Chapter II: Part 2

There is, however, one consideration, and that perhaps the most vital of all, which appears to have been strangely neglected. Every-day efficiency, even every-day right-mindedness, is not the only thing about which there is occasion for solicitude. It seems usually to be forgotten on both sides of the discussion that there occur every now and then, in the history of a nation, questions of a crucial nature upon the right or wrong decision of which rest momentous and enduring consequences. Such questions, under the traditions of representative government as they have grown up in the course of ages, are fought out in a very different way from that which marks the ordinary routine of legislation and government. They are not settled by an instantaneous show of hands. What may take place in England if it shall come to be governed by a single chamber and under a closure system which makes parliamentary obstruction impossible, no man can say; but up to the present time nothing like this kind of unlimited rule by majority vote in a parliamentary body has existed either in that country or in our own. There has always been in both a possibility of resistance, in one form or another, to the immediate desire of a majority of the people's representatives; and this has profoundly affected the course of history upon those matters which are of most vital moment.

The difference between questions of this type and the ordinary subjects of every-day legislation is more than a mere difference of degree. It is not only that they are more momentous; they are different in kind, in that their decision involves a result which, humanly speaking, is irreversible. Nothing is more common than to say that if an act of the people should prove to be a mistake, they will correct that mistake. But there are mistakes that cannot be corrected. If the question of union or disunion had been put to the touch of a majority vote, and had been decided in favor of disunion, the result of that one day's voting would, in all human probability, have been a permanent severance of this nation into two mutually alien parts. Since the Civil War there has been one great issue which, though in a wholly different way, quite as distinctly illustrates the irrevocable character which the decision of a public question may have. It _might_ be no calamity for this country to live, either temporarily or permanently, under a silver standard. But the truly vital point in the silver question which occupied the attention of the nation for twenty years was not that of the silver standard as such, but of the repudiation and currency-debasement involved in substituting the silver dollar, at the ratio of sixteen to one, for the gold dollar as the monetary unit. Had this substitution been effected, the repudiation and debasement would have taken place; and a subsequent return to the gold standard would not in the slightest degree have redressed the wrong. Under the existing system of government there was opportunity for obstruction, for compromise, for the effective influence of a few strong minds and a few powerful personalities. Under the "direct rule of the people" the whole matter might have been settled at a stroke; and it is by no means improbable that it would have been so settled, at some stage or other of the struggle, in favor of the silver standard. For it must be remembered that the very existence of this possibility would have stimulated in an incalculable degree the efforts of the silver agitators; and nothing is more probable than that during the years of depression, distress, and discontent that followed upon the panic of 1893, a moment would have been found when the popular cry of "more money" would have swept the country.

That questions not less fundamental, and the decision of which is not less irrevocable, are destined to arise in the future it should be unnecessary to argue. Never, in this country at least, has the atmosphere been so charged with issues affecting the very bases of the economic and social order. These issues are for the most part vague and undefined, but their gravity and sweep is none the less apparent. But if an illustration were needed of a more specific nature, and one which relates to a question partly of the past and partly of the future, such an illustration lies ready to hand. The agitation against the right of private property in land which was started forty years ago by Henry George's "Progress and Poverty" has only within the last few years become a serious factor in practical politics. The shape which it assumes in the actual proposals urged for immediate adoption is that of a mere reduction of the tax now levied on buildings and the placing of a corresponding additional tax on land. But the earnest advocates of this step and its earnest opponents alike rest their case on the animating purpose behind it. That purpose flows from the conviction, which its leading advocates often find it politic to keep in the background but which they seldom disavow, that the owners of land have no rights which, in the eye of justice, the rest of the community is bound to respect. The fiery zeal that shines through the pages of "Progress and Poverty" is animated by this conviction on the one hand, and on the other by the unhesitating belief that under the regime of private property in land human wretchedness must continually increase, while its abolition would carry with it the extinction of poverty. Henry George did not balk at the word confiscation. Indeed it is precisely the assertion of the right to confiscate land which, apart from the eloquent and plausible presentation, constituted the distinctive character of George's work. John Stuart Mill had long advocated the interception by the state of the "unearned increment" of the future, but firmly held that expropriation of landowners without compensation is morally indefensible. Henry George, in spite of his profound reverence for Mill, dismissed this judgment of the great liberal economist and philosopher with undisguised contempt. After quoting a certain passage from Mill, George exclaims:

In the name of the Prophet--figs! If the land of any country
belong to the people of that country, what right, in morality and
justice, have the individuals called landowners to the rent? If
the land belong to the people, why in the name of morality and
justice should the people pay its salable value for their own?

But while Henry George was convinced that outright confiscation would be perfectly just, he proposed to accomplish the substance of confiscation without introducing its form. "Confiscation," he said, "would involve a needless shock to present customs and habits of thought;" and the method he proposed for achieving his end was "to abolish all taxation save that upon land values." But he made no pretence whatever of there being any difference in substance between the two things. It was of the essence of his plan that the single tax should be tantamount to confiscation. The mere placing of the present entire burden of taxation upon the landowners would be far from sufficing for his purpose; and he expressly counted on what he regarded as the inevitable and rapid growth of the land tax, when once his principle was acknowledged, to such dimensions as to swallow up the entire rental value of land. Not the mere expenses of government as we are now familiar with them, but all the outlay for social and individual betterment which the entire revenue now attaching to the ownership of land could supply was to be available for the public good. The idea of his program was epigrammatically, but sufficiently accurately, conveyed in a motto that was prominent in his campaign for mayor of New York: "No taxes at all, and a pension for everybody."

Now it requires no extraordinary effort of the fancy to imagine what would be the natural course of such an agitation as this under a system of government in which the idea of the direct rule of the people had become thoroughly established; and by "thoroughly established" we must understand, in the case of our own country, the dominance of that idea in the nation as well as in the separate States. If in those conditions a doctrine like that of Henry George were put forward, and commanded the devotion of a band of earnest and able men, the form which its propaganda would take would, in the nature of things, be wholly different from that which we have actually witnessed. The goal towards which all effort would be directed would be the obtaining of a popular majority for some single proposal, the adoption of which would insure the fulfilment of the great purpose. The preoccupation of the nation with other issues that divide parties or factions would be no hindrance. In order to bring the question up for immediate decision by popular vote, all that would be necessary would be the satisfaction of some minimum requirement laid down in the initiative system; a minimum requirement which, be it noted, under the principle of "direct rule," has for its only _raison d'être_ the practical need of avoiding an intolerable multiplication of election questions. With this minimum satisfied, the champions of the change would advance to the charge year after year, fired with the consciousness that the gaining of a popular majority at the very next election would end once for all the iniquitous institution by which mankind has been robbed of its birthright, and make poverty and wretchedness a thing of the past.

But, it may be objected, is there after all any essential difference between this process and that which goes on under the traditional representative system, when it is truly representative? If the people are really convinced that land ownership is robbery, and that they should resume what they hold to be their own, are they not able, and ought they not to be able, to obtain their wish through the legislative assembly which represents them? The answer is that under the representative system as we know it--and quite as much at its best as at its worst--the influence of the wishes of the electorate upon the representative body is not uniform and mechanical. Representatives are elected not upon one issue, but upon many, and it is always a question how definite the popular "mandate" has been upon any one of them. From this alone it follows that there is a large, though indefinite, region in which a representative may feel free to act according to the dictates of his own individual judgment. In the case of any question involving a fundamental and momentous change, it is necessary that the mandate be extremely clear before it can be regarded by intelligent and conscientious legislators as binding upon them; and to accomplish this the strength of the feeling among the people in favor of the measure must be shown in ways far more emphatic, far more conclusive of a firm and fixed desire, than the mere existence of a majority vote. The issue must virtually raise itself to a prominence and intensity commensurate with its importance. It must find its way not merely to a position in which, when people are challenged to say yes or no, a few more say yes than say no, but to a position in which it dominates other issues and is seen to represent the deliberate and imperative desire of the people. And when we add to this the constitutional checks that have thus far obtained both in England and in this country, together with the legitimate possibilities of parliamentary obstruction, we see how profound is the difference between the representative system and that of direct rule. It may almost be likened to the difference between a living organism, endowed with the power of discrimination and judgment, and a crude mechanical contrivance. In the one case, a great issue has to go through an ordeal fitted to its nature; in the other, it is put into the hopper along with the veriest trifles of every-day business, and its fate is settled by the same monotonous turn of the wheel.

The difference which I have been endeavoring to bring out is not identical either with the difference between conservatism and progressiveness or the difference between carefulness and looseness in legislation. Much has been said both for and against "direct rule" as related to these qualities; it has been contended that direct legislation is more conservative and less conservative, more prone to error and less prone to error, than legislation by representative assemblies. But what is usually held in view, on both sides, is the course of what I have been referring to as every-day legislation. Important, however, as the question may be in relation to such matters, the transcendent issue involved in the question of direct rule of the people is how it would operate in those supreme trials which the nation is sure to be called upon in the future, as it has been in the past, to undergo. The cardinal objection that I find to it is not that it is radical or that it is careless, but that it is intrinsically incapable of making that vital distinction which should be made between these grand issues and the ordinary questions of legislative routine. And no merely mechanical modification would overcome this difficulty. The influences which, upon great occasions, have been brought into play to stay the flood of immediate popular desire perform a function for which no automatic device can serve as a substitute. These influences are sometimes noble, as in Cleveland's adamantine resistance to currency debasement, or in the act of the seven Republican Senators who, at tragic cost to themselves, voted against the conviction of Andrew Johnson; sometimes ignoble, as in the gigantic campaign fund raised by Mark Hanna in 1896; sometimes not specially to be marked with any moral label, but embodying the weight naturally accorded, in any system except that of the absolute and mechanical rule of the majority, to intellectual ability and personal force as such. Under the system of direct rule of the people, all possibility of such interposition would be swept away. Union or disunion, currency debasement or currency integrity, land confiscation or the observance of the rights of property--issues like these could be brought before the people with the same facility as a measure authorizing the purchase of a toll-road or defining the duties of a sheriff; and their fate would be decided by the same simple yes or no of the majority.

Opponents of direct rule are more or less in the habit of speaking of it as the rule of the mob. Its advocates have no trouble in disposing of this characterization by pointing out that the distinguishing mark of a mob is disorder or lawlessness, while the process of taking a vote of the people, on measures even more than on men, is eminently orderly and regular. The phrase is open to objection; taken literally, it cannot be defended. But in all probability what those who use it really mean, more or less distinctly, is something very like what has been dwelt on in this paper. What they have in mind is not the turbulence of the mob, but its brute power, its inaccessibility to complex considerations, its incapacity for taking counsel or modifying its purpose, the dumb finality of its acts. A system under which the highest questions of fundamental public policy were submitted to the peremptory decision of a majority vote at the polls would be so vitally different from the system of representative government as we have known it that, allowance made for the picturesque exaggeration of the figure, the likening of it to mob rule is by no means without excuse.

There are of course many advocates of the initiative and referendum who qualify their support in various ways; and, so far as that goes, there are many opponents who admit that, within proper limitations, these methods may be desirable. With all this I am not concerned. The real force behind the general movement--including not only direct legislation but also the recall of judges and the nullification of judicial decisions by popular vote--is the dogma of the inherent rightfulness of the unlimited rule of the majority. In the collection of papers on the subject issued by the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the leading place is given to a paper by Senator Bourne, of Oregon. Of any hesitation as to the application of the direct legislation method to the irreversible decision of fundamental questions, he shows not the faintest trace. On the contrary, it is precisely to questions of the highest moment, to the decision of issues of great sweep and significance, that he regards the application of the direct vote as peculiarly just and desirable. "It is not proposed," he says, "that the people shall act directly in all the intricate details of legislation." The great function of the initiative is in the field of ideas: "Under the initiative any man can secure the submission of his ideas to a vote of all the people, provided eight per cent. of the people sign a petition asking that the measure he proposes be so submitted." That any such question, so submitted, will be decided as it should be, Senator Bourne not only does not doubt, but apparently does not imagine that anybody else can be so perverse as to doubt. "The people of a state will never vote against their own interests, hence they will never vote to adopt a law unless it proposes a change for the improvement of the general welfare." No sign of consciousness that there may be a difference between the interests of the majority and the interests of the whole people, between immediate interests and permanent interests, between apparent interests and real interests; still less of any possible conflict between interests--as that word is commonly understood--and the abiding principles of justice or of honor. The 300,000 are certain to be right if the count of noses against them is but 290,000. To be sure, no rational man can actually believe this; and there is little doubt that Senator Bourne would repudiate such an interpretation of his words. But there is equally little doubt as to the position he would fall back upon. "The chief function"--this is the declaration with which he opens his discussion--"the chief function of the initiative and referendum is to restore the absolute sovereignty of the people." The idea that the sovereignty of the people means absolute and unrestricted rule over the whole people according to the immediate will and pleasure of fifty-one per cent. of the people--a crude error whose almost unchallenged currency among the "progressives" of our day is one of the most remarkable psychological phenomena of our time--lies at the bottom of the whole direct-rule propaganda.

THE DEMOCRAT REFLECTS

The Democrat was disillusioned, but he really was a democrat. He had been cradled and taught in the atmosphere of democracy, and was possessed by lifelong conviction of the righteousness of the democratic ideal. For a long time, too--until he had come to know more of the actual business of democracy--he had never questioned democratic practice. He was young and innocent.

But the scales had fallen from his eyes; the enlightened vision of manhood's years had disclosed in democracy a multitude of undemocratic things of whose existence in his youthful days he had not even dreamed. The preceptors of his boyhood had never told him--or his hopeful heart had not let him understand--that men had to struggle against other men to preserve even that equality to which they were born; that justice, even in the courts, could be, in the very nature of things, nothing more than an approximation, and that, among men of the world in general, it was often might that made right; that there were ways of depriving men of the ballot, in spite of enactments; that laws could be made by the will of minorities, or of single individuals. Even town-meetings could sometimes be undemocratic, and his ears were startled by those who declared that, in the nation's life at large, there was nothing left of democracy but seeming.

His faith in men had suffered the same rude shocks as his faith in democracy--quite naturally, for neither faith stood alone. He had come to see that the sordidness of human beings reached heights and depths which his youth, slow to believe and slower to perceive, had never imagined. Surely, the love of money _was_ the root of all evil--or of nearly all. The heated oratory of the campaign was mostly inspired by love of money or place. The patriotic sentiment that so abounded in the press was mostly gush, the news was colored, and the whole belonged to men with axes to grind. Yes, the press, that boasted educator of the people, of whose wondrous achievement and potentiality--yes, and whose freedom--he and his schoolfellows had written and declaimed, was sometimes bought. Votes at the polls and in legislative halls were sometimes bought. Contracts with the government were sometimes bought. Expert scientific opinion was sometimes bought. War scares were manufactured for a purpose. Great industries could use intimidation to secure a party the votes of their employees. There was no form of meanness in life high or low that could not find ready a hand for its undertaking. Cities were sinks of rottenness and suffering because it paid their democratic administrators to have them so. The greed of men could force other men to live and beget their children in unhealthful, degrading environment, birth into which was birth into slavery and disease of body and soul. "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" was a mockery to tens of thousands.

And all this took place under a democracy--a government which he had been taught was the most equitable on earth, the refuge of the poor and the oppressed, who sailed into the haven where Liberty was Enlightening the World to enter the Land of Promise where all their tears should be wiped away! And the worst of it was, that those who talked most loudly of the democratic ideal were those most eager to profit at its expense. If he could have laid it all to the rich or the aristocratic, it would not have been so bad; but he couldn't. The poor were by nature as greedy and unjust as the rich, and showed themselves as bad in practice when they had the chance, and the democrat turned tyrant as soon as it suited his purse or ambition. It was dismaying. The contrast between the actual workings of democracy and the ideal his innocence had worshipped was so enormous that he sometimes doubted whether they had anything at all in common.

But in time dismay, and even surprise, had worn away, and he recovered equanimity. He was disillusioned, but still a democrat. At the same time he learned of the weakness of his idol, he learned of the weakness of human nature. He knew that the evils he lamented were due much more to human weakness than to the form of government under which the evils occurred. With a philosopher of his own land, he agreed that no form of government was so good as not to work ill in the hands of the bad, and none so bad as not to work well in the hands of the good. Henceforth, if he must worry, let it be about men.

Thus it was that the Democrat, from being a partisan, became a Spectator. Democracy--or what was called that--was amusing: it was so human--so human in its faults, so human in its self-deception. He was moved to smiles at the spectacle of a nation of individuals all wisely thinking themselves intelligent voters, patriots, and capable managers of their country's affairs.

Was it, after all, a democracy? The Democrat possessed the none too common art of looking behind mere words, and contemplating Things as They Are. He was reading his magazine one evening--it contained one of those comforting political science essays, entitled "Whither Are We Drifting?"--when the notion seized on him to find some better name for the government under which he lived. So he laid aside the essay, and let his thoughts run.

Elimination seemed to appeal as a method. He made a whimsical beginning: it wasn't a timocracy; however much the love of honor flourished, it seemed agreed that it was not that which ruled the nation. That the government wasn't an ochlocracy he also felt sure; for, in spite of the rule of mobs, in labor troubles, lynchings, institutions of learning, and weddings in high life, he well knew that the real authority of the land lay in fewer hands.

Was it, then, an aristocracy? That could not be, for no one was better than anyone else. In matters of personal worth there was no superlative; there was not even a comparative. At least, there was no surer path to defeat at the polls than for a candidate to be called "better," to say nothing of "best."

Whether it was a theocracy hardly needed consideration. True, the coin of the realm recorded the nation's Trust in God, and God was frequently quoted as being heartily in favor of a variety of political projects; but on the whole the Democrat was convinced that the function of the inscription was decorative, and felt that any proposal to entrust God alone with the affairs of the nation would create a mighty upheaval in politics and commerce, and be followed by a period of depression. He couldn't really see that God had much part in the actual government, though he would not go so far as Epicurus, and say that He cared nothing about what men were doing. He felt more like agreeing with the Hebrew who conceived God as laughing men to derision. And besides, to say that the government was at present a theocracy would place the Democrat in the position of an adverse critic of the Almighty, which was as much as to say that he himself was better than the Almighty; and that would be undemocratic.

On the whole, those who called the government an oligarchy seemed to be getting more near to reality; for at certain crises it became quite clear that a few men determined the measures of government. And yet, the individuals of the group were not always the same, but varied according to the interests involved; and they were not an openly constituted and declared body, elected by the people. To be sure, they operated through legislators, but they themselves were more often than not far removed from open political life. To call the real government a plutocracy, its governing agents plutocrats, and their instruments the legislators, seemed reasonable enough. It was humiliating, it seemed the fact that the great democracy was ruled, not by itself, but by a Thing.

However, the rule of money, that is, financial self-interest, was not really a form of government; it was only an influence, and one that might work good as well as ill. It underlay, more or less, all governments, not only modern, but ancient as well, and had to, in the nature of things, so long as property existed and prosperity meant increase. What else did the phenomenon of economic history-writing signify but the appreciation of this fact?

The Democrat concluded to let the government under which he lived stand as a democracy. The term might not be absolutely sufficient, but it covered the case as well as any. At any rate, whatever the reality, the government was cast in the democratic mold: every man had a vote, and was sovereign over it, and could sell it, or throw it away, or even make use of it, as he chose; and he was represented, or at least thought he was, by someone whom he elected, or thought he elected; and was heeded when he clamored his desires or his indignation, provided it didn't interfere too much with what his representative was induced to conceive to be the interests of "the people."

And there were also other manifestations of the democratic ideal which really distinguished the government under which he lived from that of many other nations. There was democracy in education. The public set out to educate _all_ its sons and daughters, from kindergarten to college Commencement. The day was past when education was only for gentlemen's sons; the children of the people, rich and poor, blue-blooded and flat-footed, male and female, brainy and brainless, came to college, and within its walls there was no connection, it was said, between honors and money or place. Students dressed from the same clothes-shop, yelled the same college yell, bought their apparatus at a co-operative store, ate at the same boarding-house, took the same examinations, often subserving the cause of democracy by evading aristocratic tyranny in the person of the faculty and making democratic use of their neighbors' learning, and asked no questions about each other's finances or forbears--except, of course, the fraternity and sorority students, who had _tria nomina_ and were the exceptions to prove the rule.

And not only were the college rolls and records indicative of democracy, but there was a democracy of subjects to study. You had free election: one subject was as good as another, one course as valuable as another. So long as you had the required number of credits, the character of the credits made no difference: an hour contained sixty minutes, and no hour set up to be better than its fellows. A college education was defined as "something of everything for everybody," and the definition was especially applicable to the education of the State Universities, those great examples of learning in action. In them anyone might study anything at any time under any instructor under any conditions and in any place--for you could study in absence, and by correspondence, and hypnotism, and Christian Science. And when you got through, whatever your method or matter or capacity or docility or imbecility, you were labelled A. B., and were as good as any other A. B., and had a fortune assured--until you found out that the great democratic world thought A. B. no better than D. F., or any other combination of letters, or no letters at all.

Yes, and there was democracy of religion as well as of education. Ministers wore plain clothes, avoided religion in conversation, greeted everyone with the loudness which in some way had become confused with cordiality, romped with children, attended kissing parties, and used slang in sermons. Men believed anything, or nothing; it was a free country, a free age. Any religion, or any interpretation of it, was as good as any other, so long as you really believed it. You could pray kneeling, or standing, or sitting, or walking, or jumping--as you chose. You could interpret your creed literally, or symbolically, or allegorically, or pragmatically. You could devote your church edifice to God, or you could make it a meeting-house for the people, and use it for socials, athletics, kindergarten, lyceum, vaudeville, soup kitchens, rummage sales, teachers' institutes--and when all these religious activities grew too extensive for it, you could sell it to the liveryman or the storage company or the movie-man. What were churches for, if not for the people?

There was democracy in art, too--especially in literature. Poets wrote in what vein and in what meter they chose, at what length, with what attention to rhyme and rhythm, with what preparation or equipment they chose. They bowed before no laws, ancient or modern. If they made use of the great names in poetry, it was to justify their own vagaries. They not only pleaded Tennyson for Tennysonian liberties, but took what additional license they chose on the ground of personal liberty. Didn't Homer nod? Of course; and, taking advantage of the example, they slept the sleep of the unworrying. Poets could write in prose, and prose authors dress their commonplace thoughts in verse. In oratory and the novel, matter was all, form nothing. Men were content if their readers _could_ get their meaning; the compelling power of style and accurate expression were qualities for which they were unwilling to pay the price of long and patient preparation. Olympus, Helicon, and Arcadia had become the paradise of anarchists, to say nothing of democrats. Who cared now when Zeus's ambrosial locks were shaken in wrath, or Apollo slammed his baton down in a rage? Who were they, to set up to be better than others?

And, as for painters and sculptors, and architects and musicians, who should presume to tyrannize over them by requiring standards of style or subject? If an architect chose to construct a High School that looked like a prison or a warehouse, why shouldn't he? After all, what was the High School but the people's college, and what was its purpose if not to fit the sons and daughters of the commonwealth for life, and why _should_ it be built in the Tudor style, or in any other style? What the people needed was usefulness, not style. And if a musician wished to compose an overture imitative of all the noises that accompanied the Retreat from Moscow, including French and Russian profanity, or if a painter preferred to paint a drunken prostitute rather than Diana or a Daughter of the Revolution, why shouldn't he? It was a free country, a democratic age, and it was time art entered into the service of the people.

And there was democracy of manners, too, and of dress. Democracy had grown so used to insisting on clothes not making the man, that distinction in dress had long been a rarity, and men were no longer constrained to live up to the garb they wore. You could wear a white vest without obligation to keep it clean, and you could appear with silk hat and long coat without being suspected of religion or literature. Men made the clothes now: the process was reversed; they made them by the wholesale, every season, and if you weren't satisfied with a good democratic costume--i. e., the one imposed by the despotic democratic fashion of the season--and had your clothing made to adorn, why, you were an aristocrat.

And if clothes didn't oblige, neither did _noblesse_, that other aristocratic bugbear, oblige. Gentlemen? Family? Why, everyone was a gentleman, from pugilist to preacher. Who said so? Why, who but the gentleman himself? It was a free country, and a man had a right to be a gentleman if he chose, didn't he? Just what a gentleman was, to be sure, no one seemed able to say; but no one failed to lay claim to the title, or to pull off his coat and prove the justice of his claim if you denied it. Surely there was no greater proof of the beneficent power of democracy than that it made all men gentlemen, and all women ladies.

And there was democracy in the home as well. The American husband was so democratic that he bettered the apostolic instruction which told wives to be obedient to their husbands. You might have thought that it read the reverse. And children--the children of democratic America were famous the world over for their unquestioning assumption of knowledge and authority, for their assurance and aggressiveness; for their easy contradiction of their parents, who were intimidated by the pedagogical direction never to let your child fear you. Travellers returned from Europe and reported no Hans and Giovannino who made wide the mouth and thrust out the tongue in the streets of aristocracy. Since the time of the bald-headed prophet and the two and forty she-bears, it had been natural for youth to presume on its superiority, but it was only the spirit of democracy which seemed to _encourage_ the presumption.

But why not? If democracy meant equality, why not be consistent? If all men--black and white, good and bad, rich and poor, wise and foolish--were to be made equal, why not all women with them? Women were surely members of the commonwealth. And why not all children? Hadn't Spencer said so? Children were members of the commonwealth, too. And why not the beasts, wild and tame, who were also part and parcel of the population of the country? Why stop merely with men?

Yes, the Democrat concluded, his country was best described as a democracy, even though the few ruled over the many in matters of substance, and the many ruled over the few in art and manners, and both were tyrants. He remembered Plato's definition--Plato the blasphemer--and it seemed applicable to his own time: "Democracy, a charming form of government, full of variety and diversity, and dispensing equality to equals and unequals alike." It was marvellous how men believed in their equality with other men, what self-confidence they possessed, and what assurance came to them from the oft repeated word liberty. "This is a free country, and I'm just as good as you" could be said by anyone, and was said by everyone, and as a result his back was a little stiffer and his head a degree or two more erect. Foreigners learned to say it before they learned to speak the language. The very animals seemed to understand it; it was Plato over again: "And the horses and asses had come to have a way of marching along with all the rights and dignities of free men; and they would run at anybody whom they met in the street if he did not get out of their way: and all things were just ready to burst with liberty."

The Democrat, you see, through his habit of looking at Things as They Are, had come to possess a lively sense of the ridiculous side of democracy--its inconsistencies, its unconscious enjoyment of words, its silly self-deception and placid self-satisfaction.

Now that you have seen the workings of his mind, you will easily understand, too, how the expression of his thoughts might provoke those who were always on the lookout for the red rag of aristocracy. And the fact is, that on occasion he did express his thoughts with great frankness and no little vehemence; and, as no one likes to be told his faults by even a friendly critic, he often brought the angry hornets of democracy about his ears.

Yes, and by your smiling you seem to say that he deserved it. And yet I assure you now, as I did in the beginning, that he was really a democrat. You must not mistake realization of the faults of democracy in operation for hostility to democracy itself. He had seen something of life in aristocratic countries, and was thankful above all things that there _was_ something in the atmosphere of his own land which had the effect of making men look up. This virtue alone covered a multitude of the sins of democracy. There _was_ something in his country more than the mere form of democratic society. Whether men got their rights or not, they knew they had rights, and anyone who wanted to make them consent to injustice had at least to take the trouble of giving it the appearance of justice. And not only were they possessed of a lively sense of their own rights, but the air was full of talk about other people's having _their_ rights. Generosity and benevolence were abroad in the land. It was, to be sure, something of the sort of Sidney Smith's benevolence--the feeling which A experienced when he thought B ought to do something to relieve C's necessities; but even that kind was better than none. It was vastly important whether large classes of human beings acquiesced in being regarded as cattle--as they seemed to in the Old World--or not.

But if he had a vivid sense of the desirability of the democratic ideal, he had just as vivid a sense of the dangers of democratic practice. It was not difficult to see that the universal talk about making all men equal, vapid as it might be, was having an effect which could but make the judicious grieve. It was pulling excellence from her lofty seat to set her on a level with mediocrity. Democracy aimed at equality. But equality on a high plane was impossible. Certain men--most men--could not rise to a high plane, or would not. Those therefore who could climb were not to keep on climbing, but to remain at the lower level, or return from the heights, or assist those who were at the lowest of all. Not all could reach the mountain top; therefore let those who _were_ able to make the ascent engage in assisting the great majority to attain the _middle_ space of the incline. Not all could take a college degree; therefore let the college degree be brought within the reach of all. Not all could be gentlemen; therefore reconstruct and democratize the definition of the gentleman. In scholarship, religion, manners, in literature, in all the arts--in everything except the art of making money--democracy seemed in danger of fostering the mediocre, and discouraging the excellent. In its effort for breadth, it was encouraging shallowness. It might be that for the poorest, the meanest, and the stupidest, democracy meant individualism and opportunity; but for the brightest and most ambitious, it seemed to partake of the nature of tyranny. The main idea in Plato's Republic was the sacrifice of the individual to the whole. In the Modern Republic it seemed something like the sacrifice of the best to the good, the leveling down of the highest as well as the raising up of the lowest. Certain kinds of talent and effort were in great danger of neglect--the kind of talent and effort which had made nations live in history. If there was anything in the record of the past, if civilization was not on the wrong track, and if literature and religion and the arts were indeed the supremely worth while, it seemed plain that the encouragement of uniformity beyond limits was a crime against the race. The atoms of Democritus, streaming forever downward in parallel lines, would never have accomplished a world. It needed an Epicurus and a Lucretius to recognize that they must have swerved from their deadly course of uniformity. It took friction and collision to beget a universe. The democratic passion for freedom and equality and uniformity once fully realized, what deadness and monotony! And as for the boasted educating power of responsibility, there was as little chance for it in the frictionless machine of perfect democracy as under despotism itself.

Democracy certainly did savor of the machine; just as the object of machinery was to insure a uniform product without personal handling of each individual piece, so the object of democracy seemed to be in such wise to regulate the affairs of men that justice would be automatic.

The fact was, human laziness occupied great space in the foundations of the democratic spirit. There were other qualities also, of course. There was misapprehension. The democratic poor imagined ideal possession on the part of those more prosperous than themselves, and the democratic rich imagined the extreme of unpossession on the part of those poorer than themselves; and both forgot, or had never discovered, what Horace knew two thousand years ago, that the poor man was seasick in the hired skiff the same as the rich man in his private trireme. And there was the spirit of restlessness--the everlasting desire of the human animal for new things, and his perennial ignorance of the fact that a change of sky did not necessarily mean a change of heart. And of course there was human sympathy, the greatest of them all.

But the place of human laziness was great. Men shrank from responsibility; uniformity and automatic justice appealed to them. Democracy was a labor-saving device. The meting out of justice by and to individuals was difficult, and took time, and, what was worse, thought. It was much easier to legislate a form of equality, and have done with it--to press a button, have a uniform product, and not bother with hand-made goods.

Not that equality and uniformity were undesirable. The trouble with the popular democratic ideal consisted only in its exaggeration. The democracy of the enthusiastic multitude was an extreme. Aristocracy went to the extreme of inequality and diversity, and democracy went to the extreme of equality and uniformity. Both extremes were vicious; for vices are only exaggerated virtues. And vices are easier than virtue, extremes easier than the golden mean. To proceed on the assumption that all men could be treated as free and equal was easier by far than to recognize and study their inequalities and limitations, and to attempt the best for each individual; but the result was only a vicious approximation.

Let democracy recognize that there were two sides to the shield. The Democrat sympathized with the ignorant and needy, and believed that the more fortunate should make cheerful sacrifice to help them rise. As for himself, he would regulate his conduct among men on the basis of worth, not wealth or blood,

_scilicet uni æquus virtuti atque eius amicis_,

and stand ready to obey unselfishly any measure for the common good, however undesirable from his particular point of view. If, however, he demanded sacrifice on the part of the more fortunate in the interest of the masses, he demanded no less the spirit of sacrifice on the part of the masses for the sake of such of their fellows as gave evidence of superior worth. A democracy should be a great family, in which the sons of promise were gladly helped on their way to honor and usefulness, even at the cost of deprivation and suffering on the part of the rest of the household--as in many an actual family which performed such sacrifice, and rejoiced in it--and by the sacrifice added to its own glory and strength. It should give all its sons and daughters the greatest possible opportunity of self-realization, but never fail to recognize that some selves were more worth realization than others. Whatever was levelled, let it not be intellect or character.

After all, government was a means, not an end. The end was character--individual _and_ national. A form of government was good or bad as it succeeded or failed to produce that depth and breadth of individual and collective spirit which marked great eras in history--such a spirit as that which made possible the Parthenon or the North Portal of the Erechtheum; or turned back the Armada; or inspired the Italian Risorgimento; or crystallized into the dramas of Shakespeare or Sophocles; or formed the soul of other periods when men were actuated by passionate desire for the common good and common glory, for time _and_ eternity. The momentary good of the individual--his comfort or enjoyment--was a worthy ideal only in so far as it contributed to character. Without elevation of the ideals of the individual citizen, there could be no great leaders; without great leaders there was no vision, and the people perished.

So it appears that the Democrat's ideal society was somewhere between that of Plato, who thought that, until the union of political power and philosophy in the same person could be effected, there would be no relief, and that in which the Democrat lived, where men were chosen lawmakers and rulers ostensibly because they were good fellows, or at least none of your damned aristocrats.

THE NEW MORALITY

Some ten or twelve years ago a certain young woman, then fresh from the hands of an esteemed but erratic professor of English literature, wrote a novel the plot of which was roughly as follows. A college graduate suddenly finds himself the inheritor of a shoe factory in a New England town. Filled with the benevolent ideas absorbed in the academic contemplation of economics, he undertakes to introduce profit-sharing with his employees and otherwise to conduct his business for the benefit of the community. So far, good. But hard times follow, and his competitors by lowering wages and reducing labor are able to undersell him. Now there is in his control a considerable sum of money which a widow had entrusted to his father to invest for her, and the question arises whether he shall shut down his mills and inflict suffering upon his men, or shall divert this trust fund to his business and so try to tide over the period of stress. He yields to his sympathies and virtually embezzles the trust fund; but fails nevertheless, and with his own loss brings ruin upon the widow. The story was called "The Burden of Christopher," with the implication that the hero was a bearer of Christ in his misfortune, and the author indicates pretty clearly her sentiment that in surrendering his personal integrity for the expected good of his working people he was following the higher of two conflicting codes of ethics.

The book no doubt has gone its own way to the "limbo large and broad," where the heroes of ancient fiction wander with

Embryoes and idiots, eremits and friars;

but it made a lasting impression on one reader at least, as the first popular presentation to come under his notice of a theory which now confronts him wherever he turns his eyes. There has, in fact, been an astonishing divulgation in the past decade of what is called, with magnificent audacity, the New Morality.

Perhaps the most honored teacher of this code is the mistress of Hull House, who by her devoted life and her services to the people of Chicago in various times of need has won the right to speak with a certain authority for the striving generation of the day. And in one of her books, the "Newer Ideals of Peace," Miss Addams tells of an actual occurrence and infers a moral which points in the same direction as the novel of "Christopher." A family of five children is left motherless. The father, a drunkard, disappears, and the household is left to the care of a feeble old grandmother. Thereupon work is found for the oldest boy, "a fine, manly little fellow" of twelve, who feels keenly "his obligation to care for the family"; but after a time he becomes "listless and indifferent," and at sixteen turns to professional tramping. "It was through such bitter lessons as these," observes Miss Addams, "we learned that good intentions and the charitable impulse do not always work for righteousness." As the story is told there is a plain implication that to find work for a boy under such circumstances is "cruel and disastrous" (her own comment), and that society, and not his own nature, was responsible for his relapse. One would suppose that scarcely an honest workman, or prosperous merchant, or successful professional man had ever taken up the burden of life in youth or childhood. Certainly, hardship and physical waste often result from the demands of life, but there is not a single word in Miss Addams's account to indicate that she has felt the higher need for the future citizen of developing in him a sensitiveness to the peculiar duties that confront him, or has reflected on the moral evil that might have been done the boy if he had been relieved of his natural obligations and his family had been supported by society. "Our democracy," as she says with approval, "is making inroads upon the family, the oldest of human institutions."

This is not an isolated case in Miss Addams's works, nor does it in any wise misrepresent her. In another book, "The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets," the thesis is maintained and reiterated, that crime is for the most part merely the result of repressing a wholesome "love for excitement" and "desire for adventure." In the year 1909 "there were arrested and brought into court [in Chicago] fifteen thousand young people under the age of twenty, who had failed to keep even the common law of the land. Most of these young people had broken the law in their blundering efforts to find adventure." The inference to be drawn here and throughout the book is that one need only relieve the youth of the land from the necessity of "assuming responsibility prematurely," affording them meanwhile abundant amusement, and the instincts of lawlessness and the pursuit of criminal pleasure will vanish, or almost vanish, of themselves--as if there were no Harry Thaws, and the sons of the rich were all virtuous.

But it must not be supposed that Hull House occupies a place of lonely isolation as the fountain of these ideas. From every self-authorized centre of civic virtue in which a type-writer is at work, the stream proceeds. The very presses groan, as we used to say when those machines were still in the mythological stage, at their labor of supplying the world with the new intellectual pabulum. At this moment there lies before the writer of this article a pile of books, all recently published, which are devoted more or less specifically to the subject, and from all of which, if he had courage to go through them, he might cull abundant examples and quotations. He was, indeed, about to enter this "hollow cave, amid the thickest woods," when, an unvaliant knight, he heard the warning of the lady Una:

Yea but (quoth she) the perill of this place
I better wot then you, though now too late
To wish you backe returne with foule disgrace,
Yet wisedome warnes, whilest foot is in the gate,
To stay the steppe, ere forced to retrate.