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.
