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Page 35
Nor can the full value of this continuous training be obtained by the
onlooker, no matter how intelligent he may be. For full growth of mind
and spirit one must participate; just as in athletics one must leave the
spectator's bench and play the game if one would develop one's own
powers. Participation means love, hate, devotion and sacrifice, and only
when all these powers of the soul are brought into play, together with
the judgment, is the character strengthened and life more abundantly
obtained.
It must be evident to any one who has carefully followed this analysis
that hardly any of the adult male voters in our modern democracies have
the qualifications of good citizens. How, then, is good government
achieved? It is not achieved. We have very bad government. Everywhere
there is waste and inefficiency. Wealth is unjustly divided; great
corporations seize public utilities and exploit them for private gain;
enormous sums are squandered on unnecessary and dangerous battle-ships
and soldiers; in building a single State Capitol, $3,500,000 was
recently stolen, not only wasting public wealth, but corrupting public
morals; in some parts of our land little children still drive the wheels
of industry; and it is everywhere cheaper to scrap-heap men and women
than machines; most of our cities are ugly and badly ruled; drunkenness,
gambling and prostitution are common; life is not always secure from
lawless attack; and the machinery of justice is clogged and moves
slowly. Part of our intelligent adult population has no direct share in
the government under which it must live. We have just such a government
as we should expect where incompetent people decide such vast issues of
life.
But, on the other hand, we are vastly better off than any great people
has ever been before us. The mistakes are our own; they are made by us
who participate in government, and we are learning from them. Those who
exploit us may be called to account; and frequently they are caught and
punished. Of those who stole the millions in Harrisburg, nearly a score
have died disgraced, or are in prison or exile; and $1,300,000 has been
returned to the treasury of the State. Even when those who betray us are
not caught red-handed we learn to distrust and then to despise them.
They pass their last years in exile, and when their statues are erected
in our State Houses they are memorials of shame. Thus we learn the art
of living, we who participate in political action.
The whole business of a modern democracy is to educate itself through
doing, and we are all at school. If the bills are heavy, they are our
bills; and we are steadily learning how to make them less. In the past
no one learned. "The Bourbons learned nothing, and forgot nothing;" and
the common people were too discouraged to think. It is on these lines
that our modern democracies must be judged, not as efficient and
economical political machines, but as educational institutions. Judged
by this standard, we believe ourselves to be the triumph of the ages.
Nor can it be possible for people to enter political life fully prepared
for its duties. Even when a young man approaches a business career we do
not ask that he shall possess a knowledge of the business before
beginning. If he has general preparation, and a desire to learn, he is
admitted to share in its responsibilities, and then learns as he goes
along. It is the same in political life; few young men at twenty-one or
foreigners at the time of naturalization, have the knowledge indicated
in the preceding pages. If they have general preparation and a desire to
learn, we admit them to participation, and they learn through doing.
Years ago, while discussing education with an English statesman, he
asked whom I considered the leaders of education in his country. Knowing
his Tory instincts, I replied, "Bradlaugh, Annie Besant, William T.
Stead, John Burns and Keir Hardie." He laughed contemptuously: "Why
those people," he said, "are merely educating themselves in public." The
statement was true and far-reaching; that is what we are all doing in
our modern democracies; and that is at the same time our weakness and
our glory.
VIII
Woman's Relation to Political Life
In discussing woman's right to vote it is well to remember that the
right to rule, which is implicit in the right to vote, has always been
limited by conditions of birth, residence, wealth, morality or
intelligence. Universal manhood suffrage has never yet been achieved,
and probably never will be. Under the best Greek conditions, it was only
the free-born citizen, residing in his native city state, who voted. In
both Greece and Rome, the suffrage was limited to classes defined by
social position, wealth or military service. In our modern democracies
there have always been limitations of birth, which might be overcome by
naturalization; of residence, which could be overcome by living for a
certain time in a locality; of wealth, which was supposed to insure a
stake in the communal well-being; and of morals and intelligence, which
at least shut out criminals, the insane and the imbeciles.
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