referendum. With the new problems and complications of an
extraordinarily developed life, it is doubtless wise that the people
should be able to initiate legislation and should have the final word as
to what legislation shall stand. On the other hand, if we are not to
suffer under a mass of hasty and ill-considered legislation, if laws are
to stand, they must always be formulated by a body of trained
legislators, and not by the changing whim of popular opinion.
So with the recall, now so widely demanded in many sections of the
country. In the old days, our candidates were most obsequious and
profuse in promises to their constituents _before_ election; but once
elected, only too often they turned their backs on their constituents,
went merrily their own way, making deals and bargains, in the spirit
that "to the victor belong the spoils." Therefore we justly demanded
some control of them, after, as before, election: hence the recall.
Again the movement is right; but if the fundamentals of democracy are to
be permanent, that body of men, concerned with the interpretation of the
constitution and the fundamental law of the land, must not be subject to
the immediate whim of mob mind, and the power to recall those judges
occupied with this task would be a graver danger than advantage. They
will make mistakes, at times they will be ultra conservative and
servants of special interests, but that is one of the incidental prices
we have to pay for the permanence of free institutions. The problem is
to keep the basic principles of democracy unchanged, the forms on the
surface as fluid and adjustable as possible.
It is these three transformations--the abandonment of the old abstract
notions and the testing of democracy by its results, the expansion of
its application over the entire population, and the invention and
development of representative government--it is these three changes that
make our democracy a new order of society, new in its problems, its
menaces, its solutions.
XV
DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION
All just government is a transient device to make ordered progress
possible. In the kingdom of heaven there would be no government, for if
all human beings saw the best, loved the best and willed the best, the
function of government would be at an end. Obviously there is no hope
or fear that we shall get into the kingdom of heaven soon, and the
necessity for government will exist for an indefinitely long time.
Nevertheless, government is due to the imperfection of human nature and,
as stated, its aim is ordered progress. Progress without order is
anarchy; order without progress is stagnation and death.
It must frankly be admitted, moreover, that democracy is not the
shortest road to good government nor to economic efficiency. That we
recognize this as a people is proved by the drift of our opinion and of
the changes in our lesser institutions. Take, for instance, our city
government. A few decades ago our cities were so notoriously misgoverned
that they were the scandal of the world. Our boards of aldermen or
councilmen, representing ward constituencies, with all sorts of local
strings tied to them, were clumsy and unwieldy and easily subject to
corruption.
So, about twenty years ago, all across the country went the cry, "Get a
good mayor, and give him a free hand." That is the way our great
industries are conducted: a wise captain of industry is secured and
given full control. Being a practical people, and imagining ourselves to
be much more practical than really we are, we said, let us conduct our
city business in the same way. Why not? Plato showed long ago that you
can get the best government in the shortest time by getting a good
tyrant, and giving him a free hand.
There arc just two objections. The first is incidental: it is
exceedingly difficult to keep your tyrant good. Arbitrary authority
over one's fellows is about the most corrupting influence known to man.
No one is great and good enough to be entrusted with it. Responsible
power sobers and educates, irresponsible power corrupts. Nevertheless
we pay the price of this error and learn the lesson.
The other objection is more significant. It is the effect on the rank
and file of the citizenship, for the meaning of democracy is not
immediate results in government, but the education of the citizen, and
that education can come only by fulfilling the functions of citizenship.
Thus it is better to be the free citizen of a democracy, with all the
waste and temporary inefficiency democracy involves, than to be the
inert slave of the most perfect paternal despotism ever devised by man.
Thus the movement away from democratic city government is gravely to be
questioned, no matter what economic results it secures.
The same argument applies to more recent changes, as the commission form
of city government. As in the previous case, reacting upon the
scandalous situation, we said, "Let us choose the three to five best men
in the community, and let them run the city's business for us." Nearly
every time this change has been made, the result has been an immediate
cleaning up of the city government; but why? Chiefly because "a new
broom sweeps clean,"--not so much for the reason that it is new, as
because you are interested in the instrument. You can get a dirty room
remarkably clean with an old broom, if you will sweep hard enough. The
cleaning up is due, not primarily to the instrument, but to the hand
that wields it.
To speak less figuratively: the cleaning up of the city government with
the inauguration of the commission system, came because the change was
made by an awakening of the good people of the community. Good people
have a habit, however, of going to sleep in an astoundingly short time;
but _the gang never sleeps_. Now suppose, while the good people are
dozing in semi-somnolence, assured that the new broom will sweep of
itself, the gang gets together and elects the three to five worst
gangsters in the city to be the commission? Is it not evident that the
very added efficiency of the instrument means greater graft and
corruption?
Equally the argument applies to the most recent device suggested--the
city manager plan. As we have largely taken our schools out of
politics, and have a non-partisan educational expert as superintendent,
so it is suggested we should conduct our city business. Again, suppose
the gang appoints the city manager: he will be an expert in graft,
rather than in government.
The moment a people gets to trusting to a device it is headed for
danger. There is just one safeguard of democracy, and that is _to keep
the good people awake and at the task all the time_. Some instruments
are better and some are worse, but the instrument never does the work,
it is the hand and brain that wield it.
If there is one field where we could reasonably expect to find pure
democracy, it is in our higher educational institutions. In a college
or university, where a group of young men and women, and a group of
older men and women are gathered apart, out of the severer economic
struggle, dedicated to ideal ends: there, surely, we could expect pure
democracy in organization and relationship; yet the tendency has been
steadily toward autocracy. One can count the fingers of both hands and
not cover the list of college and university presidents who have taken
office during the last fifteen years, only on condition that they have
complete authority over the educational policy of the institution, and
often over its financial policy as well. The reason is obvious: we run
a railroad efficiently by getting a good president and giving him
arbitrary control; why not a university?
There are just the two objections cited above: even in a university, it
is difficult to keep your tyrant good. This, again, is the minor
objection. The real evil is in the effect upon the rank and file of
those governed by the autocrat. There are men in university faculties
to-day who say, privately, that if they could get any other opportunity,
they would resign to-morrow, for they feel like clerks in a department
store, with no opportunity to help determine the educational policy of
the institutions of which they are integral parts.
The German university, under all the autocracy and bureaucracy of the
German state, is more democratic in its organization than our own. Its
faculty is a self-governing body, electing to its own membership. The
Rectorship is an honor conferred for the year on some faculty member for
superior worth and scholarship. Each member of the faculty may thus
feel the self-respect and dignity, resulting from the power and
initiative he possesses as a free citizen of the institution.
Let me suggest what would be the ideal democratic organization of a
college or university. Why not apply the same division of functions of
government that has proved so successful in the state? The board of
Trustees is the natural judiciary; the President, the executive. The
faculty is the legislative body, with the student body as a sort of
lower house, cooperating in enacting the legislation for its own
government. Where has such a plan been tried?
If the primary purpose of democracy is thus, not immediate results in
government, but the education of the citizen, on the other hand,
democracy rests, for its safety and progress, on the ever better
education of the citizen. Under the older forms of human society, laws
may be passed and executed that are far in advance of public opinion.
That cannot be done in a democracy. The law may be a slight step in
advance, and so perhaps educate public opinion to its level; but if it
goes beyond that step, after the first flurry of interest in the law is
past, it remains a dead letter on the statute books--worse than useless,
because cultivating that dangerous disrespect for all law, which we have
seen growing upon us as a people.
Thus from either side, the problem of democracy is a problem of
education. It rests upon education, its aim is education. In a
democracy, the supreme function of the state is, not to establish a
military system for defense, or a police system for protection, it is
not the enforcement of public and private contract: it is to take the
children and youth of each generation and develop them into men and
women able to fulfill the responsibility and enjoy the opportunity of
free citizenship in a free society.
XVI
MENACES OF DEMOCRACY
Since modern democracy is a new thing under the sun, so its menaces are
new, or, if old, they take misleadingly new forms. For instance, the
greatest danger in the path of our democracy is the world-old evil of
selfishness, but it does take surprisingly new form. It is not
aggressive selfishness that we have primarily to dread. There are
those, it is true, who believe we may soon be endangered by the
ambitions of some arrogant leader in the nation. The fear is
unwarranted, for our people are still so devoted to the fundamental
principles of democracy, that if any leader were to take one clear step
toward over-riding the constitution and making himself despot, that step
would be his political death-blow. No, we are not yet endangered by the
aggressive ambitions of those at the front, but we are in grave danger
from the negative selfishness of indifference, shown in its worst form
by just those people who imagine they are good because they are
respectable, whereas they may be merely good--for nothing.
Plato argued that society could never have patriotism in full measure
until the family was abolished. A singular notion that any school boy
to-day can readily answer, yet here is the curious situation. Family
life, among ourselves, in its better aspects, has reached a higher plane
than ever before in any people. More marriages are made on the only
decent basts of any marriage. This is the woman's land. Children have
their rights and privileges, even to their physical, mental and moral
detriment. It is here that men most willingly sacrifice for their
families, slaving through the hot summer in the cities, to send wife and
children to the seashore or the mountains; yet it is just here that men
most readily unhinge their consciences when they turn from private to
public life.
Some cynic has said that there is not an American citizen who would not
smuggle to please his wife. Of course the statement is not true, but if
you have ever crossed the ocean on a transatlantic liner, and watched
the devices to which ordinarily decent men--men who would be ashamed to
steal your pocket handkerchief or to lie to you as an individual--will
resort, in order to lie to the government or steal from the government,
you begin to wonder if the cynic was not right. The law, obviously, may
be unjust: if so, protest against it and seek to have it changed, but
while it is the law, does it not deserve your respectful obedience,
unless you would add to the dangerously growing disrespect for all law?
Next to the menace of selfishness is that of ignorance, and this, too,
takes confusingly new form. It is not ignorance of scientific fact and
law, dangerous as that is, that threatens, but ignorance of what our
institutions mean, of what they have cost, of the ideal for which we
stand among the nations. The celerity with which, even during the past
two decades, the younger generation has abandoned old standards and
ideals, is an ominous illustration. It is true:
"New occasions teach new duties, time makes ancient goods uncouth; 'They
must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth."
Those words of Lowell's are as fully applicable to the present crisis,
as to that for which Lowell wrote them; but to give up the past, without
knowing that you are letting go, is surely not the part of wisdom.
A third menace shows in that fickleness of temper and false standard of
life that cause us to admire the wrong type of leader. Probably one
half of all the attacks on men of unusual wealth and success come from
other men, who would like to be in the same situation with those they
attack, and have failed of their ambition. Part of the attack is
sincere, no doubt, but if you assumed that all the abuse heaped upon
conspicuous men came from moral conviction, you would utterly misread
the situation.
On the other hand, men of moral excellence make us ashamed. Now it
takes a rarely magnanimous spirit to be shamed and not resent it. We
are apt to feel that, if we can pull another down, we raise ourselves.
To realize this, consider the growl of joy that comes from the worse
sort of citizen and newspaper when some public leader is caught in a
private scandal. As if pulling him down, raised us! We are all tarred
with his disgrace. There are, indeed, two ways of stating the ideal of
democracy: you can say, "I am just as good as any one else," which in
the first place, is not true, and, in the second, would be unlovely of
you to express, were it true. You can say, on the contrary, "Every
other human being ought to have just as good a chance as I have," which
is right; and yet you will hear the ideal of democracy phrased a dozen
times the first way, where it is expressed once in the second form.
That democracies are fickle is one of the oldest criticisms upon them.
We had thought that we were not subject to that criticism, and in the
old days we were not. We had the country debating club and the village
lyceum. We were an agricultural people, sober and slow-moving. We had
few books, they were good books and we read them many times. We had few
newspapers, we knew the men who wrote in them, and when we read an
editorial, our mind was actively challenged by the sincere thinking of
another mind.
To-day, everywhere, we have moved into the cities. The strength of the
country-side is sobriety and slow incubation of the forces of life. Its
vice is stupidity. The strength of the city is keen wittedness,
versatility, quick response. Its vice is fickleness, morbidity,
exhaustion. We have our great blanket sheet newspapers, representing a
party, a clique, a financial interest, with writers lending their brains
out, for money, to write editorials for causes in which they do not
believe. We have the multitude of books, incessantly and hastily
produced; we read much, and scarcely think at all. We have got rid of
the old "three decker" novel, reduced it to a single volume, and then
taken out the climax of the story, publishing it in the corner of the
daily newspaper, as the short story of the day, so that he who runs may
read. If he is a wise man he will run as fast as he can and not read
that stuff at all. We have our ever increasing "movies," with their
incessant titillation of the mind with swift passing impressions, as
disintegrating to intellectual concentration, as they are injurious to
the eyes. The result of it all is an increasing fickleness of temper,
so that the same people who shout most loudly when the popular hero goes
by, the next week cover his very name with vituperation and abuse, if he
offends their slightest whim.
This evil breeds another: fickleness in the people means demagoguery in
the leader, inevitably. We have said to our public men--not in words,
but by the far more impressive language of our conduct--"get money,
power, success, and we will give you more money, power and success, and
not ask you how you got them nor what ends you serve in using them."
That so many have refused the bribe is to their credit, not ours; we
have done what we could to corrupt them.
Finally, we are the most irreverent people in the world. We believe in
youth, we scorn age. We have splendid enthusiasm, we do not know what
wisdom means. One hears college presidents say--half jokingly, of
course--that there is no use appointing a man over thirty to the faculty
these days. So one hears Christian ministers, in those denominations
where the minister is called by the particular church, say there is no
use trying to get another call after one is fifty! Of course, it is not
true, but it is true enough to be a serious criticism upon us. For what
other vocation is there where the mellowness that comes only from time
and long experience, from presiding at weddings and standing beside open
graves, sharing the joys and sorrows of innumerable persons, is so
indispensable, as in the pastor, the physician of the spirit? Still, we
will turn out some wise, shy, mellow old man, just ripened to the point
of being the true minister to the souls of others, and replace him with
a recent graduate of a theological school, because the latter can talk
the language of the higher criticism or whatever else happens to
interest us for the moment. Obviously, we pay the price, but think what
it indicates of our civilization.
XVII
THE DILEMMA OF DEMOCRACY
We have seen that the gravest menaces of democracy are the faults in
mind and character in the multitude. Selfishness, fickleness,
ignorance, irreverence in the people, with demagoguery in the leader--
these are the menaces of American democracy. How then can the people be
trusted, since democracy depends upon trusting them? This is an old
indictment, searching to the very heart of democracy. Plato made it of
ancient Athens, while, more recently and trenchantly, Ibsen has made it
for all modern society.
The argument runs thus: democracy means the rule of the majority. Well,
there are more fools than wise men in the world, more ignorant than
intelligent. Thus the rule of the majority must mean the rule of the
fools over the wise men, of the ignorant over the intelligent. Such is
the significant indictment, and we are compelled to admit that our
political life is filled with illustrations that would seem to
substantiate it. The ward bosses, the demagogues and grafters who are
given power by the multitude, one campaign after another, would seem to
justify the pessimism of Plato and Ibsen.
Is there not, however, a subtle fallacy in the very phrasing of the
indictment? The majority does not "rule": it elects representatives who
guide. That is something entirely different. When the worst is said of
them those representatives of the people are distinctly above the
average of the majorities electing them. Take the roll of our
presidents, for instance. With all the corruption and vulgarity of our
national politics, that list, from Washington, through such altitudes as
Jefferson and Lincoln, to the present occupant of the White House, is
superior to any roster of kings or emperors in the history of mankind.
What does this mean? It means that _the hope of democracy is the
instinctive power in the breast of common humanity to recognize the
highest when it appears_. Were this not true, democracy would be the
most hopeless of mistakes, and the sooner we abandoned it, with its
vulgarity and waste, the better it would be for us. The instinctive
power is there, however: to recognize, not to live, the highest.
How many have followed the example of Socrates, remaining in prison and
accepting the hemlock poison for the sake of truth? Yet all who know of
him thrill to his sacrifice. Of all who have borne the name, Christian,
how many have followed consistently the footsteps of Jesus and obeyed
literally and unvaryingly the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount? Of
the millions, perhaps ten or twenty individuals--to be generous in our
view; but _all the world recognizes him_.
Here, then, is the hope that takes the sting from the indictment of
Plato, Ibsen and how many other critics of democracy. Plato said,
"Until philosophers are kings, . . . cities will never have rest from
their evils,--no, nor the human race, as I believe." Once, perhaps once
only, Plato's dream was realized: in that noblest of philosopher
emperors, wholly dedicated to the welfare of the world he ruled with
autocratic power; yet the soul of Marcus Aurelius was burdened with an
impossible task. It is one of the tragic ironies of history that, in
this one realization of Plato's lofty dream, the noble emperor could
postpone, he could not avert, the colossal doom that threatened the
world he ruled. So he wrapped his Roman cloak about him and lay down to
sleep, with stoic consciousness that he had done his part in the place
where Zeus had put him, but relieved that he might not see the disaster
he knew must swiftly come.
How different our dream: it is no illusion of a happy accident of
philosopher kings. We want no arbitrary monarchs, wise or brutal: from
the noblest of emperors to the butcher of Berlin, we would sweep them
all aside, to the ash-heap of outworn tools. Our dream is the awakening
and education of the multitude, so that the majority will be able and
glad to choose, as its guides, leaders and representatives, the noblest
and best. When that day comes, there will be, for the first time in the
history of mankind, the dawn of a true _aristocracy_ or rule of the
best; and it will come through the fulfillment of democracy. A long and
troubled path, with many faults and evils meantime? Yes, but not so
hopelessly long, when one considers the ages of slow struggle up the
mountain and the swiftly multiplying power of education over the mind of
all.
XVIII
PATERNALISM VERSUS DEMOCRACY
The contrast between paternalism and democracy in aim and method is thus
extreme. Paternalism seeks directly organization, order, production and
efficiency, incidentally and occasionally the welfare of the subject
population. Democracy seeks directly the highest development of all men
and women, their freedom, happiness and culture, in the end it hopes
this will give social order, good government and productive power. It
is willing, meantime, to sacrifice some measure of order for freedom, of
good government for individual initiative, of efficiency for life.
Paternalism seeks to achieve its aims, quickly and effectively, through
the boss's whip of social control. Democracy works by the slower, but
more permanently hopeful path of education, never sacrificing life to
material ends. Paternalism ends in a social hierarchy, materially
prosperous, but caste-ridden and without soul. Democracy ends in the
abolishment of castes, equality of opportunity, with the freest
individual initiative and finest flowering of the personal spirit. Which
shall it be: God or Mammon, Men or Machines?