THE CASE IS URGENT; THERE SHOULD BE NO DELAY WHATEVER IN
ESTABLISHING THIS GOVERNMENT UPON A PROPERTY BASIS.
Any demand for a qualified suffrage is certain to be met by a plea for
delay. The temptation to postpone action is natural and springs at once
to the heart of almost every man whose judgment counsels him to
undertake anything new and troublesome. There is, too, an immense party
interested in maintaining the present corrupt régime; including the
politicians, office holders, political heelers and featherhead
agitators, and a considerable predatory band who live off the pickings
and stealings of politics. In opposing any effort to establish a voters’
property qualification these will be supported by some honest believers
in the present system, as there are honest believers in all established
systems; including in this case multitudes of visionaries and the
inexperienced, especially the young. Even some of those most willing to
admit the mischiefs attendant upon universal suffrage will make the plea
of delay for delay’s sake; the plea of the indolent, the inert, the
timid, the weak, the hesitating. The first answer to this plea is that
the importance of the matter will not admit of delay. The health of the
nation is involved, and with a nation as with a man the question of
health is one of life itself. When the body is ill and suffering a
deadly and poisonous infection not an hour’s delay should be tolerated
in applying the necessary corrective. Who can say how soon the man or
the nation may have to meet an attack that will strain his or its
strength to the very utmost? Next, it is to be realized that there is no
proposal of an alternative remedy; and no delay therefore is needed for
the purpose of choice. No writer or publicist so much as suggests any
other different medicine or treatment, nor is it possible to do so. The
cause of the mischief is unlimited suffrage, and nothing but the removal
of the cause will avail. There remains to be considered the appeal of
those who say “leave it to time” to improve the situation. If there be
those who really expect relief in this matter from the passage of time
and from the changes that time unaided may bring, they are much
mistaken. The same causes which have heretofore produced the mischiefs
complained of are still operative and will continue to operate; they
include the power of organization, human cupidity, and the existence of
a controllable class of voters. The first two of these are permanent and
continuous forces; the latter is what we propose to abolish. The
political oligarchies never were as strong as they are to-day; the
dearth of great and good men in political life was never so great as
now; all the mischiefs referred to in this volume are in full blast, if
not in one place then in another. One looks in vain into newspapers,
books or magazines, one listens in vain to political speeches or private
talks for any definite promise or even suggestion of relief from any
quarter. The general attitude seems to be that nothing can be done to
improve the situation. Each reader of this book is therefore warned that
it is for him or some one like him to make the start. This book is an
offering to the cause; who will follow it up by action?
The professional reformers dare not attack universal suffrage; they are
nearly all office-seekers, open or conceded. The writers on American
politics and government are generally careful to ignore the evils of the
system, so they cannot possibly urge its removal. In fact, the reader
needs to be warned against most of them as blind guides; the more
apparently respectable are the more timid and time serving; unable to
entirely overlook the grievous condition of affairs, they carefully
avoid criticism offensive to popular vanity and to the powers that be;
they flatter us by pretending to ascribe the actual and notorious
failure of our democracy to the careless generosity of our national
character. They prattle of American good nature, national optimism,
easy-going tolerance; of our engrossment in business, and of American
“fatalism,” all of which nonsense is supposed to account in a manner
rather to our credit for our submission to plunder and misrule. There
are other explanations equally amusing. We are told with an air of
profundity that these rascalities have been permitted because of
peculiar circumstances; from 1860 to 1870 it was because of slavery
agitation and the Civil War; that people were too busy agitating and
fighting to watch the thieves. In the very next breath we are told that
in the Civil War the “moral forces” were in possession of the nation.
For the next decade the excuse is that we were immersed in great
speculations and so on. But these explanations really explain nothing;
they fail to explain why our official guardians and rulers
systematically rob us whenever we are too busy to watch them, nor why
they are not replaced by people who can be trusted. These expounders
proclaim that the people need only to “arise in their might” and the
corruption of three generations will become incorruption. When at any
election one political ring goes out and another comes in they utter
childish blasts of triumph. One wonders, inexperienced as some of these
so called publicists are, whether they really can themselves believe
such rubbish. After the explosion of some superlative political scandal
they can often be heard telling the public that all will come right by
and by; which means that we have only to continue to sit patiently and
let ourselves be fleeced until the kind fairies bring good times. We are
supposed to be very easily soothed and perhaps we are. Bryce, for
instance, who as a political radical has been trained to give ear to the
bellowing of the _vox populi_, speaking of our rascal legislators, tells
us reassuringly that “if before a mischievous bill passes, its opponents
can get the attention of the people fixed upon it, its chances are
slight.” (Vol. II, p. 369.) As though one should say to a merchant,
“Don’t worry about your clerk robbing you, any time you actually catch
him stealing he’ll stop; he won’t persist in that particular theft
anyhow; he’ll just be compelled to drop that and wait for a chance at
something else.” From all which it appears as a result of all these
discussions that no one pretends to see any definite prospect of
substantial improvement or alleviation. In all the ten thousand pages on
American government written by a score of authors, domestic and foreign,
not one is able to say that we have an honest, decent or efficient
governmental system, and not one offers any definite scheme for
practical relief. On all sides we are told that there is little to do
but to believe and hope.
As far as this hope can be said to refer to anything specific or to be
more than mere sighing wishfulness which profiteth nothing, it is
founded on belief in the educational work of the schools and the vague
notion that thereby all the people will some time become so good and so
well informed that manhood suffrage will be pure, safe and efficient.
This hope is all moonshine. The mentally deficient and the ignorant will
always be with us. There will always be upper, middle and lower classes
as long as private property endures and free play is given to human
activities; that is to say as long as our American civilization
prevails. In the march of life some will always be in the front and some
hopelessly in the rear. Faster than the increase of the information of
the common man and the development of his mentality will proceed the
growth of the great body of human knowledge; and the greater therefore
will be the comparative ignorance of the ordinary citizen. The wealth,
education, refinement, mental power, efficiency and achievement of the
gifted will always far exceed those of the common people; and the
distance between the efficient and the inefficient, the dullards and the
intellectuals will probably become even greater and greater as time goes
on. Though ordinary information will become more widespread, the science
of government as well as other sciences will continue year by year in
the future as in the past to become more complicated; and more and more
as the years pass it will be found essential that the hands which
operate the machinery of state shall be skilled to the very utmost.
Meantime envy, prejudice, cupidity, neglect, intolerance and imprudence
will continue to be human qualities, pushing men downward physically and
morally; disease and misfortune will continue to do their work in the
world, and a century from now it will be more dangerous even than today
to trust men of the least developed or more unfortunate classes to
select competent and trustworthy managers of the business of government.
The future as far as can now be seen will not of itself give us relief
from our present misgovernment; the action of our own hands and brains
must be invoked for that purpose. Of that action there should be neither
delay nor postponement. Our plight needs a remedy and needs it now.