OF EDUCATIONAL AND AGE SUFFRAGE QUALIFICATIONS FOR VOTERS
An educational qualification for voters would be incompatible with the
theory of this volume, which viewing government as preeminently a
business institution, prescribes as a preparation for the voter a
practical business training, and demands the application to the proposed
elector of the test of practical success in business life and of
interest in business affairs. But were an educational qualification
otherwise desirable, it would have to be rejected as totally
impracticable. It might be possible under certain circumstances to exact
a requirement that every voter should be able to read simple English
sentences. But even that would be difficult to enforce; and if enforced
would accomplish no more than merely to exclude the grossly illiterate;
it would not provide a real educational qualification. Even to go so far
as to require an examination on a few simple subjects would result in a
merely nominal test; in practice absolutely ineffective, while to make
it substantial would be practically impossible; no machinery exists or
could be created for the purpose. The present class of election
inspectors have neither the requisite courage nor sufficient knowledge
to apply such requirements; they cannot themselves be expected to do
much more than read and write, and do a plain sum in arithmetic; the
very thought of such officials applying a real educational test to their
neighbors, or to anyone else, is ludicrous. A board of college
professors or men with similar attainments would have to be constituted
in each district; the expense would be enormous; the examiners would be
worked and worried to the verge of insanity; they would have to sit
constantly all the year round; with the probable result after all of
riots at each election and ten years’ litigation afterwards. No two men
in the country would agree upon the subjects or rules for the
examinations; whether English grammar should be required, or geography,
or botany, or mensuration, or astronomy, or geology, or whether any of
these should be admissible. Shall he who fails to spell “procedure” or
“acquiesce” correctly be passed because he remembers the name of
Hamlet’s mother; or shall the man who says “droring” or he who does not
know the name of the governor of the state, be excluded, or shall both
be admitted? Indeed, any thorough examination would result in the
disfranchisement of nearly all middle-aged men except teachers and
clergymen. In short, the idea of applying any book examination whatever
as a test for political capacity is false and impracticable, because
there is no real relation between capacity to remember the contents of
school books, and that common sense and good judgment which is the
foundation of all good government. But there is a practicable test of
both these qualities, though book examinations will not afford it; it is
that applied in daily life and in business, and is expressed in terms of
property. The possession or lack of that good judgment and of that
common sense is openly certified every day by the success or failure of
business men. Their case is like that of students who during the whole
term have been competing for prizes. Their records and certificates
issued by the school of life are open to inspection; the ablest pupils
have been marked, stamped as it were for public recognition. No
examination or trial of any sort would furnish tests as valuable and
accurate as those applied to every man day by day in the struggle of
life.
There is no fear that any well-educated but unpropertied man will suffer
injustice through being excluded from the polls. As it is to-day, all
educated men who are not in active politics find the right to vote to be
a hollow privilege to perform an empty ceremony; they learn that its
value is nullified by the worthless men and frivolous women of the
neighborhood, and by the sordid political organizations created by
universal suffrage. No patriotic man desires the vote merely for his own
gratification, or except for the general good; and how can it be for the
public gain to let down the bars in his case, if a score of incapables
thereby get through the fence and offset and defeat his vote twenty
times over? It is probable that fifty undesirables will be excluded from
the polls by a property qualification for every man of worth kept away
because of his poverty; and the latter will be consoled and recompensed
by seeing his class at last obtain an influence and a hearing. And,
after all, the value to the state of the political judgment and opinion
of such few electors as are able to pass an educational examination, and
yet are not possessed of the equivalent of a reasonable property
qualification, cannot be very great; probably all put together it is
less than nothing. A man with all the advantage of a good education who
is unable in this country to save enough money to put him on the roll of
the thrifty, is presumably incompetent to advise the commonwealth; and
it is perhaps one of the advantages of a property qualification that it
saves the state from the ill counsel of his class.
The complete failure of mere school and college education to fit man for
civic duties is recognized by the heads of our educational system, as
well as by business men. In an address delivered at New Haven September
28, 1919, President Hadley of Yale University laid proper emphasis on
this point, and on the risks attending undisciplined democracy. He said
in substance that there is danger that our free institutions may break
down for want of capacity in the voters, and admitted that the schools
and colleges had proved incapable of creating a competent electorate.
The “vision” which Hadley found lacking in the voters of today as
contrasted with the Fathers, is the insight into life which a man may
get in caring for property or in successfully fending for himself and
family.
Besides the men of books without practical vision or judgment there is
another type whose hands should be kept off the wheels of government;
namely, those who have sufficient education and fluency of speech to
give them sway over the foolish and dissatisfied masses, but who are
themselves weak in principle and devoid of knowledge of political
economy. As long as such a one enjoys a fortune he is comparatively
safe; but let him be penniless and he is apt to become a dangerous
agitator. The state is safest without such men in any part of its
organization. A purely educational qualification system would give high
place to the featherhead revolutionary agitators of Russia and France,
Nihilists, Anarchists, Bolsheviki, Terrorists, political scoundrels and
madmen. It must be steadily borne in mind that our civilization is
founded on private property, and that the rights of private property
cannot be safely disregarded by the makers of the modern democratic
state but must be always held paramount if our fundamental institutions
are to endure.
The qualification age of voters should be advanced from twenty one to
twenty five years. The age of twenty one has by common consent of most
civilized people been selected as that at which the tutelage of a youth
shall cease, and he shall become a free man with the right to regulate
his own life and dispose of his own property. In point of fact this
theory substantially accords with the truth in the majority of cases;
the average boy ends his schooling at about seventeen years of age, and
after four years spent at college or in learning the rudiments of some
business, trade or calling his period of training for manhood is usually
ended. And so, on the theory that suffrage is a natural right of a man
it might well be said that the vote should be given on attaining
manhood; but starting with the correct theory that suffrage is a
function of government, for which the school of life is a preparation,
it is clear that a proper additional period must be granted for that
preparation. Ordinarily, the four years from the age of twenty-one to
that of twenty-five, represent the period of the youth’s first
experience in making his own living, in managing his own property, in
planning and selecting his own career and associates, in making and
executing his own decisions, and generally in the actual exercise of
free and uncontrolled manhood. There can be no doubt that these four
years thus spent have a great effect on a young man’s character; and
that ordinarily he who was but a youth at twenty-one is found at
twenty-five to be a man, with a stock of manly ideas and experience all
acquired in the last four years. Four years apprenticeship to actual
life is none too long a preparation for political duties, and the
necessity of this requirement will no doubt be acknowledged by most
young men over twenty-five years of age. In the case of those who have
inherited property, it is plain that a four years’ acquaintance with its
management, and of actual contact with the taxing power, will give to
their votes a weight and value which are usually quite lacking to those
of the ordinary youth of twenty-one years.