ANSWER TO THE PLEA THAT THE BALLOT SHOULD BE GRANTED TO THE
UNPROPERTIED CLASSES AS A PROTECTIVE WEAPON
The argument is frequently used in certain quarters that the vote in the
hands of the unpropertied classes is a weapon of defense needed to
protect their weakness against governmental oppression or to enable them
to procure needful affirmative legislation. This argument though without
real force is sufficiently plausible to merit attention.
The first and readiest answer is that the experiment has been tried and
grievously failed. They have had the ballot ninety years and have used
it for naught but mischief to themselves and others. The second answer
is that governmental oppression of the poor in this country is an
impossibility. It would only be possible through class legislation and
there is no conceivable class legislation which would favor the
prosperous people at the expense of their poorer fellow citizens. There
has never been class legislation in this country, and it is impossible
to devise, much more to enact it in a way to be effective, because we
have no fixed classes. We may use the word “class” for convenience, but
there is no permanent class of poor people any more than there is a
fixed class of lazy or sickly or dissolute people, or of professional
men or farmers or blacksmiths. There is at all times a body of skilled
and one of unskilled laborers, but they are not fixed classes; nor are
their members generally paupers or propertyless; most of them either
have or expect to accumulate money or property either individually or in
their families, and desire to have it secured to them by equal and just
laws. The poor come from all ranks, occupations and families and so do
the rich. The son of a rich farmer is a struggling doctor and the
daughter of a laborer becomes the wife of a banker. In fact, the
principal cause of the envy of the rich by the less rich is not usually
that they belong to a fixed class, but the contrary, because they have
not remained where they were but have managed by hook or crook to get
ahead of their former associates. Class legislation scarcely exists
today in any civilized country; it disappeared with the permanent
classes of former days and is now merely a tradition of a gone-by period
when no doubt the system of fixed classes served a necessary purpose.
But even if we choose to consider the different occupations of men, or
their pecuniary circumstances from time to time as class divisions,
there is no possibility of unequal legislation affecting them, because
it is so difficult as to be practically impossible to separate their
interests so as to make such legislation profitable to any special
interest. We may of course, to please our fancy, imagine attempts at
class legislation even here and now. We may imagine enactments aimed at
red-headed men or sculptors. And so we may dream of laws against the
poor, enacted by a people whose charity and generosity to the poor and
unfortunate is proverbial; but they will never be seriously considered
in this country until we have become politically insane, in which case
all democracy will be practically non-existent among us. As things
actually are our intelligent people are fully aware that business
prosperity to be real must be universal; that the well-being of the
laboring people is absolutely essential to the well-being of the rest of
the community, and they will never even consider a suggestion of
legislation oppressive towards the wage earners. There are three
principal bodies of propertied men; farmers, professional men and
traders; who together constitute the bulk of the propertied electorate.
No one can imagine the farmers as consenting to any persecution of the
poor; and the successful traders and professional men are interested in
the prosperity of their poorer neighbors; they are fed by a stream of
wealth which comes from a surplus created and expended by the working
classes. The business interests of all the people are so bound together
that the prosperity of one is in reality the prosperity of all; the
wealth of one furnishes a market for the industries of the other; the
need of one man gives employment to his neighbor; and all this is true
though the laborer and the employer and the trader and the customer are
separated by mountains, plains, seas or national boundaries. All
business workers, in whatever capacity, form part of a great joint
enterprise, and the body of the poorer people have therefore no business
interests which are antagonistic to those of the propertied class.
Rather are they interested in the successes of the wealthy, of the
capitalists, and especially of those of them who are engaged in
mercantile pursuits, or manufacturing industries, because it is on such
prosperity that their employment depends. And the situation in political
matters is similar to that in business matters. What all need in
government is ability and honesty; and the poor man might as well object
to being medically treated by one of a wealthy family, as to object to a
competent man sitting in the legislature or administering a public
office because he is rich. From Washington down to Roosevelt the men of
old and wealthy families have in politics always given the poor the
benefit of disinterested and enlightened service.
The upper classes are the least likely of all to favor oppressive
legislation because being the best trained and most accustomed to deal
with large matters, they have been and are the quickest to learn true
principles, and to adopt the common sense doctrine that the prosperity
of the country is their prosperity, and that class legislation is bad
for everybody, and especially bad for property owners. The suffrage was
originally conferred upon the unpropertied by the vote of the propertied
class; and it is almost nonsensical to suppose that nothing but the
ballot saves the former from political oppression at the hands of the
very people who voluntarily conferred the gift of the ballot upon them.
In fact, the prosperous classes of our race have not heretofore been
anywhere inclined to exercise political tyranny upon the less
prosperous. On the contrary liberalism has always been promoted by the
upper classes. Had they legislated with effect so as to crush those
beneath them when they had the uncontrolled power to do so, the lower
classes would never have been permitted to ascend. De Tocqueville says
that “almost all the democratic movements which have agitated the world
have been directed by nobles.” Historically, the case can best be judged
by reference to England as a nation with political institutions much
resembling ours, but much older and including an aristocratic order.
There, liberal political measures have always been actively advocated by
members of the upper classes; and though these originally held all
political power, it was not through usurpation, but naturally, and out
of the necessity of the case; the lower classes being totally illiterate
and the middle classes politically indifferent. And so, according as the
lower and middle classes acquired knowledge and wealth, they were
admitted step by step to a share in the government. Here we must
distinguish between individual political ambition and class legislation.
The members of the gentry and of the great families sought to keep their
individual places and power, for the same reason that any office holder
of the present time holds on to his place with all the assistance he can
muster. But they did not work together as a class against the others as
a class. Had they done so the inferior orders could never have risen. In
France in 1789 the Revolution was fathered by the upper classes.
Lafayette and Rochambeau, who came to America to help Washington, were
noblemen, and yet strong advocates of free political institutions. The
nobility of France in the National Assembly aided the progress of the
Revolution as long as it was sane. They voted almost to a man for the
abolition of the feudal system and of hereditary privileges. It was only
when the Terrorists began to tyrannize by means of riot and slaughter,
that the French nobility turned against the Revolution, which had
practically become an obscene and bloody march towards atheistic
anarchy. This liberal attitude is not surprising, because the effect of
education and refinement is to make men not only more benevolent and
sympathetic but also more just. Every man of understanding and
experience knows, that he is more likely to get both justice and
compassion from a man of high rank and breeding, well educated and in
easy circumstances, than from one of the lower classes. That is why the
aristocratic British judges stand so high in the world’s opinion, and
why some of the wiser among us endeavor, often with poor success, to see
to it that the judges of our highest courts are well bred, well educated
and paid high salaries.
Returning to the subject of class legislation, there has never been in
the United States any attempt in that direction. Whether considered
historically therefore, or in the light of present day experiences, the
fear of class legislation in this country in favor of the middle class
against the poor, is so unfounded as to be almost absurd.
The suggestion that the unpropertied should be given the suffrage, so
that they may obtain affirmative remedial legislation in their behalf,
remains to be answered. But it involves a really unthinkable
proposition, namely, the making people prosperous who are naturally
unfitted for prosperity. As well think of creating musicians or
mathematicians by legislative enactment. By no legislation can the
thriftless be made thrifty. By caring for them in almshouses, hospitals,
and by donative relief, the State has gone to the limit of taxing the
efficient to preserve the inefficient.
The doctrine that the rule of the propertied voters would be oppressive
to the poor is not only false, but falsely assumes the existence of a
universal tendency fatal to democracy and even to civilization. For, the
avowed purpose of our democracy is to promote the material prosperity of
the masses; and therefore, to encourage the production of property and
the increase of wealth; but if property and wealth have the effect of
making the common people tyrants; if the thrifty educated and
industrious masses cannot be trusted to carry on government without the
practise of tyranny upon the less prosperous, then democracy is a
complete failure, and the advance of civilization is hopeless.
Fortunately there is no ground for any such conclusion. All legislation
which favors property favors all classes, ranks and occupations. The
attitude of democracy towards property should be similar to its attitude
towards education, that of complete friendliness, founded on the
knowledge that it is a good thing, and that we all want it created as
rapidly and distributed as widely as possible. The better it is
protected the more there will be of it for everyone. The interest of the
nation’s workers of all classes is not to oppose property, but to own
and control as much of it as they can get.