Harry Pratt Judson

“ Democracy means individualism. And that has too fatefully come to mean yielding to the individual desire. It is what I want—or what I think I want—not what I ought—which determines my action. And so my moral strength becomes flabby. Here is the secret of the yielding of personal honesty to corporate unscrupulousness. Here is the secret of legislative corruption. More—here is the secret of that laxness of the family tie which is fattening our divorce courts and starving our delicate sense of duty. The ideal of the republic should not be sensuous ease, but fearless honor. ”

“ And the tyranny of banded capitalists, on the one hand, and of banded toilers, on the other, is as strenuous in monarchical Europe as in democratic America.
I repeat—the prime question is social. And it is gravely menacing throughout all the civilized nations. The truth is that democracy merely strips away disguises and puts us face to face with the facts. Monarchy and aristocracy are an evasion of the issue—they temporize. It is idle for men to try to avoid personal responsibility. ”

“ A second grave fact which confronts us is the actual tyranny which prevails at too many points and at too many times in the republic.
One form of this is the tyranny of aggregated wealth. It is too late a day in the history of modern society to deplore the union of capital in masses for the accomplishment of ends which can only be attained by vast financial power. The achievements of today consist in the application of tremendous controlled energies in the overcoming of gigantic obstacles. ”

“ The legal fiction of a soulless corporation is the expression of a biting social fact. The corporation has no soul. It has no heart. It is only a brain and a muscular, grasping hand.
And so it is that in dealing with employés and in dealing with the public our corporations are in fact too often a tyranny remorseless as that against which our fathers rebelled in 1776. ”

“ The development of our organic law since the republic was founded exhibits a growing distrust of legislatures and an incessant multiplication of measures calculated to hedge them about with restrictions.
And this state of public opinion, so clearly reflected in constitutional enactments, has become deeply impressed on the public consciousness.
Nothing is more common than the opinion that our legislative bodies, from Congress to the common council, are both ignorant and venal. ”

“ In other words, we may be very sure that we know the very worst of our democracy. But who knows the quiet things which underlie the smooth surface of hereditary aristocracy? Now and then a Stead drags them into daylight—and he goes to prison for his pains. Now and then a Bastile is stormed—and the secrets of the prison crypts are revealed. Nepotism and sinecures, too, are the horror of democracy—they are the commonplace of aristocracy. ”

“ And that is only another way of saying democracy. Shifting the responsibility to some heaven-born ruler is mere cowardice. It is putting off the inevitable. Seek to evade it as we may, sooner or later men must find themselves everywhere face to face with the issue of self-government. Europe today is vastly more democratic than it was when our Continental Congress declared the independence of these United States. Universal suffrage rules European legislation from the Atlantic to the borders of Russia. Aristocratic power is stubborn. ”

“ Now, observe, I speak of corporations, not of their members. A man may have a conscience of his own. But it is a strange fact that in combined action the moral temperature of the mass is always lower than that of its individuals. Political parties as such do things which their component individuals would scorn. Nations in their intercourse today follow little more than the brutal principles of the middle ages. And the conscienceless tyranny of too many of our financial combinations is a tendency as inevitable as that of gravitation. ”

“ City councils have been stripped of power after power, until in New York and Brooklyn they are mere shadows. And in Chicago few people would mourn if the common council were nothing more than a shadow. ”

“ But with us the basis of government is popular. We are a democracy—a democratic republic.
Of course it is not intended by that to imply that with us all the people share in government. From the nature of the case that is and always must be a physical impossibility. Even altogether aside from the question of woman suffrage, it is obvious that there will always be a large number of children and an appreciable number of criminals and persons of disordered and weak mind who should not be entrusted with political power. ”

“ It is not necessarily and only the product of the shameless wickedness of the units of the corporation. When an express train thunders over the shrinking form of a child who has fallen on the tracks, it crushes remorselessly the quivering flesh and the tender bones and the thrilling nerves. ”

“ Is it not a fact that we have come to expect much more from the President of the United States than from Congress—that we look to the governors of our states for protection from the crude and corrupt action of our legislatures—and that civic reform is embodied in the mayor? ”

“ The real difference, then, between what we call an oligarchy and what we call a democracy is that in the former the political people are few, in the latter the political people are many. Of course in a modern state by the political people we mean those possessed of the elective franchise. These in our country are now about one person in five of the whole population. If women were admitted to vote on equal terms with men the proportion would presumably be about two persons in five. ”

“ Can men govern themselves? The affirmative is civilization—the negative is barbarism. The whole trend of modern life—the sweep of modern progress—is towards individual freedom and individual responsibility. ”

“ Was the declaration of independence in truth the beginning of our woes?
In trying to answer these questions we should remember in the first place that democracy brings all things into the light. Democracy is eternally inquisitive. ”

“ He is not fit to live in the freedom of a republic who does not scorn a bribe—who does not look on personal dishonor as on bodily filth.
I believe profoundly that in our people there is a soundness at the heart which no superficial corruption can infect. ”

“ And in all the infinity of great undertakings which engage the restless activities of our leaders of industry, capital is demanded, not in thousands, but in millions—not in millions, but in hundreds of millions. ”

“ As to our city councils, the very name in our large cities has become malodorous. If one should explain to this audience that in German cities membership in the municipal council gives valuable social rank, an involuntary grin would ripple from the platform to the door. ”

“ Again, we must remember that after all the most serious issue is not governmental. It is social. The real question is not—Is republican government a failure? It is this—Is modern civilization a failure? ”

“ The nineteenth century is not the eighteenth. Today is not yesterday. Capital must be massed in order to work out the plain and necessary tasks which with their gigantic difficulties confront us with our gigantic powers. ”

“ The general of an army thinks of his men as so many machines. That they have nerves, hopes, longings, affections, of all this he takes no thought. So many men he allows to be destroyed in exchange for a battery. So many more he gladly sacrifices for a strategic point. That is war. And so in the business of our great corporations. The employés are too apt to be held as mere cogs or pinions in the machinery. If men could be fabricated of brass and leather, to be set going by changing a power belt, to be stopped by touching a lever, our corporations would gladly discard flesh and blood. ”

“ The "bright, keen sunlight of publicity" brings out every blemish, searches into every flaw. Our ladies will assure us that it is only a perfect complexion which will stand a blaze of direct light. Shadows and cloudy days soften rugged outlines. ”

“ We are surprised and thankful if one more than a third in such a body will occasionally vote against corrupt measures. And when a man of character and standing consents to an election to the council, the community looks on it as almost quixotically self-sacrificing. ”

“ In fact we have the privilege of choosing our members from at least a half million men.
In both these respects, then—eligibility for the suffrage and eligibility to office—we are very democratic. And not only that—for the whole of our history we have steadily been becoming more democratic. A hundred years ago, the property qualification was required for suffrage in nearly all the states. ”

“ Some of our states have governors who are not rich. And there are some governors who are not pious. In short, the number of men legally eligible to that high oflfice has largely increased. There are very few men of full age in this audience who, should they be elected, could not be governor of this state, or a member of either house of our general assembly.
I suppose that the essence of a republic lies in the absence of hereditary tenure of public office. ”

“ Surely no autocracy could be more absolute than that of Russia. And could free speech and a free press exploit the reserve of that autocratic administration, there is little doubt that there would be revealed a corruption which would out-Tammany Tammany itself. ”

“ We would be taxed only by our own legislatures. Our legislatures were the representatives of the people, and surely the people could govern themselves.
But gradually it was learned that these representatives could not altogether be trusted. This was a surprising revelation. But in the effort to guard the public against these agents of the public our state constitutions have been loaded with restrictions on the legislative power. A long and increasing series of acts has been flatly forbidden. The appointing power and veto power of the governor have been greatly increased. ”

“ But in wielding great resources for the attainment of grand results, the individual has withered. The rights and interests of a single puny human unit, if in the way, are crushed as if by a car of Juggernaut. ”

“ We transport our merchandise not in single wagons loaded with hundred-weight and hauled by creeping oxen, but in long trains crammed with hundreds of tons and whirled through space by powerful steam engines. ”

“ And on the other hand the most salutary measures often fail if they antagonize the profits of powerful corporations. Meanwhile legitimate legislative business is choked by a mass of bills, while the vicious committee system puts it in the power of small cliques to smother at will almost any measure they please. Our legislatures are no longer deliberative bodies. ”

“ It has been said that to educate a boy one should begin with his grandfather. It is not so sure that that is the best way to make a congressman. In short, rightly or wrongly, the republic chooses live men as its officers. The monarchy submits to dead men. ”

“ But as the human brain and the human hand must be employed, they are handled as nearly as possible as though in fact they were of brass and leather. "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" was not addressed to a modern corporation. ”

“ Here, then, is a form of government to all whose offices many thousands of men are eligible, and to whose elective franchise nearly every man of full age is entitled. It is a democratic republic. And from its inception in 1776 to the present day it has been steadily growing more democratic and more republican. ”

“ By this means frequently there were not more than fifty men in a department who were thus eligible. Suppose the case that only fifty men in Illinois were legally qualified for membership in the national house of representatives! ”