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.
