The Tools of Democracy
The tools of democracy are certain civil actions, certain inventions,
certain habits. They can be used against us--but only if we fail to
use them ourselves.
The greatest tools are civil liberties which we have been considering
as "rights" or "privileges". The right to free speech is a great one;
free speech probably was originally intended to protect property; it
preserves liberty; the rights of assembly, of protest for redress, of
a free press all have this double value, that they guarantee the
integrity of the private man and protect the State.
The great debate on the war brought back some long forgotten
phenomena: broadsides, street meetings, marches, and brawls. Before
they began, virtually _all_ the civil rights were being used either by
newcomers to America or by enemies of the American system. The poor
had no access to the radio; they used a soap box instead and genteel
people shrank away; the Bundist and the American Communist assembled
and protested and published and spoke; the believers in America waited
for an election to roll around again, and then did nothing about it.
The enemies of the people sent a hundred thousand telegrams to
Congressmen, signing the names of dead men to kill the regulation of
utilities, but the believer in the democratic process didn't remember
the name of his Congressman. Bewildered aliens got their second papers
and were inducted into political clubs; the old line Americans never
found out how the primaries worked.
_Public Addresses_
A dangerous condition rose. No families from Beacon Street spoke in
Boston Common; therefore, whoever spoke on the Common was an enemy of
Beacon Street; all over America the well-born (and the well-heeled)
retired from direct communication with the people, and all over
America the privilege of talking to the citizens fell into the hands
of radicals, lunatics, and dangerous enemies of the Republic--so that
in time the very fact that one tried to exercise the right of free
speech became suspect; and Beacon Street and Park Avenue could think
of no way to protect themselves from Boston Common and Union
Square--except to abolish free speech entirely. They did not dare to
say it, but the remarkable Frank Hague, Mayor of Jersey City, said it
for them: "Whenever I hear anyone talk about civil liberties, I know
he's not a good American".
The dreadful humiliation was that it came so close to the truth. The
Red and the Bundist, clamoring or conspiring against America, were
almost the only ones doing what all Americans had the right to do. We
hated cranks, we did not want to be so conspicuous, we hadn't the
time, the police would attend to it, if they didn't like it here let
them go back ... we allowed our most precious rights to atrophy. When
suddenly they were remembered, as they were by the bonus marchers of
1932, we yelled revolution and the President of the United States
called out the troops to shoot down the defenders of our country. It
was the first time that a petition for redress had been offered by
good citizens, by veterans, by men of notable American stock--and it
frightened us because they were doing what "only foreigners" or
"dangerous agitators" used to do; they were in fact being Americans in
action.
What is not used, dies. The habit of protecting our freedom was dying
in the United States. There was no conspiracy of power against us;
there was no need. We were carrying experimental democracy forward so
far on several planes--the material and social planes particularly--that
we let it go by default on the vital plane of practical politics. We
did not go into politics, we did not electioneer, we did not threaten
ward bosses or county chairmen, we did not form third parties, we did
nothing except vote, if it was a fair day (but not too fair if we meant
to play golf). As for private action to defend our liberties, it was
unnecessary and vulgar and bothersome.
The depression scared us, but not into free speech; by that time free
speech was Red; and the deeper we floundered in the mire of defeatism,
the more intimidated we were by shouting Congressmen and
super-patriots; it was only after the New Deal pulled us out of our
tailspin that we saw the light: we too could have been obscure men
speaking at street corners, we did not have to give all the soap boxes
to men like Sacco and Vanzetti; we too could have published pamphlets
like the dreadful Communists, and held meetings and badgered our
Congressmen. Suddenly the people were reincorporated into their
government; suddenly the people began to be concerned with government;
and the tremendous revitalization of political anger was one of the
best symptoms of democratic recovery in our generation.
_Return to Politics_
The merciless pressure of taxation and then the grip of war have
pushed us forward and in a generation we will be again as politically
aware as our great-grandfathers were when they had one newspaper a
week, and only their determination to rule themselves as a principle
of action. Perhaps we shall take the trouble they took; they travelled
a day's journey to hear a debate and discussed it for a fortnight;
they thought about politics and studied the meaning of events. And
they quite naturally did their duties as citizens; they dug their
neighbors out of snow-blocked roads, they nominated their candidates,
they watched and rebuked their representatives. It was not a political
Utopia, but it was a more intelligent use of political power than ours
has been. The usual excuse for the breakdown of political action in
America is that so many "foreigners" came, to whom the politics of
freedom were alien. This may have been true of some of the later
arrivals; but the Irish were captivated by, and presently captured,
city politics wherever they settled; the Germans were the steadiest of
citizens and so were the Scandinavians, their studious earnest belief
in our institutions shaming our flippant disregard. The Southern
Slavs, the Russian Jews and the Italians were farthest removed from
our political habits; but their passion for America was great. It
could have been worked into political action, and often was worked
into political skulduggery by bosses of a more political bent. Many of
these immigrants came after the exhaustion of free lands; many were
plunged into slums and sweatshops and steel mills on a twelve hour
day; and they emerged on the angry side, as disillusioned with America
as some of its most ancient families.
That political action dwindled after the great immigrations is true;
but it was not the immigrant who refused to act; it was the old family
and the typical American; the grafting politicians and the sidewalk
radical both kept politics alive; the real Americans were slowly
smothering politics. We shall never quite repay our debt to Tammany
Hall and the Communists; between them political machines and saintly
radicals managed to keep the instruments of democratic action from
rusting. Now we have to take them back and learn how to use them
again. Fortunately we have no choice. We neglected our rights because
we wanted to sidestep our duties; today the war makes our duties
inescapable and we are already beginning to use our rights. For in
spite of censorship and regimentation, we will use more of our
instruments of democracy than ever; we will because we are fighting
for them and they have become valuable to us.
The radio, the movies, and popular print are the three tools by which
we can create democratic action. The action itself will be appropriate
to our time and our conditions; we will not travel ten miles to hear a
debate, so long as the radio lasts; but we will have to form units of
self-protection in bombed cities; we may need other associations, to
apportion food, to house the homeless, to support the bereaved. We
will have to learn how to live together, to share what was once as
private as a motor car, to elect a village constable who may have our
lives in his hands a dozen times a day. In the process we will be
reverting to old and good democratic habits--in a city block in
Atlanta or in a prairie village outside Emporia, or in a chic suburb
along Lake Michigan. Something like the town-meeting is taking place
in a thousand apartment houses where air-raid precautions and the
disposal of waste paper are discussed and mothers who have to work
trade time with wives who want to go to the movies; the farmers have,
since 1932, been meeting; the suburbanites are discussing trains and
creation of bus-routes. We are making the discovery that it is our
country and we can decide its destiny. We are not to let others rule
us; for in this emergency every man must rule himself; the man who
neglects his political duty is as dangerous today as the man who
leaves his lights on in a blackout.
In the early months of the war our democratic processes were
muscle-bound. We hadn't been doing things together; whenever we had
organized, it was against some one else; we didn't fall naturally into
a simple cooperative effort. And within two months we were breaking
into hostile particles, until, in desperation, we discovered that men
can work together. The obstructionist manufacturer and the stubborn
labor leader could hold up an entire industry; but two men, one from
each side, could set each factory going again. The creation of the
labor-management committees of two was the first light in the darkness
of our domestic policy.
Still to come was the spontaneous outbreak of fervor and the cold
organization for victory. We had forgotten the tools of democracy
which we had to work together, as simply as men had to work on a
snowbound country road together. In a small town of Ohio a pleasant
event occurred which had a stir of promise; Dorothy Thompson's report
was:
"They got together in the old-fashioned American way: in the old opera
house. They warmed and instilled enthusiasm and resolution into one
another, by the mass of their presence, and by music, and prayer.
"Mr. Sweet had put the F.F.A. (The Future Farmers of America and the
older brothers of the Four-H clubs) to work, and they had made a
survey of the existing resources of the community, in trucks, autos,
combines, tractors. And he proposed to them that they use these
resources, _as a community_, getting the greatest work out of them
with the greatest conservation of them; organizing transportation to
the factory where war production was going on, so that no auto
travelled for its owner alone, but for as many workers as it could
carry."
_Democratic Action_
There is a field of endeavor in war time where this sort of
spontaneous, amateur organization is best; and our Government will be
wise if it prevents the inexpert from building bombers but lets them,
as far as possible, get children to and from school by local effort.
We want to feel that we are being used, that our powers are working
for the common good. So far we have been irritated by sudden demands,
and frightened by long indifference to our offers--until an angry man
has done something, as Mr. Fred Sweet did in Mt. Gilead. A government
determined to win this war will create the opportunities for
democratic action without waiting for angry men. The combination of
maximum control (the single head of production) and maximum dispersion
(two men in each factory solving the local problem) is exactly what we
understand; to translate civilian emotion into terms of maximum use is
the next step.
Already this is happening to us: on one side we are grouping ourselves
into smaller units; on the other we are discovering that we are parts
of the whole nation. It is a tremendous release of energies for us; we
are discovering what we had hoped--that America is of indescribable
significance to us and that we for the first time signify in
America--we, not bosses or financiers or critics or cliques or groups
or movements--but we ourselves. Something almost dead stirs again and
we know that we shall be able to work with our fellowmen, and work
with our Government, and watch those we chose to speak for us, and
challenge corruption, and see to it that we, who are the people, are
not betrayed. We may not revive the _forms_ of democracy as they
existed in Lincoln's time, but we will never again let the _spirit_ of
his democracy come so near to being beyond all revival.
We will use the weapons we have and invent new ones; and we had better
be prompt. Because we have a victory to win with these weapons and a
world to make. We have to work Democracy because we have to create a
world in which democracy can live. There is no time to lose.