CHAPTER XXXI

FOURTH GENERAL OBJECTION TO MAJORITY RULE—THAT IT LAYS TOO HEAVY A BURDEN UPON THE TIME AND INTELLIGENCE OF THE ELECTORATE

If the people are unable to do such a simple thing as to elect the best men among them to perform official functions, how can it be supposed that they will be able to pass intelligently on complex legislative measures which only experts can understand? If representative government has failed because of the sheer neglect of the people to attend to little duties, why should we expect them to take care of great ones? If the people's political back is so feeble that it bends double under a hundredweight of obligation, how shall it rise upright under a ton? The disbelievers in popular government develop a case of acute sympathy for the over-burdened electorate. The trouble with our country now is, so they say, that the people have already been given too much to do. They have to earn a living anyway. They have families to care for. They must have some amusement, for nature demands that labor be followed by relaxation. They do not wish to be bothered with a multiplicity of public duties. It is because the people cannot attend to public affairs directly that the representative system has been devised to clothe selected men, who have both time and knowledge, with dis

cretion in governmental matters. Why, then, shall we attempt to require of the people "the intolerable toil of thought"?

"If you would have your business thrive, go; if not, send," is a good old adage with many applications. One of them is to the affairs of government. There is a fatal element in the sympathy for the people that would relieve them of political responsibility and allow them to lapse into civic lethargy. In America, since the Declaration of Independence was issued, government has always been regarded, theoretically at least, as the people's business. It is a business that they cannot shirk with safety to the state. Democracy can live and grow only by exercise. It may be necessary for the people to send representatives on the public business, but once in a while they need to go themselves in order to see that their interests are being properly looked after. It is not altogether inexplicable that there should be found those in the state who are perfectly willing to relieve the people at large of the responsibilities of government. The comparatively small segment of the population from which the official class is mainly recruited and which lays hold of the problems of government with interested avidity, is not at all averse to the exercise of power, unrestrained by the meddlings of the populace. Agents of wealthy men are pleased to be given a free hand in the management of their masters' property. They are satisfied to have the owners spend their time yachting or dabbling in philanthropy or patronizing chorus girls, leaving their money affairs in experienced hands that are not required to render an account of their steward

ship. The lawyers, who supply all the raw material for the judiciary and the bulk of it for the legislators and the important executive and administrative officials, and the powerful few who do not find it very difficult to enlist the services of lawyers whether in or out of office, naturally enough are content to have the government left to themselves. They can then establish customs that make bribery venial, peculation from the public treasury a mere matter of precedents, and franchise-grabbing eminently respectable, even meritorious. If the ignoramuses who compose the mass of the people can only be induced to keep their hands off the affairs of state, everything will go along smoothly, business will prosper, the wealth of the country will flow into the hands of the thrifty ones who best know how to use it, and how much better it is for everybody! But when these Greeks come bearing gifts, the people may well beware.

The argument that if the electorate has failed through neglect to choose honest and able men to office, it has thereby proven its unfitness for larger tasks and graver responsibilities is sufficiently plausible to demand a careful examination. When the radicals say that the cure for the failures of democracy is more democracy, they may be stating a truth, but, if so, it is one that needs to be established with proof. This whole controversy rages around three questions-first, are the people indifferent to public affairs? second, are they too busy with other things to attend to them? third, are they too unintelligent to be concerned with them profitably? These three questions go to the very root of democracy. The answers to them will reveal the

capacity for self-government possessed by any given people at any given time.

Let us first consider the question of popular indifference in the United States to-day,-its extent, its causes and the probable effect of it upon Majority Rule and vice versa. At Presidential elections the number of votes cast runs from about 60% to about two-thirds of the total number of males of voting age residing in the United States. When we take into account the great numbers of unnaturalized immigrants included among the males of voting age and the colored men, who are practically disfranchised in most of the Southern states, the popular interest taken in Presidential elections as indicated by the vote cast seems to be reasonably acute in all portions of the country except where political life has been blighted by race prejudice. It is true that the number of votes cast at state and local elections is almost always considerably smaller than at Presidential elections, and that the vote cast on Referendum measures is still smaller, occasionally approaching the vanishing point. It is also true, or at least it appears to be so from a long series of experiences, that the electors generally take a more extensive interest in men than they do in measures. In spite of the widespread participation of the people in elections, popular apathy is generally heralded as the despair of political reform. Some of the causes of such apathy as exists have been mentioned in previous chapters. We need only say here that apathy in regard to candidates seems to arise largely from the sense of the futility of elections where the issues are clouded and the people have reason to expect betrayal by their

representatives, no matter which set of nominees is elected. In so far as popular indifference is the result of disgust at this futility, it is hoped that Majority Rule by making elections less futile will remove the cause of this indifference. The indifference sometimes shown towards measures submitted to popular vote is explained in many cases either by the absurd triviality of the questions at issue or by their special relation to a much narrower constituency than the one that is asked to vote on them. Whether time and experience under Majority Rule will fully establish the fact that measures are inherently less interesting to the people than men, cannot be foretold with certainty. It is a demonstrable fact, however, that the affairs of government, especially those of city government, affect all the people vitally, constantly and at many points. Here are the elements of intense practical interest reaching into the very homes of the people and gripping the housewives and the growing children as well as the men who now have the ballot. Although measures are impersonal and appeal primarily to the intellect rather than to the senses, there is every reason to believe that under Majority Rule they would command a much greater absolute and relative interest than they now do. Popular indifference to politics becomes more and more inconceivable as the functions of government expand and as the people's intimate dependence upon coöperation for the rendering of necessary services increases. What can be more interesting than the character of the roads we use, the amount of the taxes we have to pay, the efficiency of the schools where our children are educated, the purity and abundance of