THE CAPACITY TO CREATE AND PRESERVE PRIVATE PROPERTY IS THE PROPER
TEST AND PROOF OF QUALIFICATION FOR ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP IN AN
ADVANCED DEMOCRACY.
There are two principal arguments in favor of a property qualification
for voters; one the argument of fitness, that the propertied class are
the most capable of passing upon affairs of state; the other the
argument of justice, that the business of government principally
concerns property, namely, the belongings and the productions of
propertied people. Both these arguments assume that what is wanted is an
honest and efficient government, not a corrupt and inefficient one.
The demand for a property qualification for voters is predicated upon
the theory that there is an obligation on the part of the citizens of a
state to contribute towards its material prosperity; a duty of such
importance that the state cannot flourish in the face of its neglect;
that the class of men who are incapable of creating and preserving
property is unfitted to form part of the electorate; and that neither
native birth nor the taking of a naturalization oath is sufficient
qualification for the duties and function of active citizenship in a
genuine democracy. There may be valid excuses such as ill health,
ignorance, etc., for the individual’s failure to perform his part in the
work of civilization, but such excuses do not disprove the existence of
the obligation in others, but rather emphasize it. It is not well
fulfilled when the citizen only produces enough from day to day for his
immediate support, or wastes the surplus, leaving the burden upon others
to provide for the time of old age, sickness and incapacity. Its proper
performance therefore involves the exercise of the virtue known as
prudence, a systematic saving or accumulation of property for the joint
benefit of the individual and the State. The practice of this virtue is
incumbent not merely upon good citizens but upon every citizen and tends
to qualify for active citizenship. Like cleanliness, it is not a
superfluous but an essential virtue. The neglect of home cleanliness may
breed a pestilence; the neglect of home prudence may unfairly burden the
community; such neglect is an act of disloyalty to Society and to the
State, and is a proof of such civic incapacity and indifference as to
require in any well regulated political community, the placing of the
offender in the class of passive citizens who are not entitled to the
suffrage. His country’s protection is a sufficient reward for one of
that class for merely taking the trouble to be born in her domain. Let
him be content to be what Sieyes called a passive citizen till he has
proved his qualification to be an active one. If there be, which is
doubtful, exceptional cases of men such that neither they nor their
forefathers were actually able to earn more than enough to support them,
or having earned it to take care of it, and yet are capable of directing
affairs of state they are so few as to be negligible. Such men need the
spur of disfranchisement to make them go ahead, and meantime the thrifty
can legislate for them. Constitutional legislation can only deal with
groups, or classes, and cannot properly attempt to provide for such
extraordinary exceptions.
Democracy is an ideal form of government for none but a highly capable
people; a representative government of a worthless or a politically
indifferent constituency will be a worthless government, the more
representative the more worthless. Witness Hayti, San Domingo, Mexico,
and certain Central American or South American democracies. These are
totally incapable because their electorates are totally incapable, and
in this country the democracy, though not a complete failure, is a
partial failure, namely, to the extent that its life is vitiated by an
inferior constituency. There are thousands of men, not to speak of
women, on our voting list who are as incompetent to exercise the
functions of voters as the inferior orders of Mexico or Hayti. Many of
the improvident classes have minds absolutely childish and utterly
incapable of foresight or serious reflection. At an election held in
Ashton in England under the recently extended suffrage system, a
theatrical man named de Freece was elected to Parliament not because of
his political views, but because of the amusing performances of his
wife, a noted vaudeville actress. We quote from a newspaper:
“Vesta Tilley, the most popular male impersonator London has known in
decades, took a prominent part in the campaign. Her ‘Picadilly Johnnie
with the little glass eye’ and other popular songs, it was admitted
played a far greater part in the election than her husband’s political
views.” We may be sure it was the unpropertied and non-tax-paying rabble
whose vote went in favor of “Picadilly Johnnie.” Lord Bryce’s
description of the indifferent or incompetent British voters applies
well enough to our own:
“Though they possess political power, and are better pleased to
have it, they do not really care about it--that is to say, politics
occupy no appreciable space in their thoughts and interests. Some
of them vote at elections because they consider themselves to
belong to a party, or fancy that on a given occasion they have more
to expect from the one party than from the other; or because they
are brought up on election day by some one who can influence
them.... Others will not take the trouble to go to the polls....
Many have not even political prepossessions, and will stare or
smile when asked to which party they belong. They count for little
except at elections, and then chiefly as instruments to be used by
others. So far as the formation or exercise of opinion goes, they
may be left out of sight.” (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, pp.
319-20.)
It is impossible to weigh merits so nicely as to exclude all of this
class; it is impracticable to disfranchise a man for frivolity even
though he be so frivolous that his vote depends on the song of an
actress, but when that frivolity gives itself concrete expression such
as incapacity to acquire or retain property, it may and should be
excluded from our political life.
In considering the proposition that the creation and preservation of
property is a primary duty of citizenship, we must realize the absolute
essentiality of accumulated property in the scheme of civilization. We
all know the value of money, but we are generally loath to formally
acknowledge its importance. There is a prevalent affectation of
indifference towards it, assumed by vain fools as a mark of superiority,
and by spendthrift fools to excuse their stupid poverty. This
affectation is encouraged by the writers of the popular magazines and
newspapers and other cheap literature which is published for the masses,
who are supposed to be poor and to like to be flattered by being told
that their poverty, instead of being a mark of inferiority as it really
is, is a sign of superior goodness. This sort of writing misleads many
thoughtless people to their detriment. Civilization can only be
expressed in terms of property; and property is its token, its
manifestation, its note, its unfailing indication, its hall mark. There
is not a quality, a circumstance, a feature of civilization which is not
represented in some way by property, either by being due to property,
derived from property, originating in property, or sustained by
property. The desire for property is an attribute of man; denied to the
lower animals and dormant in savages, such as the North American Indians
who when discovered, had no permanent property, not even a year’s
provisions to live on in times of scarcity, and had created nothing for
posterity. A pauperized people is on the direct road to barbarism. On
the other hand, the higher the grade of civilization the greater the
wealth of the country; so that to attain the very highest grade we must
pass far beyond the period of aggregation of merely useful things and
reach a point of great luxury, where men can spend lives and millions in
the service of the high arts and refinements of life, and where in an
atmosphere enriched by the artistic emanations of centuries, are
produced operas costing $10,000 a day, and palaces and cathedrals at an
expenditure of the time of generations of men and of hundreds of
millions of dollars in money.
It is often said that the main object of our government should be to
preserve our political institutions. This is too short-sighted a view.
These institutions are not an ultimate object; they are only the means
of promoting and protecting civilization, the which ought to be the
principal and ultimate object of the State. This object is to be
accomplished by encouraging the citizens in the voluntary production of
life’s primal material necessities: food, clothing, and shelter; in the
conservation of the accumulated treasures of the past, and by favoring
the addition thereto of new contributions by this generation, so that
the total may be passed on intact to posterity. Any government is a
failure which neglects that duty; which if accomplished, and a proper
attention given to education, virtue and morality will take care of
themselves. In the play of “Major Barbara,” one of Bernard Shaw’s best
and most instructive comedies, the distinguished author shows the
difficulty, the almost impossibility of the reclamation by mere
admonition of a man degraded by pauperism; but that good wages regularly
paid will do the job. Now, our present voting system not only fails to
encourage thrift, saving or accumulation of wealth, or to promote
civilization, but has a contrary tendency, because it grants equality
and power in government to the non-producer, to the shiftless, lazy and
vicious consumers and wasters of property.
In order to fairly realize the gross injustice of granting governmental
powers to the thriftless classes, we must clearly visualize and properly
estimate the results of the lives and labors of the thrifty and
industrious. We must not fail to fully understand that frugality is the
creator and preserver of the State. We have recently heard frequent
appeals to save and help win the German war; because to save is to
contribute to a fund out of which can be paid the expenses of the
government. But the common fund of the nation’s wealth in peace as well
as in war exists and is drawn upon by every member of the community, and
it is just as true in peace as in war that the citizen who saves money
is thus contributing to that common fund and thereby to the strength
and well-being of the commonwealth, and this, whether he deposit his
savings in a bank where it is loaned out to aid industry and create
employment, or whether he invests it in commerce or manufactures,
directly or indirectly, by the purchase of stocks or securities in
industrial or commercial concerns. The mere fact of saving, that is to
say of producing more than he consumes makes him at once a contributor
to this general fund; and therefore any man who leaves behind him upon
his death money or property which he accumulated in his lifetime has
been a benefactor to the community, in the same sense as if he had
contributed a great book or a valuable invention to the world, or had
spent his life in benevolent work. To save or to make money and then to
usefully spend it in one’s lifetime, reaping the tribute of the world’s
appreciation is well enough; but to frugally save for a long lifetime in
order to do good or give pleasure to others after one’s eyes are closed
in death is surely nobler still. All the useful productions of man in
the United States, the dwellings, stores, shops, ships, roads,
railroads, telegraphs and telephones; the schools, colleges, hospitals
and church edifices; all the accumulated fuel and stores of manufactured
and other goods, are the fruits of individual saving. The greatness and
power of the United States depend upon the collected savings of
generations gone by, and evidence their industry, prudence and
self-denial. The class of Americans who have wasted their surplus or who
have produced no more than they earned; those devil-may-care fellows so
admired by sentimentalists, have been of no permanent material value to
the country; they are of the parasite class; they have no part in the
creation of its civilization which is represented by its acquisitions
and depends upon them for its continuance. Many of these people give
themselves airs of virtue and generosity because they are not “mean” as
they say; they even brag that they spend as they go, and for that
attitude toward life expect and sometimes receive applause from others
as great fools as themselves. Their ignorance prevents their perceiving
their own selfishness; and their vanity hides from them a suspicion of
their worthlessness. The late Andrew Carnegie is credited with many
sayings wise and foolish; of the latter one of the oftenest quoted is
that it is a disgrace to die rich. No proverb more mistaken and
mischievous was ever uttered. For since no man, however much he made but
might have squandered it all, therefore to die rich implies some
prudence and self denial, and usually means that the departed left the
world better off than he found it. The only anti-social rich are the
land grabbers. All who have become capitalists by trade, production or
invention, or by efforts in aid thereof, are public benefactors.
Here let us stop to pay a well-earned tribute to the past and present
rank and file of the hard-working money savers of our country, above all
to those of the past; to such of the departed ones and of the old
superannuated fathers and mothers still feebly lingering among us, as
have lovingly toiled and scraped and saved to leave something to their
children and their descendants. They are and have been among the best
the world produces, those honest, prudent, thrifty, self-denying
Americans, those brave old progenitors of ours, whose honest toil and
stinting and close bargaining for generations past built up the wealth
which makes so many of us comfortable and which enabled America to give
Germany her solar plexus blow. May their memories be dear to their
descendants and be honored by all of us forever.
We hear much these days of “class consciousness”; of that feeling of
solidarity among the working classes which inclines the mechanic or
operative to feel the needs of his fellow workers and to act with a view
to their benefit, and this is well; but a little guiding thought is
never amiss in such matters, and will surely lead to a conclusion
favorable to a property qualification for voters. First, the workers
should remember that all good workmen are interested in the creation and
preservation of capital. Their class consciousness should align them on
this question with those who produce and save. They should realize that
immense numbers of workingmen have savings bank accounts and other
property and are therefore in the capitalistic class. Most of them have
hopes and aspirations for still greater wealth, for in the United States
and in other civilized countries where the ancient struggle for personal
and religious liberty is over, the chief modern aspiration of all
workers is to create and preserve property, and thus to enjoy to the
utmost the security and happiness which come with civilization and are
expressed in terms of property. They should also understand that all
capital is in a fund which is accessible to all, and that their best
contribution to the welfare of their brothers would be the increase of
this fund by their own wise thrift and saving. The savings bank is a
great creator and preserver of property, and operates by a process which
is vital to the existence of the unpropertied working man to an extent
which he often fails to realize till the destruction of stored up
capital by Bolsheviki methods brings him to starvation’s verge. And
while the property actually owned by the working man is usually much
less in dollar value than that of almost any single capitalistic
employer of labor, or business men generally, yet its actual importance
to him is as great or greater; and then the use by the working man of
property not his own but accumulated by society, and its necessity to
his existence is usually almost as great and may be practically greater
than that of the rich man. The latter for instance may be an invalid or
of sedentary habits, making but little direct use of mechanical forces;
while the working man in question may be constantly and necessarily
using machinery, railroads, and other transportation facilities, etc.,
in his daily employment to such a degree as to be absolutely dependent
on them for his existence. In the case of another worker his direct
personal use of food, clothing, furniture, household goods, books, etc.,
may be actually greater than that of his wealthy but more secluded or
abstemious neighbor. Such a one whether or not he realizes it, is
vitally interested in the preservation and maintenance of the property
of others through the use of which he obtains his livelihood, or on
which his comfort and happiness depend, and therefore that government
should be so organized as to protect that property.
As the thrift of the worker is the root of our material prosperity, so
is the thrift of the rich its flower and choicest fruit. What would
America be, what would Europe be without the savings of the well-to-do,
accumulated from generation to generation, and here now at our command
and for our use manifested not only in railroads, ships, canals, banks
and all the buildings and equipments of commerce and industry, but also
in fine mansions, in elegant furniture, in beautiful lawns and gardens,
in churches, cathedrals, hospitals, universities and museums? From out
the ranks of the opulent and thrifty classes, and especially of those of
them who have scorned waste, extravagance, dissipation and vulgar
display, came the leaders in the social army, the noble pioneers of
taste and beauty. We hear much canting laudation of the frontier
pioneers, a rough and coarse set mostly, of whom such as did their part
deserve the credit. But far more excellent and admirable are those to
whose zeal, enthusiastic taste and noble self-denial we owe most of the
preserved and accumulated treasures of the earth in architecture,
painting, sculpture and ornamentation. In every age, in every generation
they appear on the scene, little bands of modest amateurs, devoting
time, patience and money to rescuing these treasures from destruction,
and to fostering, instructing and creating public taste for created
beauty. They seek and teach the best in life, leisure, refinement and
loveliness; they introduce noble and graceful fashions in dress, manners
and deportment and set fine examples to the world. The public museums
and opera are endowed by their benefactions; they are the patrons of the
best music, the purest drama, and the most inspiring architecture. And
not merely to the cultivated very rich who are able to do so much, but
also to the refined of the more modest middle class is our gratitude due
for their leadership in this same direction. We see their tasteful
comfortable houses dotting the landscape; their good sidewalks, shady
street trees, gardens and orchards delight the wayfarer. In improving
the public taste in the choice of furniture, or book bindings, of music
and other things they are constantly helping along our civilization and
forwarding the interests of the Social Commonwealth. They train their
children so that they often become still more tasteful than their
parents; they set an example of decent living to the poorer classes;
they beautify the land; they give the rest of us something to aspire to.
As we pass through a handsome well-kept American village let us give a
thought of gratitude to the folk of all degrees of well-to-do, most of
them now dead and gone, who planted and built well, who dressed, talked
and lived like gentlemen and ladies; who improved the life and manners
of their time and left the world better housed, better mannered and
better looking than they found it. Of such is the history of the
nation’s progress. Like the great artists and authors, they each
contributed an offering to civilization; they left something of value
behind them to make them remembered, were it only a little well-built
and well-designed house for someone to occupy after their departure.
Though their names are never in the mouths of platform ranters, they are
among the true patriots of America.
The manhood suffrage doctrine fails to recognize the vital political
difference heretofore referred to, originally pointed out by Sieyes,
that exists between the two classes of citizens; the one the faithful
members of the social commonwealth; the progressive workers, loyal and
active in the promotion of civilization and in sustaining the state; and
who because of such civic activity, are accounted worthy of the
suffrage; the other the non-socials; the drones; the neutrals or
disloyal and therefore ineligible for political functions of any sort;
non-producers, shirkers, wasters, and destroyers. Sieyes, who was a
statesman, publicist and member of the French National Assembly in 1792,
recognized the existence of these two clearly separated classes of
citizens, and, by a statute proposed by him and subsequently enacted,
all Frenchmen were divided accordingly into active citizens (_citoyens
actifs_), having the right to vote and hold office, and passive citizens
(_citoyens passifs_), who are excluded from both these privileges. It is
not just or fair that these latter, who are always behind the chariot of
progress, pulling backward and being carried or dragged along, impeding
the march of the race, should compel the progressive workers, the real
active citizens of the country, to expend a large part of their efforts
in overcoming their resistance.
Consider also the gross injustice and folly of inviting a large class
who have contributed nothing to the treasury of civilization to share in
its management and control, even permitting them to mismanage, misuse
and waste it. “That the tax eaters should not have absolute control over
the taxes to be expended by the tax payers would appear to be entirely
axiomatic truth in political philosophy.... That this suffrage is a
spear as well as a shield is a fact which many writers on suffrage leave
out of sight.” (_Sterne, Const. History_, p. 270.) Those who made this
country what it is are the thrifty workers, the successful business men.
Now, is it asking too much to demand that the destiny of the country
should be placed in their hands? Is it fair that government should be
put under the control of the wasteful and the foolish, that they may
burden it with debt, and bond their thrifty fellow citizens and all
future generations to pay off the obligations thus imposed upon the
nation?
A purely sentimental and therefore very popular argument against
property qualification is that the rights and claims of humanity are
separate from and superior to those of property. This statement has
really nothing to do with the case, since it is not proposed to exclude
humanity from the polls, but merely to select for admission thereto a
superior and more representative class. It is said by these
sentimentalists that the rights of man are absolute and transcendent and
must first be satisfied, while those of property are inferior and may be
disregarded. This is on the absurd assumption that civilized man and
his property are separable and distinct forces; and that a conception of
civilized man without property is possible. And so we are assailed with
the catch phrase, popular with penny papers and platform ranters: “Man
is superior to property.” This, like most catch phrases, is found, when
examined, to be rather empty. Man is superior to property just as the
head is superior to the stomach, as the fruit of the tree is superior to
the roots. But when the stomach is neglected the head dies; when the
root is not nourished the fruit perishes; the only way to preserve the
head is to feed the stomach; the only way to produce the fruit is to
fertilize the roots. Man in a state of civilization cannot exist without
property; if you sacrifice his property you sacrifice him. The imagined
comparison of the value of human life in its entirety with human
property in the aggregate is absurd, it presents an impossible choice.
How, for instance, can you balance the value of human life against that
of the New York Croton Aqueduct system which conserves the life of
millions? Carry out the notion that all property should be sacrificed
rather than that one man should perish, and you have the spectacle of a
people without food, fire, clothes, shelter or medicines, whereof not
merely the one sacred man, but the whole lot would perish forthwith. On
the other hand, a comparison of the value of individual life with that
of individual property depends on the character of the life and of the
property referred to. Whatever we may pretend we do not practically
treat the life of a human being as such, say for instance, that of a
savage, as equivalent in value to the highest forms of property such as
our great works of art, our great public works, or the material
equipment necessary to our subsistence. It is probable that the
aggregate of the accumulated treasures of wealth and art which existed
in Europe at the time of the discovery of America was worth to
civilization and to the moral and religious universe a million times
more than all the savage human life on the North American continent at
that time. To the existence of this accumulation of property and this
organized society not only the well-to-do, but the most ignorant man,
be he ever so poor, owes whatever enjoyment he has in his daily life.
The little naked child is brought into the world by the aid of
physicians and nurses who have been trained in great institutions
established and sustained by organized civilized society through the
medium of property accumulated by the men of years and generations past;
and from his birth on, the child, whatever be his station, is clothed,
fed, sheltered and nourished in sickness and in health; trained,
educated, watched over and preserved as long as he lives, by the aid of
institutions which were created and are maintained by Society through
the accumulation, the use and the application of property. The poorest
individual is more indebted to property accumulations and is more
dependent upon them in time of need than the richest, because it is only
from them that charities and benevolences of all kinds, outdoor relief,
free hospitals, dispensaries, schools, colleges and churches can be
maintained. Even Robinson Crusoe on his island would have perished had
it not been for the use of such products of high civilization as he was
able to save from the wreck.
Following the argument founded on the justice of the case comes that
based upon the superior fitness of members of the propertied class for
the function of voters. This fitness is derived from the training which
is incidental to the acquisition and care of property in the struggle
for life. The property qualification for voters is in effect an
educational test, and far more effective than that of mere book
learning, which so often turns out to be quite insufficient as a
preparation for the conduct of human affairs, and is equally
insufficient for the understanding of politics. There is an education in
life as well as in books and the education in life is the more valuable
of the two. To have acquired and preserved property implies not only
ordinary school or theoretical education, but business training as well,
and as government is mostly a business affair a property qualification
presupposes a special preparatory course of training of the kind which
is the best of all for the voter, and in addition such civic and
political virtues as are necessary to success in business. “In politics,
as elsewhere, only that which costs is valued. The industrial virtues
imply self-denial, which prepares their possessors to wield political
power; but pauperism raises a presumption of unfitness to share in
political power. The person who cannot support himself has no moral
claim to rule one who can.” (Lalor’s _Cyclopedia_; _Suffrage_.)
It is the actual contact with, and the masterful control of the things
of life that fits a man to give judgment on their force and value; and
his success therein is the test of his own capacity. In a very able and
instructive article on “The Basic Problem of Democracy” in the _Atlantic
Monthly_ for November, 1919, written by Walter Lipman, he dwells upon
the proposition heretofore generally overlooked that what is most needed
in our political system is some means of giving the electorate true
information as to facts. He says:
“The cardinal fact always is the loss of contact with objective
information. Public as well as private reason depends upon it. Not
what somebody says, not what somebody wishes were true, but what is
so beyond all our opining, constitutes the touchstone of our
existence. And a society which lives at secondhand will commit
incredible follies and countenance inconceivable brutalities if
that contact is intermittent and untrustworthy. Demagoguery is a
parasite that flourishes where discrimination fails, and only those
who are at grips with things themselves are impervious to it. For,
in the last analysis, the demagogue, whether of the Right or the
Left, is, consciously or unconsciously, an undetected liar.”
For the purposes of this argument the point here is that not only the
mere rabble but the unpropertied and impecunious from any cause, either
from lack of interest or of capacity, live at secondhand in their
relations to politics and are not themselves at “grips with things” and
therefore easily become the prey of the demagogue, the undetected liar.
The practical value of the property qualification test though not
properly appreciated has not been entirely overlooked by previous
writers. For example, Bagehot:
“Property indeed is a very imperfect test of intelligence; but it
is some test. If it has been inherited it guarantees education; if
acquired it guarantees ability; either way it assures us of
something. In all countries where anything has prevailed short of
manhood suffrage, the principal limitation has been founded on
criteria derived from property. And it is very important to observe
that there is a special appropriateness in this selection; property
has not only a certain connection with general intelligence, but it
has a peculiar connection with _political_ intelligence. It is a
great guide to a good judgment to have much to lose by a bad
judgment; generally speaking, the welfare of the country will be
most dear to those who are well off there.” (_Parliamentary
Reform_, p. 320.)
Bagehot, like most political writers and speakers, while recognizing the
educative value to the voter of property ownership and management, fails
to give sufficient importance to the effect of a business training. He
elsewhere dwells upon the beneficial influence upon the voter of
leisure, of education, of lofty pursuits, of cultivated society; but he
overlooks the obvious fact that all good government is a business
enterprise, and that a business training is essential to the instruction
of the electorate. This oversight was perhaps natural for two reasons:
one the traditionary contempt in which all business was formerly held in
England, and by the literary class everywhere. Dickens, for example, had
not the least idea of business capacity or of the intelligent life of
the business world of London, and Thackeray very little. Their business
men are of varying degrees of stupidity. The fact is that the world of
art and letters has always been over conceited and inclined on
insufficient evidence to believe itself superior in intelligence to the
world of work and business. The other reason for the oversight referred
to is that in former days business training was far less thorough and
extended than it has since become and is today.
Whatever may have been the case in days gone by, in our own time a
business training is necessary to enable a voter to make a proper choice
of candidates for public office. The only way to secure competent
officials is through the demand of the electorate for capable men and by
close and intelligent scrutiny of the candidates. But this implies
capacity on the part of the voters to pass on the candidates’
qualifications and to make a proper choice; in other words an electorate
of trained minds, good judgment and knowledge of men. The voter needs
not only understanding of the merits of public controversies and
knowledge of the published records of candidates for office but also
judgment to weigh their qualities. And just as some knowledge of music
is necessary to enable a listener to judge of the ability of a musician,
so the voter who is to choose men for office having proper business
qualifications should himself have had fundamental business training and
experience, and an educated sense of honesty and justice in such
matters.
From all which it appears that business and the professions furnish a
school of which all voters should be graduates. In this institution
established by natural processes and everywhere in operation, citizens
are being daily trained in prudence, foresight, self-denial, temperance,
industry, frugality, and the capacity to reason. There is a continuous
and automatic exclusion of the unfit. First the worthless, very stupid,
defective, dishonest and lazy are eliminated. Either they refuse to
enter, or from time to time as boys or young men they are rejected and
discharged as incompetent; weeded out, and their places taken by the
more competent. As years go on the more industrious, clear-headed,
honest and frugal of these surpass the others and achieve success in
proportion as they display those qualities, together with good judgment
and farsightedness; while meantime they establish and maintain families,
raise children and acquire more or less property, all the while gaining
in training and experience in the affairs of life. They become members
of business firms, employers, superintendents, business managers, etc.
In agriculture they become successful farmers. In the professions they
become known and established as reliable, and acquire and accumulate
clients and patients, regular offices, books, equipment, furniture,
together with some money or other property. In literature they write
successful books. In teaching they become principals and college
professors. There you have them, trained and graduated in the school of
life’s affairs, the academy of evolution; a class of the fittest armed
with Nature’s own credentials, certifying them to be of proper stuff
from which to build a safe foundation for the democratic State, and thus
has nature herself done the preparatory work of selecting material for
an electorate by sifting out the inefficient, the non-social, the
passive citizens; by separating and putting in plain sight the efficient
members of the Social Commonwealth and stamping them with the seal of
competency for active citizenship. So that a property qualification for
voters appears upon a proper consideration to be fit, appropriate,
practical, effective and in accordance with natural law.
Exceptions there probably are, instances of men of good parts and
judgment who through misadventure have been reduced to such poverty that
they would be debarred from voting under any fair property qualification
rule. But the law cannot provide for such misfortunes any more than for
unavoidable absence from the polls on election day. Such minor defaults
will not affect the desired result, which is the production of a class
of reliable voters, and not merely a few exceptional ones.
Not only property but the honest and intelligent desire for property
should be represented in the councils of the State. This aspiration has
been stigmatized by twaddlers as an “appetite”; but an appetite is a
good thing; and essential to life. The desire for wealth is one of
nature’s constructive forces and should be availed of by wise statesmen
for the purpose of nation building. Nothing is more offensive to the
intelligent thinking man than to hear hypocritical demagogic ranters
denounce as “greed” the honest efforts of thrift to collect together a
competence for old age, a provision for helpless children, or capital
for a business enterprise. Politicians and the impudent followers of
politicians, vile parasites on the body politic, scurvy knaves who have
never earned an honest hundred dollars in their lives, make a trade of
this kind of talk; preferring the business of flattering and cozening a
constituency of wooden heads and uncontrolled emotions to earning a
living honestly. The wish for property is a primal impulse like the love
of life, the appetite for food and drink, and the desire for
procreation; it is in the nature of every healthy man; the want of it is
abnormal and detracts from capacity for constructive state work. Those
who really lack it become in politics as dangerous as lunatics; they are
dreamers, enthusiasts who ruin everything they control, such as were
Robespierre and thousands of his followers. One would not trust one of
these crackbrains to build a house, let alone a nation. In private life
they are shiftless and burdensome on their friends and the public; in
the lower classes they are often known as loafers or deadbeats; some of
them become the “floaters” of politics, the cheap material for bandit
political organizations. On the other hand this desire to create, to
save, to preserve and to perpetuate useful and beautiful things, is a
natural force which wise statesmen employ to the utmost in the service
of the State; whose development they encourage in civics, in private
life, in politics and in government, and which found in the character of
the individual should be accorded its proper and legitimate, sane and
steadying influence.
The possession of property is also a necessary qualification of a voter
because it renders him pecuniarily independent. The voter in a democracy
should be so situated as to be free from the need of yielding to the
temptation of a bribe, either in the shape of cash or the salary
attached to a small office. We pay judges large salaries, to lift them
above the atmosphere of temptation. The voter is a judge, called upon to
pass judgment upon the candidates whose names are on the ballot. That
the verdict of the polls upon these candidates for office should be
rendered by paupers, by men whose means do not enable them to vote with
independence, is monstrous. The shelter of secrecy afforded by the
Australian ballot is no answer to this objection. The purchased voter is
corrupted before he enters the booth; his soul is degraded as soon as he
resolves to take the bribe. Why should he be false to his bargain?
Surely not for patriotism or virtue, for the act of betraying his
purchaser would not cleanse him; it would only prove him doubly
recreant. To say that the elector besides being venal will perhaps
become a perjured traitor is a poor plea for his admission to the
suffrage. And yet, the tendency of manhood suffrage being forever
downward is towards pauper voting. A New York newspaper of March 5,
1919, recorded that Lady Astor, a candidate for Parliament in Plymouth,
England, had just visited the almshouses there in making her canvass for
votes. In the short time England has been afflicted with an
approximation to universal suffrage, this much has been accomplished. If
it be right, it should go on, and great England’s Parliament, renowned
for six centuries as the mother of all free representative assemblies,
should become a club of chattering women, sent there by paupers and
vagabonds. America should face the other way. In its political life it
has no need for women nor for flabby and inefficient men; it needs
honesty, frugality, virile force, courage and efficiency; it needs a
constructive and conservative spirit to replace the reckless and
wasteful temper now so prevalent. The electorate should include only
active citizens, only those who have made good; the governmental state
should correspond to the social state, representing not only the working
and thrifty people, but their works, their homes, their property and
their civilization.
The democratic advance thus proposed is a movement onward and upward to
better things. The manhood suffrage movement was downward. In the next
and succeeding chapters the reader will find briefly sketched some
account of that descending progress into and through the muck of
ignorance and corruption for the past one hundred years.