Part 4 (2/2)

He pointed to the tea, cooling in the saucer: that was the function, to cool the tea of legislation. That was the function intended for our national senate. The trouble was, the tea of legislation often became so stone cold in the process that it was fit only for the political slop-pail, and that was not what we wanted. So we have changed it all, but one more safe-guard of democracy is gone.

So with other reforms, loudly acclaimed, as the initiative and referendum. With the new problems and complications of an extraordinarily developed life, it is doubtless wise that the people should be able to initiate legislation and should have the final word as to what legislation shall stand. On the other hand, if we are not to suffer under a ma.s.s of hasty and ill-considered legislation, if laws are to stand, they must always be formulated by a body of trained legislators, and not by the changing whim of popular opinion.

So with the recall, now so widely demanded in many sections of the country. In the old days, our candidates were most obsequious and profuse in promises to their const.i.tuents _before_ election; but once elected, only too often they turned their backs on their const.i.tuents, went merrily their own way, making deals and bargains, in the spirit that ”to the victor belong the spoils.” Therefore we justly demanded some control of them, after, as before, election: hence the recall.

Again the movement is right; but if the fundamentals of democracy are to be permanent, that body of men, concerned with the interpretation of the const.i.tution and the fundamental law of the land, must not be subject to the immediate whim of mob mind, and the power to recall those judges occupied with this task would be a graver danger than advantage. They will make mistakes, at times they will be ultra conservative and servants of special interests, but that is one of the incidental prices we have to pay for the permanence of free inst.i.tutions. The problem is to keep the basic principles of democracy unchanged, the forms on the surface as fluid and adjustable as possible.

It is these three transformations--the abandonment of the old abstract notions and the testing of democracy by its results, the expansion of its application over the entire population, and the invention and development of representative government--it is these three changes that make our democracy a new order of society, new in its problems, its menaces, its solutions.

XV

DEMOCRACY AND EDUCATION

All just government is a transient device to make ordered progress possible. In the kingdom of heaven there would be no government, for if all human beings saw the best, loved the best and willed the best, the function of government would be at an end. Obviously there is no hope or fear that we shall get into the kingdom of heaven soon, and the necessity for government will exist for an indefinitely long time.

Nevertheless, government is due to the imperfection of human nature and, as stated, its aim is ordered progress. Progress without order is anarchy; order without progress is stagnation and death.

It must frankly be admitted, moreover, that democracy is not the shortest road to good government nor to economic efficiency. That we recognize this as a people is proved by the drift of our opinion and of the changes in our lesser inst.i.tutions. Take, for instance, our city government. A few decades ago our cities were so notoriously misgoverned that they were the scandal of the world. Our boards of aldermen or councilmen, representing ward const.i.tuencies, with all sorts of local strings tied to them, were clumsy and unwieldy and easily subject to corruption.

So, about twenty years ago, all across the country went the cry, ”Get a good mayor, and give him a free hand.” That is the way our great industries are conducted: a wise captain of industry is secured and given full control. Being a practical people, and imagining ourselves to be much more practical than really we are, we said, let us conduct our city business in the same way. Why not? Plato showed long ago that you can get the best government in the shortest time by getting a good tyrant, and giving him a free hand.

There arc just two objections. The first is incidental: it is exceedingly difficult to keep your tyrant good. Arbitrary authority over one's fellows is about the most corrupting influence known to man.

No one is great and good enough to be entrusted with it. Responsible power sobers and educates, irresponsible power corrupts. Nevertheless we pay the price of this error and learn the lesson.

The other objection is more significant. It is the effect on the rank and file of the citizens.h.i.+p, for the meaning of democracy is not immediate results in government, but the education of the citizen, and that education can come only by fulfilling the functions of citizens.h.i.+p.

Thus it is better to be the free citizen of a democracy, with all the waste and temporary inefficiency democracy involves, than to be the inert slave of the most perfect paternal despotism ever devised by man.

Thus the movement away from democratic city government is gravely to be questioned, no matter what economic results it secures.

The same argument applies to more recent changes, as the commission form of city government. As in the previous case, reacting upon the scandalous situation, we said, ”Let us choose the three to five best men in the community, and let them run the city's business for us.” Nearly every time this change has been made, the result has been an immediate cleaning up of the city government; but why? Chiefly because ”a new broom sweeps clean,”--not so much for the reason that it is new, as because you are interested in the instrument. You can get a dirty room remarkably clean with an old broom, if you will sweep hard enough. The cleaning up is due, not primarily to the instrument, but to the hand that wields it.

To speak less figuratively: the cleaning up of the city government with the inauguration of the commission system, came because the change was made by an awakening of the good people of the community. Good people have a habit, however, of going to sleep in an astoundingly short time; but _the gang never sleeps_. Now suppose, while the good people are dozing in semi-somnolence, a.s.sured that the new broom will sweep of itself, the gang gets together and elects the three to five worst gangsters in the city to be the commission? Is it not evident that the very added efficiency of the instrument means greater graft and corruption?

Equally the argument applies to the most recent device suggested--the city manager plan. As we have largely taken our schools out of politics, and have a non-partisan educational expert as superintendent, so it is suggested we should conduct our city business. Again, suppose the gang appoints the city manager: he will be an expert in graft, rather than in government.

The moment a people gets to trusting to a device it is headed for danger. There is just one safeguard of democracy, and that is _to keep the good people awake and at the task all the time_. Some instruments are better and some are worse, but the instrument never does the work, it is the hand and brain that wield it.

If there is one field where we could reasonably expect to find pure democracy, it is in our higher educational inst.i.tutions. In a college or university, where a group of young men and women, and a group of older men and women are gathered apart, out of the severer economic struggle, dedicated to ideal ends: there, surely, we could expect pure democracy in organization and relations.h.i.+p; yet the tendency has been steadily toward autocracy. One can count the fingers of both hands and not cover the list of college and university presidents who have taken office during the last fifteen years, only on condition that they have complete authority over the educational policy of the inst.i.tution, and often over its financial policy as well. The reason is obvious: we run a railroad efficiently by getting a good president and giving him arbitrary control; why not a university?

There are just the two objections cited above: even in a university, it is difficult to keep your tyrant good. This, again, is the minor objection. The real evil is in the effect upon the rank and file of those governed by the autocrat. There are men in university faculties to-day who say, privately, that if they could get any other opportunity, they would resign to-morrow, for they feel like clerks in a department store, with no opportunity to help determine the educational policy of the inst.i.tutions of which they are integral parts.

The German university, under all the autocracy and bureaucracy of the German state, is more democratic in its organization than our own. Its faculty is a self-governing body, electing to its own members.h.i.+p. The Rectors.h.i.+p is an honor conferred for the year on some faculty member for superior worth and scholars.h.i.+p. Each member of the faculty may thus feel the self-respect and dignity, resulting from the power and initiative he possesses as a free citizen of the inst.i.tution.

Let me suggest what would be the ideal democratic organization of a college or university. Why not apply the same division of functions of government that has proved so successful in the state? The board of Trustees is the natural judiciary; the President, the executive. The faculty is the legislative body, with the student body as a sort of lower house, cooperating in enacting the legislation for its own government. Where has such a plan been tried?

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