democracy is radical. The difference lies in the location of the
sovereignty of society. The citizens who assign the lawmaking power to
officials surrender in a body their collective sovereignty. That
sovereignty is then habitually employed by the lawgivers to their own
advantage and to that of a twin governing class, the rich, and to the
detriment of the citizenship in general and especially the poor. But
when the sovereignty rests permanently with the citizenship, there
evolves a government differing essentially from representative
government. It is that of mere stewardship and the regulation
indispensable to society.
_The Social Forces Ready for Our Methods._
Now that our theory of social reform is fully substantiated by fact, our
methods shown to be in harmony with popular sentiment, our idea of
democratic government clearly defined, and our final aim political
justice, there remains some consideration of early possible practical
steps in line with these principles and of the probable trend of events
afterward.
Having practical work in view, we may first take some account of the
principal social forces which may be rallied in support of our
methods:--
To begin with: Sincere men who have abandoned hope of legislative reform
may be called to renewed effort. Many such men have come to regard
politics as inseparable from corruption. They have witnessed the
tediousness and unprofitableness of seeking relief through legislators,
and time and again have they seen the very officials elected to bring
about reforms go over to the powers that exploit the masses. They have
seen in the course of time the tricks of partisan legislators almost
invariably win as against the wishes of the masses. They know that in
politics there is little study of the public needs, but merely a
practice of the ignoble arts of the professional politician. Here,
however, the proposed social reorganization depends, not on
representatives, but on the citizens themselves; and the means by which
the citizens may fully carry out their purposes have been developed. A
fact, too, of prime importance: Where heretofore in many localities the
people have temporarily overthrown politician and plutocrat, only to be
themselves defeated in the end, every point gained by the masses in
direct legislation may be held permanently.
Further: Repeatedly, of late years, new parties have risen to demand
justice in government and improvement in the economic situation. One
such movement defeated but makes way for another. Proof, this, that the
spirit of true reform is virile and the heart of the nation pure. The
progress made, in numbers and organization, before the seeds of decay
were sown in the United Labor party, the Union Labor party, the
Greenback-Labor party, the People's party of 1884, and various
third-party movements, testify to the readiness of earnest thousands to
respond, even on the slightest promise of victory, to the call for
radical reform. That in such movements the masses are incorruptible is
shown in the fact that in every instance one of the chief causes of
failure has been doubt in the integrity of leaders given to machine
methods. But in direct legislation, machine leaders profit nothing for
themselves, hold no reins of party, can sell no votes, and can command
no rewards for workers.
Again: The vast organizations of the Knights of Labor and the
trades-unions in the American Federation of Labor are evidence of the
willingness and ability of wage-earners to cope practically with
national problems. And at this point is to be observed a fact of capital
significance to advocates of pure democracy. Whereas, in independent
political movements, sooner or later a footing has been obtained by a
machine, resulting in disintegration, in the trades organization, while
political methods may occasionally corrupt leaders, the politician labor
leader uniformly finds his fellow workmen turning their backs on him.
The organized workers not only distrust the politician but detest
political chicanery. Such would equally be the case did the wage-workers
carry into the political field the direct power they exert in their
unions. And in politics this never-failing, incorruptible power of the
whole mass of organized wage-workers may be exerted by direct
legislation. Therewith may be had politics without politicians. As
direct legislation advances, the machine must retire.
Here, then, with immediate results in prospect from political action,
lies encouragement of the highest degree--alike to the organized
workers, to the men grown hopeless of political reform, and to the men
in active rebellion against the two great machine ridden parties.
Encouragement founded on reason is an inestimable practical result.
Here, not only may rational hope for true reform be inspired; a lively
certainty, based on ascertained fact, may be felt. All men of experience
who have read these pages will have seen confirmed something of their
own observations in direct legislation, and will have accepted as
plainly logical sequences the developments of the institution in
Switzerland. The New Englander will have learned how the purifying
principles of his town meeting have been made capable of extension. The
member of a labor organization will have observed how the simple
democracy of his union or assembly may be transferred to the State. The
"local optionist" will have recognized, working in broader and more
varied fields, a well tried and satisfactory instrument. The college man
will have recalled the fact that wherever has gone the Greek letter
fraternity, there, in each society as a whole, and in each chapter with
respect to every special act, have gone the Initiative and the
Referendum. And every member of any body of equal associates must
perceive that the first, natural circumstance to the continued existence
of that body in its integrity must be that each individual may propose a
measure and that the majority may accept or reject it; and this is the
simple principle of direct legislation. Moreover, any mature man, east
or west, in any locality, may recall how within his experience a
community's vote has satisfactorily put vexatious questions at rest.
With the recognition of every such fact, hope will rise and faith in the
proposed methods be made more firm.
_Abolition of the Lawmaking Monopoly._
To radical reformers further encouragement must come with continued
reflection on the importance to them of direct legislation. In general,
such reformers have failed to recognize that, before any project of
social reconstruction can be followed out to the end, there stands a
question antecedent to every other. It is the abolition of the lawmaking
monopoly. Until that monopoly is ended, no law favorable to the masses
can be secure. Direct legislation would destroy this parent of
monopolies. It gone, then would follow the chiefer evils of governmental
mechanism--class rule, ring rule, extravagance, jobbery, nepotism, the
spoils system, every jot of the professional trading politician's
influence. To effect these ends, all schools of political reformers
might unite. For immediate purposes, help might come even from that host
of conservatives who believe all will be well if officials are honest.
Direct majority rule attained, inviting opportunities for radical work
would soon lie open. How, may readily be seen.
The New England town collects its own taxes; it manages its local
schools, roads, bridges, police, public lighting and water supply. In
similar affairs the Swiss commune is autonomous. On the Pacific coast a
tendency is to accord to places of 10,000 or 20,000 inhabitants their
own charters. Throughout the country, in many instances, towns and
counties settle for themselves questions of prohibition, license, and
assessments; questions of help to corporations and of local public
improvement. Thus in measure as the Referendum comes into play does the
circumscription practicing it become a complete community. In other
words, with direct legislation rises local self-government.
_The Principles of Local Self-Government._
From even the conservative point of view, local self-government has many
advantages. In this country, the glaring evils of the State, especially
those forming obstacles to political improvement and social progress,
come down from sources above the people. Under the existing
centralization whole communities may protest against governmental
abuses, be practically a unit in opposition to them, and yet be
hopelessly subject to them. Such centralization is despotism. It forms
as well the opportunity for the demagogue of to-day--for him who as
suppliant for votes is a wheedler and as politician and lawgiver a
trickster. Centralization confuses the voter, baffles the honest
newspaper, foments partisanship, and cheats the masses of their will. On
the other hand, to the extent that local independence is acquired, a
democratic community minimizes every such evil. In naturally guarding
itself against external interference, it seeks in its connection with
other communities the least common political bonds. It is watchful of
the home rule principle. Under its local self-government, government
plainly becomes no more than the management of what are wholly public
interests. The justice of lopping off from government all matters not
the common affairs of the citizens then becomes apparent. The character
of every man in the community being known, public duties are intrusted
with men who truly represent the citizens. The mere demagogue is soon
well known. Bribery becomes treachery to one's neighbor. The folly of
partisanship is seen. Public issues, usually relating to but local
matters, are for the most part plain questions. The press, no longer
absorbed in vague, far-off politics, aids, not the politicians, but the
citizens. Reasons, every one of these, for even the conservative to aid
in establishing local self-government.
But the radical, looking further than the conservative, will see far
greater opportunities. In local self-government with direct legislation,
every possibility for his success that hope can suggest may be
perceived. If not in one locality, then in another, whatever political
projects are attainable within such limits by his school of philosophy
may be converted by him and his co-workers from theory to fact. Thence
on, if his philosophy is practicable, the field should naturally widen.
The political philosophy I would urge on my fellow-citizens is summed up
in the neglected fundamental principle of this republic: Freedom and
equal rights. The true point of view from which to see the need of the
application of this principle is from the position of the unemployed,
propertyless wage-worker. How local self-government and direct
legislation might promptly invest this slave of society with his primary
rights, and pave the way for further rights, may, step by step, be
traced.
_The Relation of Wages to Political Conditions._
The wages scale pivots on the strike. The employer's order for a
reduction is his strike; to be effective, a reserve of the unemployed
must be at his command. The wage-worker's demand for an increase is his
strike; to be effective it must be backed up by the indispensableness of
his services to the employer. Accordingly as the worker forces up the
scale of wages, he is the more free, independent, and gainer of his
product. To show the most direct way to the conditions in which workers
may command steady work and raise their wages, this book is written. For
the wages question equitably settled, the foundation for every remaining
social reform is laid.
To-day, in the United States, in scores, nay, hundreds, of industrial
communities the wage-working class is in the majority. The wage-workers
commonly believe, what is true, that they are the victims of injustice.
As yet, however, no project for restoring their rights has been
successful. All the radical means suggested have been beyond their
reach. But in so far as a single community may exercise equal rights
and self-government, through these means it may approximate to just
social arrangements.
Any American city of 50,000 inhabitants may be taken as illustrative of
all American industrial communities. In such a city, the economical and
political conditions are typical. The immediate commercial interests of
the buyers of labor, the employers, are opposed to those of the sellers
of labor, the employed. To control the price of labor, each of these
parties in the labor market resorts to whatever measures it finds within
command. The employers in many branches of industry actually, and
employers in general tacitly, combine against the labor organizations.
On the wage-workers' side, these organizations are the sole means,
except a few well-nigh futile laws, yet developed to raise wages and
shorten the work day. In case of a strike, the employers, to assist the
police in intimidating the strikers, may engage a force of armed
so-called detectives. Simply, perhaps, for inviting non-unionists to
cease work, the strikers are subject to imprisonment. Trial for
conspiracy may follow arrest, the judges allied by class interests with
the employers. The newspapers, careful not to offend advertisers, and
looking to the well-to-do for the mass of their readers, may be inclined
to exert an influence against the strikers. The solidarity of the
wage-workers incomplete, even many of these may regard the fate of the
strikers with indifference. In such situation, a strike of the
wage-workers may be made to appear to all except those closely
concerned as an assault on the bulwarks of society.
But what are the bulwarks of society directly arrayed against striking
wage-workers? They are a ring of employers, a ring of officials
enforcing class law made by compliant representatives at the bidding of
shrewd employers, and a ring of public sentiment makers--largely
professional men whose hopes lie with wealthy patrons. Behind these
outer barriers, and seldom affected by even widespread strikes, lies the
citadel in which dwell the monopolists.
Such, in outline, are the intermingled political and economic conditions
common to all American industrial centres. But above every other fact,
one salient fact appears: On the wage-workers falls the burthen of class
law. On what, then, depends the wiping out of such law? Certainly on
nothing else so much as on the force of the wage-workers themselves. To
deprive their opponents of unjust legal advantages, and to invest
themselves with just rights of which they have been deprived, is a task,
outside their labor organizations, to be accomplished mainly by the
wage-workers. It is their task as citizens--their political task. With
direct legislation and local self-government, it is, in considerable
degree, a feasible, even an easy, task. The labor organizations might
supply the framework for a political party, as was done in New York city
in 1886. Then, as was the case in that campaign, when the labor party
polled 68,000 votes, even non-unionists might throw in the reinforcement
of their otherwise hurtful strength. Success once in sight, the
organized wage-workers would surely find citizens of other classes
helping to swell their vote. And in the straightforward politics of
direct legislation, the labor leaders who command the respect of their
fellows might, without danger to their character and influence, go
boldly to the front.
_The Wage-Workers as a Political Majority._
Suppose that as far as possible our industrial city of 50,000
inhabitants should exercise self-government with direct legislation.
Various classes seeking to reform common abuses, certain general reforms
would immediately ensue. If the city should do what the Swiss have done,
it would speedily rid its administration of unnecessary office-holders,
reduce the salaries of its higher officials, and rescind outstanding
franchise privileges. If the municipality should have power to determine
its own methods of taxation, as is now in some respects the case in
Massachusetts towns, and toward which end a movement has begun in New
York, it would probably imitate the Swiss in progressively taxing the
higher-priced real estate, inheritances, and incomes. If the
wage-workers, a majority in a direct vote, should demand in all public
work the short hour day, they would get it, perhaps, as in the Rockland
town meeting, without question. Further, the wage-workers might vote
anti-Pinkerton ordinances, compel during strikes the neutrality of the
police, and place judges from their own ranks in at least the local
courts. These tasks partly under way, a change in prevailing social
ideas would pass over the community. The press, echo, not of the widest
spread sentiments, but of controlling public opinion, would open its
columns to the wage-working class come to power. And, as is ever so when
the wage-workers are aggressive and probably may be dominant, the social
question would burn.
_The Entire Span of Equal Rights._
The social question uppermost, the wage-workers--now in political
ascendency, and bent on getting the full product of their labor--would
seek further to improve their vantage ground. Sooner or later they would
inevitably make issue of the most urgent, the most persistent, economic
evil, local as well as general, the inequality of rights in the land.
They would affirm that, were the land of the community in use suitable
to the general needs, the unemployed would find work and the total of
production be largely increased. They would point to the vacant lots in
and about the city, held on speculation, commonly in American cities
covering a greater area than the land improved, and denounce so unjust a
system of land tenure. They could demonstrate that the price of the land
represented for the most part but the power of the owners to wring from
the producers of the city, merely for space on which to live and work, a
considerable portion of their product. They could with reason declare
that the withholding from use of the vacant land of the locality was
the main cause of local poverty. And they would demand that legal
advantages in the local vacant lands should forthwith cease.
In bringing to an end the local land monopoly, however, justice could be
done the landholders. Unquestionably the fairest measure to them, and at
the same time the most direct method of giving to city producers, if not
free access to land, the next practicable thing to it, would be for the
municipality to convert a part of the local vacant land into public
property, and to open it in suitable plots to such citizens as should
become occupiers. Sufficient land for this purpose might be acquired
through eminent domain. The purchase money could be forthcoming from
several sources--from progressive taxation in the direct forms already
mentioned, from the city's income from franchises, and from the savings
over the wastes of administration under present methods.
From the standpoint of equal rights there need be no difficulty in
meeting the arguments certain to be brought against this proposed
course--such sophistical arguments as that it is not the business of a
government to take property from some citizens to give to others. If the
unemployed, propertyless wage-worker has a right to live, he has the
right to sustain life. To sustain life independently of other men's
permission, access to natural resources is essential. This primary right
being denied the wage-workers as a class, any or all of whom, if
unemployed, might soon be propertyless, they might in justice proceed to
enforce it. To enforce it by means involving so little friction as
those here proposed ought to win, not opposition, but approval.
Equal rights once conceded as just, this reasoning cannot be refuted.
Discussed in economic literature since before the day of Adam Smith, it
has withstood every form of assault. If it has not been acted on in the
Old World, it is because the wage-workers there, ignorant and in general
deprived of the right to vote, have been helpless; and if not in the
New, because, first, until within recent years the free western lands,
attracting the unemployed and helping to maintain wages, in a measure
gave labor access to nature, and, secondly, since the practical
exhaustion of the free public domain the industrial wage-workers have
not perceived how, through politics, to carry out their convictions on
the land question.
Our reasoning is further strengthened by law and custom in state and
nation. In nearly every state, the constitution declares that the
original and ultimate ownership of the land lies with all its people;
and hence the method of administering the land is at all times an open
public question. As to the nation at large, its settled policy and
long-continued custom support the principle that all citizens have
inalienable rights in the land. Instead of selling the national domain
in quantities to suit purchasers, the government has held it open free
to agricultural laborers, literally millions of men being thus given
access to the soil. Moreover, in thirty-seven of the forty-four states,
execution for debt cannot entirely deprive a man of his homestead, the
value exempt in many of the states being thousands of dollars. Thus the
general welfare has dictated the building up and the securing of a home
for every laboring citizen.
In line, then, with established American principles is the proposition
for municipal lands. And if municipalities have extended to capitalists
privileges of many kinds, even granting them gratis sites for
manufactories, and for terms of years exempting such real estate from
taxation, why not accord to the wage-workers at least their primary
natural rights? If any property be exempted from taxation, why not the
homesite below a certain fixed value? And if, for the public benefit,
municipalities provide parks, museums, and libraries, why not give each
producer a homesite--a footing on the earth? He who has not this is
deprived of the first right to do that by which he must live, namely,
labor.
_Effects of Municipal Land._
A city public domain, open to citizen occupiers under just stipulations,
would in several directions have far-reaching results.
Should this domain be occupied by, say, one thousand families of a
population of 50,000, an immediate result, affecting the whole city,
would be a fall in rents. In fact, the mere existence of the public
domain, with a probability that his tenants would remove to it, might
cause a landlord to reduce his rents. Besides, the value of all land,
in the city and about it, held on speculation, would fall. Save in
instances of particular advantage, the price of unimproved residence
lots would gravitate toward the cost, all things considered, of
residence lots in the public domain. This, for these reasons: The corner
in land would be broken. Home builders would pay a private owner no more
for a lot than the cost of a similar one in the public area. As houses
went up on the public domain, the chances of landholders to sell to
builders would be diminished. Sellers of land, besides competing with
the public land, would then compete with increased activity with one
another. Finally, just taxation of their land, valueless as a
speculation, would oblige landowners to sell it or to put it to good
use.
Even should the growth of the city be rapid, the value of land in
private hands could in general advance but little, if at all. With the
actual demands of an increased population, the public domain might from
time to time be enlarged; but not, it may reasonably be assumed, at a
rate that would give rise to an upward tendency of prices in the face of
the above-mentioned factors contributing to a downward tendency.
At this point it may be well to remember that, conditions of land
purchase by the city being subject to the Referendum, the buying could
hardly be accompanied by corrupt bargaining.