Democracy and the human equation

Front matter

PAUL MCBRIDE PERIGORD

AT

LOS ANGELES

Introduction

IT will serve the convenience of the reader if I present here a brief summary of the matters discussed in this volume.

The United States commenced its career as an independent nation under conditions which appeared to guarantee to it an unprecedented success in solving all the political and social problems which to the nations of the old world had proved insoluble.

It had a sniall but vigorous and self-reliant population; it had safely weathered the dangers which had almost destroyed but had never daunted the early settlers; it had become used to orderly Government under a system which, if it lacked something of that freedom which is the most prized possession of young communities, had afforded that stability without which young communities cannot learn to accept those restraints upon which the tenure of freedom depends.

The revolt against the mother-country was less an expression of anger, produced by specific grievances, than it was a flowering amid new surroundings of that spirit which, nearly a hundred years before, had emboldened the English people to drive into exile a king who claimed to derive his authority from God, and to set upon the throne a king who was content to derive it from an Act of Parliament.

In the framing of Its national Government the United States had been more fortunate than any nation of which history carries the record. The Philadelphia Convention included not only men great in their own time and in their own country, but also men who will be esteemed great for all time and in every country. The fame of an assembly which numbered among its members George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Alexander Hamilton can only be extended and enhanced by every comparison in which it forms a term. The Constitution, which was the final outcome of the Convention's labors, is, by the common consent of the world's intelligence, one of the most remarkable political documents which the genius of man has bequeathed to the ages. That its terms are vague, measured by the requirements of legal interpretation, is a fault which time and circumstance have imparted to it; and this fault, grave as are the consequences which have flowed from it, does not detract from the nobility of its conception, or obscure the sagacity of that form of Government which it formulated for the emulation of mankind and which it prescribed for the use of the American people.

To that people was presented the greatest opportunity with which any people have ever been blessed. It is, perhaps, the only occasion in the history of civilized man of which it can be said that the road of self-determination was actually open — the obstacles removed, the wayside ambuscades dispersed. The advantages at the disposal of the American people when they became a nation included every advantage which any people had ever enjoyed; and from the disadvantages under which other peoples had labored the American people were happily free.

There was an immense territory, immeasurably rich in soil, in minerals, in metal ores, in forests; there was an extended and well-harbored coast line; there were magnificent rivers giving ready access to the interior, and the interior was a vast plain presenting no barriers to the pioneer; there was a climate ranging between a sub-arctic rigor and a sub-tropical clemency; there was a homogeneous population of northern stock, and this population was endowed with a heritage of physical vigor and of moral and Intellectual worth, and with a tradition of high-spirited self-reliance.

The conditions which exist in the country to-day are a strange product of such an ancestry.

Who could have foreseen that in less than a century and a half the United States would be confronted with almost every problem which Americans have so persistently regarded as the odious monopoly of despotic rule, of populations sunk in ignorance and condemned to misery by a poor soil, a primitive agriculture and a still more primitive industry, and by the slavery of social caste? Who could have foreseen that in a land upon which nature has lavished its most precious gifts, in a land consecrated to the ideals of freedom and justice, in a land where every child can claim a free schooling and every man a share in Government, a point would be reached, as it has now been reached, where every symptom is to be observed which experience identifies with the approach of a serious national crisis, and where the stability of the national institutions is threatened by every form of discontent which threatens the national institutions of Europe?

To what causes should this state of affairs be attributed? To many causes, of course. Of these I discuss only those which seem to me to be of primary importance, and of which the operation is such that if all the other causes for our immediate situation were removed, and these primary causes were allowed to remain, the day of reckoning would only be postponed.

These causes are, in my opinion, the following:

( 1 ) That the principle of Representative Republicanism, which is the "heart of the Constitution," has disappeared almost entirely from the political system of the country, and that we are rapidly drifting into that system of direct Democracy which is its very negation.

(2) That the American people as a whole — judging by the discussion of Government in the daily press, in the weekly, monthly and quarterly periodicals, from the platform and from the pulpit — have been led to adopt a rhapsodical posture towards their Government, and have thus lost all sense as well of the proper functions of Government as of the proper administration of Government.

(3) That there has never been undertaken, either in the United States or in any other country, a comprehensive, scientific study of comparative Government; and that in consequence there is no science of Government; and that all that can be said of it is what a certain

Oxford don is reported to have said of logic — that it is neither a science nor an art, but only a dodge.

THE DISAPPEARANCE OF REPRESENTATIVE GOVERNMENT

The theory on which the principle of Representative Government rests is very simple. All the people in a modern State cannot assemble together, formulate a public policy and put it into effect; they must, therefore, assign these tasks to a few of their number, specially chosen for that purpose. These men are the people's representatives. Now, except in regard to very simple questions — and there are, in fact, no very simple questions in modern Government — and in regard to questions which have been made to appear simple by party emotionalism, questions such as the tariff is to Republican emotions, and as State Rights used to be to Democratic emotions — the representative is to use his own judgment, after acquainting himself, as well as he is able, with the germane facts, and after hearing arguments advanced in legislative debate by men who agree with his interpretation of them and by men who differ from it. A representative does not go to a legislature to represent the opinions of those who elect him; he goes there to represent them in the business of forming opinions.

If his opinions turn out not to be the kind of opinions the voters like, their remedy Is to vote for some one else at the next election. It Is precisely to meet this situation that the Constitution of the United States provides for congressional elections every two years, and that the State Constitutions all contain provisions for elections at short intervals. This system has such enormous advantages over every other political system ever devised that, if it is faithfully carried out, you can get out of It all the good that there is in Government. You can get from it all the advantages of Democracy (Government by the people) , and all the advantages of Aristocracy (Government by the best of the people) , and at the same time escape every disadvantage which is inherent in or may be grafted onto cither of them.

But, admirable as this system is. It has one drawback, namely, that that element in it upon which its successful operation absolutely depends — the complete independence of the representative — Is extremely difficult to preserve, not only In its full integrity, but even in any such measure as gives it reality.

It is evident that if you elect a man to Congress and then get five thousand people to send him telegrams telling him how to vote; if you send a paid lobbyist to him who threatens him with defeat at the next election if he does not vote for a bill agreeable to the Interests of the lobbyist's clients; If you send a deputation to his office, with band playing and banners flying, to demand that In some matter he is to be guided by the deputation's will and not by his own conviction — If you do these things, your man is no longer a representative — he Is a delegate. .-^ow, a delegate is a man who must vote, not as his judgment counsels him, but according to the Instructions of those who employ him; and In whatever degree a man yields to the idea of delegation, he loses, In an equal degree, his character as a representative. The progress of converting nominal representatives into actual delegates has the effect of destroying the whole significance of Representative Government.

These arguments apply i?i every respect^ and with what should be irresistible force, to the devices known as the Initiative, the Referendum and the Recall. It Is not difficult to make a good brief In support of the I. R. R.; but no brief is worth the paper It Is written on which attempts to prove that where the Initiative, the Referendum and the Recall are, there the people are living under that form of Representative Republicanism which Is guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the United States.

Of all the evil consequences which are inseparable from the weakening of the representative principle In Government and from the strengthening of the principle of delegation, the most disastrous, the most widespreading, the most insidious Is the lowering of the tone of Government. One Is often asked why It Is that so little of the best ability of the country, so little of its best character, finds Its way into the political life of the United States. A moment's reflection supplies the answer. It Is because few men of high abilities, few men of high character, will put their abilities and their character In mortgage to their Inferiors. To represent the people Is an ambition which could claim the service of the ablest and most upright men In the country; to be the people's tool, to take part In public life only as the obedient servant of every whim and passion by which the popular will Is swayed. Is an ambition which can appeal to few men who are not circumscribed by their intellectual and moral defects.

THE RHAPSODICAL ELEMENT IN GOVERNMENT

I apply the word "rhapsodical" to a number of very common reactions toward Government and toward matters closely related to it.

It Is rhapsodical, in my view, to describe Government in terms of Its own description of itself, instead of In terms of what It is.

It is rhapsodical to deduce the effects of Government from an examination of its structure, and to reject in regard to its structure every principle induced from an examination of its actual effects.

It is rhapsodical to accept the facts of material progress as evidence of moral and intellectual progress.

It is rhapsodical to believe that Government can dispense a statutory substitute for human character, and a statutory equalization of ability.

It is rhapsodical to believe that any formal element in Government can dominate the elements which depend upon the human equation.

It is rhapsodical to believe that you can get a sound educational system out of badly-paid teachers.

It is rhapsodical to believe that you can get an efficient administration of public business by paying the higher ranks of the Government service salaries which private business pays only to its lower ranks.

It is rhapsodical to believe that you can give a survival value to mediocrity and have survivors who are not mediocre.

It is rhapsodical to believe that you can enjoy at the same time all the advantages of order and of liberty, of private control and of Government regulation, of high wages and of cheap commodities, of competition and of combination, of distributed authority and of concentrated responsibility. In a word — to draw upon a vernacular which has done

Democracy and the Human Equation i i

much to serve the cause of clear thinking — it is rhapsodical to believe that "you can have it both ways at once."

There is not one of these rhapsodical habits and beliefs which has not exerted a powerful influence upon political thought and upon political action in the United States. If no one is rhapsodical in all these matters, few people could plead "not guilty" on every count.

The intrusion of so much rhapsody into the very prosaic and very technical business of conducting a modern Government has given to American legislation, to American administration, and to American education, a quality of unreality which has seriously impaired their ability to deal effectively with the very real problems with which the nation is now confronted.

If the American people do not soon apply to their public affairs a good deal of that clear-headedness, ingenuity, and humor for which, in the conduct of their private affairs, they enjoy such a high and well-merited reputation, conditions will go beyond the point where these qualities will suffice to provide a remedy for th6m.

GOVERNMENT AS AN "UN-SCIENCE"

The present state of Government throughout the greater part of the world affords a spectacle from which reason recoils. In this domain of human activity we have at our disposal the record of nearly three thousand years of experimentation, and of this record at least three hundred years is covered in great detail. Nearly twenty-four centuries have elapsed since Plato and Aristotle discussed at immense length, and with a vision and acumen which to this day command the admiration and respect of all serious students, the problems which society presents to politics. Before either of these philosophers was born, Aristophanes — the Bernard Shaw of his day — convulsed Athenian audiences with his satires on local politics.

It is surely one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the human race that the science of Government — which for more than twenty centuries has engaged the attention of the most profound and capacious minds, which has enlisted the sympathetic interest of the noblest characters in all ages, which has for its material an experimental record so vast that the material of all other sciences is insignificant by comparison — should have yielded results so unsatisfactory that there is scarcely a Government in the world to-day which is not threatened with radical change of form and of method, if not with actual destruction, at the hands of an exasperated populace.

And yet, strange to say, no series of facts revealing any phase of the social activities of man points to an explanation more simple than that which emerges from a study of our activities in Government.

If we compare the methods followed in the study of chemistry, of engineering, of surgery — fields in which the most stupendous advances have been made during the past half-century — with the methods employed in the study of Government, we soon discover the reason why the science of chemistry, for instance, has advanced while the science of Government has stood still, or even retrograded.

The student of chemistry records with the utmost minuteness and accuracy the exact conditions of his experiment. When he proceeds to describe his results, he has before him the precise nature of the material he employed, the precise character of his reagents, the precise consequences which followed the application of the latter to the former. The conclusions he announces are based solely upon his actual observations, without reference to whether they will be popular or unpopular, or to whether they run counter to long-accepted theories laid down by some distinguished predecessor.

Most "students" of Government follow an entirely different plan. They begin by assuming to be true some things which are insusceptible of proof, some things which have never been proved, and some things which have been disproved. They then proceed to discard from whatever real facts they have before them all those which are inconsistent with their a priori assumptions. Finally they reach such conclusions as might be expected from such "investigations" when they are conducted by men who know that if their conclusions offend popular feeling they will certainly incur the censure of popular opinion, and will probably find their ability to earn a livelihood injuriously affected.

The significance of this contrast between the methods employed in studying chemistry and those employed in studying Government is not disposed of, as many people believe it to be by asserting that the reactions of the inanimate substances which form the principal material of the chemist's investigations are amenable to a logic different from that which applies to the reactions of human beings; there is a difference of degree, but not of kind. It is idle and pernicious to pretend that because human reactions in the field of politics cannot be measured with the accuracy which the microscope, the thermometer and the balance insure to a chemical investigation,' they cannot be measured with an accuracy quite adequate to the purpose for which the measurement is undertaken.

There is ample material to disclose the causes of revolutions, and the symptoms of their approach;

the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of the criminal law; the comparative merits of different legislative, judicial and administrative systems; the difference in cost between one method and another of carrying out any public enterprise; the various forms of pressure which various forms of taxation exert upon a nation's trade and industry; the results, measured in terms of social utility, of different kinds of education; the effects of stimulating agriculture at the expense of manufacture, or manufacture at the expense of agriculture.

How can it be seriously maintained that a conscientious examination, on a scientific method, of all the material which could be assembled, even upon the few subjects referred to above, could yield no results which could be taken as "proved," and which could be used as the working hypotheses of a science of Government?

Here and there some devoted student has made a careful and exhaustive investigation of some phase of Government; but nearly all of this investigation has been historical rather than scientific, in the sense that it has been descriptive, qualitative, and positive, instead of analytical, quantitative, and comparative.

One reason why we have so little scientific material available about Government is that all scientific investigation is extremely exacting, and very costly, and that most of the writing on Government has been done by overworked and underpaid university professors who have, in a spirit which cannot be too highly praised, employed their scant leisure and their slender means for a purpose for which, if there were among the "benefacturing" class a more frequent association of sincerity, intelligence and money, they would be given ample time and generous recompense.

As things now are, we afford the peculiar spectacle of a people who apply twentieth century methods to twentieth century problems In engineering, in chemistry, in medicine, in surgery, in industry, in agriculture, and who, in Government, approach the problems of the twentieth century with the theories and the implements of the eighteenth century. The plain fact is that our present political practice Is no nearer the time to which it is applied than would be the medical practice of a physician who, in this year of grace, should prescribe the King's Touch for scrofula.

The actual situation, which should be held firmly in the mind of every patriotic and thoughtful citizen, is that the only people in the United States to-day who are satisfied with the condition of Government are those who, from its qualities of irresponsibility, amateurism and defective technique, derive their ability to gratify their acquisitive instincts at the expense of a supine public.

The essential feature of the present unrest is that the public is at last arousing itself from the political listlessness which is at the root of the defects and abuses in Government which have now assumed the proportions of an intolerable burden. This unrest is in itself an encouraging sign; but if its issue is to be constructive reform and not destructive revolution, there will have to be a very frank examination of its causes, a very resolute acceptance of the results, and a very sincere attempt to make them the axioms of a new practice of Government.

Just so long as people hold the extravagant views they now hold about what Government ought to do for them, and about what it can do for them, and the absurd views they now hold about how these things should be done, just so long will most people labor under a sense of injustice and injury, for they are expecting to get from a Government what they could only get from a miracle, and what they could not get from a miracle if they insisted that it should be a statutory miracle.

The remedy for this state of affairs lies in education. Now that the elective franchise has been extended so as to include practically the whole populatlon of adult citizens the time is ripe to begin a qualitative limitation of the right to vote. If education in citizenship were undertaken seriously in all schools and colleges, with due regard to the vital as well as to the formal elements in Government, an educational qualification could be required of the voter.

The adoption of such a plan would not only elevate the conception of citizenship and improve the quality of the electorate, it would also greatly strengthen the position of those who realize the urgent need of rescuing the school system from its present deplorable condition.

The general effect on Government of substituting a qualitative for a purely quantitative scheme of political agency would be highly beneficial. It Is too much to expect that there can ever be any wide recognition of Government as an applied science of politics so long as any person, however stupid or ignorant he may be. Is recognized as being fit to share in the determination of public policy and in the administration of public affairs.

In Chapters IV and V the reader will find a brief discussion of the Influence exerted respectively by heredity and by environment In the determination of mental and moral traits. The arguments arc not susceptible to further condensation. The conclusion to be drawn from them is that the Influence of heredity greatly outweighs that of environment. The importance of this conclusion cannot be overestimated. If further research should establish this hypothesis as a natural Law it would be necessary to make a number of radical adjustments in our conceptions of political agency, of education, of legal and of social responsibility.

Chapter I

WHO is satisfied — I will not say well satisfied, but satisfied at all — with the present state of Government?

Are the agricultural interests satisfied with it? Are the industrial interests? Is skilled labor satisfied with it? Is capital? Are those whose social contribution is intelligence satisfied with it? Are those whose contribution is muscle? Is the individual considered as a producer satisfied with it? Is the individual considered as a consumer? Are those who bear the burden of an oppressive taxation satisfied with it? Are those upon whom the proceeds of this taxation are lavished?

It is not too much to say that the only people in the self-governing portions of the world who are to-day satisfied with the state of Government are those who from the incompetence or from the corruption of government secure the opportunity to amass power and wealth at the expense of the general welfare, and those who regard these qualities in it as the most effective arguments in favor of revolution.

It is surely one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the human race that a science which for more than twenty centuries has engaged the attention of the most profound and capacious minds, which has enlisted the sympathetic Interest of the noblest characters, which has for Its material an experimental record so vast that the material of all other sciences Is insignificant by comparison, should have yielded results so unsatisfactory that there is scarcely a Government In the world which is not at this moment threatened with radical change of form and method, if not with actual destruction, at the hands of an exacerbated populace.

That our present state should be what It is after nineteen centuries of Christian teaching, after a hundred years of industrial development, after several generations of popular education, must afford to all intelligent and informed minds food for the most disturbing reflection, and cause for the gravest alarm.

The most significant element In the situation is not that which derives Its Interest from the portrayal of the confusion Into which Government has fallen, of the exasperation v/hlch pervades the mental attitude of all classes, of the physical distress which Is, as it always has been, the real foundation of popular discontent. What endows the position with Its most serious perils is that what we observe around us to-day is the net product of all the extravagant promises of human betterment trumpeted to the world for more than a century by the hierarchs of religion, of politics, of education, of industrialism and of philanthropy.

Religion was to make people good, education was to make them wise, politics was to make them free, Industrialism was to make them rich, and philanthropy was to take care of the exceptions which prove the rule. Now, everybody knows that the majority of people are neither good, nor wise, nor free, nor rich; but what is much less generally known is that, if these adjectives are employed with a strict regard for their true meaning, the majority of people are neither better, wiser, freer, nor richer than their ancestors were two thousand years ago.

Are they better in the sense that they are less under the dominion of greed, lust, envy and malice? Are they wiser in the sense that the progress of knowledge has made them more amenable to the appeal of reason, and less to the appeal of the emotions? Are they freer in the sense that the pressure exerted upon them by the elusive forces of modern Industrial and social conditions is less galling to them than was that of the more tangible slavery of ancient times to their forbears. Are they richer in the sense that with a thousand conveniences at their service which formerly the wealth of a

Croesus could not command, they have narrowed the gulf which separates desire from attainment, or in the sense that their tenure of decent existence from day to day is endowed with that security which is the most important factor in happiness?

In some respects, indeed, man is now more fortunate than he has been in any other age. For the extremity of his physical suffering the chemist has provided anodynes; for the satisfaction of his mind the printing-press has opened the boundless field of letters; for his entertainment the ingenuity of inventors has placed at his disposal every sound which charms the ear, and every sight which charms the eye ; to his comfort and luxury the remotest regions of the globe despatch their contribution; his days have been lengthened by the physician and by the surgeon; the obstacles which, for countless centuries, time and space interposed between man and man have been swept aside by the engineer; and the air, the sea and the land have become the highways of an ever-broadening human intercourse.

That these advantages are widespread over the world, that they are enjoyed by the rich and by the poor, some of them, even, by the destitute, has led to the popular acceptance of an utterly erroneous belief that the nature of man has, in modern times, experienced a general and rapid elevation, that alike in character and ability his progress has been such as to discredit all argument based upon human history, and to justify a serene confidence in an imminent millennium.

If any one cause, more than another, has contributed to the present appalling condition of the world, if there is one which has done more than any other to withhold from the use of mankind that nourishing harvest which observation fertilizes in the soil of experience, it is that blind optimism which discounts every disagreeable fact, as having no more than a casual and transitory significance, and accepts every agreeable fact as the expression of an irresistible force for good.

The arguments of the optimists have been advanced with warmth, with ingenuity, with persistence; and as their general quality is such that they reassure the ignorant, console the mediocre, flatter the vain and bewilder the stupid, they have rallied to their standard a vast army of genial adherents. So great is the proportion of humanity which has fallen under their spell that the almost imperceptible minority which prefers any truth, however painful, to any falsehood, however gratifying, is branded as materialistic, cynical, and reactionary.

The fact is that so far as human beings are thinkers they fall into two distinct groups — the rhapsodlsts and the realists. The former turn their eager faces toward the future, and encourage their hopes to paint upon the unwoven canvas of tomorrow \the rich landscape of their desire; the latter scrutinize the unalterable engravement of yesterday, in the confident assurance that upon that chart alone can a true course be laid for human advancement.