It was a rhetorical and sensational sentence in which a recent speaker
in this city declared that the worst grafter is the man who does not
vote. But there is much more than a kernel of truth in the words. The
citizens of a republic need constant stimulus to the fulfillment of
the plainest duties of life. The better the working of the machinery
of government, the less the average man is affected. He rarely feels
the pressure of taxation. He lives in a generation from which no
military service is demanded. He is permitted freedom of thought,
speech and religion, and almost insensibly, as a result, he loses
sight of the supreme obligation which is due his country. He forgets
that that country, in time of public stress, may demand his time, his
property and his life, drafting him for its armies if he does not wish
to volunteer, governing him under martial law, which sets aside the
usual privileges accorded him, and exercising over him, if need be, a
tyranny ordinarily associated with despotism among the older peoples.
The very fact that the American citizen does not often feel the
exercise of the sovereign power, and is not called upon to pay the
supreme obligation of service, makes him careless of his civic duties,
when, it might be thought, he would feel the utmost gratitude for the
privilege of living under such favoring conditions. This carelessness
becomes chronic, and there is abundant need for the constant
reiteration of the call to duty. If, then, a citizen is content to
enjoy the comforts and the quiet of American life without rendering
any return therefor, he may justly be called a grafter, and a grafter
of that worst sort, who robs his benefactor. For, with duty faithfully
performed by the citizen, public opinion is readily shaped, laws
quickly secure enforcement, and public servants are kept clean and
true. It all comes back at last to the individual citizen, upon whom
must rest the responsibility for failure or success of government. It
is easy enough to cry out against the grafter in official position who
puts his hand into the public treasury. Perhaps, after all, the worst
offender is the citizen who does not vote, who does not take a lively
interest in the selection and election of his rulers, who fails to
recognize the underlying obligation of service which his country has a
just right to demand of him.