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.