cited as a model--provides that 8 per cent of the voters of a state
may submit a measure directly to the people, and if a majority of
those voting upon it give it their support it shall become a law
without reference to the legislature or to the governor. That is the
initiative. And it provides that if 5 per cent of the voters are
opposed to a law which the legislature has passed, upon signing the
proper petition the law shall be suspended until the next general
election, when the people shall be given an opportunity to pass upon
it. That is the referendum.
Now, there are several things about this plan which I believe the
people of this country, when they come really to consider it, will
scrutinize with a good deal of care and possibly with some suspicion.
It is to be noted, in the first place, that a very few of the people
can put all the people to the trouble and expense of a vote upon any
measure, and the inquiry may well arise whether the cause of settled
and orderly government will be promoted by vesting power in the
minority thus to harass and annoy the majority. In my own state, for
example, who can doubt that the prohibitory amendment, or some one of
the statutes enacted for its enforcement, would have been resubmitted
again and again if the initiative had been in force there these past
twenty-five years.
Again, it will be observed that still fewer of the people have it in
their power to suspend a law which a legislature may have passed in
plain obedience to the mandate of a majority of the people, or which
may be essential to the prompt and orderly conduct of public affairs,
and when they come to think about it the people may wonder if the
referendum might not make it possible for a small, malevolent, and
mischievous minority to obstruct the machinery of government and for a
time at least to nullify the will of the majority.
In the third place, it is to be remarked that a measure submitted
either by the initiative or the referendum cannot be amended, but must
be accepted or rejected as a whole, and we may well inquire whether
this might not afford "the interests" quite as good an opportunity as
they would have in a legislature to "initiate" some measure which on
its face was wholesome and beneficent but within which was concealed
some little "joker" that would either nullify the good features of the
law or make it actively vicious, and which, through lack of
discussion, would not be discovered. Every day we have new and
incontestable proof that "in the multitude of counselors there is
wisdom." But that wisdom can never be had under a system of
legislation which lays before the people the work of one man's mind
to be accepted in whole or rejected altogether.
Once more let us observe that under this system, no matter how few
votes are cast upon a given measure, if there are more for it than
against it, it becomes a law, so that the possibility is always
present that laws may be enacted which represent the judgment or the
interest of the minority rather than the majority of the people.
Indeed, experience would seem to show that this is a probability
rather than a possibility, for in the last Oregon election not one of
the nine propositions enacted into law received as much as 50 per cent
of the total vote cast, while some of them received but little more
than 30 per cent of the total vote.
And finally and chiefly, without in the least impeaching the
intelligence of the people, remembering the slight and casual
attention the average citizen gives to the details of public
questions, we may well inquire whether the average vote cast upon
these proposed measures of legislation will really represent an
informed and well-considered judgment. In his thoughtful work on
democracy, discussing this very question, Dr. Hyslop, of Columbia
University, says:
People occupied with their private affairs, domestic and social,
demanding all their resources and attention, as a rule have little
time to solve the complex problems of national life. The referendum
is a call to perform all the duties of the profoundest
statesmanship, in addition to private obligations, which are even
much more than the average man can fulfil with any success or
intelligence at all, and hence it can hardly produce anything better
than the Athenian assembly, which terminated in anarchy. It will not
secure dispatch except at the expense of civilization, nor
deliberation except at the expense of intelligence. Very few
questions can be safely left to its councils, and these only of the
most general kind. A tribunal that can be so easily deceived as the
electorate can be in common elections cannot be trusted to decide
intelligently the graver and more complicated questions of public
finance or private property, of administration, and of justice. It
may be honest and mean well, as I believe it would be; but such an
institution can not govern.
That is the conclusion reached a priori by a profound student of men
and of institutions; and there is not a man who hears me or who may
read what I am now saying but knows the conclusion is sound.
But, fortunately for the states which have not yet adopted the
innovation, we are not obliged to rely upon academic, a priori
reasoning, in order to reach a conclusion as to the wisdom of the
initiative and referendum, for the step has already been taken in
other states and we have their experience to guide us.
There is South Dakota, for example, where under the initiative the
ballot which I hold in my hand was submitted to the people at the
recent election. This ballot is 7 feet long and 14 inches wide, and it
is crowded with reading matter set in nonpareil type. Upon this ballot
there are submitted for the consideration of the people six
legislative propositions. Four of them are short and comparatively
simple. But here is one referring to the people a law which has been
passed at the preceding session of the legislature dividing the state
into congressional districts. How many of the voters of South Dakota
do you suppose got down their maps and their census reports and
carefully worked out the details of that law to satisfy themselves
whether or not it provided for a fair and honest districting of the
state? They could not amend it, remember, they had to take it as it
was or vote it down. In point of fact, they voted it down; but who
will say that in doing this they expressed an enlightened judgment or
merely followed the natural conservative instinct to vote "no" on a
proposition they did not understand? And here is a law to provide for
the organization, maintenance, equipment, and regulation of the
National Guard of the state. This bill contains 76 sections. It
occupies 4 feet 4 inches of this 7-foot ballot. It would fill two
pages of an ordinary newspaper.
And here is a copy of the Oregon ballot, from which it appears that
the stricken people of that commonwealth were called upon at the late
election to consider 32 legislative propositions. Small wonder that it
was well onto a month after election before the returns were all in.
And here is another constitutional amendment in which the people are
asked to pass judgment on such simple propositions as providing for
verdict by three-fourths of jury in civil cases, authorizing grand
juries to be summoned separately from the trial jury, permitting
change of judicial system by statute prohibiting retrial where there
is any evidence to support the verdict, providing for affirmance of
judgment on appeal notwithstanding error committed in lower court and
directing the Supreme Court to enter such judgment as should have been
entered in the lower court, fixing terms of Supreme Court, providing
that judges of all courts be elected for six years, subject to recall,
and increasing the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. Is it any wonder
that with questions such as those thrust at them so large a percentage
of the voters took to the "continuous woods where rolls the Oregon"
and refused to express a judgment one way or the other? Now, with all
possible deference to the intelligence and the diligence of the good
people of Oregon, is it conceivable that any considerable proportion
of the voters of that commonwealth went to the polls with even a
cursory knowledge of all the measures submitted for their
determination?
As to the practical working of the referendum, I have seen it stated
in the public prints that four years ago nearly every appropriation
bill passed by the Oregon legislature was referred to the people for
their approval or rejection before it could go into effect. As a
result, the appropriations being unavailable until the election could
be held, the state was compelled to stamp its warrants "not paid for
want of funds," and to pay interest thereon, although the money was in
the treasury. The university and other state institutions were
hampered and embarrassed, and the whole machinery of government was in
large measure paralyzed. In other words, under the Oregon law a
pitiful minority of the people was able to obstruct and embarrass the
usual and orderly processes of government, and for a time at least to
absolutely thwart the will of an overwhelming majority of the people.
A system of government under which such a thing as that is not only
possible, but has actually occurred, may be "the best system ever
devised by the wit of man," as we have been vociferously assured, but
some of us may take the liberty of doubting it.
But the initiative and referendum, subversive as they are of the
representative principle, do not compare in importance or in possible
power for evil with the recall. The statutes of every state in this
Union provide a way by which a recreant official may be ousted from
his office or otherwise punished. That way is by process of law, where
charges must be specific, the testimony clear, and the judgment
impartial. But what are we to think of a procedure under which an
official is to be tried, not in a court by a jury of his peers and
upon the testimony of witnesses sworn to tell the truth, but in the
newspapers, on the street corners, and at political meetings? Can you
conceive of a wider departure from the fundamental principles of
justice that are written not only into the constitution of every
civilized nation on the face of the earth, but upon the heart of every
normal human being, the principle that every man accused of a crime
has a right to confront his accusers, to examine them under oath, to
rebut their evidence, and to have the judgment finally of men sworn to
render a just and lawful verdict.
Small wonder that the argument oftenest heard in support of a
proposition so abhorrent to the most primitive instincts of justice is
that it will be seldom invoked and therefore cannot do very much harm.
I leave you to characterize as it deserves a law whose chief merit
must lie in the rarity of its enforcement.
But will it do no harm, even if seldom enforced? It is urged that its
presence on the statute books and the knowledge that it can be invoked
will frighten public officials into good behavior. Passing by the very
obvious suggestion that an official who needs to be scared into proper
conduct ought never to have been elected in the first place, we may
well inquire whether the real effect would not be to frighten men into
demagogy--and thus to work immeasurably greater harm to the common
weal than would ever be inflicted through the transgressions of
deliberately bad men.
We have demagogues enough now, heaven knows, when election to an
office assures the tenure of it for two or four or six years. But if
that tenure were only from hour to hour, if it were held at the whim
of a powerful and unscrupulous newspaper, for example, or if it could
be put in jeopardy by an affront which in the line of duty ought, we
will say, to be given to some organization or faction or cabal, what
could we expect? Is it not inevitable that such a system would drive
out of our public life the men of real character and courage and leave
us only cowards and trimmers and time servers? May we not well
hesitate to introduce into our political system a device which, had it
been in vogue in the past, would have made it possible for the Tories
to have recalled Washington, the copperheads to have recalled Lincoln,
and the jingoes to have recalled McKinley?
In all the literature of the age-long struggle for freedom and justice
there is no phrase that occurs oftener than "the independence of the
judiciary." Not one man could be found now among all our ninety
millions to declare that our Constitution should be changed so as to
permit the President in the White House or the Congress in the Capitol
to dictate to our judges what their decisions should be. And yet it is
seriously proposed that this power of dictation shall be given to the
crowd on the street. That is what the recall means if applied to the
judiciary; and it means the destruction of its independence as
completely as if in set terms it were made subject to the President or
the Congress.
Do you answer, "Oh, the recall will never be invoked except in an
extreme case of obvious and flagrant injustice"? I reply, "How do you
know?" It is the theory of the initiative that it will never be invoked
except to pass a good law, and of the referendum that it will never be
resorted to except to defeat a bad law; but we have already seen how
easily a bad law might be initiated and a good law referred. And so it
is the theory that the recall will be invoked only for the protection
of the people from a bad judge. What guaranty can you give that it
will not be called into being to harrass and intimidate a good judge?
There never yet was a two-edged sword that would not cut both ways.
Mr. Chairman, I should be the last to assert that our present system
of government has always brought ideally perfect results. Now and then
the people have made mistakes in the selection of their
representatives. Corrupt men have been put into places of trust, small
men have been sent where large men were needed, ignorant men have been
charged with duties which only men of learning could fitly perform.
But does it follow that because the people make mistakes in so simple
a matter as the selection of their agents, they would be infallible in
the incomparably more complex and difficult task of the enactment and
interpretation of laws? There was never a more glaring non sequitur,
and yet it is the very cornerstone upon which rests the whole
structure of the new philosophy. "The people cannot be trusted with
few things," runs this singular logic, "therefore let us put all
things into their hands."
With one breath we are asked to renounce the old system because the
people make mistakes, and with the next breath we are solemnly assured
that if we adopt the new system the people will not make mistakes. I
confess I am not mentally alert enough to follow that sort of logic.
It is too much like the road which was so crooked that the traveler
who entered upon it had only proceeded a few steps when he met himself
coming back. You cannot change the nature of men, Mr. Chairman, by
changing their system of government. The limitations of human judgment
and knowledge and conscience which render perfection in representative
government unattainable will still abide even after that form of
government is swept away, and the ideal will still be far distant.
Let it not be said or imagined, Mr. Speaker, that because I protest
against converting this Republic into a democracy therefore I lack
confidence in the people. No man has greater faith, sir, than I have
in the intelligence, the integrity, the patriotism, and the
fundamental common sense of the average American citizen. But I am for
representative rather than for direct government, because I have
greater confidence in the second thought of the people than I have in
their first thought. And that, in the last analysis, is the
difference, and the only difference, so far as results are concerned
between the new system and that which it seeks to supplant; it is the
fundamental difference between a democracy and a republic. In either
form of government the people have their way. The difference is that
in a democracy the people have their way in the beginning, whereas in
a republic the people have their way in the end--and the end is
usually enough wiser than the beginning to be worth waiting for.
We count ourselves the fittest people in the world for
self-government, and we probably are. But fit as we are we sometimes
make mistakes. We sometimes form the most violent and erroneous
opinions upon impulse, without full information or thoughtful
consideration. With complete information and longer study, we swing
around to the right side, but it is our second thought and not our
first that brings us there. Our intentions are always right, and we
usually get right in the end; but it often happens that we are not
right in the beginning. It behooves us to consider long and well
before we pluck out of the delicately adjusted mechanism by which we
govern ourselves the checks and brakes and balance wheels which our
forefathers placed there, and the wisdom of which our history attests
innumerable times.
The simple and primitive life of civilization's frontier has given
way to the most stupendous and complex industrial and commercial
structure the world has ever known. Incredible expansion, social,
political, industrial, commercial--but representative government all
the way. At not one step in the long and shining pathway of the
Nation's progress has representative government failed to respond to
the Nation's need. Every emergency that 130 years of momentous history
has developed--the terrible strain of war, the harrassing problems of
peace--representative government has been equal to them all. Not once
has it broken down. Not one issue has it failed to solve. And long
after the shallow substitutes that are now proposed for it shall have
been forgotten, representative government "will be doing business at
the old stand," will be solving the problems of the future as it met
the issues of the past, with courage and wisdom and justice, giving to
the great Republic that government "of the people, for the people, and
by the people" which is the assurance that it "shall not perish from
the earth."
APPENDIX V
QUESTIONS WITH SUGGESTED ISSUES AND
BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY
Below are several questions with issues suggested which should bring
about a "head on" debate. They should be useful at the beginning of
debating work or when time for preparation is somewhat limited. A
brief bibliography is in each case appended.
"THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE SHOULD BE GRANTED TO WOMAN"
_Affirmative_
I. Woman wants the ballot.
II. Woman is capable of using the ballot wisely.
III. Where woman has had the ballot, the results have been beneficial
to the state.
_Negative_
I. A majority of women do not want the ballot.
II. Woman is incapable of using the ballot wisely.
III. A benefit has not resulted in those states which have given woman
the right to vote.
BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Success of Woman's Suffrage," _Independent_, LXXIII, 334-35 (August
8, 1912).
"Suffrage Danger," _Living Age_, CCLXXIV, 330-35 (August 10, 1912).
"Teaching Violence to Women," _Century_, LXXXIV, 151-53 (May, 1912).
"Violence in Woman's Suffrage Movement: A Disapproval of the Militant
Policy," _Century_, LXXXV, 148-49 (November, 1912).
"Violence and Votes," _Independent_, LXXII, 1416-19 (June 27 1912).
"Votes for Women," _Harper's Weekly_, LVI, 6 (September 21, 1912).
"Votes for Women," _Harper's Bazaar_ XLVI, 47, 148 (January, March,
1912).
"Votes for Women and Other Votes," _Survey_, XXVIII, 367-78 (June 1,
10.12).
"What Is the Truth about Woman's Suffrage?" _Ladies' Home Journal_,
XXIX, 24 (October, 1912).
"Why I Want Woman's Suffrage," _Collier's,_ XLVIII, 18 (March 16,
1912).
"Why I Went into Suffrage Work," _Harper's Bazaar_, XLVI, 440
(September, 1912).
"Woman and the State," _Forum_, XLVIII, 394-408 (October 1912).
"Woman and the Suffrage," _Harper's Weekly_, LVI, 6 (August 17, 1912).
"Woman's Rights," _Outlook_, _C_, 262-66 (February 3, 1912).
"Woman's Rights," _Outlook_, _C_, 302-4 (February 10, 1912).
"Concerning Some of the Anti-Suffrage Leaders," _Good House-keeping_,
LV, 80-82 (July, 1912).
"Expansion of Equality," _Independent_, LXXIII, 1143-45 (November 14,
1912).
"Marching for Equal Suffrage," _Hearst's Magazine_, XXI, 2497-501
(June, 1912).
"Woman and the California Primaries," _Independent_, LXXII, 1316-18
(June 13, 1912).
"Woman Suffrage Victory," _Literary Digest_, XLV, 841-43 (November 23,
1912).
"Woman's Demonstration; How They Won and Used the Votes in
California," _Collier's_, XLVIII, 17-18 (January 6, 1912).
"Recent Strides of Woman's Suffrage," _World's Work_, XXII, 14733-45
(August, 1911).
"Woman's Suffrage in Six States," _Independent_, LXXI, 967-20
(November 2, 1911).
"Women Did It in Colorado," _Hampton's Magazine_, XXVI, 426.
"Woman's Victory in Washington" (state), _Collier's,_ XLVI, 25.
"Are Women Ready for the Franchise?" _Westminster_, CLXII, 255-61
(September, 1904).
"Argument against Woman's Suffrage," _Outlook_, LXIV, 573-74 (March
10, 1900).
"Check to Woman's Suffrage in the United States," _Nineteenth
Century_, LVI, 833-41 (November, 1904).
"Female Suffrage in the United States," _Harper's Weekly_, XLIV,
949-50 (October 6, 1900).
"Ought Women to Vote?" _Outlook_, LVIII, 353-55 (June 8, 1901).
"Outlook for Woman's Suffrage," _Cosmopolitan_, XXVIII, 621-23 (April,
1900).
"Woman's Suffrage in the West," _Outlook_, LXV, 430-31 (June 23,
1900).
"Movement for Woman's Suffrage," _Outlook_, XCIII, 265-67 (October 2,
1909).
"Why?" _Everybody's_, XXI, 723-38.
"Woman's Rights," _Twentieth-Century Encyclopedia_.
"THE AMERICAN NAVY SHOULD BE ENLARGED SO AS TO COMPARE IN FIGHTING
STRENGTH WITH ANY IN THE WORLD"
_Affirmative_
I. The scattered possessions of the United States demand the
protection of a large navy.
II. The expense of the proposed navy would be a judicious investment.
III. The proposed enlargement of the navy would be a step toward
universal peace.
_Negative_
I. The geographical situation of the United States makes a large navy
unnecessary.
II. The expense entailed, if the proposed plan were put into practice,
would embarrass the United States.
III. To carry out the proposed plan would be to increase the chances
of war.
BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Relative Sea Strength of the United States," _Scientific American_
CVII, 174 (August 31, 1912).
"For an Adequate Navy in the United States," _Scientific American_,
CV, 512 (December 9, 1911).
"Humble Opinions of a Flat-Foot; Frank Criticism and Intimate Picture
of Our Navy, by a Blue-Jacketed Gob," _Collier's_ L, 14-15; P., XIX,
22-23 (December 7, 1912).
"Importance of the Command of the Sea," _Scientific American,_ CV, 512
(December 9, 1911).
"The United States Fleet and Its Readiness for Service," _Scientific
American,_ CV, 514 (December 9, 1911).
"Battle-ship Fleet in Each Ocean," _Scientific American_, CII, 354
(April 30, 1910).
"Naval Madness," _Independent_, LXVIII, 489 (March 3, 1910).
"Our Naval Waste," _Nation_, XCI, 158 (August 25, 1910).
"Our Navy As a National Insurance," _Scientific American_, CII, 414
(May 21, 1910).
"American Naval Policy," _Forum_, XLV, 529 (May, 1911).
"If We Had to Fight," _Cottier's_, XLVIII, 18 (November 18 1911).
"Panama Canal and the Sea Power in the Pacific," _Century,_ LXXXII,
240 (January, 1911).
"LOCAL OPTION IS THE BEST METHOD OR DEALING WITH THE LIQUOR PROBLEM"
_Affirmative_
I. Other methods of dealing with the liquor problem have failed.
II. Local option is consistent with American ideas of government.
III. Local option is a proved success.
_Negative_
I. Local option is undesirable in theory.
II. Local option has not succeeded where tried.
III. There is a better method of dealing with this problem.
BRIEF BIBLIOGRAPHY
"Local Option; A Study of Massachusetts," _Atlantic_, XC, 433-40.
"Principle of Local Option," _Independent_, LIII, 3032-33 (December
19, 1901).
"When Prohibition Fails and Why," _Outlook_, CI, 639-43 (July 20,
1912).
"To Dam the Interstate Flow of Drink," _Literary Digest_, XLIV, 106-7
(January 20, 1912).
"Psychology of Drink," _American Journal of Sociology_, XVIII, 21-32
(July, 1912).
"World-Wide Fight against Alcohol," _Review of Reviews_, XLV, 374.
"Drink and the Joy of Life," _Westminster_, CLXXVI, 620-24 (December,
1911).