,:ii;!iii'..uiili; *tate (foUcge of AgticttUure Sltbtraty D 657 Ci?'^'""*" ""'"*'*"*' '""'"''>' Jjemocracy in reconstruction. 3 1924 014 109 270 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924014109270 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION EDITED BY FREDERICK A. CLEVELAND FORMXKLY CHAIRMAN OF PRESIDENT TAFT's COMMISSION ON ECONOMY AND EFFICIENCY AND JOSEPH SCHAFER PROFESSOR OF HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON AND VICE CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL BOARD FOR HISTORICAL SERVICE HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO COPYRIGHT, I9I9, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY ALL RIGHTS RBSERTED QCfte -Rilttrsait SttM CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS U . a . A CONTENTS I. The Historical Background of Recon- struction in America Joseph Sehafer 3 I. IDEALS OF DEMOCRACY II. Ideals of Democracy as Interpreted by President Wilson Frederick A. Cleveland. . .. iB HI. The Underlying Concepts of Demo- cracy W.W.WillougKby 48 n. INSTITUTIONS OF DEMOCRACY IV. Democracy and Private Property . . . Carl Kelsey 69 V. Democracy and the Family Arthur J. Todd. .'. 96 VI. Democratization of Institutions for Social Betterment Edward Cary Bayea Ill VII. Democratization of Institutions for Public Service W.F. WHloughby 146 m. AFTER-WAR SOCIAL PROBLEMS VIII. Democracy and Health Esther Lovejoy, M.D 165 IX. The Child and the New Order Mary Elizabeth Tiizd 193 X. The Educational Lessons of the War Samuel P. Capen and Charles R. Mann 212 XI. Saving and Thrift Willis H. Carothers 244 XII. Social Insurance Samuel MeCune Lindsay. .263 IV. AFTER-WAR LABOR PROBLEMS Xin. Demobilization and Unemployment. J7aro/(2 G. MoulUm 293 XIV. Capital and Labor William F. Oghum 305 V. AFTER-WAR TRANSPORTATION PROBLEMS XV. Our Transportation System — Elements in Reconstruction. An Introductory Note by the Editors. .329 iv CONTENTS XVI. Military Motor Transport — Its Lessons for Peace Frederick A. Clevdand. . . .837 XVII. Motorized Highways the Basis of a National Transport System ...Rl C. Hargreaves 358 XVIII. The Raikoad Problem. Statement of the JrUerstate Commerce Commistion. .382 XIX. Ocean Commerce in War and Re- construction William E. Lingdbach. .. .397 VI. AFTER-WAE POLITICAL PROBLEMS XX. Need for Readjustment of Rela- tions between the Executive and the Legislative Branches of Gov- ernment Frederick A. Cleveland.. ..423 XXI. The Rights and Duties of Mi- norities. .Chester CoHins*Maxey . . . .446 XXII. The Commonwealth Conference . . . Frederic G. Young 468 XXIIL The Evolution of Democracy: A Summary Charles A. Beard 486 INDEX 498 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OP RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA Joseph Schafer PT(^essor of Hiatory in the UniversHy (if Oregon and Viee-Chairman of the National Board for Historical Service DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF RECONSTRUCTION IN AMERICA JOSEPH SCHAFER America and Europe. War-swept Europe avowedly ap- proaches reconstruction as an inescapable probleilti growing out of the material and human devastation wrought by the holocaust of the last four years. We Americans, standing in safety behind the wide barrier of the sea, touched by the War only so far as we came into it during its later stages, are fondly protesting our immunity fronj a similar com- pulsion. We look about over our imperial domain, un- scarred by high explosives, peaceful, smiling, productive; and upon our people whose happy fortune it was to have helped mightily while suffering comparatively light losses; we see the roystering prosperity incident to the War stiQ trying to persist in many of its manifestations, and we are loath to admit that the word reconstruction has any relev- ancy here. Our case, it seems to us, is unique. This conclusion, on a superficial view of the facts, is in- controvertible. We are distinctly better off than any of the European belligerents, and we have suffered less injury even than some neutral countries. At least, it is apparent that the United States, by virtue of its stupendous material resources, has become the underwriter of the world's credit system as well as the world's main resource for food during the transition era following the War. 4 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Europe's double motive. But there is another side to the picture. Even a cursory examination of the reconstruction literature of, let us say. Great Britain will disclose a twofold program. 1 One portion of it has a direct relation to problems created by the War, such as demobilization, buffer employment, after-war trade, restored shipping, conserva- tion of raw materials, coal, iron, and electricity. On the other hand, the elaborate programs for labor adjustments, housing, freer access to the land, agricultural improvement, Grovemment regulation of industry, special and general education — these are problems of reform which had al- ready attained great prominence in public discussion be- fore the War and which recent events have merely rendered more critical. So that, as British and other European writers confess, reconstruction implies with them a general overhauling of the social and industrial system — possibly also the political system — in the belief that now, to quote Lloyd George, things are in so "molten" a state as to be easily remolded to a more ideal form. Some reforms are imperative, others are desirable. Both types can be wrought out more easily while things remain "molten" than when they become once more merely "malleable." In a word, the Old World has agreed that this peace-time shall make the starting-point in a new era — a better era, more hopeful, just, and humane than any which preceded it. World unity in thought. Millions of Americans sympa- thize^th that attitude. The basis of their sympathy is in part the growing unity of the world's thought on subjects happily described long ago as "the rights of man." In- creasingly, as the physical world has perfected its facilities * See bibliography on The Peace and Reconstruction, prepared by the National Board for Historical Service. World Peace Foundation, Boston, February, 1919. Also "Some British Reconstruction Views," in The His- torical Outlook, Philadelphia, February, 1919. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 5 for communication, have the spiritual forces of mankind coursed over seas and continents unimpeded by either nat- ural or political boundaries. To-day the world is a single vast community in. the sense that ideas which inform the life of all its parts are common to all. This result — the best fruit of historical evolution — is the ground of our hope for a new international arrangement which will render the coming peace endiuring. America's historic ideals. America, however, has in her own peculiar history an additional basis of interest in plans for fundamental reconstruction. Our people have never forgotten that American history exemplified " the rights of man" as projected in the days of our national beginnings. They recall, indeed, that it was the "Uberty" and "equal- ity" enjoyed by their ancestors which gave the character of authenticity to the democratic doctrines as these surged hke leaping flames over the face of Europe after the French Revolution. And there is another thing Americans remember: that American democracy up to recent times connoted a three- fold equaUty of opportunity — political, social, and eco- nomic. The emergence on our own soil and the growth of this new description of human life were the distinguishing characteristics of American history at least until toward the close of the nineteenth century. The struggle for its maintenance against other forces also inherent in oiur sys- tem, which are hostile to it, particularly in its social and eco- nomic aspects, has been called the key to the more recent history.* The promoter's synonym for the United States — "The Land of Opportunity" — is by no means an invention of the modem commercial intellect. The idea at least, if not the 1 See Turner, F. J.: "Social Forces in American History," American Historical Review, vol. xvi, pp. 217-33. 6 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION form of expression, runs back to the very beginning of plans for settling America. It is found in Hakluyt's Discourse of Western Planting, written in the days of Queen Elizabeth. The same idea occurs again in the writings of Francis Higginson, an austere Puritan of early Massachusetts. Higginson wrote about the "commodities of New England," mentioning every obvious good in turn — the soil, the tim- ber, the fish, the wild game, and even the atmosphere, de- claring that "a sup of New England's air is better than a whole draught of old England's ale." But in all he says the deepest enthusiasm underlies his remarks about the ease and certainty with which the essential needs and comforts of life could be secured. There, in his new world, was no unemployment and no pinch for food. "Little children here," he says in one place, "by setting of corn can earn much more than their own maintenance." Again, "A poor servant here, who is to have no more than fifty acres can afford to give more timber and wood for fires than many a nobleman in England can afford to do. Here is good living for those who love good fires." *■ There we have America's "First Frontier," which was at the same time the frontier of Europe. How great and how continuous was the influence exerted by such ideas upon the older societies across the sea during the history of coloniza- tion then just begun, would be an interesting inquiry. We are concerned, however, with the influence upon American society of the fact that it was molded, out of European ele- ments, in an environment of primitive freedom and abound- ing opportunity for men of strong, self-reliant type. The second, third, and all other frontiers were, with variations, essentially like the first. During the Revolution a Pennsyl- vania writer described the American as a European who, ' iligginson, Francis, "New England's Plantations, 1630," in Stedman and Hutchinson's lAhrary of American Literature, vol. i, pp. 66-71. THE fflSTORICAL BACKGROUND 7 by settling in the New World, had created for himself a bright-hued future. "Here," he said, "the rewards of his industry follow with equal step the progress of his labor. . . . From involuntary idleness [unemployment] servile dependence, penury, and useless labor, he has passed to toils of a very different nature, rewarded by ample sub- sistence." ^ These writers of the American foretime utter a language with whose every tone and cadence we are familiar. It was appeals like that of Higginson which enticed the men of the old Revolutionary Army beyond the Alleghenies to Ohio, or to the Southwest; by similar means the various historic "rushes" were directed now to the prairies of Illinois, again to Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa, to Texas and Oklahoma, to California and to the Great Northwest, With incredible strides the frontier passed across the continent, from Atlantic to Pacific. The movement constitutes not merely the major epic of American history, but also, within limits, its best interpretation.^ From the days when Governor Dale's men began setting tobacco in the fat river loams along the James, and Hooker's Puritans sought pasture for their multiplying herds on the lowlands of the Connecticut, the land liu-ed the landseeker westward. For beyond the James were the Kanawha, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and the hundred valleys of the Mississippi system; beyond the Connecticut were the Hudson, the Susquehanna, Allegheny, and Ohio, hnked again by long reaches with the Missouri and the Columbia. ^ Crevecoeur, Hector St. John de: Letters of an American Farmer. lion- don, 1782. 2 Turner, P. J.: Significance of the Frontier in American History. For other essays by the same author interpretative of American history, see Channing, Hart, and Turner, Quide to the Study and Beading of American Mislory. Boston, 1912. Also in bibliography of The Peace and Reconstrius- Uon. World Peace Foundation. 1919. 8 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION The land was not absolutely free, but it was cheap and easy to acquire. Any man could have a generous portion with merely so much exertion or sacrifice as was contributory to self-respecting manhood. Only the "loafer" or sub-caUber person would fail to acquire land and that failure fixed upon men the stigma of being socially incompetent. Frontier social and political traits. Cheap land was the basis of the American democracy. All the virtues implied in literary tributes to the "sturdy yeomanry" characterized the free American farmer class. They had a spirit of inde- pendence which corresponded to the facts of their economic self-suflSciency and their social equahty. But with this went commonly an ability and readiness to cooperate for practical ends, ranging all the way from barn-raisings to church dedications in purely local matters, and including also a variety of political activities vmder the governments of town and county. Such special manifestations of com- munity self -helpfulness as the Western Claims Associations, by which the intent of the Government to sell wild lands to the highest bidder was practically nullified in the interest of settlers as against speculators, and by which also "claim- jumping" was effectually discouraged, are prophetic of many things in the more recent history of the country.* The spontaneous freedom of natural resources — farm-land, timber, water-powers, minerals — made the frontier demo- crat a natural hater of every kind of obstructive monopoly. "Speculators' lands," "railroad sections," "company tim- ber," absentee-owned mines — all these were an offense to the community of free farmers environing them. So they used the speculators' lands as "cow commons," with no thought of compensation to the owner, and they never hesi- tated to tax absentee owners in an exemplary way if that 1 See Shambaugh, Benj. F.: Claim Aiaociation of Johnson Count]/, Iowa, Introduction. Iowa City, 1894. THE mSTORICAL BACKGROUND 9 were legally possible. The absentee owner might get rich out of unearned increments when his property was finally sold, but as owner he trod a thorny trail.* On the side of political democracy the frontier was the Nation's training-ground. Older sections had their "first- families" and their traditional "selectmen," but not so the new settlement. Here was a fresh, unprejudiced try-out for leadership which involved not merely the testing of intellec- tual and poUtical abilities, but the fitness of these to meet the new circumstances. In the race for preferment, social adaptation and tact often counted for more than special training; and the frontier "career of honors," beginning on the primitive plane of local constable and passing by easy gradations to State Representative or even Congressman, the motive of political ambition produced a continuous and not unwholesome agitation of the social mass. If not all could be leaders, most at least could be near leaders or a highly independent type of followers. Much has been written about the failure of popular government in novel situations Uke that which prevailed in California during the early years of the gold rush.'' But when one reflects that American experience had been limited mainly to easily directed rural con^m^ities and to States prevailingly agricultural, the wonder is not that California showed a partial and temporary failure, but that ultimately it affords an example of relative success. The same general- ization will apply to other cases where political problems ^ At this day a woman who is absentee partner in a small Alaska gold mine can obtain her share of the annual product in one way only, namely, by going to the mine, taking her place alongside the other partners on the sluice-box, and receiving the gold as it is washed free. Her partners are not dishonest men, but they are frontiersmen, and it would not occur to them that the gold belonged to her unless she were there to join in the work of collecting and saving it. * Royce, Josiah: California — A Study in American Character, pasHm. Boston, 1886. 10 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION emerge from the primitive and take on the complexity char- acteristic of the newer time. The American people, trained to an habitual independence in political action, recognizing no final limitations upon popular control, even when that control had to be exercised by a vigilance committee, are quite as ready to-day to readjust their pohtical machinery at the challenge of forces inimical to democracy, as they were in San Francisco in 1856. ^ American optimism. The relation of the spirit of "dare and do" — so noticeable in our public affairs — to the pro- verbial American optimism, is closer than may at first ap- pear, and optimism is one feature of the national psychology most clearly traceable to the unstinted opportunity of American life and its freedom from the fundamental terrors of hunger and want. The great financial panic of 1837 bankrupted thousands of Eastern business men, most of whom were victims of a bad system and were not personally to blame. Did it lead to an epidemic of suicides? Not at all; it led to a general migration westward. And the prai- ries of Illinois, the "oak openings" of Michigan, received in consequence some of the best human material the Nation afforded, to the lasting glory of their new societies.* A sect of religionists, endued with all the perversity that Timothy 1 The use of forcible coercion to produce unity of action during the war, while often exercised in ways that are unjust, was decidedly not " un-Ameri- can." As a social phenomenon it is significant chiefly as showing that when the American people largely agree upon a common objective having in it an ideal good, the mass energy with which they pursue it will not be stayed or swerved by ordinary personal or even legal restraints. We may deplore the fact, but we may not blink it. Cf. Carver, T. N.: "Are we in Danger of becoming Prussianized?" MUitary Historian and Economist, April, 1918, pp. 112-27. 2 Michigan, especially, owes much to this migration of energetic, enter- prising, cultured people from the i^astern cities. The writer received the story from Dr. Thomas Condon, one of the emigrants, who afterwards went to Oregon as a missionary and became in time a famous teacher and geologist. THE mSTOEICAL BACKGROUND 11 Dwight noted in the settlers of interior New England in 1795,1 finds it impossible to live in the East or the older West by reason of both lawful and unlawful persecutions. So they take up the line of march over a thousand miles of plain and mountain, toiUng, struggling, suffering, to a new home in the heart of the Cordilleras. Here, cut off from all the world, in a land which was once a gleaming, blistering des- ert, they build their "New Canaan" in "chiu-ch and com- monwealth"; and the desert has blossomed from the year of their arrival.^ The process of American history, indeed, during the free land era, was by its very nature socially redemptive. Kip- ling makes his "settler" say: "Here, where my fresh-turned furrows run. And the deep soil glistens red, I will repair the wrong that was done To the living and the dead" — lines which, freely interpreted, are as appUcable to Kansas or California as to the Rand or the Transvaal. Since the unit in any democratic society is the p|ain man who seeks a mode of realizing himself, the man who for any reason is denied a chance is to that extent oppressed? In primitive America he suffered no denial. Always there were condi- tions on the one frontier or on the other, which fitted the individual case and afforded the means of escape from former handicaps, whatever they were — often enough bad habits or an unsocial disposition which alienated neighbors and friends and could be hopefully reformed only among new people. The imsuccessful man needed not to be perma- nently unsuccessful. He always had "another chance." And if he used up all of his opportunities without manifest * Dwight: Travels, vol. n, pp. 458-63. 2 See Bancroft, H. H.: The History of Utah. San Francisco, 1890. Or Linn, William A.: The Story of the Mormons. London, 1901. 12 DEMOCRACY IN EECONSTRUCTION personal profit, his family might nevertheless be the bene- ficiaries and thus the desired social result be achieved. Hardly an American in middle life but can recall examples of men and families deemed to be failures in an older social soil, who, transplanted to the newer West, took root and flourished, "growing up with the country." '■ Influence of free lands on the condition of laborers. Said Senator Benton, in 1830, speaking of the industrial laborers: "These poor people wish to go to the West and get land; to have flocks and herds — to have their own fields, gardens, and meadows — their own cribs, bams, and dairies; and to start their children on a theater where they can contend with equal chances with other peoples' children for the honors and dignities of the country." ^ Benton was contending for the freest possible method of disposing of the public land, and against restrictions which would make the acquisition of land more difficult. He pointed out, significantly, that the status of industrial labor in America differed from that of European labor precisely in this : that in Europe there was no land which poor laborers could get, and so they were compelled to work cheaply, while in America they had access to land and were not com- pelled to work cheaply. The great fact is that so long as cheap lands lasted Ameri- can laborers were insured against low wages, against unem- ployment, and they had the equivalent of the old-age pen- sion in the opportunity, which was generally taken, to secure land before the years of productive labor were over. More- '■ It is doubtful if history furnishes another example of the social redemp- tion of a large body of outcasts which is more striking than the well-known case of the so-called "redemptioners" or "indentured" servants of early Virginia and other colonies. On a smaller scale the same process was going on constantly as long as free lands remained. * Register of Debates in Congress, 21st Congress, 1st Session, Sen., vol. vi, pt. 1, p. 24. (Jan. 18, 1830.) THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 13 over, the children of the industrial laborers furnished con- stant accessions to the class of independent landholding citizens. Employers of factory labor recognized that, roughly, the wages they must pay corresponded to the productivity of labor as applied to the land. In conse- quence, manufacturers had the problem of maintaining profits at such a level as would permit them to pay "Ameri- can" wages as against the wages paid "pauper labor" in Europe. Of course, when the supply of cheap land was gone, the natural regulator of wages was gone also, and then society, as opposed to the manufacturers, had the problem of securing the welfare (rf labor by social and legal means. Tariffs, labor unions. Government regulation of certain in- dustries, minimum-wage laws, laws for workmen's insurance against unemployment, sickness, and old age; special atten- tion to public-school education, from the primary to the college, in order to give the children of laborers a fair chance — these are some of the issues involved in the complex labor problem.^ It seems incAdtable that men should have de- rived from religion, philosophy, or "natural law" the doc- trines now so firmly held in all civilized countries with re- spect to the right to labor, the living wage, and conditions of well-being based on the idea of making the laborer and his family effective and useful members of society and good citi- zens of the State. But, in America, we have a social mem- ory which enforces those doctrines. While in Great Britain, in Germany, in Russia, the social memory is of conditions less free and wholesome than the present, with us exactly the reverse is true. Our history utters an authoritative * See labor planks in recent party platforms as showing what measure of protection labor demands. Industrial labor has been, since the thirties of last century, one of the most powerful influences in building up the sys^ tern of free public education in the manufacturing towns. See-Commons, John R.: Documentary History of American Industrial Society, Introduc- tion to vol. V, and Index, vol. x. 14 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION word on the demand for such a reconstruction in the domain of industry, the details of which must be worked out by specialists, as will safeguard American democracy against revolution or anarchy on the one hand, and on the other against social stagnation or decay. It suggests the principle of social welfare as the touchstone for the determination of every question involved in the complicated problems of the relation of capital and labor. History also suggests that while the labor question could be favorably influenced by a reformed land policy, which would make land for agriculture more accessible than it has been in recent years, a policy the need of which would seem to be self-evident, yet it will have to be solved in terms of industry. No one who can appreciate the stubborn force of social habit will expect the laboring populations of our congested cities to seek the country in relatively large numbers. Effect on tiie immigration question. Immigration began to seem like a problem during the forties of the last century when the influx of assisted immigrants from the British Isles, especially Ireland, and of political refugees from Ger- , many, made an aggregate so large as to arouse the fears of the American people. But we soon found that those fears were groundless. For the immigrants went West, in large numbers, first to find work and then to get land. As streams of home-seekers, they met and mingled with more numerous and greater streams from the colonizing sections of the United States. To change the figure, on the new frontiers they entered into the weave of American society like the minor colors in a pattern on the loom, and the result was usually a harmonious blend. The public school, the demo- cratic association of neighbors, the common performance of citizens' duties in local governments open to the inspection of all, the business of gaining "a stake in the community" THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 15 — all these contributed to the success of an assimilation process which was usually so normal as to be quite uncon- scious. Only in the isolated cases of the formation of colo- nies did foreigners remain foreigners. These cases occurred mainly in the older States through the general desertion of a farming district by Americans and its possession by the more thrifty Germans, or other European farmers. And such small areas of alien population were neghgible. It used to be considered remarkable in the Western States if a mature immigrant of non-Enghsh speech failed to learn EngUsh enough to neighbor with the American settlers. And it was expected that his children would speak, read, and write the language of America whether or not they re- tained the use of their mother tongue. In the normal case the children lost all effective use of their mother tongue and became in every outward aspect American. The Civil War, which put these Western communities to the test, proved the genuineness of the assimilative process. These people were Americans, proud, upstanding patri- ots, ready to march into battle singiog the war anthem, "A Thousand Years My Own Columbia," shoulder to shoulder with their neighbors who might have inherited the traditions of six generations of American forbears. Theirs was the old flag, the majestic imion which it sym- bohzed, the liberty, prosperity, and happiness constituting a bountiful reward for all past and prospective perils and sacrifices. There is no secret about the method of attaining the degree of social unity manifested in those days of fiery trial. The process was largely spontaneous. The aliens wanted to be Americans because they loved America as the "land of their dreams," and they believed in the country for the bountiful measure of its opportunities. In order fully to enjoy these, they must learn the speech, the thought, and 16 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION the ways of the American part of the community, which was always the effective, dominating majority.^ ' The district school. The American district school, now mider such deep condemnation, deserves well at the hands of the historian. It was marvelously adapted to the needs of frontier rural communities, for essentially it was based on a neighborhood organization which might be larger or smaller according to circumstances. Whenever immigra- tion pushed into a new valley or occupied additional areas anywhere, the school could be set up as soon as three or four families were settled. It grew with the growth of popula- tion, it multipUed its tmits to suit community needs. In a word, the district school brought educational facilities to every American home however remote from population centers. The spirit of adventure sometimes carried Ameri- cans into strange, distant, almost unheard-of sections of our national domain, but wherever they went, whether to the plains of Kansas, the mountains of Wyoming, or the valleys of Oregon, they took the district school with them. Rarely do the present-day critics of the district school recognize fully its importance in the history of American democracy. Orators, indeed, have not infrequently pro- claimed it the "sheet anchor" or the "palladium" of our liberties without much care to analyze the content of those ^ On the history of the American ideal of "hospitality" to those of other lands, and the present status of that ideal, see Schafer, Joseph, "Histori- cal Ideals in Recent Politics," An. Rept., Am. Hist. Assn., 1916, vol. i, pp. 459-68. The writer is convinced that a study of the facts and conditions of assimilation on the frontier would furnish the surest guide to the principles upon which the alien, or immigration, question must be settled. Those principles in outline are as follows: (1) The aliens must not be too numerous. (i8) They must not be too tmlike our own people. (3) They will have to be thoroughly intermingled with Americans. (4) They must be so hopefully situated as to feel the inner urge to be- come Americans. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 17 high-sounding phrases. But the fact is that the district school, as an institution of rural education in the period during which American life was mainly expansive, was fairly adequate to its purpose. It provided opportunity for instruction in reading, in writing, in arithmetic; it stimu- lated patriotism through reading, reciting, and special exer- cises; it inculcated the ideals and the habits of rigid moraUty which derived from New England, the primal soiu-ce of the school itself. It was due largely to the district school that, in all the Northern States, the sentiment for the maintenance of the Union was strong enough to sustain Lincoln's policies at the beginning of the Civil War. When the Civil War came, a young man, who had gone to the University of Michigan four years earUer from a rural district in Indiana, returned to his old home to raise a company of soldiers, which he accomplished with ease. Many years later this man, who rose to the rank of brigadier-general, testified that sixty per cent of his original company could recite the peroration of Webster's Refly to Hayne, having learned it in the speaking contests in the district school.* The school had unified the North despite the rich diversity of its population. In those local affairs of a political or administrative nature, Uke the management of township and county business, the training of the district school, supplemented by experience, enabled men to gain a passable success. And it was by no means a rare occurrence for a gifted man, with no formal training beyond the district school, to rise to high place in the State Government as well; though in most cases the lawyers and others who so largely monopolized the fimction of legislation, national and state, received some higher training. 1 General W. H. H. Beadle. The statement was made by him fifty years later, on the basis of his recollections. 18 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION The district school gave no direct vocational training, but under the conditions of life, characterized by a primitive agriculture carried on by methods which were based on habit and tradition, no special vocational training was required. The boy reared on, let us say, a Wisconsin farm, who attended the district school four months each winter for six or seven years and there received the usual rudiments of literature, composition, and accounting, meantime serving a stiflE apprenticeship to his farmer parent, was well equipped to win success for himself as a farmer on the free lands of Iowa, Nebraska, or Dakota when he arrived at man's estate. And one such case epitomizes the vocational his- tory of millions. Why it is not now an adequate educational agency. What the average boy thus trained would do were he to try farm- ing on land costing from $100 to $500 per acre as at present, or were he to enter any one of the modem businesses with its requirement of close and penetrating intelligence, is easy to imagine. He would fail for want, first, of an ade- quate general education calculated to free the mind, and, second, of a special training to give him control of the facts and principles governing his particular business. A similar statement could be made regarding the diflference between the training requisite for citizenship imder conditions of pioneer simplicity and present-day complexity of public affairs. If the district school, such as it was, proved ade- quate from the vocational and the citizenship standpoints under frontier conditions, then, in view of changes which have come since the passing of the frontier — in view of the intensely dynamic quality of American life, which fairly bristles with social and economic problems — a thorough education through the high school and including vocational training would certainly not be excessive to-day, for the average boy or girl. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 19 Harking back to a "golden age" may be unprofitable or the reverse, depending on the spirit of the inquiry it impUes. By contrasting the life of laboring men in his own time and country with that of a certain mediBeval manor, Carlyle was able to point the moral that ideal human welfare is by no means guaranteed by a policy of laissez faire.^ But this in no wise justified his apparent assumption that autocratic control exercised over the fives of common men by persons whose responsibility was purely moral, would prove a satis- factory solution of the problem: No sane person would wish to project the crude conditions of America's primitive age into the future; but every student of our social history must feel a desire to conserve much of the spirit of that America, the America of free lands and an economic system based on individual initiative, which is now receding into the background of life and becoming a social memory. "Others may praise what they like; But I, from the banks of the running Missouri, Praise nothing, in art or aught else Till it has breathed well the atmosphere of this river — also the western prairie-sceat. And fully exudes it again." * Passing of the frontier. The frontier, in the sense of a broad belt of fertile and accessible free land, with the timber, minerals, water-powers, and other resources going with the land, all open1;o utilization by citizens on the individuafistic basis, passed away with the nineteenth century itself. Its disappearance was unobserved by the masses of the people. Only those who were intent on large-scale exploitation and were organized for it, paid proper heed. And the result was, that every kind of free material wealth stiU left — timber, coal, copper, fertilizer deposits, range lands — was rapidly > Past and Present. ^ Walt Whitman. 20 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION engrossed by private individuals and by corporations. ' This helped to entrench the possessing classes still more firmly in the advantages they had already gained as creative organ- izers of business opportunity under conditions of unrivaled fruitfulness. Every natural resource, gained on the old cheap-land terms at or near the time of the disappearance of free lands, was sure to increase in value by something like a geometrical progression. Effect on farm-land values. One effect of the change is found in the statistics of farm-land values. In 1850 the average value per acre of farm-land in the whole country was $11.33, and at that time 38.5 per cent of the land classi- fied as farm-land — namely, that which was actually within existing farms — was cleared. Since the movement into the great plains had only juist begun and most of the farms had been originally timbered, it follows that practically the whole of the value represented labor expended in making improvements, and from that plane values rose only very slowly. By 1890 the average had gone up to $31.33, but at that time 57.4 per cent was cleared land. Dm-ing the next ten years — the decade during which the frontier was actually disappearing — so vast a body of new land was taken up in Oklahoma and other newly opened reserves, and in the timbered and semi-arid regions of public-land States, that the percentage of cleared land dropped from 57.4 to 49.4, a difference of 8 per cent. The average value per acre also declined, but not in the same ratio; it stood in 1900 at $19.30. The figures for the next census period, 1900-1910, deserve serious attention. The farms have now become somewhat smaller, and the percentage of cleared land has ^ The acquisition by a certain live-stock company of approximately 229,000 acres of grazing land in a single Oregon county is an indication of the way the process of absorbing the left-over lands was carried out. See Schafer, Joseph: A History cf the Pacific Northwest, chap. xviu. New York, 1917. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 21 risen again to 54.4. But ike average value has jumped from $19.30 to $39.50, an increase of more than one hundred per cent.^ This shows that a scarcity value, or a speculative value based on scarcity, is definitely affecting the farm-land problem, which in turn must affect fundamentally such social problems as farm tenancy, unproductive landlordism, and the crowding of population into the towns.* Other social and economic transformations. It is hardly necessary to point out that the change just noted is merely symptomatic of a profound revolution in American life, which was preparing for many years, indeed, but which has come to its natural development only since the disappear- ance of the free-land frontier and largely in consequence of that stupendous fact. The amassing of great wealth was not only not reprehensible, so long as native resoiu-ces seemed imlimited, but, if the process was an honest one, it was highly creditable as revealing the qualities of enterprise, resourcefulness, and "pluck" so congenial to the pioneer mind. But when the raw materials of wealth came to have definable hmits, then the powerful possessing classes became 1 See statistical table of farm-land values, 1850 to 1910, in Schafer, Joseph, "Historic Ideals in Recent Politics," An. Rept. Am. Hist. Assn., 1916, vol. I, pp. 459-68. 2 Two ways have been suggested for making farm-land more easily available for those wishing to make their living by laboring on the land: (1) The Secretary of the Interior, Hon. Franklin K. Lane, has a plan for the redaniation, by national means, of arid lands, swamp-lands, and cut- over timber-lands, of which he estimates 300,000 square miles may be made available. (2) Some of the States, stimulated by the duty of pro- viding opportunities for returning soldiers, are projecting land colonies — the land to be supplied by the State, with improvements making it ready for profitable cultivation. The purchaser is to pay for the land on the amortization plan. This plan has been carried into execution most hope- fully by the State of California. There appears to be a widespread de- mand, in the several States, for the discriminatory taxation of farm-lands held out of use, and there is a less well-defined sentiment in favor of a taxing system that should discourage very large holdings, 22 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION dangerous monopolists to be curbed and controlled by demo- cratic means.' The duration of the contest for democratic control as against what are called "special interests," cor- responds roughly with the period since the passing of the frontier.^ The problem of democratic control — Hopeful elements. The fight has been going on ever since in some form or other. It has engendered much bitterness of spirit, which in tiun makes adjustments more difficult. The most hopeful devel- opment is the new social consciousness that has come into existence partly in consequence of the War and which is rapidly unifying the demand for a sane, evolutionary, but unequivocally liberal, solution of the economic and social problems of American life. In this demand men of all classes are uniting together and increasingly the practical statesman and reformer are in- voking the aid of those who, through their study of history and the other social sciences, are able to offer suggestions of a relatively scientific character. "Conference and coopera- tion" are, at last, becoming the watchwords of progress. They signalize a profound faith in the good sense, fairness, and optimistic outlook of the American people. It is a faith that, in the long run, Americans of whatever class, of whatever degree, will be true to the spirit of America — a spirit bom of three centuries of unique opportimity for common men, under the aegis of a practical as well as a theo- retical democracy. "Without extinction is liberty! Without retrograde is Equality! They live in the feelings of young men, and the best women." * 1 See Professor Turner's luminous interpretation of recent democratic movements like the initiative, referendum, recall, etc., in his "Social Forces in American History," Am. Hist. Review, vol. xvi, pp. 217-33. ' The frontier line was first omitted from the census maps in 1890. It was in 1892 that the Populist Party at St. Louis threw down the gauntlet to privilege. » Walt Whitman. I IDEALS OF DEMOCRACY Fhederick a. Cleveland Formerly Chairman of President TaJVs Commission on Economy and Efficiency W. W. WiLLOUGHBT Professor of Political Science in the Johns Hopkins II IDEALS OF DEMOCRACY AS INTERPRETED BY PRESIDENT WILSON FREDERICK A. CLEVELAND There are a few periods and a few men that stand out in history like mountain ranges and peaks rising from a broad plain. Analogy may be carried further. There are periods diu-ing which the underlying institutional strata of society are bent and broken. The old order proving too inelastic, class stresses grow imtil established institutions give way. In circumstances which do not provide means of adaptation to new and changing demands, readjustment comes by social and institutional upheaval. It is at such times as these that great revolutionary leaders like Washington, Gam- betta, and Bolivar are pushed up from the masses of man- kind who stand as the landmarks of social progress — ex- alted monuments to the ideaHsm as weU as to the mihtancy of the existing civilization. The hope of our time is that poUtical institutions may be made elastic — that they may admit of adaptation by pro- cess of gradual evolution. The hope and promise of demo- cracy is, that war and revolution is not assumed to be the normal method of social achievement; that they are justifi- able only in case society has no other way of freeing itself from a constraining institutionalism which arbitrarily main- tains an estabUshed order that violates cherished ideals of justice and common well-being, which leaves no recourse other than appeal to violence. When institutions do pro- vide for normal adaptation, there is an ever-present oppor- 26 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION tunity for leadership. In these circumstances, the normal working of democracy is to produce great evolutionary leaders like Gladstone, Lloyd George, and Clemenceau. Pre-War demands for readjustment. We are conscious of the fact that the world is passing through a period of great change — the cataclysmic feature of which has been the War. But it may be that when the history of our time is written, the beginning of this War will be passed over as a thing which in itself was quite apart — a related event in this only that it made a violent breach in the incrustations of the existing institutionalism, after which the controlling spirit of the age was revealed and asserted itself with greater freedom. Evidences of national protest. This view has been fre- quently expressed by those who stop to analyze. As far back as President Cleveland's first election the voice of national protest was heard against the threatened domi- nancy of a privileged class and of institutions inconsistent with the spirit of democracy. The Populist Party was bom of discontent with existing conditions. Mr. Biyan's leader- ship was possible because of his ability to feel the pulse of the people and speak the resentment in the hearts of millions of his fellow citizens. The key to Mr. Roosevelt's success in dealing with hostile partisans and in pressing through legis- lation against opposition was his direct appeal to the people and their belief tiiat he shared their ideals of democracy. It was the prevailing popular opinion that these ideals were being violated, that institutions had been fostered which stood in the way of equality of opportunity, that collective undertakings were being conducted in a manner to enable a few to grow enormously wealthy while the great masses who toiled to produce wealth were permitted simply to eke out a bare subsistence. It was popular conviction such as this which gave to Mr. Wilson his basis for appeal and made IDEALS OF DEMOCEACY 87 him, first. Governor of New Jersey, then President of the United States. Great majorities were convinced that " the times are out of joint" and they beHeved in President Cleveland, Mr. Bryan, President Roosevelt, and President Wilson because they spoke a language of protest and urged reforms which drew to them a great following. Histoiy will doubtless assign each of these great leaders a high place in the statesmanship of our transitional age. It would be a grateful task to discuss here the work of all of them, par- ticularly the great work of Mr. Roosevelt. But both space and the theme of this book limit me to the treatment of the career of Mr. Wilson. Conditions upon which protest was based. When Presi- dent Wilson went before the country in 1912, he bore this message: We are facing the necessity of fitting a new social organization, as -we did once fit the old organization, to the happiness and pros- perity of the great body of citizens ; for we are conscious that the new order of society has not been made to fit and provide the conven- ience or prosperity of the average man.^ Enlarging on his message: There was a time when America was blithe with self-confidence; she boasted that she and she alone knew the processes of popular government; she sees that there are at work forces which she did not dream of in her hopeful youth. . . . We stand in the preseuce of a great revolution — not a bloody revolution; America is not given to spiUing blood — but a silent revolution. . . . We are ujHjn the eve of a great reconstruction. It calls for creative statesman- ship as no other age has done since we set up the government under which we live.' The testimony of ejqierts. In the same campaign ex- President Roosevelt not only painted a picture of "social injustice" with characteristic boldness; he went further in his condemnation of our existing institutions and practices 1 The New Freedom, p. 4. ' Ibid., p. 28. 28 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION in that he essayed to attack the courts themselves as being party to this injustice. Mr. Wilson urged changes in the existing laws, which, as he viewed them, were fundamentally undemocratic in operation; the tariff as the mother of trusts; banking laws and institutions which gave monopo- lies over credit; incorporated combinations of capital be- yond the reach of the law iu the exercise of powers and privileges that were withheld from individuals. Mr. Roose- velt contended that the courts as the arbiters of justice had become anti-social and undemocratic in the arbitrariness of the protection given to the existing order of things, by a too slavish regard for precedent and that such an attitude if persisted ia would necessitate a revolution of violence. For example, in correspondence with Mr. Charles H. Betts, pub- lished as a political dociunent, he said: My plea is for a rational growth, my plea is that the courts act with ordinary statesmanship, ordinary regard for the Constitution as a living aid to growth, not as a strait-jacket, ordinary regard for the law, the rights of humanity and the growth of civilization. I wish to state with all emphasis that no man who takes the opposite ground . . . has any right to be on the bench; and it is a misfortune to have him there. Governor Hughes took a like view, but threw emphasis on the methods employed by those who sought to obtain legislation and official action, the result of which was to establish special privilege and make our institutions un- democratic: There is [he said] a constant effort by special interests to shape or defeat legislation, to seek privileges and to obtain favors in the administrative departments. So close is the relation of govern- ment to many large enterprises, particularly to the so-called Public Service Corporations, that there is the strongest motive to control the government in their interests. For this purpose they are will- ing to supply the sinews of political campaigns and desire in re- turn to name legislators and administrative officers. The political IDEALS OF DEMOCRACY 29 machine, especially the personal machine, furnishes the most ready instrument to their purpose. The result is the making of corrupt alliances between the party managers and the special interests. . . . In these alliances we have the most dangerous conspiracy against the government of the Nation, the State, and the local community.* No one has stated the need for an institutional change and for reform in methods more strongly than did Sena- tor Elihu Root before the New York Constitutional Con- vention. The psychological basis of national and international leadership. Until President Wilson was fifty-fotu* years of age, nine years ago, he had never held a pubUe office or been counted a force even in local poUtics. His life had been spent largely in retirement as a student, writer, and teacher of Civics. To understand why in 1910 he was able to gain a following large enough to make him Governor of the State of New Jersey; why in 1912 he gained a following large enough to make him President; why it was that when, on April 2, 1917, President Wilson went before Congress and asked it to declare war on Germany and gave as his reason for so doing, that in his opinion such a course was necessary "to make the world safe for democracy" — to understand why it was that he at once became the outstanding man among nations, we must see and feel what was going on in the minds of men everywhere. Pre-war world opinion. An English writer, accounting for President Wilson's sudden rise to world leadership, pictures pre-war conditions thus : A new spirit had entered into men; they were reaching out for something better than they had, they were striving to remove the iniquities and injustice of an artificially stimulated social system. This spirit was moving men in all parts of the world, but nowhere perhaps was its force so insistent as in the United States. . . . 1 Responsibilities of Citizenship, p. 104. so DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Refonn was in the air, the social order was changing; the change bad almost come. Men were looking for the new vision; in the great democracies of the world, in England, in France, and in the United States, social experimentation was being tried on a vast scale. Woman suffrage, prohibition, old age pensions, state insur- ance, the curbing of the power of monopolies and the arrogance of wealth, these are symptoms of a mental and spiritual rebirth. It was a time of excessive luxury, of great wealth, of extreme selfish- ness; in some respects materialism had a deeper hold than ever be- fore in the world's history, and yet even those deepest sunk in their materialism, who defended the existing order and resented change, dimly saw that change was inevitable, vaguely felt that justice cried for reform, but hoped only that it might be postponed so that their comfort i would not be disturbed. To the great mass, not alone the down-trodden, and the poor, and the illiterate, the day of their deliverance was near. . . ; To Mr. Wilson democracy was less a political belief than an imminent conviction and he had given proof of his faith. Imbued in the tenets of his political forefathers, seeing their code of moral guidance which was also their rule of statesmanship, reposing con- fidence in the wisdom of the people to govern themselves, rejecting the thought that they were incapable of self-government and must necessarily be directed by a selected class, his sympathies and his intellect made Mm support the cause of the people against privi- lege.' Whatever our inbred prejudices, our political, religious, or social beliefs, here are verities that must be dealt with: An irresistible urge in the hearts of men everywhere for something which goes by the name of "justice," "liberty," and "equality," and a pre-war conviction that existing laws and institutions made for "injustice," "repression," and "inequality"; the longmg of the people for a leader — a Moses to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt, some one controlled by ideals of "justice," dedicated to the proposi- tion that "all men were created equal" — a leader, too, with a practical knowledge of what is required to bring about • Low, A. Maurice: President Wilson, pp. 3-6. IDEALS OF DEMOCRACY 31 the institutional adjustments desired without wrecking or destroying the instrumentalities through which the social organism must work. President Wilson as interpreter. Whether we like or dis- like President Wilson personally, here is another verity: The people applauded him as prophet, and supported him in his practical proposals for readjustment. That is, they ap- proved his interpretations of democratic ideals and princi- ples as appUed to present-day needs. This to us is the sig- nificant fact: Mr. Wilson, before the bar of public opinion, qualified for State leadership; then for national leadership; then for international leadership. He quahfied for it first by a habit of mind. Every Kne of his writings and teaching had spoken in terms of ideals of democracy before he entered the field of practical politics, at the mature age of fifty-four. As student, writer, and teacher he had thought and spoken largely on the need and the means of bringing about insti- tutional readjustment. As one of his foreign biographers has pointed out, he had shown himself to be possessed of "a profound faith in democracy, and an indomitable enthusi- asm for reform," and he had given his whole life to studying the ways of bringing reform about. Every step in his polit- ical career, after he entered public life, had been to the peo- ple an evidence that on the fundamental issue of democracy he was keeping the faith. The meaning of " equality." As president of Princeton he had stood for and fought for democratic ideals against "the influence of the money-power" in our educational institutions where citizens are trained; this won for him the popular confidence which made him Governor. As Gov- ernor of New Jersey he was at once drawn into a fight with Senator Smith as the leader of the Democratic "party machine," and the organized forces of "Capitalism," and by going directly to the people here he won — preventing 32 DEMOCliACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Mr. Smith's election to the United States Senate, putting through against all opposition the "seven sisters" bills, the aim of which was economic equahty. This won for him the popular confidence which made him President. As Presi- dent he met the same forces. Against organized opposition, which before had unmade every President who had had the temerity to face it; without opportunity to participate in the deliberations of Congress, by laying each case before the high court of public opinion, he obtained judgments favorable to the enactment, one after the other, of the most drastic readjustments in our economic system that had yet taken place. At every step Mr Wilson obtained a vote of confi- dence, not formally, for our poUtical machinery does not provide for open discussion and a showing of hands on ques- tions involving leadership; but there was no uncertainty in the minds of representatives of the people as they sat in Washington, as to what the popular verdict was; and they had no other course open to them than to read that verdict and make it a matter of record. In all these ways the peo- ple had opportunity to approve or disapprove President Wilson's interpretation of the meaning of "justice" as spelled out in terms of "equahty of opportunity" when applied to existing conditions. The meaning of " liberty." He also had occasion both to state how in his view Kberty was to be conceived, and how it was to be appUed. In his preachments, liberty is of two kinds, personal and political. As to the first, liberty of conscience, the right of free speech, free press, freedom to choose, and to act, this needed no enlargement. In respect to the right of self-expression and self-determination of the individual, no issues of great moment arose. His preach- ments and practical tests were in the field of politics. In this he begins and end^ with these fimdamentals : roEALS OF DEMOCRACY 83 Political liberty is the right of those who are governed to adjust their government to their own needs and interests. Political liberty consists in the best practicable adjustment be- tween the power of the Government and the privilege of the indi- vidual; and the freedom to alter the adjustment is as important as the adjustment itself for the ease and progress of affairs and the contentment of the citizen. What this means is told to his popular audience in this simple fashion: There are many analogies by which it is possible to illustrate the idea if it needs illustrations. We say of a boat skimming the water with light foot, "How free she runs," when we mean how perfectly she is adjusted to the force of the wind, how perfectly she obeys the great breath out of the heavens that fills her sails. Throw her head up into the wind and see how she will halt and stagger; how every sheet wiU shiver and her whole frame be shaken, how in- stantly she is "in irons" in the expressive phrase of the sea. She is free oidy when you have let her fall off again and get once more her nice adjustment to the forces she must obey and cannot defy. We speak of the fre^ movement of the piston-rod in the perfectly made engine, and know of course that its freedom is proportioned to its perfect adjustment. The least lack of adjustment will heat it with friction and hold it stiff and unmanageable. There is bothing free in the sense of being unrestrained in a world of innu- merable forces, and each force moves at its best when best adjusted to the forces about it. Spiritual things are not wholly comparable with material things and political liberty is a thing of the spirits of men; but we speak of friction in things that affect our spirits, and do not feel that it is altogether a figure of speech. It is not forcing analogies, therefore, to say that that is the freest government in which there is the least friction between the power of the govern- ment and the privilege of the individual. The adjustment may vary from generation to generation, but the principle never can. A constitutional government, being an instrumentality for the maintenance of liberty, is an instrumentality for the maintenance of a right adjustment, and must have a machinery of constant adap- tation.* • Constitutional Government of the United States, p. 4-7. 34 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Application to Mexico. Its first application to practical aflairs after he became president was in dealings with Mexico. His guiding motive is expressed in his address to Congress August, 1913, after a year and a half of annoy- ances, during which time the people of Mexico in a state of revolution had insulted the American flag, destroyed mil- lions of American and foreign investments as well as many hves of American citizens. In the face of all this and of attacks by men like Mr. Roosevelt who urged action. Presi- dent Wilson construed the right of self-determination as follows: Wliat is it our duty to'do? Clearly everything that we do must be rooted in patience and done with calm and disinterested deliber- ation. Impatience on our part would be childish and would be fraught with every risk of wrong and folly. . . . We can aflFord to exercise the self-restraint of a really great nation which realizes its own strength, and scorns to misuse it. It is our duty to show what true neutrality will do, to enable the people of Mexico to set their a£Pairs in order again and await the further opportunity to oflFer our friendly counsels. What was the practical result of this interpretation and the support given to President Wilson's Mexican policy is best told by ex-President Eliot of Harvard: To President Wilson's administration the country gives its thorough committal to two policies which concern its righteousness and its dignity. The first of these policies is — no war with Mex- ico. The second is — no intervention by force of arms to protect on foreign soil American commercial and manufacturing adventur- ers who of their own free will have invested their money or risked their lives under alien jurisdiction. America has now turned her back on the sinister policy of Rome and Great Britain of protecting or avenging their wandering citi- zens by force of arms and has set up quite a different policy of her own.' * Atlantic Monthly, October, 1916. roEALS OF DEMOCRACY 35 Liberty and the World War. Then came the Great War. Here again the doctrine of political freedom and equality — the right of self-determination — stood out clearly, as it had been interpreted by Washington and Jefferson, warning the people of the dangers of "entangling aUiances," in the "Monroe Doctriue," in the utterances of President Cleve- land which threatened to precipitate war with Great Brit- ain over the Venezuela question, in the attitude taken by America with respect to Cuba. All these obiter dicta of the great high court of public opinion, passing judgment in cases of moment in the past, were before the President; and, unless there were new conditions requiring reversal, they all meant that America should remain neutral. Not only did they mean this to Mr. Wilson, but for a time the principle was so appHed by Mr. Roosevelt, and other men of prophetic vision. The difference was that Mr. Wilson continued to interpret the events of the War as calling for neutrality long after Mr. Roosevelt and his partisans urged war. And the people in the election of 1916 gave to the President a vote of confidence as their leader. Here again his interpretation was approved. As in the case of Mexico, he did not allow the German campaign of "f rightfulness" to cloud his vision. Demands were made for the use of the armed forces of the United States to resist attacks on American shipping; appeals came to him from the Allied nations for aid. The spiritual workings of public opinion, which resented cruelty and injustice in every form and wherever it might express itself, were manifest. But all these things did not distract his mind nor cause him to for- get that war is an easy thing to get into and a hard thing to get out of, and nothing would justify it except a conviction that it was a just cause. It did not blind him to the injus- tice which was the cause of unrest — the institutional ill- adjustments that were present before the War began, nor 36 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION cause him to lose sight of the fact that demands for readjust- ment would again be renewed and that they would have to be reckoned with after the War. The justice of the Allied cause was not the only thing which moved him. It was also the conviction, finally arrived at, that German success would give permanence to a pater- nalism premised on inequality and subservience. And hav- ing reached this conclusion, he had the vision to see that the same appeal which he had made when he went before the electors of New Jersey and later when he was a candidate for President, if made in an emergency such as this, would mobihze the manhood not alone of Americia, but of the world, align all the forces and control aU of the world opinion favorable to democracy first against Prussianism and then against special privilege and organized selfishness in every form — that the War furnished the occasion and the oppor- timity for impressing democracy on the ill-adjusted institu- tions of the world. The ideals of democracy applied to world politics. When President Wilson went before Congress April 2, 1917, he was in a position to ask that all of the human and material re- sources of the country be thrown into a world war for "Hb- erty" and "justice." His appeal was the more striking and convincing because he had withheld his sanction for war nearly three years after Belgium had been ovemm, while other nations were grappling in a fight to preserve the old balance of power — tmtil such a time as Ameripa became conscious that it was not a matter of "entangling alliances," but a matter of "her own principles and duty." During the three years from 1914 to 1917, hundreds of American lives wfere ruthlessly taken on the high seas in violation not alone of international law but of specific agree- ments. Hired agents of the Imperial Grerman Government had been employed to stir up sedition and violence in our roEALS OF DEMOCRACY 37 midst. Other governments had been besought to make war on us. Still the President urged neutrality. It was not imtil in his opinion the whole people were ready to accept the con- clusion that we owed it to ourselves as well as to mankind to go into the struggle that Congress was asked to declare war. All through the period from 1914- to 1917, President Wil- son took the part not of commander-in-chief of a nation in arms, but of high priest. He preached "justice"; he preached "liberty"; he preached "humanity." He refused to be moved by the gibes of hostile opposition or the solici- tations and criticisms that came to him from nations in arms. Throughout these years of trial he was moved only by the profound determination that nothing less than a great cause, and that the cause of democracy, should lead this nation into war. Explaining his action or inaction, as it was called, to the Daughters of the American Revolution, he said: We are interested in the United States, politically speaking, in nothing but human liberty. ... I ask you to rally to the cause which is dearer in my estimation than any other cause. . . . We should ultimately wish to be justified by oiu* own conscience and by the standards of our own national lives. At Arlington Cemetery, May 31, he said to the Veterans of the American Civil War: Let us go away from this place renewed in our devotion to daily duty and to those ideals that keep a nation young, keep it noble, keep it rich in enterprise and achievement; make it to lead the world in those things that make for hope and the benefit of mankind. On Flag Day, in June, he elaborated this theme: We are trustees for what I venture to say is thegreatest heritage that any nation ever had, the love of justice and righteousness and hiunan liberty. On September 28 of that year, to the Grand Army of the Republic, he expressed the hope that 38 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION we shall never| forget that we created this nation not to serve ourselves but to serve mankind. In October, in his Thanksgiving Proclamation, he voices the same thought: America has a great cause which is not confined to the American continent; it is the cause of humanity itself. Throughout 1916 and the campaign for reelection, in the face of foreign criticism and partisan impeachment, with the public prints full of distortions of detached statements, such as "too proud to fight," he carried forward the preach- ment of America's duty to stand for principles of permanent peace as found in concepts of justice and liberty. It was not till after the election had been won, in fact a month after his second inaugural, that President Wilson became convinced, through the act of the Imperial German Gov- ernment in renewing its campaign of "f rightfulness" on the high seas without regard for recognized international rights or newly made promises, that the national policy of "neutrality was no longer possible or desirable." It was not until then that he was convinced that the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its people and the menace to that peace and freedom lies in the existence of autocratic governments backed by organized force which is con- trolled wholly by their will and not by the will of the people. Therefore, his message to Congress asking that steps be taken to throw the full weight of the resoiu-ces of the American people into the fight for liberty, to do their full duty in the struggle, the purpose of which would be to set up among the really free and self-governed people of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth guarantee the observance of those principles which make for peace and justice — ■ enforce on rulers the same standards of conduct and responsibility for wrong done ... as are observed among the individuals of civilized states. roEALS OF DEMOCRACY 39 Liberty, the right of self-determination and self-expres- sion, interpreted according to standards of right and wrong established and vouchsafed by a "partnership of democratic nations ... a league of honor, a partnership of opinion" was the reason given for accepting the "gage of battle with this natural foe of liberty." We are glad now that we see the facts with no veil of false pre- tense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate peace of the world and for the liberation of its peoples, the German peoples included: for the rights of nations, great and small, and the privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obedience. . . . We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no domiuion; we seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely ipake. The spirit of democracy that was manifest at the time that the Nation was asked to go into the War is perhaps best exemplified in the concludiag paragraphs of the message: It is a distressing and oppressive duty. Gentlemen of the Congress, which I have performed in thus addressing you. There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and Uberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, every- thing that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privileged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. And his interpretation of democracy, his application of 40 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRtJCTION prindples to the questions at issue at the time that war was declared, have been fully approved, not alone by American public opinion, but no less by the common people every- where. In the midst of the clamor and confusion of inter- national conflict, when the forces of Prussian militarism were in their ascendancy. President Wilson's voice rang out like the voice of Sheridan as he rode into the confusion of retreat at Winchester. From that day forward every flag which went before the Allies into battle was a symbol of Liberty. Millions of men came forward with the zeal of crusaders. It was his interpretation and his appeal which made possible the coming together of independent political leaders; made possible the organization of an international cabinet; and put all of the Aflied armies under the military leadership of General Foch. It was this that supplied the spiritual unity upon which rested central executive direction and control — in the absence of which German generals had gained their victories. The best evidence which we have of the grip the passion for Uberty and democracy has on the world is found in the prompt recognition accorded to President Wilson as inter^ national leader. Mr. Wells, England's leading apostle of democracy, m those much-read essays pubUshed under the title "In the Fourth Year," spoke not alone his own mind nor yet the minds of an inconsequential group of extremists, ■w^hen he said, "Among the other politicians and statesmen of the world. President Wilson towers up with an effect almost divine." The judgment of mankind. One cannot read the history of the period leading up to America's declaration of war without being profoundly impressed by the high regard which President Wilson had for the common opinions of men as to what is right and just when a cause is fairly pre- sented. He viewed his responsibilities as of one who is looked roEALS OF DEMOCRACY 41 to and trusted as a leader — made difficult to discharge because in our country, we had no procedure developed for having issues defined and discussed before the country is conunitted to a policy which gravely affects the welfare of all. "The closed doors of the White House" may not be ex- plained on any theory of indifference. When President Wil- son entered upon his high office, it was with this declaration : We know our task to be no mere task of iJolitics, but a task which shall search us through and through, whether we are able to under- stand our time and the need of our people, whether we be indeed their spokesmen and interpreters, whether we have the pure heart to comprehend and the rectified will to choose our high course of action. This is not a day of triiqnph; it is a day of dedication. Here muster not the forces of party, but the forces of humanity. Men's hearts wait upon us; men's lives hang in the balance; men's hopes call upon us to say what we will do. ... I summon all honest men, all patriotic, all forward-looking men everywhere to my side. God helping me I will not fail them, if they will but counsel and sustain me. Much has been said about President Wilson's habit of seclusion. One of his commentators gives us this view: He knows that most men reach conclusions on superficial judgment and without giving due weight to the facts; there- fore, his appeal on all important issues to the country at large; therefore, his policy of watchful waiting. Or as Mr. Low puts it, the standard for judgment which he has set up for himself is the standard set up by Cicero: What would history be saying of me six hundred years hence? And that is a thing I fear much more than the petty gossip of those who are alive to-day. It is because he is willing to play for the verdict of history that Mr. Wilson thinks, in the words of his own speeches, "it is service that dignifies, and service only"; that the kings of men are those who have won their elevation to the throne "by thinking for their fellow men in terms of humanity and unselfishness." 42 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION That President Wilson understood fully his responsibility as leader and the importance of having his advice to Con- gress premised of rightness of judgment appears not alone in the events of the years leading up to his address of April 2, 1917, but in every subsequent act and appeal. His statement before the Peace Congress at Paris has this vision: We stand in a peculiar cause. As I go about the street here, 1 see everywhere the American uniform. Those men who came into the war after we had uttered our purpose, they came as crusaders, not merely to win a war but to win a cause, and I am responsible for them, for it all fell on me to formulate the purpose for which I asked them to fight. And I, like them, must be a crusader. Such a fulsome appraisal as is given by Mr. Wells we were not inclined to accept. For here, at every turn, we are enjoined by partisan opponents to "beware"; at the clubs, among groups of men wherever they congregate, we have brought to our ears mutterings of distrust, which commonly go with partisanship. These early encomiums, therefore, were not so seriously taken among President Wilson's own people, and they might have been dismissed altogether as the emotional outburst of extremists were it not for the fact that the events of the two years which fol- lowed, each month more firmly convinced the world that Mr. Wells's view of the outstanding quality of his leadership was justified. Not alone did President Wilson's interpre- tation come to be accepted and his position as the spokes- man for world democracy come to be recognized by "the masses"; confirmation is given by the most critical and thoughtful of men. Sober-minded judgment is expressed in public forums; in the editorial and periodical press as well as in the confiding faith of not less than a thousand miUion of the "common people," including the people of Germany and Austria as well as those of France, Italy, England, and other countries who placed themselves in alliance against the Central Powers. EDEALS OF DEMOCRACY 43 In all this, we are not interested in President Wilson as an individual. The pages of history as they are written around him, if true, must regard him as the product, not the authorj of democracy. Nor would his interpretation of the ideals of democracy interest us except for the fact that by consent they have become the ideals of the world. He is acting only as spokesman and leader. The significant fact is that when nations applaud they show enthusiasm for a cause. When official bodies pass laws and ordinances, renaming mountain peaks, or erect statues and tablets, these are the expressions of a grateful humanity under stress and siifiFeringfor the success of a cause. When observers ascribe to President Wilson "power to dissolve foreign min- istries and overturn governments," or partisans refer to him as "the greatest autocrat the world has ever known," they are not speaking of President Wilson. They are speaking of the power of public opinion — and of the essential value of leadership as a means of giving expression to that opinion. The acceptance accorded to the views of President Wil- son, interpretive of the ideals of democracy in practical application to the problems of readjustment which were before us before the War and by the upsetting circiunstances of the War itself, suggest that the following excerpt from his writings on subjects of immediate concern as well as the practical outworking of institutions in response to demo- cratic impulse as described in the pages which foUow, may be of value as standards for judgment. Democracy to be realized must work through institutions adapted to its purposes. President Wilson gives little time to telling what democracy is, and to discussing ideals, simply as moral or social philosophy. His whole interest is in the practical means designed for its outworkings. "It is easy," says he, "to speak of right and justice; it is something dif- ferent to work them out in practice. Justice, liberty and 44 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION equality are to be realized only through institutional means. This conviction eliminates all these 'isms' which assume contrary premises." Government as an organ of society. Society is the organ- ism, government the organ. This, then, is the sum of the whole matter: the end of govern- ment is the facilitation of the objects of society, the rule of govern- mental action is necessary cooperation.^ Government, as I have said, is the organ of society, its only potent and universal instrument: its objects must be the objects of society. What, then, are the objects of society? What is society? It is an organic association of individuals for mutual aid. Mutual aid to what? To self -development. The hope of society lies in an infinite individual variety, in the freest possible play of individual forces : only in that can it find that wealth of resource which consti- tutes civilization, with all its appliances for satisfying human wants and mitigating human sufferings, all its incitements to thought and spurs to action. It should be the end of government to assist in accomplishing the objects of organized society.^ Limits of State action. Self -development means exercise; individual activity; the fullest range and opportunity for the development of individual abihties. This is to the interest of society as well as the individual. Therefore lie govern- mental institution must not impair, but promote initiative. That there are natural and imperative limits to state action no one who seriously studies the structure of society can doubt. The limit of state functions is the limit of necessary cooperation on the part of society as a whole, the limit beyond which such combina- tion ceases to be imperative for the public good Cooperation is necessary in the sense here intended when it is indispensable to the equalization of conditions of endeavor, indispensable to the maintenance of uniform rules of individual rights and relationships, indispensable because to omit it would inevitably be to hamper or degrade some for the advancement of others in the scale of wealth and social standing. There are relations in which men invariably have need of each '^ The State, 1536. \IMd.,153,Z. roEALS OF DEMOCRACY 46 other, in which universal coBperation is the indispensable condition of even tolerable existence. Only some imiversal authority can make opportunities equal as between man and man. . . .» The point at which public combination ceases to be imperative is not susceptible of clear indication in general terms; but is not on that account indistinct.^ Change through conservative adaptation. Whatever may be the attitude of the individual with respect to the status quo, whether in the attitude of protest or of defense, this fact is to be carried in mind, that institutional change if it is to be achieved by peaceful means must come about slowly. "The method of poUtical development is conservative adap- tation, shaping old habits to accomplish new ends."^ Whatever view be taken in each particular case of the rightful- ness or advisability of State regulation and control, one rule there is which may not be departed from under any circumstances, and that is the rule ot historic continuity. In politics nothing radically novel may safely be attempted. No result of value can ever be reached in politics except through slow and gradual development, the careful adaptations and nice modifications of growth. Noth- ing may be done by leaps. More than that, each people, each na- tion, must live upon the lines of its own experience. Nations are no more capable of borrowing experience than individuals are. The histories of other peoples may furnish us with light, but they cannot furnish us with conditions of action. Every nation must con- stantly keep in touch with its past; it cannot run toward its ends around sharp comers.* The most absolute monarchs have had to learn the moods, ob- serve the traditions, and respect the prejudices of their subjects; the most ardent reformers have had to learn that too far to outrun the more sluggish masses was to render themselves powerless. Revolution has always been followed by reaction, by a return to even less than normal speed of political movement. Political growth refuses to be forced; and institutions have grown with the slow growth of social relationships; have changed in response, not to new theories, but to new circumstances.' 1 The State. 1529. ^ Ibid.. 1531. ' Ibid., 1536. « im.. 1535. ' Ibid.. 1352. 46 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Socialism and laissez faire. On the one hand there are extremists who cry out constantly to governments, "Hands off," "Laissez 'faire," "Laissez passer," who look upon every act of government which is not merely an act of pwlicywith jealousy; who regard government as necessary, but as a necessary evil; and who would have government hold back from everything which could by any possibility be accomplished by individual initiative and endeavor. On the other hand, there are those who, with equal extremeness of view in the opposite direction, would have society lean fondly upon government for guidance and assistance in every affair of life. . . . Between these two extremes, again, there are all grades, all shades and colors, all degrees of enmity or of partiality to state action.' Stateism. — The development of new organs of public ser- vice. It by no means follows . . . that because the State may un- wisely interfere in the life of the individual, it must be pronounced in itself and by nature a necessary evil. It is no more an evil than society itself. It is the organic body of society; without it society could be hardly more than a mere abstraction. If the name had not been restricted to a single, narrow, extreme, and radically mis- taken class of thinkers, we ought all to regard ourselves and to act as socialists, believers in the wholesomeness and beneficence of the body politic. If the history of society proves anything, it proves the absolute naturalness of government, its rootage in the nature of man, its origin in kinship, and its identification with all that makes man superior to the brute creation. Individually man is but poorly equipped to dominate other animals; his lordship comes by combination, his strength is concerted strength, his sovereignty is the sovereignty of union. . . . Every means, therefore, by which society may be perfected through the instrumentality of government, every means by which individual rights can be fitly adjusted and harmonized with public duties, by which individual self-development may be made at once to serve and to supplement social development, ought certainly to be diligently sought, and, when found, sedulously fostered by every friend of society. Such is the socialism to which every true lover of his kind ought to adhere with the full grip of every noble affec- tion that is in him. It is possible, indeed, to understand, and even in a measure to » The State, 1515. roEALS OF DEMOCRACY 47 sympathize with the enthusiasm of these special classes of agitator^ whom we have dubbed with the too great name "Socialists." The schemes of social reform and regeneration which they support with so much ardor, however mistaken they may be — and surely most of them are mistaken enough to provoke the laughter of children — have the right end in view; they seek to bring the individual and his special interests, personal to himself, into complete harmony with society with its general interests common to all. Their methods are always some sort of coSperation, meant to perfect mutual helpful- ness. They speak, too, a revolt from selfish misguided individual- ism; and certainly modem individualism has much about it that is hateful, too hatful to last. The modem industrial organization has so distorted competition as sometimes to put it into the power of some to tyrannize over many, as to enable the rich and the strong to combine against the poor and the weak. It has given a woeful material meaning to that spiritual law that "to him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not shall be taken away even the little that he seemeth to have." It has magnified that self-inter- est which is grasping selfishness and has thrust out love and com- passion, not only, but free competition in part as well. . . . Aiid there is a middle ground. The schemes which Socialists have proposed society cannot accept and live; no scheme which involves the complete control of the individual by government can be devised which differs from theirs very much for the better. A truer doctrine must be found, which gives wide freedom to the individual for his self-development and yet guards that freedom against the competiticm that kills, and reduces the antagonism between self-development and social development to a minimum. And such a doctrine can be formulated sxirely, without too great vagueness.* > The State, 1619-21. m THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY W. W. WILLOUGHBY The term "democracy" has a social as well as a political comiotation — a fact that, in the years immediately to come, is very likely to be impressed upon the minds of all those who concern themselves with matters of public inter- est. It is, however, especially with its political implications that democracy will be discussed in this chapter. The general welfare. The fundamental nature and ethi- cal justification of a human institution are determined rather by the ends which it seeks to realize than by its out- ward form of organization or by the administrative methods employed for its operation. Certainly this is true of States or their govermnents if all divine or other mystical concep- tions regarding them are put away, and they are viewed simply as hiunanly created and operated agencies for satis- fi^ng certain recognized needs of men. Thus regarded, a gov- ernment is good or bad, irrespecti^^e of its form, according to the ends which it seeks to attain; it is efficient or not accord- ing to the methods it employs in seeking to attain them. Democracy starts with the premise that the sole end for which political rule may be justly established and main- tained is the welfare of all the people over whom its authority extends. This proposition carries with it the denial that there are any individuals or classes of individuals who, by heredity or any other inherent attribute, may claim special rights to rulership or to the exercise of the suffrage or other privileges of so-called active citizenship. As thus viewed solely in its "final" or purposive aspect. THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY 49 democracy is not wedded to any particular form of political machinery, for it is clearly possible that a monarchically organized government — even one of the autocratic or abso- lutist type — may be so administered as to seek with single purpose the welfare of the governed. However this may be, as a matter of theoretical possibil- ity, as a practical proposition, all persons except those who ascribe a mystical and superhuman character to the State or recognize a divine right of rulership inhering in certain individuals or certain families, are now agreed that no suflS- cient security is offered that the welfare of the whole people will be consistently, disinterestedlyj and intelligently sought unless the rulers derive their right to rule from the freely expressed will of the governed and can maintain themselves in ofl5ce only so long as they are supported by such popular approval. Consent of the governed. Thus we reach the second pos- tulate of democracy, that, as stated in the American Decla- ration of Independence, governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." This statement, thus incorporated as a premise in Amer- ican political philosophy, is quite generally regarded as an absolute ethical principle. In fact, however, it is not, and the attempt so to view it at once leads to logical difficulties when the suffrage or other rights of active citizenship are denied, as, in practice, they must be, to certain classes of persons — to minors, for example — or even to whole com- mimities, as, for example, certain of the tribes of the Philip- pine Islands. In other words, the doctrine of the "consent of the governed" can properly be regarded as an absolute ethical principle only to the extent of holding that no purely arbitrary political disqualifications, no disqualifications not defensible upon enlightened utilitarian groimds, shall be im- posed upon citizens or groups of individuals. 50 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION To some it may seem unfortunate that the absolute right of individuals to participate actively in their ovm govern- ment should be thus surrendered. In fact, however, by making this concession we are able to furnish grounds for the maintenance of popular political institutions which appeal more directly to the reason of men than if we have to sup- port them upon abstract propositions which, though as- serted as absolute and therefore general in application, we are in practice, as a matter of imperative expediency, com- pelled to disregard. Popular government. The term "popular government" does not describe a particular form of government, but one, whatever its structure, that exhibits a certain quality — that those who hold the reins of political power are con- strained to direct their coiurse according to the will of those whom they govern. Thus govermnents, without regard to their outward forms of organization, vary among them- selves according to the extent to which those in authority are amenable to the control of public opinion, and the same government, without constitutional change, may, in prac- tice, deserve, in differing degree, the right to be described as popular in character. It is not practicable, even if it would be appropriate, to do more in this chapter than to indicate the grounds upon which popular government is to be preferred to autocratic political control. As revealed by experience as well as by fair deduction from what may be expected from the average of human intelligence and disposition, it appears certain to the supporters of popular government that when the general wishes of the governed are allowed to control public poli- cies, there is offered the best possible guarantee that the true interests of the governed will be made known and be sought by those in authority. It is, however, seldom if ever claimed that a popularly controlled government may be THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OP DEMOCRACY 51 expected to provide a more efficient, or, indeed, as efficient^ an execution of public policies as can be, or ordinarily is* furnished by more autocratically controlled systems. These further and incidental advantages are, however, claimed for popular government: that the giving to the people a control of their own political affairs increases their patriotism, stimu- lates their imagination, quickens their interest in matters of general concern, trains them in the exercise of self- restraint and devotion to other than purely selfish interests, and thus exerts an educative influence which in time will produce an administration of public affairs not only more intelligent as regards the policies that are adopted, but more efficient as regards their execution than, at its best, an auto- cratic government can be expected to supply. Even before this consummation is reached, a popular government is therefore to be preferred to an autocratic one because of its idealism and the intellectually and ethically stimulating influence which its maintenance exerts. Agencies for the fonnulation and utterance of a popular will. It is clear from what has been already said that a popular government is feasible only if, arid to the extent to which, the governed are able to form and give authentic expression to a general or collective will with regard to matters of public interest and therefore with regard to the policies which their government is to adopt as its own. If the will thus formulated and expressed is to be an intelligent one, means must be provided whereby the people generally may obtain a knowledge of the necessary political facts and a training of their political judgment so that they may draw from them the proper conclusions. The creation of an intelligent public opinion is a matter of great diflaculty. For bringing it into existence the schools and colleges, the press, the scientific associations, the churches, and all kinds of political party organizations mus^ 52 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION cooperate. And in this connection it is to be noted that, in order that popular government may yield satisfactory re- sults, it is necessary that a public opinion should be an ethically enlightened as well as an academically intelligent one. The experience of nearly all countries has demon- strated that, unhappily, scholastic or technical education has not inherent in it the quality of creating good citizen- ship; that popularly controlled governments are nearly, if not quite, as subject to the demoralizing influences of corrupt and self-seeking action upon the part of those in authority as are the more autocratic forms of rule. Political morality, as well as intellectual enlightenment, must therefore be pro- moted if popular government is tc be a success. So much for formulation of an educated and well-disposed public will. In order that this will may find authentic expression it is necessary that freedom of speech, of writing, and of pubHsh- ing shall exist; that voluntary associations may be freely formed and allowed to express the corporate or collective will of their members; that at sufiBiciently frequent intervals the people be permitted at the polls freely to select represent- atives to speak for them, and that, when feasible, the peo- ple be given the opportunity to pass direct judgment not simply upon the policies of particular political parties, but upon specific public policies. Constitutional government. Closely allied to the prob- lem of securing government that is obedient to the general will of the governed is the establishment of definite princi- ples of constitutional law the purpose of which is to provide that those in public authority shall exercise then" official powers within the limits and according to methods previ- ously determined. Any government that thus operates according to estab- lished law is a constitutional one even though these limita- tions upon the State's functionaries, including the executive THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY 53 head or monarch, are, in whole or in part, set by that nJer and subject to amendment or abrogation by him. Where, however, as in the United States, the exercise of all political power is conceived to rest upon the consent of the governed, the correlative constitutional principle is adopted that the fountain and source of all legal authority is in the people themselves, or at least in those persons to whom the active rights of citizenship have been given. This means that no public ofloicial, high or low, can rightfully exercise any authority save that which has been given to him by a law sanctioned by the people, either directly in constitutional grant, or in enactments of their chosen representatives. The United States Supreme Court has stated this principle of American public law in these words: "No man in this coun- try is so high that he is above the law. All the officers of the Government, from the highest to the lowest, are crea- tures of that law and are bound to obey it." One of the oldest of our State Constitutions, that of Massa- chusetts of 1780, states this doctrine as follows:'" All power residing originally in the people, and being derived from them, the several magistrates and officers of government are their substitutes and agents, and are at all times ac- countable to them." In the famous Bill of Rights pre- fixed to the Constitution of Virginia, adopted in 1776, the doctrine receives still more terse statement in the words: "That all power is vested in and consequently derived from the people; that magistrates are thus trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them." And as the Federal Con- stitution in its first sentence declares: "We the People of the United States ... do ordain and establish this Constitution." Political and legal responsibility of public officials. From what has already been said it appears that the problem of maintaining a government under which there is a reasonable guarantee that the policies pursued will be such as are ap- 64 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION proved by the governed, it is necessary that those who are in public authority shall be subject to both political and legal control. This political control is of course exercised by the people at the polls, through the pressure of public opinion, and, in extreme cases, by removal from office as a restilt of impeachment proceedings or, in some jurisdictions, by what is known as the "recall." The legal responsibility of public officials is made eflfective by judicial proceedings, criminal as well as civil, whereby ultra-vires acts are held void and their execution stopped, or, if executed, criminal and civil damage imposed upon those officials responsible for them. Written constitutions. Besides being a government for the people, and, directly or indirectly, a government by the people, a further fimdamental principle of American politi- cal life is that the forms and powers of government are found in written instruments of government. These fundamental documents are framed and put into force only by methods calculated to obtain the people's consent to them in a more solemn manner than is the case with ordinary laws. They may not be altered except by consent of the people, given according to the special procedures which they themselves prescribe. Inasmuch as these written constitutions furnish the legal source and fix the legal limits of governmental powers, leg- islative as well as judicial and executive, it is usual to speak of them as furnishing a higher and more fundamental law than the ordinary legislative body is able to provide. In other words, an act of the legislature, if contrary to, or not supported by, a provision of the Constitution, is held void by the courts, and its enforcement refused. This fimdamental principle of American constitutional law has received uniform application since it was first stated in 1803 by the great Chief Justice John Marshall. "Cer- THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OP DEMOCRACY B5 taiilly," he said, "all those who have framed written con- stitutions contemplate them as forming the fmidamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently, the theory of every such government must be that an act of the legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void." In striking contrast to this doctrine is the principle ap- pUed in nearly aU the other States of the world, that written constitutional provisions, though clothed with a specicl moral force, are not efficient to overcome contrary or incon- sistent declarations of the legislative body. Reserved rights of individuals. Closely allied to the con- stitutional principle discussed in the preceding section is the doctrine, emphasized in American law, that the legal powers of government expressed in the Constitution should not be permitted to extend to all matters of possible public control, but that from their operation certain private rights of the individual with reference to his life, liberty, and the possession and use of his property are excepted. In the en- joyment of these rights he is entitled to protection by the Government, not only against possible infringement by other individuals, but against undue infringement by the Government itself. These reserved rights are thus secured to the individual, not only by the rule enforced by the courts that no organ of Government may exercise a power not granted to it by the Constitution under which it operates, but by the fact that these rights are specifically enumerated in the Constitution and expressly withdrawn from governmental control. It is true that the people themselves, if they see fit, may amend their written constitutions so as to bring certain or all of these rights within the control of laws which the legislature may enact, but until they do so, these rights are guaranteed against governmental abridgment or abrogation. Our fundamental law provides that the individual shall 66 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION not be deprived of life, liberty, or property, no matter bow proper the procedure followed, if the law authorizing it is not founded in equity and good conscience, or is not in con- formity with those principles of reason and justice which, through hundreds of years of judicial selection, have become embodied in what is known as the Common Law, and which furnishes the basis for the private law which American coiu^ apply. That these principles of justice as they are enmnerated in our National and State Constitutions are deemed to be in- herently just, is shown by the fact that though constitu- tionally not obliged to do so, the American Government has extended their application to the peoples of the depend- encies of Porto Rico and the Philippine Islands. Legal eqtxalily. A further fundamental principle of our American political life is the equality of all individuals be- fore the law. This means that no arbitrary distinctions are drawn between individuals or classes of individuals. All are equally entitled to those rights which the law recognizes, and are held equally responsible for the acts which they com- mit. This, of coiu-se, does not mean that laws are not enacted which apply to particular classes of persons; but the classifications thus created must, under American con- stitutional law, be based upon actual facts which render them reasonable. Thus, under American law there are no special laws or judicial tribunals whose jiuisdictions are based upon dis- tinctions of birth, or race, or color, or wealth, or occupation, or education, or any other arbitrarily created status. This fimdamental American doctrine of equality before the law is one which rests upon a conception of the inherent moral worth and dignity of the individual. It also implies an essential equaUty in moral status of all the members of the human race. THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY 57 Democracy. By the foregoing logical steps' we are finally in a position to define the term "democracy" and place it in its due relation to popular and constitutional govern- ment. The terms "democrat^" and "popular govern- ment" are often loosely used as synonymous. They need, however, to be distinguished. As has been already pointed out, a government is "popular" to the extent that its opera- tions are controlled by the general will of the governed, and that in order that this quality may be exhibited it is not necessary that a government should be of any given type of organization: thus, in outward form it may be a monarchy as in Great Britain, or a republic as in France or Switzer- land or the United States. A democratic government, or, to use the shorter term, a democracy, is, however, a special type of government, although here, too, the democratic ele- ment may be exhibited in vaiying degrees, although, as will presently appear, it must be present to a certain extent before the government can properly be described as demo- cratic in character. The term "popular," when applied to government, has reference to the will which controls its operations. The term "democratic," when similarly appUed, has reference to the chief means by which assurance is obtained that a government will be guided by the popular will, namely, by admitting the people, or at least a considerable number of them, to a direct participation in the operation of their own government. To just what extent it is practicable to democ- ratize a government depends upon the intellectual enlight- enment and moral disposition of the governed, and by the technical difficulties involved in the performance of the tasks which the Government imdertakes to perform. These difficulties relate not only to the determination of the poli- cies which are to be adopted, but to the administrative problem of securing their efficient execution. And it does 68 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION not need to be said that in both these respects the difficul- ties tend to increase with the increase in territorial size and population of a State and with the assumption by the Government of administrative duties which involve special knowledge and technical training upon the part of those who are to determine and execute the policies concerning them. It is possible to meet in large measure the difficulties raised by size of territory and population by adopting a sys- tem under which large discretionary powers and autonomous administrative authority are given to local self-governing bodies, as, for example, are given in the United States to the States of the Union and by them to their local subdivisions; or by establishing a highly integrated administrative sys- tem, as in France, in which the directing authority is cen- tralized and effectively exerted, but the actual execution of much of the work of the Government is placed in the hands of local officials. Democracy and the activities of government. The accept- ance of the democratic theory of government carries with it no conclusion as to the specific matters that shall be brought under public control. It does carry with it, how- ever, the proposition that no hard-and-fast arbitrary line can be drawn between those functions the performance of which the Government may legitimately undertake and those which it may not. The fundamental democratic prmciple being adopted that governments exist for the wel- fare of the governed, it results that expediency alone should dictate whether a given enterprise should be undertaken by the Government. The decision should turn upon the point whether, as a practical administrative problem, the Govern- ment is or may be so organized that it can perform the task in a manner better than that in which it will be performed if left to private initiative and control. Distinction between policy-forming and policy-executing THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY 59 functions of government. It is possible to overcome in con- siderable measure the difficulties involved in the perform- ance by the Government of tasks involving technical knowl- edge and training by carefully distinguishing between what Dr. Goodnow, in his volume entitled Politics and Admin- istration, terms the policy-forming and the policy-execut- ing functions of the Government, and vesting these latter in the hands of a body of officials, properly recruited, prop- erly supervised, with assured salaries and permanency of tenure, and thus removed from the distm-bing influence of partisan politics. The establishment of such a civil service — call it a bureaucracy if one will — is not opposed to the principles of either popular or democratic government, for the essential element in a government by the people is that the popular will shall be controlling upon the will of the Government — a will that finds expression in the policies that are adopted and not in the details of the manner in which they are executed. Democratic government means, then, that the people directly, or indirectly, through their freely chosen represent- atives shall determine the public policies that are to be pursued. This means, first of all, that they shall have the opportunity either to issue direct mandates or to select representatives to speak for them. These representatives, thus popularly appointed, should include not only the mem- bers of what is known as the legislative chambers, but all those executive ftmctionaries to whom are granted such wide ordinance-making or other discretionary powers that they are able, to an appreciable extent, to influence the policies of the Government. Democratic government does not include, as of necessity, that the electorate should select the great body of administrative officials who have no other duty than to execute the public policies which the 60 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION true policy-forming authorities decide upon; nor does it include the right, or rather privilege, of selecting or other- wise controlling judicial oflBcials whose function, by its very nature, is limited to the interpretation and application of existing laws without regard to the wisdom of the policies embodied in them. Separation of powers. In all constitutional States it has been found expedient to distinguish between the enactment of laws, their execution, and their interpretation and appli- cation when dispute arises as to their meaning and applica- tion to specific conditions of fact, and, to a very considerable extent at least, to place the performance of these fimctions in different organs of government. Their absolute separa- tion is, however, neither possible nor desirable. Certainly this is true as regards executive and legislative functions, and to the extent to which this separation is effected, it is necessary that constitutional means be provided, or prac- tices be developed, which wiU make possible an intimate and cordial cooperation between the organs which exercise these two functions. Space does not permit an elaboration of this point, but it may be pointed out that the central factor of efficiency in the British parliamentary system is the successful way in which this cooperation has been achieved, and that in the United States, the system of separation of powers would have proved unworkable had not political party organiza- tions and activities been able to bring about at least a cer- tain amount of harmony and cooperation between these two brianches of goverimient which both in the States and in the Federal Government the constitutional fathers sought to keep almost wholly independent. Representative govenunent. In the smallest of demo- cratic States it is necessary that the actual exercise of execu- tive powers should be placed in the hands of a small number THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY 61 of people. In all but the very smallest it is also necessary that the people should abandon the attempt to exercise laW' making powers in a direct or immediate manner. Instead it has been necessary to vest the electoral power in the hands of persons possessing certain qualifications of age, sex, education, or property, who are granted the power to elect a comparatively few persons who, sitting together as a legis- lature, are presumed to represent not simply the persons who have elected them, but the whole body of citizens viewed as a single unit. That there is, in practice, a fictitious element in this assmnption there can be no doubt, for it will be observed, in the first place, that in almost all cases a majority vote is taken as the act of the whole; in the second place, that the members themselves are elected by majority votes and as the nofainees of the political parties into which the electo- rate is divided; and, in the third place, that the electorate iD no case includes more than a fraction of the entire citizen body. Even where manhood suffrage exists, it includes hardly more than twenty per cent, and in most cases a con~ siderable number of those entitled to vote do not, for some reason or other, exercise their right. Nevertheless this is as near to the realization of true democratic government aa it is practicable for any but a very small State, such, for example, as some of the diminutive cantons of Switzerland, to approach. However, as the earlier paragraphs of this paper have shown, no real violence is done to the demo- cratic philosophy of govermnent if the suffrage is as widely extended as the intelligence and disposition of the people make reasonably expedient, if no one is denied political rights upon arbitrary grounds, and if those who exercise political power, whether as voters or holders of office, do honestly and disinterestedly seek the best interests of the whole body of the governed. 82 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Functions of representative chambers. The popularly elected representative body is ordinarily spoken of as the legislative branch of the government and its chief function conceived to be that of law-making. In truth, however, this is not the case, and the failure to recognize this fact has been prolific not only in false pohtical reasoning, but in unfortunate political practices. In 1861 John Stuart Mill published a treatise on Repre- sentaHve Government which has come to be regarded as a classic. Chapter V of that work has for its title "Of the Proper Functions of Representative Bodies," and it is a re- markable fact that the conclusions which Mill there reaches as a matter of abstract reasoning have been approximated in fact at the present day by the Enghsh ParUament. After pointing out that there is a radical distinction be- tween controlling the business of government and actually doing it, and that the latter is a task which no numerous assembly should attempt to perform. Mill says : " It is equally true, though only of late and slowly beginning to be acknowl- edged, that a niunerous assembly is as Uttle fitted for the direct business of legislation as for that of administration." "The proper duty of a representative assembly in regard to matters of administration," he says, "is not to decide them by its own vote, but to take care that the persons who have to decide them shall be the proper persons." And again he says, "Instead of the function for governing, which it is radically unfit for, the proi)er office of a representative assembly is to watch and control the Government; to throw the light of publicity on its acts; to compel a full exposition and Justification of all of them which any one considers ques- tionable; to censure them if found condemnable, and, if the men who compose the Government abuse their trust, or fulfill it in a manner which conflicts with the deliberate sense of the nation, to expel them from office, and either expressly THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY 63 or virtually appoint their successors. This," he contin- ues, "is surely ample power, and security enough for the liberty of the nation. In addition to this, the Parliament has an office, not inferior even to this in importance; to be at once the Nation's Committee of Governances and its Congress of Opinions; an arena in which not only the gen- eral opinion of the nation, but that of every section of it, and as far as possible of every eminent individual whom it contains, can produce itself in full light and challenge dis- cussion." And Mill concludes this remarkable chapter by saying: "Nothing but the restriction of the function of representative bodies within these rational limits will enable the benefits of popular control to be enjoyed in conjunction with the no less important requisites (growing ever more important as hiunan affairs increase in scale and in com- plexity) of skilled legislation and administration." That in England, the pioneer in free political institutions, and the "Mother of Parliaments," the progressive broaden- ing of the franchise and consequent increase in democratic control have been attended by a steady diminution in the part actively played by the people's representatives in the determination of public policies, is certainly a very signifi- cant fact, and warrants us in stopping to consider what are the proper functions of the elected chambers in a republican scheme of government. These functions have been already suggested in the quo- tation from Mill. They may, however, be recapitulated as follows: First of all, the representative assembly should function as an organ of public opinion. Secondly, it should act as a powerful and searching board of censors, compelling those in executive and administrative authority to account for the manner in which they have exercised the fiduciary powers entrusted to them, and. when 64 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION they are found remiss or incompetent or corrupt in the per- formance of their duties, visiting upon them the condemna- tion of their political superiors, the People, and, if necessary, holding them legally responsible, civilly and criminally, for their acts. Thirdly, it is the proper function of a representative assembly to educate and, directly or indirectly, to select those who are to exercise the administrative powers of gov- ernment. We all know how this is done, most effectively, under what is called the responsible or cabinet type of par- Eamentary govenmient. Under the presidential type, as it is found in the United States of America, this elective function is not ^o directly performed by the Congress as it is by the English Parliament, but by its investigations, and the reports which it requires to be made to it, and by its debates and other proceedings. Congress is able to bring executive acts before public opinion which is able to make its influence effectively felt at the next Presidential election. From what has been said it is not to be understood that a congress or parliament should play no important part in legislation. The only point here made is that its very mul- titudinous composition, and the inevitable fact, that most of its members will be without technical training, make it impossible that a large representative body should be com- petent, as an entire body, to do the constructive work of drafting the public policies which are to find authoritative expression in law. This work must be done by its leaders, and if, as under the cabinet system, these leaders can also be the ones who are to be held responsible for the carrying of these policies into effect, so much the better. Where this working cooperation of the executive and legislative is not thus secured, the political responsibility of the executive has to be enforced, as in the United States, through the influence of the political party system. But in any case THE UNDERLYING CONCEPTS OF DEMOCRACY 65 the representative body should be the body before which the proposed public poUcies must be submitted for criticism, amendment, or rejection. This is a function which a parlia- ment should never abdicate, but it is one which it should not abuse. In any country, and especially in one which is but beginning the practice of self-government, it is essential that the representatives of the people should be willing to give their confidence and support to those whom they have chosen as their leaders, and to these leaders authority should be given sufficient to enable them to exercise control over the administrative services. Executive power is not dan- gerous if to it is joined legal and political responsibiUty, For a legislature itself to attempt the direct exercise of adminis- trative control in matters of detail, or to refuse the guidance of those who have demonstrated their abihties as construc- tive statesmen and efficient executive chiefs, is to render certain a weak and unintelUgent conduct of public affairs. Conclusion. In conclusion this point is to be emphasized. A republican government is, after all, but a means to an end. It is a machinery for serving the public good. It, like all other forms of government, must be justified by its results. It contains no inherent force or energy which automatically or inevitably tends to bring about a good administration of public affaiis. Indeed, it is a form of government which, for its successful operation, requires a more active, intelli- gent, and disinterested cooperation of its citizens than is demanded by other types of political rule. It has the merit that there is a greater promise than exists under autocratic authority that the interests of the governed rather than those of the governing will be sought, and it furnishes agencies for the possible determination of what the people conceive to be for their own best welfare; but whether of the democratic or representative type, popular government provides no sure guarantees that those in authority will not 66 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION selfishly use their powers, nor does it make it any more certain that the poHcies which are adopted by the Govern- ment will be wisely chosen. And, in any event, it is as necessary under a repubUcan as under an autocratic regime that there should be established and maintained an efficient administrative machinery for carrying into effect the poli- cies which have been approved. To the legal obligations which attach to citizenship in any State, whatever its form of government, there are thus added moral obligations which increase in force as political rights are broadened. For the welfare of the country is thus vested not in the hands of a few men, but placed in charge of the people themselves. Upon their intelUgent judgment and disinterested action the decision rests whether or not the Nation shall be guided by the highest ideals of justice and humanity, and the actions of the Govenmient wisely conceived and efficiently executed. If, then, in any State, a repubUcan form of government is to be more than a mere form; if it is to receive substantive realization and be quick- ened by a living spirit of liberty and enlightenment, there must be something more than a mere aspiration of the people, something more than a general sentiment in favor of self-government. There must be a deliberately formed and continuously maintained determination of the people to make the necessary sacrifices, to exercise the necessary self- control, and to exert the necessary effort to obtain and exhibit that political intelligence without which there can be neither good government nor true patriotism. While the Civil War was in progress, in one of the greatest speeches ever made. President Lincoln said that the question was then in the balance whether a Nation dedicated to freedom could endure. That is a question which is never settled. It depends upon whether there is in the people the sustained resolve to preserve for themselves and their posterity the blessings of liberty. n INSTITUTIONS OF DEMOCRACY CarlKelset Projesaor of Sociology in the UniversUy of Pennsylvania Abthub James Todd Profeaaor cf Sociology, and Director cf the Training Course for Social and Cime Work, in the University of Minnesota Edwabd Cabt Hates Professor of Sociology in the University (ff Illinois W. F. WiLLOTJGHBT Director of the Institute for Qovemmeni Research rv DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY CARL KELSEY Wealth — Capital — Its creation, consmnption, and ex- change. Long before man appeared on earth and began his conquest of the world. Nature had stored away vast quan- tities of iron, coal, and other mineral substances. She had covered the hills with grass and trees; had filled the oceans with fish and populated the fields and forests with coimtless forms of animals. To this huge accumulation we give the name " natural resources." Man comes. He is himgry and would befed; he is cold and would be clothed; he is exposed to the weather and would be housed. To meet these needs he works and gets, or produces, tlie things he needs. It is im- material whether his work consists in hunting the deer, snar- ing the fish, climbing the tree for the cocoanut, or moving the lock from the ledge to the buQding site — wealth is the result of his labor. All the wealth of the world, aside from natural resources, then, is what man has created by his work. The production of wealth does not in itself satisfy man's needs. He must consume his wealth. He must eat to satisfy hunger and must wear his clothes to be warm. Use involves the destruction of wealth. The food will last for the meal, the clothing for weeks or months, the house for years; but sooner or later, the wealth is destroyed. Even the relatively durable forms like houses or roads must be kept in repair; that is, labor must be expended upon them if they are not to disappear before their time. The wealth that is thus used to meet present needs we call " consump- tion goods." Under favorable conditions man finds that he 70 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION can catch more fish than he can use for himself, or quarry more stone than he needs. He then seeks to trade his sur- plus for things produced by other men and thus he gets a variety which makes his life richer and happier. After a time he invents money and begins to buy and sell rathei;/ than barter. He comes to work for money wages rather than for bread and butter. Thus it comes about that many people forget the real facts in the case and talk solely in terms of money. In reality men are always producing and consuming goods — " wealth," not money. Man soon leams to use part of his wealth, not directly to satisfy his wants, but indirectly to help him produce more goods. He invents bows and arrows, and by their help secures more game. He makes machinery, and weaves more cloth in an hoiu- than he did previously in weeks. To this part of his wealth which is used in production we give the name " capi- tal," or " production goods." But " production goods " like " consumption goods " are destroyed by use and must be replaced constantly. Property — Ownership. Once the wealth is produced another question arises. To whom does the wealth belong? Does it belong to the individual? Does it belong to the group of which he is a member? Does it belong to the members of his group or to other groups as well. To such questions there is no one answer. In the present state of our knowledge of the past it appears that different answers have been given at different titnes and places. Present customs have resulted from the attempts of men in the past to answer them ia ways that seemed best to them and no one line of development can be traced. Before man was, the squirrels and bees established sav- ings banks of nuts and honey and defended them as best they could. Early man seems to have developed the idea that what he himself produced was his in a peculiar sense, and DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 71 thus " property " came into existence. Even this statement needs modification. In many tribes a man may own the clothes he wears or the bow and arrow he makes, and yet the game he kills as food may belong to the family or to the group rather than to the individual. The American Indians recognized private property in some things, but not in food, generally speaking. When hungry, the Indian might help himself to food wherever stored. The white man could not understand this attitude, and considered the Indian a thief when his storehouses were attacked, while the Indian was equally unable to understand the white man's position. Even to attempt to trace the history of property would require volumes rather than pages, and cannot here be undertaken. AH that we can do is to note the sorts of things which have been treated as property. Rights are social in origin. To avoid misunderstanding later, let us note that what we call rights are the privileges or permits granted by society to individuals. These privileges may be chosen wisely or foolishly, but they are chosen by the group, not by the individual. I am allowed to live if I do as society decrees. If I act in violation of the decree, I may be put to death. Property is a social institution. There is no natural right to hold property. Private prop- erty, then, refers to those things which society permits to be individually owned. It should be remembered that other views of property have been held. The original constitution of Massachusetts contained phrases expressing an inalien- able right to acquire, possess, and defend property. Ameri- can courts have stated that the right to acquire and possess property is one of the "natural, inherent, and inalienable rights of man." Such expressions, no matter when uttered, aU hark back to concepts no longer held by well-informed students. Titles — Contracts. Some one has well said that private 78 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION property is a "bundle of rights." Our courts have con- sistently held that the right to hold property involved a right to enter into contracts. Thus contract rights became property rights under the law. The complex legal questions involved in this attitude cannot be treated in this chapter. All that can be done is to indicate that the term "property " is not limited to material things. As Ely has written, " The essence of property is in the relations among men arising out of their relations to things." Objects of property. We may divide the objects held as property into tiree great groups: (1) Human beings — slaves and bond servants. (2) Non-human beings and other commodities. (3) Land. Slaves are no longer wealth in the sense in which the word has been used here. But this our present-day notion has not always been accepted. Earlier genera- tions have recognized that the conquest of the weaker by the stronger gave to the latter the right to hold them in per- manent subjection, to direct their labors, to buy and to sell them as if they were animals; at times, to kill them. Our own country was the last of the great nations to prohibit the ownership of human beings. It must be admitted that many men still believe in it. The serf is an intermittent slave, beiug required to give service for limited periods. Serfdom differs from slavery likewise in that the master, in theory at least, has corresponding and equivalent obliga- tions to the serf. There have been good owners and satis- fied slaves, good masters and contented serfs, but oin* moral development has carried us beyond the specious arguments of the past, and slavery is not likely to be established in public esteem in any future that can be foreseen. Serfdom disguised, still survives, but the necessity for the disguise makes further comment unnecessary. DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 73 Non-human beings and commodities, to capture, to pos- sess or produce which has required labor, with various Umitations, are ahnost universally recognized as properly coming within the scope of private property. There are many questions involved, however, which are far from simple. If a man goes fishing alone it is easy to decide that he is entitled to the catch. If ten men go in a boat and all help to row as well as to do the other work, does he whose hook catches no fish get nothing? Ten negroes dig ten elephant pits, then all seek to drive the elephant in their direction. Does he in whose pit the elephant falls ob- tain the title? In the scattered populations of earlier times, or under rural conditions to-day, it may not be hard to de- cide what each produces. When men congregate in great masses and work by thousands on a boat it is most puzzling to determine just what each has produced, even if we grant the workers are entitled to the whole product of their efforts. With certain limitations to be discussed later, the general consensus of opinion to-day is that each man should have what he produces. The student of economics will soon encounter the term "free goods." This refers to goods so common as to be accessible to all; the air, for example. Water, once so com- mon and available as to be a "free good," becomes private property at times under modem conditions. Fish and game have been held as "free goods" long after the land was held in private ownership. If the American policy in this matter is not soon changed there will be no game left. When the control of free, or manufactured, goods passes into the hands of individuals or groups of individuals we have private property. When the control is held by the State or some subdivision thereof we have public property. Right of ownership in land. The right of individuals to own land has often been disputed. The Iroquois Indians 74 DEMOCRACY EST RECONSTRUCTION of New York marked off the boundaries of the tribal lands, but did not admit individual ownership. The Indian fam- ilies of the Canadian woods may hold the hunting and fishing rights in a river valley, but not as individuals. It is easy to see how this family control might easily lead to individual ownership and quite probably this has been one of the ways in which the right has been developed. Con- quest of other peoples with the subsequent granting of great estates to favored leaders has also been a common antecedent of individual ownership. In Europe most of the land titles down to the thirteenth century rested on con- quest. In general, among primitive peoples land has been held under some form of communal ownership. In ancient Germany as well as in England the land was held in com- mon and let out from time to time in small strips for the use of individuals and families. This custom has siu-vived to our own day in Russia in the "Mir." The common land of England was not all enclosed at the beginning of the nine- teenth century. In the City of Boston in oiu- own country the famous "Boston Common" is what is left of the old communal landholdings. Our States and the Nation still hold enormous areas of public land. We may now consider the wisdom of this private ownership of land. Its justification. It is well to admit at the outset that the test of any social program is whether or not it is conducive to the welfare of the people. Land-ownership like every other private property right or privilege cannot be success- fully defended on the ground that it is an ancient custom, nor condemned on the belief that it originated in ruthless conquest of other peoples. Inasmuch as conditions in differ- ent countries vary, we shall limit the discussion to the United States. There were less than five hundred thousand Indians here when the white man came. The incomers bought the land DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 75 from the Indians for an insignificant sum, large as it may have seemed to the natives. This land was immediately offered to individuals on the easiest of terms which prac- tically involved nothing more than residence upon and ciJ- tivation of the land itself. The immediate result of this policy was to attract here great groups of hard-working peoples of Europe who saw a chance to better their condi- tion. As a result the country increased in population and spread far beyond its first limits. Plenty of hard work and the simple life fell to the lot of the immigrants. Because of individual ownership the communities became pennanent and it was to the interest of the owner to improve his land in every way. The greatest obstacle to this improvement was the existence of even better land a little farther west which could be more easily cultivated and could be secured on equally easy terms. Scarcity of labor and abundance of tillable land led to the improvement of machinery, with the result that agricultural implements have changed more since 1850 than they had in all the period from Herodotus to 1850. Most of these improvements have been made by Americans. Under such conditions every man of any energy and ambi- tion became a landholder and prosperous, relatively speak- ing. Thus public property became private property. New conditions in America. We are now facing a new situation. The free land is almost gone if we leave out of account areas subject to improvement by drainage or irriga- tion. With the increase of the population as well as because of the improvements made by owners, the land has risen enormously in price. The young fanner, recently married, can no longer get land for a song and is forced to become a tenant with the chance of owning his farmstead postponed to a distant future. When he can he moves on as did his grandfather. Iowa, a typical farming State, has lost in actual population largely because the younger generation W DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION has gone to the Pacific Coast or to Canada. The older gen- eration accumulated more land than it could till, so leased much of it to tenants. When the working years passed, the owners moved to the small towns for the sake of better edu- cational advantages for the children. The result is the in- crease of absentee landlords. Incidentally the backward- ness of many of these towns in the Middle West is due to the large percentage of retired farmers who, not having had certain facilities in the country, refuse to vote the money for them in the town. It is almost axiomatic that the owner will take better care of the place than will a tenant who may be displaced at any time. Moreover, the absentee landlord wiU not be willing to spend the money for many improve- ments that price would compel him to make if he continued to reside on the place. If carried to extremes, this may lead to the withdrawal of much land from agriculture as has happened in England. Compel a reconsideration of policies. It is clear then that our system of private land-ownership will have to be considered from a new angle. Indeed, one of the schemes of reform, the so-called "single tax" of Henry George, was suggested to him as a newspaper man in California by the fact that when the placer mines were worked out the miners were imable to get good farms because so much of the then available land had passed under the control of corporations and was not open to the individual settler. Whatever the final decision, it is certain that we shall have many sugges- tions of the desirability of public ownership of land before many years. The war has forced England to take vigorous measures to secure better cultivation of the soil. The State's relation to property. In simpler times when property was scarce the activity of the central organization called the State was largely taken up with the settling of minor disputes, such as those growing out of the rivalry of DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 77 men over women or the protection of the group from the attacks of outsiders. With the increase of private property of every imaginable sort property matters come to play an ever larger part. Primitive crime is chiefly personal. As civilization and wealth increase, crime is more and more concerned with property. Thus the State comes to have many and immediate relations to the question of property and these must be outlined. The State establishes law. Freedom comes with law. Where there is no law there is no freedom. Law may be written as it is now, or unwritten as it has been in earlier times. The essential thing is its existence. Without law there can be no peace for individuals or security for prop- erty. Unless property rights are observed, additional prop- erty but adds to the worry of the owner who must spend increasing time and effort to safeguard what he has. Thus the protection of the property rights of the citizens in ordi- nary times comes to be far more important than the protec- tion against outside enemies. By an unfortunate shift of language there has come the habit of speaking of property rights as something inhering in the property itself. This is not the case. From a social standpoint property can have no rights, but property-owners do. , Much confusion would be avoided if this were kept clear. To seciure the protection of owners in their just rights and to settle the endless mis- understandings that arise over property, the State has been compelled to secure increasing revenues. That means in substance the withdrawing of a certain percentage of prop- erty from private to public uses. No State recognizes an unlimited right to private property as regards the acquisition, holding, use, or disposal thereof. To give the details in this regard is impossible. We must be content with the briefest statement of general principles. The State regulates acquisition. The State insists upon 78 DEMOCEACY IN RECONSTRUCTION the securing of a clear title to property. It recognizes the just claim of the worker to that which he has produced, but it prohibits acquisition by force or theft. Even the hoary practice of securing foreign lands by conquest is more and more coming under the ban. Holding. The state determines who may hold property. It may discriminate against foreigners, as does the present land law of California as regards the acquiring of land by Orientals. It may prohibit foreigners to own firearms, as does the Pennsylvania law, or it may prohibit the carrying of concealed weapons or the ownership of intoxicating liquors, which is true of many States. It may forbid women to own property, as it did until recently, and it may require minors and insane to have guardians,' as is generally true. Use. All States seek to prevent what they consider the improper or anti-social use of property. The buying of votes, the corrupting of juries, the bribing of public officials, and similar practices are imiversally condemned. Even the private ownership of land does not always give exclusive use thereof to the owner. The right of access to the water- front, of walking through the forests or hills, is often re- served for the public and constitutes what may be called an easement on the property. Transfer. The State seeks to regulate the transfer of property from one owner to another. Lotteries, once used even to maintain religious organizations, that is, the secur- ing of property without giving anything in return except through outright gifts, and other forms of gambling are opposed. Special attention is paid to the safeguarding of titles to land and some form of public registration is required. Our own system is an antiquated and unsatisfactory jum- ble, but that is a minor matter. Each year witnesses the growing interest of the State in this subject. Once the motto was "Let the buyer beware"; now, the State seeks DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 79 to protect the unwary. This has been made necessary by the development of great enterprises often located at a great distance, and with reference to which few individuals could get personal information of value. Blue-sky laws are growing in favor. Inheritance. To most people as incident to the right to acquire private property is the right to grant or to give it to any one he will, either during his lifetime or by devise or bequest at time of death. The two are, in reality, entirely distinct and involve very different considerations, as Black- stone himself clearly saw. It is easy to justify the holding of property by the creator as a stimulus to thrift and indus- try. It is easy to understand the natural desire to leave the family comfortably situated, but other results must be con- sidered. In reality no man, however wealthy, can eat more than a certain amount, nor does he have any more time diu*- ing his life than does the poor man. The limits of physical needs are quickly reached and when these are reached it is usually the desire for power which urges the man to accumu- late more rather than the desire for money. The wise use of great power is the most difficult task man ever undertakes. Many men accumulate money by painstaking attention to the business of which they are masters, but make great fools of themselves when they give it away and likewise accumu- late gold bricks as well as gold bonds in their safety deposit boxes. It is easy to justify the sharing in this wealth by the wives who have helped in many cases to accumulate it, or the pensioning of afflicted children. It is not so ea^ to jus- tify the passing it on to normal children. This argument must be examined in more detail. Its problems. No law can destroy natural differences be- tween men. Law can prevent the exercise of great ability, and should do so if the way chosen is harmful to society; but the sodely that refuses to take advantage of the powers of 80 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION its great men is committing a slow form of suicide. The in- heritance of great wealth cannot be defended on the gromid that the children of the wealthy will prove equally able. They'may inherit the physical fiber of their ancestors, but they seldom inherit the social environment and receive the training which their fathers had. The development of a great business breeds a sense of responsibility seldom shared by the inheritors. In other words, the inheritor of great wealth is put in a position of power which he is often unfitted to hold. Society shoidd not seek to destroy natural distinc- tions. Should society establish artificial distinctions? The possession of wealth means that the owner can determine the activity of thousands of human beings. Should such power be given one who has not shown his fitness to exercise the responsibility? That is the crux of the question. If this be true even of the children of the accumulators of wealth, how much more true is it of the distant relatives who so fre- quently share in the great estates. This question is being asked with increasing frequency, and the public mind is slowly coming to the conclusion that some solution must be found. With the disappearance of cheap land and the neces- sary result that larger and larger elements of the people will become wage-earners, the question becomes more acute and more clearly seen. Distribution of property. The ownership of wealth is steadily concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. In 1855 in New York City a man who owned $100,000 was consid- ered wealthy and milUonaires were almost unknown. It is estimated that two per cent of the people in the United States own sixty per cent of the wealth. Not long ago it was thought that there was little danger of the excessive central- ization of wealth, owing to the American custom of dividing it among all the children, but as the number of children in a family seems to vaiy inversely with the size of the family DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 81 income, this hope has not materialized. It is significant that franchises or real estate have been the bases of a large part of the great fortunes. This fear of the results of accumula- tion of wealth is not limited to the poor. Andrew Carnegie has written: "The Almighty Dollar bequeathed to children is an almighty curse. No man has a right to handicap his son with such a burden as great wealth." ' In other words, among people who believe in wealth and would hesitate to limit in any artificial way the accumulation of wealth by great men, there is coming a feeling that wealth in the hands of other than the accumulators is a growing menace to the welfare of the country and a threat to democratic institu- tions. John Stuart Mill wrote years ago : " It is not fortunes that are earned, but those that are unearned, that it is for the public good to put under limitation." The belief that the ownership of wealth is a- trusteeship is growing. The problem is, then, the devising of ways and means to make wealth of the greatest service to the community. This does not mean the destruction of wealth, for wealth is the basis of civilization. Now vaguely realized, now clearly seen, serv- ice is the justification for wealth. How can the greatest service be secured? The question must be answered by the friends of wealth unless they foolishly prefer to have it an- swered by their enemies; for answered it must be, whether we live in America or in Russia. Inasmuch as this is one of lie most difficult problems society faces, few individuals are so foolish as to think that they can give complete and final answers. Some of the plans and proposals must be discussed. Taxation of inheritances — By the Federal Government. The steadily increasing need for public revenues has led the leading nations to consider more and more inheritance taxes both as partial answers to the questions above raised and as • Gospel of Wealth. 82 DEMOCRACY m RECONSTRUCTION revenue measures. As early as 1797 the United States Gov- ernment put a stamp tax on legacies and shares of personal estates when the amount was over fifty dollars. This was repealed in 1802. Nothing further was done until 1862, when the war revenue measure imposed a legacy tax on the devolution of personal property and stamp taxes on probates of will and letters of administration, the rates ranging from three fourths per cent to five per cent, according to relation- ship and amount. These measures were modified several times, and finally repealed in 1872. In 1894, in provisions for an income tax, income was defined to include " money and the value of all personal property acquired by gift or inheritance." The excess of the inheritance over four thou- sand dollars was to be taxed two per cent. This law was an- nulled by the Supreme Court in the case of Pollock vs. Farmer's Loan and Trust Company.' In 1898 another war measure placed a tax on inheritance and the distribution of shares of personal property, the rates ranging from three fourths per cent to fifteen per cent. The high-water mark of this law was reached in 1903, when $5,356,774 was col- lected; an analysis showing that two thirds of the entire amoimt was paid by relatives taxed at the lowest rates. Ob- jection was made that such taxation was a violation of the Constitution, which states that' direct taxes must be appor- tioned among the several States according to population. This objection was answered by the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution adopted in 1913: "The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from what- ever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumer- ation." The Supreme Court has decided that inheritance taxes are duties and not direct taxes. The Federal law of September 8, 1916, established a scale of rates from one to » 168 U.S. 601. DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 83 ten per cent; on March 3, 1917, the rates were raised from one and one half to fifteen per cent, and on October 3, 1917, to a sum ranging from two to twenty-five per cent, the last applying to fortunes over $10,000,000 with a minimum of $50,000 except in the case of foreign owners. By the State Governments. Th^ several States have also established inheritance taxes, the first law having been passed in Pennsylvania in 1826. The movement did not acquire headway until about 1890. By 1917 forty-three States had inheritance taxes, the rates rangiag for direct heirs from one to fifteen per cent and for collateral heirs from three to thirty per cent. From January 1, 1917, to April 1, 1918, the last figures I have at hand, twenty-three States amended their laws, making them more rigid in every case, while Mississippi passed its first law. The four States having no laws are Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and New Mexico. In twenty -one States the tax runs as high as ten per cent on collateral inheritances of the largest amounts and most distant relationship. Fifteen States reach a maxi- mum of fifteen per cent, while the rates under the same con- ditions in Nevada are twenty-five per cent, in Missouri and California, thirty per cent, and in Arkansas, thirty-two per cent. Inasmuch as these rates apply only to remote rela- tions and the largest amoimts, their importance must not be exaggerated. There is a substantial smn exempted, Cali- fornia exempting sums under $24,000 and the Federal Gov- ernment sums under $50,000. They indicate very plainly the drift of the times. Owing to the fact that the laws vary in different States and that owners do not always live in the State in which the property is situated, the tax actually col- lected may exceed the rate in any one State. By European Goveniments. In Europe, even before the war, the rates were very high. England as early as 1894 established a graduated "estate duty" on estates before 84 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION division and also a " legacy duty " on personal property, the combined eflFect being that about twenty-three per cent of estates valued at over $15,000,000 passing to distant rela- tives went to the State. France adopted a highly progres- sive inheritance tax in 1901. On estates valued at over $10,000,000 direct heirs paid five per cent; distant relatives, twenty per cent on all the excess over $1,000,000. Germany originally left this in the hands of the several States, but in 1906 it passed a law establishing a tax of twenty-five per cent on estates exceeding $250,000 going to distant rela- tives. Taxation of unearned increments. It has abeady been hinted that great fortunes may arise in various ways. Well- informed men recognize that certain of the leaders of finance in days gone by have been essentially buccaneers and pirates in that they were seeking to rob other men of their accumu- lations and that they built up their fortunes by methods which may have been legal, but which were not conducive to the welfare of society. It is this type of man who is chiefly responsible for the blind outcry against wealth so frequently heard. Of a second type is the man who through faith in some new invention, such as the telephone, pro- duces something which eveiy one wants and gains a vast fortune while serving the people. Or, it may be that he is a great singer or actor to whom every one gladly contributes because of the pleasure he renders. The third type is repre- sented by a man who through fortunate investments in land needs only to sit and wait while population increases, creat- ing nothing, doing nothing to improve the land, but who gathers in enormous returns to which we give the name "unearned increment." Until recently, it was generally accepted that it was fit and proper for this " unearned incre- ment " to go to the holder of the title. This was natural in a country where nearly eveiy family in one way or another DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 85 was profiting by the increase in the price of land. When this day passed and land was more and more centralized ia own- ership, questions were asked, and there is a rising tide of opinion opposed to the old practice. The single-tax sugges- tion of Henry George has been mentioned. Li this country^ it has not been adopted and the leading economists have been opposed to it. There is growing in favor, however, the suggestion of securing some revenue in this way. In other lands the movement is much further advanced. ■. Great Britain in 1909 imposed a tax of twenty per cent of the incre- ment arising after that year payable by the owner when the land is sold, leased for more than fourteen years, or trans- ferred at death. Land held by corporations and not chang- ing hands is to pay the tax every fifteen years. The Ger- mans in Kiaouchau in 1898 imposed a tax of 33^ per cent on any increment accruing thereafter to individuals purchas- ing land from the Government. This example was quickly taken up in Germany itself, and by 1910 the increment tax was operating in 437 Grerman towns. In 1911 the German Empire imposed a progressive tax on increments. In Al- berta and Saskatchewan many towns have adopted this plan and the movement was spreading rapidly before the War. Australia and New Zealand have made experiments, and it is claimed in the latter that the great land estates have been broken up by the operation of the law. The es- sence of the argument in favor of such laws is that persons will be unable to hold land in idleness and pay the taxes and will thus be forced to turn the land over to those who can make good use of it. Such legislation usually is accom- panied by provisions for reducing the tax on improvements which is one of the great weaknesses of the ordinary system of taxing land. Property in a democracy. The essential thing in a demo- cratic government is the recognition that the source of au- 86 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION thority lies in the expressed wish of the people. Other sys- tems of government have rested upon the personal might of the ruler or ruling class, or upon some alleged divine sanc- tion, and could be conducted without reference to the wishes of the people, even though nominally conducted in their interest. Not so in a democracy. Here the people must be free to express themselves and to modify their judgments from time to time as they may think best. This does not mean that a hasty verdict, due to some passion or sudden enthusiasm, is to be allowed to overthrow long-established standards, and democracies recognizing this danger provide some machinery which makes it impossible to execute snap judgments. Its entrenched position in America. For many years Americans have been extremely proud of their democracy. Justly so; but, curiously enough, they have failed to re- member that many of the dominant men at the time of the founding of this country believed in aristocracy rather than democracy, and threw many obstacles in the way of real democracy. It is significant that as competent a judge as President Hadley of Yale has written: The fact is, that private property in the United States, in spite of all the dangers of unintelligent legislation, is constitutionally in a stronger position, as against the Government and the Govern- ment authority, than is the case in any country of Europe. How- ever much public feeling may at times move in the direction of socialistic measures, there is no nation which by its constitution is so far removed from socialism or from a socialistic order. This is partly because the governmental means provided for the control or limitation of private property are weaker in America than else- where, but chiefly because the rights of private property are more formally established ia the Constitution itself. President Hadley, in an article which will be foimd in The Independent, April 16„ 1908, goes on to point out that the system of land tenure in every country in Europe, down to DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 87 the thirteenth century or thereabouts, was feudal and based on militaiy service. From the fourteenth to the nineteenth century, Europe gradually substituted industrial tenures for military tenures. At first, the industrial tenure was an addi- tion to the mflitary teniu:e rather than a replacement. In America, no military chieftain was desired. Conditions made us ultra-individualistic. Free land for all, the neces- sity of hard work, sacrifice, and saving if one would accumu- late, cultivated in us a faith in the individual and a fear of overhead control. The result was that when the United States started its independent career "respect for industrial property right was a fundamental principle in the law and public opinion of the land." The Dartmouth College case. Fear of strong central government, plus the fear of sectional jealousy, led to the constitutional provision preventing legislature or executive, either of the Nation or of the States, from taking property without judicial inquiry as to the necessity and without making full compensation if property was taken. Further- more, there was the provision that no State should pass a law impairing the obligation of contracts. Our courts soon adopted what was undoubtedly the intention of the framers of the Constitution, though nowhere so stated in that docu- ment, the power of deciding that legislation is or is not con- stitutional. It should be remembered that in no other great country do the courts have this power. In England, for instance, the action of the legislature is the law of the land. Two things have happened which have greatly strengthened this position of property, though directly having nothing to do with it. First was the famous Dartmouth College case, decided in 1819, which established the principle that a char- ter once given could not be modified by the State without the consent of those who held the charter. For almost a century this decision had the effect of protecting any char- 88 DEMOCEACY IN RECONSTRUCTION ter-holders even though the representatives of the people who gave the charter had been controlled by the most vi- cious motives. Unless the holders of the charters were will- ing, the public had no power of recalling or modifying the charter. In the minds of many of our keenest men, this decision was most unfortunate in that it confused privilege with property. Its indirect effects upon legislation have been enormous. Now it is generally held that a charter is a permit not a contract. The Fourteenth Amendment. The second event was the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbade the treating of different persons in unequal ways. In 1882 the Southern Pacific Railroad Company objected to a taxation law of California on the ground that the law was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, inasmuch as the corporation was a person, and therefore entitled to equal treatment. Although such a contingency had never been imagined by those who put- forward the Fourteenth Amendment, the claim was granted and thereafter corporations imder the law became persons. This still further reduced the possibility of public control. Although this decision has been regretted by some of the best legal minds, it has been generally favored and was considered advantageous by the corporations them- selves until the scheme of a graduated income tax was de- vised. No wonder, then, that President Hadley writes: "The fundamental division of powers in the United States is between voters on the one hand and property-owners on the other. The forces of democracy on the one side, divided between the executive and the legislature, are set over against the forces of property on the other side, with the judiciary as arbiter between them, the Constitution itself not only forbidding the legislatiu-e and executive to trench upon the rights of property, but compelling the judiciary to define and uphold those rights in a manner provided by DEMOCRACY AND PRIVATE PROPERTY 89 the Constitution itself." This Constitution, he concludes, "has been a decisive factor in determining the political career of the Nation and the actual development of its industries and institutions." If we now recall what has been said about the influT ence of free land upon the development of our national life and individualistic emphasis, it is easy to understand the earlier belief of Americans that all could succeed if they would work and save, and the earlier impatience with those who did not accumidate property to some extent. In the covu-se of events it has come about that this condition can no longer obtaia, and that the majority of American work- ers in the futiu-e will be wage-earners, not land-owners, and that the percentage of property-holders may diminish indefi- nitely. It is obvious that the stage is being set for a very definite reconsideration of the principles upon which our Government has been conducted, in so far as property is concerned. This changing sentiment has found expression in several ways. Taxation. The income of the Government must increase with the functions of the Government. In America, be- cause of the pension ^stem adopted after the Civil War, the budget for which continued to grow in spite of all prophecies, the necessity for increased income has been ever present. The easiest way of raising money is usually by indirect taxa- tion. If the tax can be added to the cost of an article with- out the buyer realizing the fact, he pays the tax much more willingly than if he recognized it and paid it directly. In- direct taxes have been favored by the more or less unthink- ing multitudes, who failed to realize that from fifteen to twenty-five per cent of their cost of living went in reality to the Government for taxes. Wealthier citizens, however, were not paying more than from ten to fifteen per cent to the Govenmient in this way. I cannot vouch for the accuracy 90 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION of these percentages, but they are probably reasonably cor- rect. There has grown up gradually a belief that it would be well to raise a larger percentage of our public revenue by direct taxation. Moreover, direct taxes being separately paid are always realized and the payers are likely to be more keenly alive to the way in which the money is spent. Coupled with this there has been in the last twenty-five years a very extensive discussion of the standard of living, with an emphasis upon a minimum wage which will enable workers to live in decen James Melvin Lee: History of American Journalism, p. 149. SOCIAL BETTERMENT 123 a stronghold of New England conservatism, its editor, upon some pretext of legality, was for a considerable time jailed — a fact which greatly increased the circulation of his paper. A test of the fitness of a people for democracy is the readi- ness of an aroused majority to respect the right of a minority to freedom of discussion. It is only by freedom of diacussicm that democracy can survive and progress. Anti-slavery press — Penny press. The first abolition newspaper. The Emancipator, was started in Tennessee in 1820 by the son of a Quaker preacher who had emigrated from Peimsylvania. Ten years later William Lloyd Garri- son began to publish The lAberator in Boston. The first penny newspaper to make a great success was The New York Sun, in 1833, when the standard price was six cents. Several of the penny papers which then sprang up, including James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald, were not party organs as the older and more expensive papers were, but were largely an "independent press." They became the natural advocates of the interests of the common man. The new price greatly extended the news- paper trade. No laborer was too poor to secure the informa- tion which these papers afforded and to feel their infiuence. They correlated well with the extension of compulsory education. They exposed corruption like that of the Tweed Ring and they advocated reforms. However, they were not free from the fault of "yellow" sensationalism. In more recent times there has been much needed legal and ethical progress in protecting readers against immoral and fraudulent advertising. Some local papers still have much to answer for, and some "story papers" live by collusion with petty fraud. The great dailies use their power in various forms of social service. They have freely promoted the campaigns of benevolent organizations. They have themselves raised 124 DEMOCRACY IN EECONSTRUCTION and administered "fresh-air funds" and "free-ice funds." They have maintained "health departments" in their col- umns, supplied "household hints," and lent a "helping hand" in divers ways. It is all the better if such things pay, and they do, for "the women are the purchasing agents of the American home," and it is the home paper that is the profitable advertising medium. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century a revo- lution in the newspaper business was in progress. The money expended in gathering and printing the news was vastly increased. More numerous foreign correspondents, tele- graphic service, swift and costly machinery, numerous and bulky editions increased the cost and made the business of conducting a metropolitan daily a great commercial venture involving large capital. The days were past when a gifted youth writing on a dry-goods box in a basement could start a New York daily and hire a job printer to get it out. At the same time the price of the large and costly dailies fell, in general, to one or two cents, except for the still bulkier Sunday editions. This was accompanied by a very great increase in the amount of advertising. The papers came to depend directly for their income more upon advertising than upon subscriptions. However, indirectly they depend also upon the subscriptions, since the profitableness of theL' advertising depends on the extent of their circulation. Press now capitalistic. The great outlay of capital nov; involved in the publication of a daily has an important bearing upon the democratization of the press. As a result, the purveying of news and molding of public opinion by the great daily papers becomes a function of the rich. The democratization of economic organization is admit- tedly the stage of progress that now confronts us. Since ideas and sentiments are the power on which democratiza- tion must depend, it is a matter of the gravest significance. SOCIAL BETTERMENT 125 thus to place one of the two * greatest agencies for the molding of opinion and sentiment in the hands of the eco- nomic class that is interested in maintaining the existing situation. This is not accusing the owners of the great dailies of deliberate unfairness; it is only stating the fact that they are interested parties in the great discussion now in progress. In every society members of the class that is possessed of wealth and power have a conservative psy- chosis which is the natural consequence of the influences by which their whole life is surrounded and of the forms of prestige to which they defer. They are in general either unconscious of this psychosis or tend to regard it as the only sanity. There are nevertheless individuals who pos- sess a sanity so broac^ and deep and who have received an education so varied as to escape from class bias. The noblest liberals are those who have escaped from class limi- tations and understand both radicals and conservatives. Now that a daily newspaper has become a great com- mercial enterprise, involving large capital and requiring expert business management of its complicated affairs, the editor can no longer be the manager as well. As a rule the editor is an employee who must do his work in a way that is satisfactory to the business management. Much has been said about the slavery of editors, about the dictation of the policies of papers by their owners and managers so that the editors must write according to this dictation even when it is directly opposed to the convictions of the editors them- selves. There is no groimd for thinking that newspaper owners are less idealistic than other business men. They cannot be unaware that they have assimied a colossal re- sponsibility. Some of them bear this responsibility in a spirit of devotion to high standards. Some of them do not. * As the second I have in mind the school, including the university, which fina% determines the character of all other schools'. 126 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Whether the exercise of so essential a function and so vast a power ought to be exclusively a commercial enterprise is a question worthy of consideration. An endowed press. The endowed newspaper might be controlled by standards as high as those of the endowed college. Evidence that the endowed newspaper is feared may be seen in the extravagant statements made about its alleged impracticability. In 1912 the City of Los Angeles, California, established a weekly municipal paper. Special columns were set aside for the unrestricted use of each of the political parties. The mayor or any member of the city council could use half a column in any issue to defend his policies or expose any proposal of which he disapproved. A page was devoted to the interests of the pupils in the schools. Sixty thousand copies were put into the homes of the city at a cost of about a thousand dollars a week. There was no telegraphic news and no discussion of state or national questions. Publication was discontinued because of the expense. The paper was distributed absolutely free, and appears to have been boycotted by the large adver- tisers, particularly the department stores. No democracy coiJd tolerate any form of monopoly of the newspaper business. The cost of maintaining great dailies may make that class of papers a function of "the capitalistic class," but the freedom of the press implies the liberty of all citizens and classes to issue such papers as they can pay for. We have a great number of publications devoted to the interests of every scientific specialty, of every trade and profession, of every sect and of every minor party, too poor to control the greater dailies, but not too poor to have its organs. An important step in the democratization of the press would be a law requiring that every regular publication should not only certify to the postal authorities, as now. SOCIAL BETTERMENT 127 but also print, the names of its owners, so that the people may know who is speaking. After all it depends upon the people to recognize the character of the journals they read. A sufficiently intelligent democracy could insist that every great daily should be a forum for publishing signed articles on both sides of every great issue, and that the highest duty of the press is to preside fairly at such bal- anced discussion of public questions. Development of a professional ethics of the press having this requirement would be one of the most significant of reforms. The Church. The separation of Church and State was an American innovation, a departure from all the precedents of history. The Church had profited by the material sup- port and authority of the State, and the State had profited by the docility and loyalty inculcated by the Church, which taught that rulers are the "anointed of God" and that each man should "be dutiful and obedient in his lot and station." Men loyal to both religion and government prized a relation by which they were mutually strength- ened. The separation of Church and State was not accomplished at the outset of American history. The colonists brought with them the ideas on this subject that had been universal in the Old World. The liberty of conscience which they sought was liberty for their own consciences, not for the consciences of men who differed from them. And if they fled from government that enforced uncongenial religious views, many of them saw no incongruity in founding a government designed to enforce the religious views which they held to be true. Roger Williams was more than a century ahead of the colonists in general in his declaration that there is equality before God, and should be equality among men, for all who with a sincere conscience foUow such light as is given them. 128 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION THs principle of complete reKgious freedom is profoundly different from mere toleration, which, while supporting a preferred form of religious profession and observance, for the sake of keeping the peace refrains from interference with other forms which are regarded as erroneous and in- ferior. The colonists in general, like the world in general, had not arrived even at the level of reUgious tolerance. "The time was," said Lord Stanhope in 1827, "when toler- ation was craved by cUssenters as a boon; it is now demanded as a right; but the time will come when it will be spumed as an insult." Colooial Virgiiiia. The laws of Sir Thomas Dale, gov- ernor of Virginia, on the subject of religion far surpassed in severity the similar legislation of New England. To speak impiously of the Trinity or of one of the Divine persons was punishable with dealJi, as were various other rehgious offenses. Death was the penalty for a third offense of Sabbath-breaking. Every person who came into the colony was to zepair to the minister for examination in faith; for a third refusal to do so one was to be "whipt every day till he makes acknowledgment." If the religious laws of Vir^nia were nominally more ferocious than those of New England their enforcement was usually much more lax. Until 1642 the governor claimed the right to appoint the minister of every parish. Fifty years later effort was made to restore to the governor that power, but its exercise by the paxish vestries was by that time established custom. This was the first step away from Government control of the Church, and in the direction of religious liberty. How- ever, under Governor Berkeley the vestry of each parish was made a self-perpetuating close corporation with power to levy taxes and to make the position of heretics hard. Unlike New England the southern colony was ill-supplied with suitable material for filling the ministerial office. Un- SOCIAL BETTERMENT 129 fit adventurers were often installed with scandalous conse- quences. The Church in early Virginia did not become liberated so rapidly as that of the mother coxmtry for lack of the vigorous pressure of dissenting sects which in England loosened the hold of the Estabhshed Church upon the Governmen t. The Toleration Act of William and Maiy was most grudgingly recognized by the colonial legislature. It was by an excep- tional clemency that early in the eighteenth century a few, Huguenot and Lutheran parishes were exempted from church dues and left free to pay the minister of their own selection. In 1710 Governor Spottiswood ^ wrote: "This government is in perfect peace and tranquillity, under due obedience to royal authority and a gentlemanly conformity to the Church of England." In 1722 there were instances of prosecution for absence from divine worship, and of whipping for child baptism not according to the forms of the Established Church. And it was not until the time of the Revolution that general exemption from church rates was granted by the legislatm-e of Virginia.* Colonial Massachusetts. Allowing Virginia to stand as the representative of the Church of England in the col- onies, we turn now to the Massachusetts Bay settlement as representative of the Puritan history. The settlers of Massachusetts Bay Colony were not gold-seekers nor ad- venturers, but almost without exception deeply religious men of a high average of native force and intelligence, while "never since in the history of our country has the population as a class been so highly educated as during the first half-centiuy of the Massachusetts settlements." I Also written Spotswood. [Editors.] - See Jemegan, Marcus W.: "Religious Toleration and Freedom in Virginia," in Source Problems in American History. New York, 1918. [Editors.] 130 DEMOCRACY m RECONSTRUCTION These colonists set out for the deliberate purpose of con- structing from its foundations an ideal commonwealth on a religious pattern, "a City of God." The conception of religious liberty had not formed itself as a part of their ideal. They proposed that in their Utopia all men should walk in a godly and orderly conformity to true doctrine as they apprehended it. Allowance of dissent and diversity was no part of their plan. In the Massachusetts Colony Church and State were one and "all inhabitants liable to assessment for Church as for State." Such was the letter of the law until long after the American Revolution. A certificate of good and regular standing in a Cpngregational Church — or Church of the Standing Order — was an essential qualification for voting. The most pious Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Baptist could not be a freeman. The civil government assumed power to determine who might organize a church, who be called as pastor, and who admitted to membership. Banishment, imprisonment, the pillory with opprobrious placard on the breast, whipping, boring the tongue with hot iron, were penalties enacted against non-conformity in doctrine and observance. As in the case of Virginia so also in that of New England, religious Kberty did not progress so rapidly as in Old Eng- land where the strife of sects was compelling mutual toler- ance. The new royal charter of 1691, which merged the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies, gave tolerance to all save Catholics. But tithes for the Congregational Church continued to be assessed by civil officers in Massa- chusetts until 1833. In 1727, however, in imitation of a law earlier passed in Connecticut, it was provided that the tax collected from Episcopalians could go to an Episcopalian minister provided there was one within five miles. Later the same privilege was extended to Baptists and Quakers. SOCIAL BETTERMENT ISl The settlement at Plymouth was never so arbitrary as that at Massachusetts Bay in attempting to enforce religious conformity and the first settlers of Connecticut left Massa- chusetts to escape from excesses of religious intolerance. Yet even in Connecticut the separation of Church and State was no part of the ideal originally adopted. No church of whatever sort could be founded without the consent of the general court. Money for the support of some church was collectible from each citizen as a civil tax, and church attendance was compulsory. The Saybrook Platform for the regulation of Congregational churches was enacted into law by the general court of Connecticut, but provided "that nothing herein shall be intended or construed to hin- der or prevent any society or Church, that is or shall be allowed by the laws of this government, who soberly differ or dissent from the united Churches hereby established, from exercising worship and discipline in their own way, according to their consciences." Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Delaware were the three colonies in which, from the beginning, there was more or less protest against the world-wide principle of union of Church and State. But the common notion that Pennsyl- vania, and its offshoot Delaware, stood for complete reli- gious liberty is far from the truth. It was Rhode Island that was the incomparable leader in this movement, or more truthfully it was Roger Williams. Roger Williams and religious liberty. Roger Williams was as zealous in his piety as any of the Puritans, a skill- ful disputant, and generous in his kindness even to those who persecuted him without mercy. He opposed the ex- ercise of civil authority over the administration of church affairs, restriction of franchise to the orthodox, compulsory church attendance, a civil tax for the support of the min- istry, and civil trial and punishment for heresy. His ideas 132 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION if given free rein would have been subversive of the whole theocratic experiment. Those who opposed him were as conscientious as he. But he was "the first among philoso- phers and Statesmen, since the day of Constantine, to pro- claim the complete freedom of mind and conscience from all civil bonds." He succeeded in obtaining from King Charles 11, a monarch ordinarily inclined to despotism, a charter which provided for "the first thoroughly free gov- ernment in the world, where the State was left plastic to the moulding will of the citizen; the conscience at liberty to express itself in any way of doctrine and worship; the Church untrammelled by any prescription or preference of the civil law." By the time of the Revolution the ideal of a theocracy, a City of God, so tenaciously cherished by the early settlers of Massachusetts, had been given up. There was still an established church supported by civil taxes. But no form of dissenting worship was proscribed and each believer could direct his tax to the church of his choice. The powerful influence of Jonathan Edwards in New England had tended to exalt the Church as a divine institution above all depend- ence upon the fostering State. Disestablishment in Vii-ginia. Meanwhile in Virginia there had been less progress toward reUgious freedom. Lib- erty had been granted to Presbyterians, but Baptists were beaten and imprisoned at the very time when the Con- tinental Congriess was about to assemble. Three fourths of the people were outside the Established Chiurch and the limitations upon their liberties moved them to vigorous protests. The State Convention of 1776 received many petitions for protection in the various modes of worship, for exemption from church taxes, and the disestablishment of the Anglican Church. The famous Bill of Rights adopted by the convention contained a section (number SOCIAL BETTERMENT 133 16), proposed by Patrick Henry and improved by Madison, which expressed the best conception of religious Hberty that had yet been ofiPered for acceptance outside of Rhode Island. The various perquisites of the AngUcan Church in Virginia were reduced by succeeding legislatiu"es. These changes were secured at the cost of what Jefferson de- scribes as "the severest struggles in which I have ever been engaged." There was strenuous debate and many petitions were presented for and against a law providing taxes to support the Christian reUgion, but with a provision like that in New England that each taxpayer might desig- nate the church to which his payment should go. Madison and Jefferson opposed this as an oppression of Jews and in- fidels. An act establishing religious freedom was drawn by Jefferson, and after lying on the table for six years was passed through the advocacy of Madison in 1785. This put into effect the principles of the Bill of Rights, and de- stroyed the last of the special privileges of an estabKshed church. The Federal Constitution, on the theory of the sovereignty of each State over its domestic affairs, allowed the various religious restrictions and establishments that existed in the various States. In Massachusetts, as already noted, it was not until in 1833 that towns were discharged from all au- thority over the chiurches and civil taxes for religion abol- ished. To this day the constitution of Pennsylvania limits its guarantee of rcHgious freedom to those who acknowledge belief in Almighty God and in a future state of rewards and punishments, and a statute making blasphemy a crime is still on the statute books of that State. The laws of eight States disqualify an avowed atheist from office-holding. Arkansas also makes him incompetent as a witness. These provisions and a few others like them are, however, dead and inoperative, mere vestiges of a former state of public 134 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION opinion. An established church would be unconstitutional in any State, and in no State can attendance on any form of religious service be enforced by law, or contribution to the support of any such service, or restraint be put on the free exercise of religion or on the free expression or promulgation of religious thought, provided that this freedom does not excuse acts of licentiousness or practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of the State. Laws protecting the observance of one day in seven are based on physiological and psychological, and not merely on religious, grounds. The proclamation of days of thanks- giving and fast implies no legal obligation on any one, but is a practice to which some object, though it seems to have the approval of the great majority. Exemption of church property from taxation is defended on the ground that churches, like educational and charitable institutions, ren- der services to the State. This exemption is criticized in some quarters, especially when the exemption extends to church property that is not used for religious, educational, or charitable purposes, but as a source of income. Church CoSperation. Freedom of conscience in America was not merely forced upon each other by conflicting sects. It was largely an expression of the humanitarian idealism of such men as Williams, Jefferson, and Madison. But while this moral ideal was imposed upon the State in its treatment of the churches, it was not immediately adopted by the churches in their treatment of each other. During the last half -century, however, there has been great progress in this direction. The more intelligent sects have abated their claim to certainty upon points about which equally good men differ. Especially they have more and more dis- tinguished the central purpose of Christianity to realize its standards of character and service from those matters about which Christians disagree. SOCIAL BETTERMENT 135 This change opens the way toward more efficient coopera- tion in service, which is the condition that must be fulfilled if the Church is to perform its function as one of the institu- tions of democratic society. Protestant Christianity largely wastes its resources and largely sacrifices its opportunity through divisiveness. In country neighborhoo(Js a variety of sects maintain pitiful rivalry and neither attract the min- isters they need nor command the influence which a united church would wield. In the city, churches assemble for purposes of competition in the best residential quarters and leave miles of humbler districts feebly churched or not at all. Catholicism is free from this fault. It should be pos- sible for Protestantism also to district the city into parishes, and to have behind the church which is located in the needi- est section, as well as that in the wealthiest, the united force of the Protestant Christianity of the whole community. A step in this direction is being taken by the movement for "Church Federation." This plan allows each church in a village, or parish, to have its own clerk, records, and mem- bership roll, and to forward its benevolent contributions to its own denominational board, while for local purposes all the churches in the village, or parish, unite in one or- ganization. Philanthropy. Progress toward democracy in this field cannot be epitomized in the history of our country; it is necessary even for our present purposes to take into account some of the main features of a longer development. Primitive society is communistic. The savage is savage toward those outside his clan, but the gregarious instincts, sociability, and loyalty prevail within the horde. The Aus- trahan Bushman does not regard his game as his own, but divides it according to strict prescriptions of custom. The successful Eskimo distributes his surplus among his clans- men. Savages brought to civilized cities have been amazed 136 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION that in the same group some should be so rich and others so poor, and they have resorted to fantastic explanations for the anomaly. Our wide economic differences are highly artificial products resulting from elaborate organization. Under the feudal system the poor were serfs and slaves. Economic differences were wide. They were largely the products of military organization. All organization impUes leadership. And though, as individuals, many of the rank and file might be as strong as the leaders, yet the leaders de- rived from the fact of organization a power which no mere individual power however great could equal. Similarly to-day the fact of economic organization gives to the leaders power to amass wealth which as individuals they never could produce or acquire. The problem of democracy, whether under military or economic organization, is to retain the efficiency created by organization without allowing the fruits of that efficiency to be improperly monopolized by the leaders of the organization. In spite of the wide gap between the rich and the poor, so long as the poor were serfs and slaves, there was little charity in the modem sense. The serf was bound to the manor, but he was supported by the manor as of right and not of charity. As society be- came diversified ideally each man was stiU attached to a group and lived by the life of the group, the manor, the reli- gious order, the trade or craft guild. The need for charity grew as men became detached from their groups. Some groups were broken up by famine which was not rare, by war and robbery which were common, by pestilence which stalked abroad, and the survivors wandered forth. Pilgrim- ages tolled men away from their groups and the life of the religious mendicant was found by many to be ea,sy and agreeable. The crusades scattered men abroad. The break-up of feudal organization, the escape of villains to the towns, the dismissal of bands of retainers, the enclosure of SOCIAL BETTERMENT 137 farm-lands for cheap pastures, and the turning adrift of the dispossessed rustics, all helped to break up the group life that had made charity so Uttle needed. The feudal order was in many respects bad. It was an organization controlled with primary regard to the interest of the organizers, and not of all the people, and this is the opposite of deiaocracy. The disintegration of this system was a necessary step toward democracy. But all normal human life is gregarious, social, organized, and the disso- lution of old bonds left the laborers isolated, as individuals, or as families. For this reason the need of charities grew apace. This need for charities was met by the religion of the time with the doctrine that alms to the poor brought merit to the giver and shortened the stay of his soul in purgatory. This motive was frankly adopted. Charitable bequests were referred to in the wills as "in aid and merit of the soiJ of the testator." It was understood that the business of a beggar was to ask alms and to pray for the souls of the givers. There was an occasional saint who practiced the true charity of personal ministration, but mediaeval char- ity was in general that indiscriminate almsgiving which does more harm than good. However, gifts were abundant. Endowments of the great monasteries were so lavish that, as Warner remarks, "If the devotion of material wealth to the relief of the poor could alone have cured destitution, it would have been cured." "But these abbeys did but maintain the poor which they made, and such places wherein the great abbeys were seated swarm most with poor people at this day (1656) as if beggary were entailed upon them." " In no case," says Lecky, "was the abolition of monasteries effected in a more indefensible manner than in England, but the transfer of property, that was once employed in a great measure in charity, to the courtiers of King Henry, was 138 DEMOCRACY EST RECONSTRUCTION ultimately a benefit to the English poor." Later, "the Protestant authorities," says Emminghaus, "were not more prudent than their predecessors; the only alteration arose from the fact that the Chiu-ch had less abundant means at its disposal, but this fact alone may be considered a great gain." As the Church has tried indiscriminate almsgiving with disastrous results, so the civil authorities of practically every nation of Christendom have tried indiscriminate repression of begging and vagrancy with results almost equally unsatisfactory. Whipping, cropping the ears, and hanging for the third offense, proved no more effective than we find thirty days in a county jail to be. Labor in confine- ment enforced as the condition of receiving food is eminently proper treatment for sturdy beggars who refuse to work. But when there is no chance to work, men will rove and beg, if they do not steal. For those willing and able to work an opportunity to do so is the only and obvious cure. And to let their labor run to waste, and worse than waste, is a fault of organization. It will some time be learned that although there are times when a fraction of the labor force can yield no profit to managers, it is nevertheless highly profitable to society to furnish to that force at all times the oppor- tunity for employment at least at a subsistence wage. Un- employment and indiscriminate almsgiving are the two causes for an army of tramps and beggars. To stop one would remove the excuse, to stop the other would remove the perennial temptation, to vagabondage and beggary. The third experiment in the neld of charity has been with indiscriminate, or relatively indiscriminate, alms by civil authorities. This has been the usual policy in the United States. The results have been almost as unsatisfactory as in the case of the mediaeval monasteries. In one great American city in 1877 one person in every sixteen of the SOCIAL BETTERMENT 139 population was receiving non-institutional relief. Friends of politicians received help whether needy or not. One woman received help under nine different names. Many sold what they received. Men came from the country every autumn to live at the expense of the city during the winter. The following year the whole system was discontinued. "To the surprise of all no increased demand fell on the pri- vate relief agencies during the winter following, no suffering appeared, and the numbers in almshouses did not increase. There is no well-authenticated instance where outdoor relief has been stopped and any considerable increase either of private charity has been required or any marked increase in the inmates of institutions has occurred. Public outdoor poor-relief educates more people for the almshouse than it keeps out of it, and therefore it is neither economical nor kindly." The conclusion from these facts is not that all relief of poverty should stop, but rather that mere gifts of money or goods, without personal acquamtatice vdth the recijdenta and personal service rendered^to them, on the whole do more harm than good. On the other hand, when confidential per- sonal relations with the. beneficiaries are established, when the physical, personal, and social causes of distress are dis- covered and so far as possible removed, when the personal relationship is kept up till economic independence is reestab- lished, or the need otherwise terminated, when money, or other material aid, is used as an opiate is used by a physi- cian to relieve suffering, or in the form of loans for tools or peddlers' stock or surgical appliances or other means of cure, they are used as a physician uses a medicine, then we have true and constructive charity. This requires organiza- tion. It requires the ability to wrestle with practical prob- lems when they are most baflBing. The advantage is great if the person attempting it has the benefit of the accumulated 140 DEMOCRACY IN EECONSTRtJCTION experience of those who have dealt with many forms of so- cial breakdown and are familiar with all the methods and agencies of social rehabilitation. These lessons of experience have brought into existence the Charity Organization movement, which has the follow- ing objects: (1) To provide paid workers who have the personal qualifications and the special training required for this work, who will devote to it their entire time and energy. (2) To organize and assist the volunteers who can devote a part of their time to friendly personal service among the poor. (3) To establish confidential cooperation among aU the charita,ble agencies of a community so as to prevent needless repetition of personal investigations when several agencies chance to learn of the same case of need, to stop neediest duplication of relief and the impostures of charity rounders, and to increase the efficiency of every agency by notifying it of each case which it is especially adapted to serve, and replacing mutual interference and cross-piu-poses by a con- certed plan for every case taken under treatment. A more or less incidental result of the Charity Organiza- tion movement is the fact that its continuous first-hand research in the actual causes and conditions of poverty has been an efficient means of enlightening public opinion as to social needs and problems. Institutional charity in the States. The Charity Organi- zation movement is a private enterprise and is practically confined to non-institutional charity. Institutional charity is in part private and in part supported by public funds. The State of Illinois, for example, supports twenty-two institutions with plants valued on the average at nearly a million dollars each, and having on the average more than a thousand inmates in each, and costing for mainte- SOCIAL BETTEBMENT 141 nance more than six million dollars annually. These include provision for the insane, the feeble-minded, the epileptic, the deaf and the blind and others. Cities have also their institutional charities, and unfortunately their non-in- stitutional almsgiving, and coimties, besides their non-in- stitutional poor-relief, maintain at least almshouses or infirmaries. Some of the States have increased the efficiency of their charities by consohdating their management under one central authority. And some of them (Indiana being a pioneer in this) have established a useful superintendence by the authorities of the State over all the charities of the cities and counties and even the private institutions. The requirements of such superintendence furnish our best hope of securing a tolerable efficiency in the non-institutional charity of cities and counties. Non-institutional charity ought as a rule to be left entirely to private agencies, devel- oped in accordance with the principles of the Charity Organi- zation movement, or to be carried on in close cooperation with such private agencies, the latter supplying the per- sonal service which is their most characteristic function, or they should be under such thoroughgoing supervision by the State as no State has yet provided. The almshouse has long been the most characteristic institution of local public charity in England and America. It has been the subject of many abuses. There are still sur- vivals of the infamous system by which the poor of a coimty were entrusted to the lowest bidder. In the most progres- sive States the insane are removed from the almshouses, and no children are allowed to grow up in that environment, and feeble-minded women are no longer allowed to enter and leave at will, leaving their almost annual progeny of miserable humanity. A recent innovation which has swiftly spread to about half 142 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION the States is the "mothers' pension" or "funds to parents" legislation, which provides that children shall not be sepa- rated from their parents if their only unfitness to rear their offspring is poverty, the county court allowing a stipend from county funds. This is a bad law unless the money is accompanied by such personal acquaintance and service as that described when discussing the Charity Organization movement; but it is an excellent one provided that condition can be properly fulfilled. The Charity Organization movement, the influence of National and State Conferences of Social Work, and of scientific study and teaching, are so increasing public intelli- gence in this field that it may possibly some time become the rule for public non-institutional relief to be efliciently admin- istered, and all indiscriminate almsgiving, whether public or private, to be abolished. Moreover, departments of sociology in universities and schools of philanthropy are gradually equipping a force of trained workers. County organization — Its importance. In America the county is the chief unit in those forms of public charitable work which have preventive and constructive possibilities. It is the oflBcials of the county, not those of the State, that are in constant contact with the people where the people live. In the most progressive States every county court is authorized to lay aside the ordinary rules of court procedure in the case of juvenile delinquents and to em- ploy the services of a probation oflBcer. It is in this work of juvenile probation, in the enforcement of school-attend- ance laws, in the administration of funds for parents, and in regular county poor-relief that the Government touches the imperiled classes. Wherever the central State administra- tion of charity is sufficiently intelligent and honest, it shpuld be possible to require that in every county (except the most sparsely settled) there should be at least one competent SOCIAL BETTERMENT 148 and trained social worker, certified as such by the State civil service commission in cooperation with the State depart- ment of public welfare, and under the direction of this trained worker the pubKcly supported social service of the county should as far as possible be consolidated. With eflBcient State departments of public welfare, which we now have in a few States, having charge of the charities and also of the corrections of the State, and with county departments of pubhc welfare as just described, we shall have gone far in the right direction. Already certain cities (Kansas City being a pioneer in this) have established muni- cipal departments of public welfare which have a force of trained social workers and administer the various public charities of the city in close cooperation with the private charitable agencies. The municipal department of public welfare maintains also such agencies as a free legal-aid bureau, a loan agency, a department of hotising and factory inspection, a free employment bureau, emergency employ- ment, supervision for dance halls and other places of amuse- ment, and administers the city's correctional institutions and parole system, and a department for research. Nowhere is it truer than in the field of charity that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Every form of physical and moral breakdown can grow out of pov- erty and be entailed upon succeeding generations. Even a wise selfishness on the part of society woxild enlist earnest endeavors to identify and combat the personal and social causes of poverty. Let aid be given to the poor before they fall over the brink of pauperism. Genuine and intelligent philanthropy vnll he devoted chierfly to giving the poor a chance to help themselves, by creating conditions of housing, public health, recreation, education, and labor which the poor indi- vidual, as an unaided and isolated individual, cannot provide, but which a democraiic society is bound to maintain. 144 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Against forms of misfortune to which the principle of insurance applies, especially against sickness, the most constant of all causes of poverty and general breakdown, that principle should be scientifically directed as is being done in every great industrial nation except the United States. The principle of insurance is that all who are ex- posed to a given risk, or who profit by having others ex- posed to that risk, should share the burden instead of allow- ing its whole weight to crush those who are selected to bear it by accident or physical nature.^ Charity, in the old-fashioned sense of giving a little out of the abundance of the well-to-do to keep the wretched alive in their peniuy, was not an institution of democracy, but came near to being the very antithesis of democracy. Every normal individual receives from society a million times more than he can repay, and he is a pauper and a dependent unless in return he does his part to help attain the goal of social betterment through democratic organiza- tion. None is worthy to give who is not willing to acknowl- edge that he receives, that he is debtor to the Greek and to the barbarian, the bond and the free, to all who have created and who help to maintain the common social life, and willing to measure his own worth chiefly by the loyalty of his determination to contribute his part to that cooperative achievement. ' The subject of social insurance might with propriety have been treated at length under the title of this chapter. The topics to be included in the chapter were determined by the plan of the editors. I understand that the press, the chiurch, and philanthropy are not elsewhere dealt with in this book, while all the other subjects that might have been included in the title of this chapter are elsewhere treated. SOCIAL BETTERMENT 145 SUPPLEMENTARY READINGS Charles Horton Cooley: Social Organizaiion. New York, Chas. Scribner's Sons, 1909. Edward Cary Hayes: Introduction to the Study of Sociology. New York, D. Appleton & Co., 1915, chapters 11, 12, 22, 34 to 36. James Melvin Lee: History of American Journalism. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1917. Sanf ord H. Cobb : Rise of Religious Liberty in America. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1912. Amos G. Warner: American Charities. New York, Thos. Y. Crowell Company, revised ed., 1908. Charles Richmond Henderson, and Others: Modern Methods of Charity. New York, The Macmillan Company, 1904. VII DEMOCRATIZATION OF INSTITUTIONS FOR PUBLIC SERVICE W. F. WILLOUGHBY Democracy, not autocracy, won the War. The War now so happily terminated brought with it many revelations. In the field of politics it demonstrated the inherent strength of democracy. For years prior to the outbreak of the War the feeling had been widespread in countries enjoying popti- lar government that the advantages of that form of govern- ment were secured only at the expense of efficiency. When the supreme test came, however, these coimtries, not Only waged a successful war, but showed a steadfastness of pur- pose, a self-sacrifice, and an efficiency in meeting the varied problems of waging war under modem conditions that was equaled by no one of its autocratically ruled enemies. Everywhere popular government emerged triumphant, while autocracy with its much-vaunted efficiency in every case, if we except Japan, which was subjected to no severe strain, crumbled in ruins. Yet political democracy has weaknesses for a peace-time. The victory of popular government should not blind us, however, to its weaknesses, or rather to an appreciation of the necessity for certain things if it is permanently to endure and fulfill its mission. Popular government has demon- strated its strength in time of war. Will it be equally suc- cessful in the period of poUtical and industrial unrest upon which we are now entering? Unless indications are mislead- ing, popular government is about to be subjected to a test PUBLIC SERVICE 147 even more severe than the one from which it has just emerged. It behooves all lovers of democracy, therefore, to take stock of experiences of the past four years, to sound the basic reasons for the radicalism now coming to the front in every land, and to see wherein the weak points in the armor of popular government may be strengthened. It is opposed to industrial autocracy. To the writer the greatest source of weakness of democracy is that it is seeking to maintain itself in an environment which in many respects is not in accord with its principles. When England, in the middle of the nineteenth century, was seeking, by the reform of its electoral franchise system, to democratize the founda- tion upon which its pohtical structure rested, many of her more enlightened men looked with apprehension upon, if they did not actually oppose, the movement, due to the be- lief that political democracy could not permanently prevail in a community whose industrial system was not on the same basis. For years these forebodings seemed to have been un- founded. To-day, however, they are, or should be, in the minds of every one to whom the public welfare is a matter of concern. There can be little doubt that the world is about to enter upon a struggle on the part of the common people for industrial democracy comparable in all essential respects to the struggle for political democracy that characterized the nineteenth century. The Bolsheviki in Russia, the old Teutonic empires, and the Scandinavian countries, the Syn- dicalists in France, the Laborites with their new program, and the advocates of national guilds in England, and the LW.W.'s, in our own country, though differing in respect to the character of their present demands and the means to be employed for their attainment, are one as to the fundamen- tal aim that they have in view. Progressively or immedi- ately they are demanding that the present regime, where 148 DEMOCRACY EST RECONSTRUCTION industrial control is in the hands of the few, shall give way to one where all who participate in productive operations shall exercise a voice in their conduct. Necessaiy to face the facts. This brief sketch of condi- tions as the writer sees them is not written in any spirit of advocacy or denunciation. What is sought is merely that the existence of these conditions shall be clearly recognized. Especially is it necessary that those whose work hes in the field of political science should do so. In the past it has been possible for the social reformer and the poUtiqal scien- tist each to travel his own road without much thought of the other. In the modem movement for industrial democracy the two paths come together. The Laborite, with his new platform, must now give a large part of his attention to ways and means, to organization and procedure. The polit- ical scientist must follow this movement, since nothing is more certain than that, if it gains headway, the conditions under which political institutions operate will be radically changed if, indeed, such institutions do not themselves undergo profoimd modification. And to take one's position on them. Next in importance to recognizing the existence of a movement is that of making up one's mind regarding the position that should be taken in regard to it. The choice here lies between that of opposition and repression and that of attempts to remove the causes of the discontent which have given rise to the movement and to direct the movement itself into proper channels. Which of these two attitudes is the correct one it is hardly necessary to state. Few now question that the efforts of the political and industrial Bourbons of the past, to oppose the develop- ment of democracy and the right of workmen to organize and demand the substitution of collective for individual bargaining in fixing the labor contract, were a mistake. In so far as they achieved their end at all, they had as their PUBLIC SERVICE 149 effect to drive the workmen into other and more radical movements for reform. In respect to the present movement it is thus in the highest degree desirable that its aim as an aim should be viewed sympathetically. Certainly a more democratic form of industrial organization is desirable, if feasible. Facts disclosed during the War. The coimtry owes a deep debt of gratitude to the President's Mediation Com- mission, which, at the request of the President, made, in 1917, an investigation into the causes of industrial discon- tent as evidenced by the spread of the I.W.W., for taking this position. In a remarkably able report submitted to the President, this Commission imequivocably condemned the efforts at repression which had been so much in evidence in the past and insisted that future efforts should be directed toward the removal of the very real grievances which had been responsible for the movement. It thus said: Broadly speaking, American industry lacks a healthy basis of relationship between management and men. At bottom this is due to the insistence by employers upon individual dealings with their men. Direct dealings with employees' organizations is still the minority rule in the United States. In the majority of in- stances there is no joint dealing, and in too many instances employers are in active opposition to labor organizations. This failure to equalize the parties in adjustments of inevitable indus- trial contests is the central cause of our difficulties. There is a commendable spirit throughout the country to correct specific evils. The leaders in industry must go further; they must help to correct the state of mind on the part of labor; they must aim for the release of normal feelings by enabling labor to take its place as a coSperator in the industrial enterprise. In a word, a conscious attempt must be made to generate a new spirit in iudustry. . . . It is, then, to uncorrected specific evils and the absence of a healthy spirit between capital and labor, due partly to these evils and partly to an unsound industrial structure, that we must attrib- ute industrial difficulties which we have experienced during the war. Sinister influences and extremist doctrine may have availed 150 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION themselves of these conditions; they certainly have not created them. . . . Too often there is a glaring inconsistency between our demo- cratic purposes in this war abroad and the autocratic conduct of some of those guiding industry at home. How to avoid Bolshevism. If our country is to avoid the evils of Bolshevism or of I.W.W.-ism, in so far as that organization stands for direct action, sabotage, and vio- lence, every effort must be bent toward the removal of these conditions and the taking of the action that will put our industrial organization on a more democratic basis. This means, that specific evils in the way of excessive hours and improper conditions of labor generally shall be corrected; that the principle of collective bargaining shall be definitely recognized as the only means through which labor may effectively exercise its legitimate voice in the determination of conditions tmder which its services shall be given; that individual ownership and operation of farms shall be pro- moted in every way possible; that cooperative efforts in both production and distribution shall be stimulated; and that all movements and policies having for their purpose the securing of a more even and equitable distribution of property and income shall be earnestly supported. Industrial democracy a task for high statesmanship. Political democracy has proven a success, since the limita- tions and the dangers inherent in it have been clearly appre- ciated and guarded against. Li the development of repre- sentative government has been foimd the means, not only of extending the benefits of popular government to a large population, but of avoiding the dangers of mob rule and of furnishing protection to the minority from the possible op- pression of a tyrannical majority. Industrial democracy presents equally numerous and grave limitations and dan- gers. In their determination and the devising of means by PUBLIC SERVICE 151 which they may be met, the statesmanship of the world has a task second to none in importance and complexity among the problems with which it will have to deal in the new period into which we are now entering. Democratization of civil service and military organiza- tion. The democratization of industry represents but one phase of the general movement for democracy which the War has brought so prominently to the front. Another phase is that of the democratization of the two great divi- sions of the administrative branch of the Government, the civil service and military and naval establishmraits. This is a phase which the writer has sought to handle in a work recently published by him.* Its discussion arose in connec- tion with his attempt to define and determine the signifi- cance of bureaucracy and militarism as those words are used as terms of opprobrium. If we examine the personnel systems of the leading govern- ments of the world, it will be found that they are fundamen- tally different according to the principles on which they are based. At one end of the scale stands the biu-eaucratic type of Prussia as it existed before the War. Much misappre- hension exists in regard to the true character of this system due to the two senses in which the term " bureaucratic " may be employed in describing a system of organization and personnel administration. In its larger sense this term is used to describe any personnel system where the employees are classified in a system of administration composed of a hierarchy of sections, divisions, bureaus, departments, and the like. Used in this sense there can be nothing to justify the prejudices which exist in the United States against what is known as a " bureaucracy." Such a system is in fact one that must be established in the case of any large undertaking if efficiency in operation is to be secured, ' An Introdtiction to the Study of the Qovernment of Modem States. The Century Company, 1918. 152 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION What is bureaucracy? The term " bureaucracy " can be, and is, however, used in a much more restrictive and special sense as descriptive of a body of public servants organized in a hierarchical system which stands outside of the sphere of eflfective public control. It is in this sense that it is em- ployed in designating the old Prussian civil-service system. The prime characteristic of this system is that it represents a body of public servants owing their positions directly to the authority of the ruler. They are in the fullest possible acceptance of the term but the servants of the ruler, the agents through whom he exercises his autocratic powers as head of the administration. Due to this fact the ruler is able to organize the civil branch of the government upon a basis substantially similar to the military branch of the government. It constitutes as distinct a career as those of the military and naval establishments. Special provisions exist for the education and training of those contemplatiag adopting its several branches as careers. After entrance, members of it advance ia regular gradation of positions and in Gonformity with general regulations. Their tenure of oflBce is as fixed and secure as in the case of the military and naval services. Practically the same care is given to the determination of the titles employed in designating officers of different grades, and to the social and other advantages and prerogatives attaching to such offices, as in those serv- ices. The result of these provisions is to briag into exist- ence a body of public servants who constitute a distinct class in the community in the same way as do the mihtary and naval forces. Gennan bureaucracy and efficiency. There can be no question of the advantages which such a system offers from the standpoint of efficiency. Notwithstanding this, exami- nation shows that there are inherent in it certain disadvan- tages or dangers which go far toward justifying the deep- PUBLIC SERVICE 153 seated distrust that Americans have of it. The fact that under it Government employees are servants of the State rather than of the people tends to make them, not only irresponsive to public demands, but to assimae a superior or overbearing attitude to the public. That this feature was very much in evidence in the Prussian system any one who has had contact with it can testify. All of the evils of mili- tarism, as they concern the relations between the military establishment and the general population, are latent, if not positively expressed, in a bureaucrat^ of this character. What is of still greater importance is the power which this system gives to a ruler to control both the general social and the political life of the people. That this power was used in Prussia in this way to control elections and to secure the attainment of the political ends of the ruler is certain. In- deed, its use was openly acknowledged and justified as a legitimate use by the ruler of his powers to advance the wel- fare of the State as he saw it. The British system aristocratic. In England we have another type of personnel system which may be character- ized as the "aristocratic" in contrast with the "autocratic" type of Prussia. A distinguishing feature of this system is the sharp distinction which is drawn between diflFerent grades of personnel, and the difficulty which exists in passing from one grade to another. There is first the class of per- manent under-secretaries and assistant secretaries. No attempt is made to apply the competitive principle in re- cruiting this class. Its members hold office by appoint- ment based upon the personal judgment of the appointing officers as to their capacities; and selection may be made from persons already in the Government service or who have never held public office. The theory is that the quali- fications desired of this class are of so special a character and involve to so large an extent the matter of personal equation. 154 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION and the relations between them and their appointing officers are of so personal a nature, that the latter should have broad discretionary powers in making their selections. Next there is the class of superior administrative officers to whom is given the designation of "first-class clerks." This class includes all those who, subject to the authority of their superior officers, the heads of the departments, the under- secretaries, and assistant secretaries, occupy the more im- portant positions and constitute the great bulk of what may be called the directing personnel. This class is almost wholly recruited by means of special competitive examina- tions, the conditions and character of which are so fixed that practically only graduates of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge can hope to compete with success. Only in exceptional cases are those positions filled by promotion of employees in the lower ranks. Finally, there are a number of classes of subordinate personnel, the ranks of which are recruited by special competitive examinations and in less degree by promotion of persons within the services. Resemblance to military organization. This system is based upon substantially the same principles and considera- tions that obtain in the military and naval services. Sub- stantially the same clear distinction is made between the directing personnel, or officer class, and the general line of employees, that is made in the latter services between the commissioned officers and enUsted men. And the same diffi- culty exists in passing from one class to another that obtains in those services. The theory is, though it is not always openly avowed, that the directing personnel should not only have qualifications which can be secured only by special training, such as is given in higher universities, but that they should be drawn from the upper classes of the population. This system, which is often described as one of water-tight compartments, is, it will be observed, congenial to the aris- PUBLIC SERVICE 165 tocratic character of the social system of England. Pri- marily its adoption is due to this fact, rather than to the deliberate opinion on the part of those entrusted with the conduct of public affairs of its intrinsic merit. The argu- ments that are brought forward in favor of it represent thus but the effort to justify a decision that has been made on other grounds. American civil service democratic. The system of the United States presents still a third type of civil-service organization. In thus characterizing the American civil service as a distinct type, reference is not made to one of its most characteristic features, the extent to which public oflBces are treated as political spoils, but rather to the char- acter that has been given to the system where the effort has been made to take it outside of the domain of politics and put it upon a merit basis. A distinguishing feature of both the German and English systems is that they are based upon the principle of recruiting their personnel from among young people just leaving school and who have deliberately selected the Government service as their life occupation. In the United States the whole principle upon which the personnel system is based is radically different. The theory seems to be that the Government service is not one to be deliberately adopted by young people as their life vocation. The age requirements are such that persons well along in life may enter; and in fact, to a large extent, persons entering the Government service have previously been employed in other capacities. Entrance examinations, instead of being of a general character, are highly specialized* The effort is made to secure persons already possessing the particular training fitting them to perform the work called for by the particular positions to be filled. We have entered upon this rather lengthy description of the three types of personnel systems, since it serves to bring 156 DEMOCRACY IN BECONSTRUCTION out the important part that this branch of public adminis- tration plays in determining the real character of the po- litical institutions of a country. The Prussian system is an autocratic system; that of England, an aristocratic; and that of the United States, a democratic. No one can claim that oiu- system, as it is actually operated, is a satis- factory one. It is desirable, however, to appreciate that, as regards its fimdamental character, it is thoroughly con- sonant with oiu" democratic form of government. It is then highly important that in an effort to improve it we should preserve this feature. The problem, in other words, is that of seeking to give to it the good features of other systems while still holding on to its essential democratic character. The nature of militarism. Turning now to the military and naval branch of administration, we are confronted with a set of considerations in all essential respects similar to those presented in the case of the civil branch. Just as the nature of bureaucracy has been generally misunderstood by the American people, so there has been a wide misapprehen- sion in respect to the real nature of militarism. To the writer this term can properly be applied only to a system where the miKtary and naval forces, not only constitute a distinct class in the community, but are beyond the effective control of the people. As so used it can refer, in its strictest sense, only to the military estabKshments of an autocracy. MiUtarism is, in fact, the twin brother of bureaucracy, or, to change the metaphor, bureaucracy and militarism consti- tute the two arms of the autocrat through which he is en- abled to maintain himself and make his will prevail. The importance of this analysis of militarism, from the standpoint of the proposition now being urged for the estab- lishment of the principle of universal military service in the United States, is evident. The greatest argument that is brought against this proposal is that it will lead to militar- PUBLIC SERVICE 157 ism. No greater mistake could be made. Militarism, properly viewed, is not synonymous with the maintenance of a large military establishment and especially not if this estabhshment rests upon the basis of a general obligation on the part of all classes to service. The distinction between the two is precisely that which we have sought to draw be- tween a bureaucracy in an autocracy and an administrative personnel in a popular government. A military system in an autocra(gr means the existence of a force of soldiers who constitute a class apart and are agents of the ruler rather than guardians of the pubhc. Not dangerous under our system. With this un4erstand- ing of the true nature of militarism, it must be apparent that the proposal to require military service of aU the youth of the land has in it none of the dangers inherent in that sys- tem. In itself it has as democratic a character as any sys- tem that can well be devised. Especially is this so it the rigid line, which has heretofore been drawn between com- missioned officers and enlisted men, is in a manner broken down, or at least eliminated to such an extent that the for- mer are recruited from the latter according to some selective i?ystem resting upon merit and capacity. The writer will yield to none in the emphasis that he would put upon the necessity for implicit obedience on the part of men to their officers. He does not believe that the only way to secure this is through the sharp separation now existing between the two classes and the special character of the relations which are now enforced between them. Certainly if the de- cision in favor of universal service is made, every effort should be exerted to emphasize the democratic character of the army resulting. If this is done such an army can be made a means of training, physical, mental, and moral, and an instrument for Americanizhig our heterogeneous popula- tion second only in importance to our public-school system. 158 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION The public school. In referring to our public-school sys- tem mention has been made of yet another institution which, while not of a political character, has, or may have, profound influence upon the maimer in which such institutions work in practice. If democraQ^ means anything, it means an equality of opportunity. Such a condition can obtain only where the educational system of a country is such that its facilities are open to all and substantial freedom of choice exists in respect to the nature of the instruction desired with reference to vocation to be followed. To state this in an- other way, it is a mockery to hold that all fields of endeavor are open to all persons if the opportunities for securing the education and training necessary for work in those fields are not equally open. Non-democracy of German schools. It is a rather re- markable thing that, much as the educational system of Ger- many has been studied, this aspect of it received little or ho attention until the War led to a searching examination of all of the institutions of that country. It is now seen that the much-vaunted educational system of that country was deliberately devised so as to exclude practically all opportu- nity on the part of the lower classes of entrance into any of the higher positions, either in the service of the State, civil or military, or in the professions. In effect this system pro- vided for two classes of schools: one for the common people, which provided for a good common education, but made no provision for those studies which were necessary to prepare students for the professions, the superior positions in the army and the civil services, and the more responsible posi- tions in industry generally; and the other which had spe- cially in mind the preparing of pupils for these positions. Attendance in the first class was free or practically so; while that in the second class entailed a very considerable expense. The result of this was that the great mass of the laboring PUBLIC SERVICE 159 classes was compelled to send their children to the schools of the first class. Once having made this decision it was ex- ceedingly difficult for a student to pass from one class to an- other. The courses of study in the two classes of schools were so adjusted with reference to the requirements for entrance into any of the higher positions, that only students in the second class could possibly qualify for these positions. From ninety to ninety-five per cent of the youth of Germany thus found themselves, at the very start of their lives, de- barred from all hope of entrance into the higher walks of life. As Professor Alexander has pointed out in his excellent study of this system: ^ A careful study of the Prussian school system ■will convince any unbiased reader that the Prussian citizen cannot be free to do or act for himself; that the Prussian is to a large measure enslaved through the medium of his school; that his learning instead of making him his own master, forges the chain by which he is held in servitude; that the whole scheme of Prussian elementary educa- tion is shaped with the express purpose of making ninety-five out of every hundred citizens subservient to the ruling house and to the State. Similar tendencies in England. A study of the English educational system will show that, though there is no such deliberate plan of excluding the lower classes from the schools, attendance upon which qualifies for the superior positions, the system is one having this effect to no slight extent. Mention has already been made of the fact that the requirements for entrance to the higher positions in the Government are such that only graduates of Oxford and Cambridge stand much chance of meeting them. In the case of the English system the factors having the greatest weight are, however, social rather than legal. American schools democratic. It is only when one turns to the United States, and to a less extent to other countries 1 Ths Prussian Elementary Schools. 1918. 160 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION in which democracy, from a social as well as a political stand- point, prevails, that a really democratic system of education is foimd. Whatever may be the technical defects of our education system, it has this great merit. This applies not only to our common-school system, but to our system of higher education as well. Thanks to the establishment of the great system of State universities, the liberality of our men of wealth in endowing private universities, and the dem- ocratic spirit that prevails in most, if not all of them, the opportimity for securing the training leading to every posi- tion, public and private, no matter how exalted, is open to all. In this most important inatter the United States has thus laid the absolutely essential basis for democracy,, politi- cal or-industrial. In the foregoing we have sought to consider certain of the more important phases of a problem which now confronts all nations of the Western world. To recapitulate, this prob- lem is that of putting all of their public institutions, political, social, and economic, upon a democratic basis. The point that it has been desired specially to emphasize is that the democratization of purely political institutions constitutes but part of the task to be accomplished. In the United States and in most of the countries of Europe this has been fairly well accomplished. The remainder of the problem consists in bringing the other institutions of the land into harmony with these institutions. America's fortunate position. In respect to this phase of the problem the United States is in a pecuharty fortunate situation. It has never suffered from either bureaucracy or miUtarism. All of its instincts are against such systems. It has a civil service which, notwithstanding its many de- fects, is of a thoroughly democratic character. In its public- school systems it has an educational system that could PUBLIC SERVICE 161 hardly be more democratic, either in principle or practice. Having ehminated the cancer of slavery it has a social sys- tem that recognizes the dignity of labor and draws no false distinctions between those who labor with their hands and their minds. It is in the field of industry alone that much yet remains to be done to bring that system into harmony with its other institutions. The writer is far from advocat- ing any of the radical measures of reform, such as are repre- sented by Bolshevikism, socialism, syndicalism, or what-not, now prominent in other lands. He does beUeve, however, that if the evils of these systems are to be avoided, the United States will have to spare no effort to secure a greater equality of bargaining strength between employees and em- ployers, such as will result from the general acceptance of the principle of collective bargaining; a greater equality in the distribution of wealth and income, such as will be se- cured through the development of farm ownership and the promotion of cooperative efforts; and a greater equality in the burden of taxation, such as is represented by the progres- sive principle in the imposition of income taxes, the taxation of articles of luxiuy, etc. One thing is certain. The work- ing classes are going to demand, to an increasing extent, not only a larger share in the world's goods, but a greater voice in the determination of the conditions under which these goods are produced and distributed. If they cannot accom- plish these ends through the means which we have men- tioned, it is only a question of time when they will direct their efforts into the other channels being followed by their fellow workers in other lands. The American people have solved, or are in the process of solving, the problems of polit- ical democracy. Just as they have avoided the dangers of mob rule in that field, may we not hope that they will do so in that of industry? Certainly no other nation is better situated to work out successfully this problem of the new era upon which we are entering. in AFTER-WAR SOCIAL PROBLEMS Esther Clatson Lovejot, M.D. Vice-President Elect of the National Medical Women's Association, formerly Director qf Public Health in Portland, Oregon Mary Euzabeth Titzel Research Assistant in the Children's Bureau of the United States Department qf Labor Samuel P. Capen Specialist in Higher Education in the United States Bureau of Education, and member of the Advisory Board of the Committee on Education and Special Training of the War Department Charles R. Mamn Chairman of the Advisory Board cf the Committee on Education and Special Training cf the War Department Willis H. Cahothebs Professor of Secondary Education in the Kansas State Normal School, Emporia, Kansas Samuel McCune Lindsat • Professor of Social Legislation in Columbia University VIII DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH ESTHER LOVEJOY, M.D. "Let us admit it fairly, as a business people should. We have had no end of a lesson; it will do us no end of good." That is, it will do us no end of good if as a nation we act upon the information available as a result of the War. From the standpoint of public health and welfare the startling revelations which followed the application of the selective service draft will be worth far more than the cost of the War if we admit our national faults fairly, and apply rational remedies to the correction of evils which ought not to exist in this or any other country. The supreme test was applied to the soul of the Nation on June 5, 1917. That was the day set for the first registra- tion and practically all of our men between twenty-one and thirty-one years of age responded to the war call as with one voice. This was the answer made to the charge that our country was divided against itself. These young men were willing and anxious to join the army, but when the examina- tions were made many of them were rejected on account of preventable diseases and physical defects, and, in this land which boasts of its public schools, a shocking percent- age of illiteracy was revealed. Condition of the drafted men. According to the report of the Provost Marshal General, 730,756 out of the first 2,510,706 men examined were rejected for physical defects. A table covering ten thousand of these cases indicates that most of these faults were preventable, and many of them were of a nature that might easily have been corrected during 166 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION childhood. Over four per cent were rejected on account of venereal disease. It is easy to examine thousands of men and tabulate gross imperfections, culling out those whose ears have been/in- jured by scarlet fever, or whose vital organs have been dani- aged by the Treponema pallidum, or tubercule bacillus, but it is utterly impossible to measure the stature of the men who might have been if the States and the Nation had done their full duty to the children of the last generation. The yoimg men who answered the call so loyally, and who were rejected because of preventable defects, had been neglected by the mother country for which they were wiUing to die. Those who were found to be illiterate had been irreparably wronged by the States they loved so well. There was hot haste in the Nation to correct the evils that reduced our man-power, but it takes twenty years to make a man and it is impossible to speed up the process to meet an emergency. With the submarines threatening our coast, our social con- science suddenly awakened and we began to think straight and act straight and adopt rational measures for the welfare of the Nation. Many of these enactments have been facili- tated as war measures, but as a matter of fact they are just as truly peace measures. Some of them had been advocated by our peace patriots for years, and if they had been in operation fewer men would have been rejected. "In times of peace prepare for war" is a pretty good old adage, and from the standpoint of a practical pacifist the better we are prepared for war the less likely we are to have it. A high type of manhood is the best possible guarantee of safety for the future, and it remains to be seen whether our suddenly developed social conscience will stand the test of peace. British experience. The prophets of England had been DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 167 ding-donging along this line for years. British soldiers had sounded the warning over and over again. Statesmen had harped upon it, and, in the light of recent events, the immor- tal protests and prayers of the great poetic prophet of the English-speaking peoples, would seem to indicate that he previsioned the price he was to pay personally.' But what good did it all do? Even the South African experience was lost, and when the great crisis came the defenders of the realm were so unbelievably under-grade that the Government suspected the examining physicians of some sort of connivance and checked their work by having groups of men reexamined, with the result that the Premier apologized publicly to the examining physicians for the unjust suspicion. The material resources pi the Nation had been carefully conserved. The ships and forts had been conscientiously tested, guarded, and improved. They cost money — "ay, there's the rub! " When men cost money, they'll be worth it. But so long as values are measured in pounds and pence and dollars and cents, and women people the earth gratui- tously, without guarantee of care and protection for their children, human material will be cheap and not worth saving. England was surprised and shocked at the number of "B-2 " and " C-3 " men that volunteered for service. That is, the well-fed, well-educated, physically and mentally fit part of England was surprised and shocked. It was appall- ing. As a result of national disregard of public health and welfare the strength of the Nation had declined, and the country found itself a million man-power short at the time of its greatest need. This shortage could be measured by the weak and defective man-material on hand. But, it might have been worse. The men who presented them- 1 Kipling's only son was killed in the early part of the War. 168 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION selves for examination had at least survived. They were an asset. They could serve in some capacity according to their strength, but no board of examiners could measure the stature, or the loss to the kingdom, of those who had died in childhood and youth as a result of the conditions which had produced these hundreds of thousands of under-grade, defective men. Physical perfection is a glorious thing. An " A-1 " man is the noblest work of woman. He radiates strength and vitality. He is the very apple of the eye of womanhood. As "a national asset his value reaches away into the genera- tions of the future. In times of peace "B-2" and "C-3" men are hopelessly handicapped in competition with the "A-ls." But, after all, life is sweet, and there is a grim compensation and a sort of national retribution in the fact that in times of war the "A-ls" pay the price of physical perfection, and the "C-3s" or "D-4s" — the worse the bet- ter — are most likely to survive and avenge their wrongs by perpetuating their imperfections. If misery really loves company, the revelations following our selective service examinations must have comforted the other nations in their humiliation. It does not seem possible that there can be three fourths of a million illiterates, and about the same number of diseased and defective young men in the United States. This is undemocratic. The co- existence of these two evils in corresponding proportion naturally suggests that they go together. As a matter of fact they do. Education is a basic public health measure. An educated electorate will demand living conditions condu- cive to the highest degree of health. Oiur draft was democratic. It was a war measure. It got the man from Harvard and the man who had grown up without care or education. But the disparity that made it possible for one to enjoy advantages so far beyond the DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 169 reach of the other is absolutely unfair, undemocratic, and un-American. Our boys have fought and died for the ideal of democracy, but a true democracy is impossible where economic pressure pushes the children out of school into gainful occupations before they have passed the sixth grade. We could scarcely beheve the report of the Provost Mar- shal General. If it had come from a less reUable soiu"ce we should have branded it instantly as a base fabrication. This stain on our national reputation will not come off in a hurry. Everybody is talking about it. The other more or less demo- cratic nations find mitigation in it for their own short- comings, and the Bolshevist holds up his hands in horror and points to it to prove that a "plutocracy" is worse than an "autocracy." What the draft revelations mean. It is perfectly clear to • the whole country that these boys have been neglected and iU-treated, and it is fair to assume that their sisters have fared no better: worse, perhaps, because the neglect of girls leads to prostitution. These defective young men are the victims of a defective social system. They have been de- prived of their birthright in this democracy. When the honors of the Nation were distributed, embarrassment and rejection were their portion. They were crestfallen and broken-hearted. Their families were humiliated. But the blush was on the wrong face. The fair, innocent face of youth was flushed with the shame that should in justice have branded the brow of the elder generation. The womanhood of the land is stung to the quick by this living evidence of injustice. The women's organizations are discussing the matter openly, in all its phases, not excluding the venereal, and passing resolutions of censure against whosoever and whatsoever is responsible. As a nation we have fallen far short of our ideals, and women find scant 170 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION comfort in the fact that they are without guilt in this con- nection. "Care of the public health is the first duty of a states- man." This dictum of Disraeli has been repeated over and over again, in substance, by clear-thinking men of all na- tions, including Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt, Being a statesman, Disraeli realized this perfectly, and if the majority in the British Parliament had been "states- men" doing their "first duty" froni that day to this, Lloyd George would not have been constrained to deplore the obvious fact that an "A-1" nation cannot be maintained with a "C-3" population. An "A-1 " nation is a peace problem, like all fundamental preparations for war. It involves every phase of human welfare. It necessitates the free exercise of our inalienable constitutional right to the pursuit of happiness. It is con- tingent upon ascending national ideals, possessing all the charm of the imattainable, and its possibilities are as bound- less as eternity. In a limited, present-day sense, an "A-1" nation is a matter, of comparison, and with all our imperfections we are "A-1" from this standpoint. Bad as we are, the other countries are worse, and since, according to the best authori- ties, our national status depends primarily upon our popu- lation being alive and well, which involves the mysterious, agonizing, and hazardous incident of being bom, let us take a peep into the mortality statistics of the United States (a thrilling publication) and see if we can gather anything worth while regarding the cost at which we are born, why we get sick, and what we die from. American mortality statistics. Over a milhon people die annually in this country, and nobody has the slightest idea how many are bom. According to the 1916 census, the last available report, made up from the death returns of the DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 171 registration area which includes about seventy per cent of the population of the United States, 12,165 persons died of " senility " and the rest were cut off more or less prematurely by diseases, most of which were preventable, and many of which were inexcusable. Even the 12, 165 who died oflScially of old age probably had something the matter with their vital machinery that did not appear on their death certifi- cates. Tuberculosis formerly led the procession of death, but as a resTilt of education and preventive measures that dread malady had gradually slackened to second place and organic heart disease was in the lead, when a dark team resembling influenza and pneumonia speeded up and won with a record oifour hundred thousand in the eventful year just passed. This was a shocking deviation from the usual course. In a general way the returns of 1916 represent the regular order of mortality, and the following list will give us a fair idea of what is happening from year to year: Organic heart disease 107,154 Tuberculosis 101,396 Bright's disease (nephritis) 75,316 Violent deaths — including suicide 75,303 Pneumonia and bronchitis 74,787 Pleurisy and other respiratory diseases 43,619 Cerebral hemorrhage and softening of brain 59,164 Cancer and other malignant growths. 58,600 Diarrhoea and enteritis: under two years 46,956 over two yeaiB 9,807 66,763 Appendicitis and typhilitis 9,157 Hernia and obstruction 8,974 17,231 Diseases of stomach, non-cancerous 10,330 Cirrhosis of the liver 8,799 Gall-stones '. 2,438 11,237 Epidemic diseases common during childhood: Diphtheria 10,367 Measles 7.947 ^- Whooping cough 7,284 Scarlet fever 2,355 27,953 172 DEMOCRACY EST RECONSTRUCTION Influenza 18,886 Typhoid fever 9,510 Childbirth (immediate effects, mothers) 11,642 Infants (stillbirths, not recorded) 55,676 The deadly plagues: Typhus fever 35 Yellow fever 1 Bubonic plague and cholera Rabies 36 Smallpox 114 186 Other diseases 187,175 Grand total 1,001,921 The popular diseases. As a choice of this long list of evils who would not gladly die from organic heart disease? There is a sentimental appeal in this manner of departing from the world. It sounds so innocent, pure and free from any association with infection or contamination. It is such an appropriate ending for a middle-aged person whose repu- tation is above reproach. And yet, organic heart disease covers a multitude of sins and evils, including the best brands of alcoholic beverages, lead-poisoning, syphilis, the toxins of specific fevers, rheumatism, gout, pus foci, intem- perate eating, excessive and long-continued exercise, work, or sport — usually sport — and many other things that might easily be prevented. Arterio-sclerosis (hardened arteries) favors cerebral hem- orrhage, Bright's disease, and other terminal manifestations. Any or all of these may be associated with chronic heart disease, and many of these pathological cronies have the same mischief-making antecedents. They are a bad lot. Conclusive etiological evidence is lacking in regard to can- cer, but this supreme affliction cooperates effectively with the whole degenerative train of human ills. Cancer of the stomach is the bane of bar-tenders. It is the price they pay for their free drinks. And this suggests that the extraordinary percentage of cancer of the stomach DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 173 among men, as compared with women, may be induced by the convivial habit of treating and topiag, in which case we may confidently expect a decrease in the number of deaths from cancer of the stomach during the next few years. Cancel; of the uterus is part of the price women pay for the privilege of peopling the world. A lacerated cervix provides an ideal soil for the growth of this deadly excrescence, and with the anticipated fall in the number of cases of cancer of the stomach during the coming decade, it is to be hoped that there will be a corresponding decrease in cancer of the uterus due to the better care which the mothers of the Nation may receive. Motherhood as a cause of death. An " A-1 " motherhood is a prerequisite of an "A-1" nation in times of peace or war. From the standpoint of song and story the mothers in the warring nations have been shown every consideration during the last year or two. Nothing has been left unsaid or unsimg. The orators of all lajids, including our "four- minute" men, have been singing their praises and calling them blessed. They have been crowned with honor and glory, but a gravid woman or a nursing mother cannot live on glory alone. Motherhood is the fundamental military service, attended with a larger percentage of "killed and woimded" than any other branch, and it is about time that it was getting some practical recognition. Halos are not edible. It is impossible to say how many women die from immedi- ate and remote causes connected with child-bearing. Phy- sicians and families are loath to admit that a mother has died from neglect or accidental infection. In the examination of death certificates I have never observed one where it was plainly stated that the woman had come to her death from puerperal infection at the hands of some "person or persons unknown," probably the male or female midwife in attend- 174 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION ance, or that she had died from eclampsia (convulsions) due to gross neglect at the time of her greatest need. These would be shocking things to put on a death certificate. They are so sensational. They might be considered bad form, and while there are so many available scapegoats in the way of possible causes and concurrent aflFections, why add to the calamity by telling the truth about it? According to the census of 1916 between eleven and twelve thousand deaths from the immediate effects of child-bearing were reported during that year. These returns were from the registration area which includes approximately seventy per cent of the population of the United States. It is con- servatively estimated that between fifteen and twenty thousand mothers are lost yearly from such causes. Practi- cally all of these women are between fifteen and forty-four years of age, and with the single exception of tuberculosis there is no disease that kiUs so many women in the prime of life as this '' perfectly natural" function. If deaths from miscarriages and the remote effects of the injuries incident to child-bearing were included, tuberculosis itself would certainly be outclassed. This appalling loss of life is probably due, in large degree, to the popular opinion that child-bearing is "perfectly natu- ral." But we do not belong to the spawn-and-die species, and the evidence strongly indicates that this is a pathologi- cal process. Suffering usually begins within six weeks of conception and danger increases steadily until the end. Parturition is a painful and mutilating experience. Every woman who bears a child is injured, and while the majority recover completely, it often happens that permanent in- validism, with subsequent death, is the sequel. AU the gynaecologists in the country and many of the general prac- titioners derive a considerable part of their yearly incomes from women who have been injured in child-bearing. DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 175 Deaths among infants. And now let us take another look at the mortality statistics and see what happens to the ba- bies for which women pay so high a price. In addition to the unknown percentage of stillbirths, these children are lost at the rate of about three hundred thousand annually before they are a year old. They die in their infancy from lack of care and improper feeding. Many of them contract mea- sles, scarlet fever, whooping cough, and other preventable diseases in early childhood, and a percentage of those who survive these infections sustain permanent injuries which add to the causes of degenerative diseases so fatal during the middle years of life. The International Classification of the Causes of Death was followed in compiling the mortality statistics of the year 1916, but about three thousand years ago Solomon said, "The rich man's wealth is his strong city: the destruc- tion of the poor is their poverty." And Solomon was the wisest man that ever lived! Relation to poverty. Infant mortality rises and falls with the incomes of fathers, and when a family lives in a sty on less than a living wage, that family begins to adjust itself to its environment by dying off. It is self-evident that men are not created with an equal chance of survival so long as one is bom in a palace with every care that money can buy, and another is bom in a hovel where his mother dies from neglect. The great underlying causes of premature death are ig- norance, vice (including intemperance), and poverty, these three, and the greatest of these is poverty. In the overcrowded tenements of big cities, large numbers of little children die from malnutrition and lack of care. Their mothers have neither the means nor the understanding necessaiy to provide proper food for them. These are the breeding-places of disease. Here death lurks. This is his 176 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION great field. But he is not limited to the slums. He has a long arm. By means tff infection he reaches out over the city and gathers his toll from among the children who enjoy all the protection that wealth can supply. The principal carriers of venereal disease are professional prostitutes. Therefore, this scourge is also traceable to poverty, for well-to-do women rarely become professional prostitutes. Many a rich man dies of poverty — the pov- erty that degraded the woman who waylaid his youth and left him with a constitutional taint that wealth could not wash out of his blood. Venereal diseases. Venereal diseases we have always with vs, and in view of their virulently contagious nature, our social habits, and our affirmatively deaf, dumb, and blind attitude in this connection, it is amazing that so many people have escaped contamination. The history of these disorders unmistakably indicates that we value our reputa- tions far more than we do our lives. We have held our tongues and set our faces against these loathsome affections. As a choice of evils we have preferred to entertain them in secret, rather than discuss them openly. The "unmention- able" diseases are well understood, and would have been as rare as rabies before this time but for the personal respon- sibility involved in their transmission. Carriers have been shown every consideration. Their feelings have always been respected. If the carriers of rabies had been treated in this way the world would have run amuck with hydro- phobia long ago. But rabies is a dog-borne disease, and when it breaks out we muzzle the dogs and the hydrophobia is nipped in the bud. The Treponema paUMum and the Ganococcus were not recognized in polite circles before the War. These micro- scopic miscreants were not considered fit to associate with respectable germs like the BacUliis tuberculosis and the DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 177 BacUlzis diphthericB in the city laboratory or the health office. But war is a great leveler. It is no respecter of per- sons, parasites, or destructive micro-organisms. A bacillus may prove more deadly than a bullet; the activities of the obscure cootie may do more damage than a Zeppelin; and our War Department has very wisely conducted an offensive campaign against all these enemies of our country. The effect of our mental attitude upon this disease has been discouraging. In spite of the fact that we have stead- fastly refused to admit its existence, it "constituted the greatest cause of disability in the Army " (Surgeon General). Five sixths of it was inducted with the draftees, and one sixth was acquired afterward from civil sources. The social organizations and health agencies throughout the country are cooperating with the Army in the nation-wide campaign against "the greatest cause of disability," and the results are already such as to justify the hope that complete eradica- tion may be effected before many years if the good work goes on as it should. Our clean anny. It is significant that less than one per cent of the boys from the Northwestern States, where ilht- eracy is comparatively nil, were infected. This confirms the contention that education is an important health meas- ure. The venereal scourges were formerly increased by warfare, and spread broadcast by returning soldiers. But the preventive practices in the Army have been attended with such success that our soldierSj returning clean from the camps, will be warranted in demanding a bill of health from their own home towns. War and pestilence are boon companions and a world war without a world plague would be a historic anomaly. Pre- ventive medicine has met and vanquished most of the old plagues, including cholera, smallpox, typhus and typhoid fevers, in addition to the septic infections following wounds. 178 DEMOCEACY IN RECONSTRUCTION But the forces of evil are hard to beat, and when the cost is finally counted, the plagues of the past compared with the strange plague that has just swept over the earth, will seem like the wars of the past compared with the one we have just experienced. The new scourge. This disease was epidemic in the United States in 1916. It came insidiously in the guise of " influenza " and attracted very little attention, although 18,886 persons died from its effects. Had it been called " pneumonic plague " or " Bolshevitis," it would have been arrested at the ports of entry. It gathered force in 1917, and spread over the country during the later months of last year Hke an old-fashioned plague given the advantages of modern travel. The American Public Health Association held its annual meeting in Chicago recently. This was the greatest public health conference that has ever been assembled. The prin- cipal topic discussed was the "unknown disease" that had invaded the Nation. The sum total of definite information was that in three months' time approximately four hundred thousand people had died from this strange malady (most of whom were between twenty and forty years of age) ; that it kills by inducing a secondary pneumonia; and that those who go to bed at the onset and stay there until at least a week after full convalescence is established, usually escape the death-dealing complication. On accoimt of its vast range this has been the most fatal epidemic that the world has ever experienced. A London paper has estimated that six million people died during the year from this disease alone. It is a greater menace than war. Nothing should be«left undone to identify it, in order that rational means of prevention and treatment may be adopted in case of its recurrence. This and other epi- demics are far more likely to recur than the War, and DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 179 the death records show that they are attended with a higher mortality. Woman's supreme part in reconstruction. Reconstruc- tion has a terrible meaning for the women of the world. It is their part to make good the loss in human life. The greatest wonder of the War is the way in which women have lifted the burden of labor from the shoulders of men and set them free to fight. There is probably no industrial occupa- tion for which women cannot qualify. They have demon- strated that they are perfectly capable of doing the "chores " of the world. But they have a bigger job. By virtue of a divine function coupled with human intelligence they have the power of giving or withholding the life of nations. This is God's supreme commission. Man is woman's great work. Cell on cell she builds him up and delivers him to the world at the risk of her life. His survival depends upon her sacrifice, and God gave her mother-love to make that sacrifice a joy. During his infancy she nourishes him at her breast. This service is its own reward. Life holds nothing half so sweet. Did you ever see a mother look down at her nursing babe? He is her treasitte. He is the hope to which she has dedicated her life. Throughout his childhood she guards him and cares for him according to her light, and if he dies love's labor is lost and her heart is buried with him. But when he lives and grows and his mind unfolds and he finally reaches man's estate, this is the fulfillment of the law of love. Did you ever see a mother look up at her son? He is her finished product. He is her gift to the world. Woman has had too little respect for the creative power with which she is endowed. She has been too prolific in the past — too lavish with her wealth of human life. With- out legal or intellectual control of her person, she has poured a living stream of children into the maw of Moloch and their 180 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION cries are on. her conscience. There is nothing that women are not wiUing to do for men, gladly, joyously, but why should they be called upon to suffer and die by the thou- sands every year for the sake of bearing children that perish before they are five years old, because of health and eco- nomic conditions over which their mothers have no control? Men's neglect of human welfare. The city. State, and national fathers have been running this our mother coimtry since the beginning, and considering the lop-sided scheme of things they have done fairly well. They have represented men only, and the records would seem to indicate that men are not primarily interested in humanity. They are mani- festly more concerned with enterprises of great pith and moment and variety, involving wealth and power and priv- ilege. Men are the builders of the material world and they are interested chiefly in the work of their hands and hearts and brains. But woman's work is humanity itself, and in the interest of humanity she should be given her fuU and rightful share in the reconstruction and the future conduct of the nations of the earth. Child-welfare workers often call attention to the fact that large sums are expended by the Nation yearly for the pur- pose of fostering animal industry. The amoimts appropri- ated for child-welfare as compared with pig-welfare are very properly held up to scorn. But this is a perfectly natural thing under the existing system. Child-welfare is woman's work, and woman has only a wee, small voice in the affairs of the Nation. But men are interested in pigs. Ham, bacon, sausage, lard, head-cheese, and hair-brushes are commercial commodities. What would the packers do without pigs? Pigs are pork! The subject of population is paramount at present, and this involves the rights and privileges of parous, parturient, and nursing women. The leaders of the dominant nations DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 181 are looking into the future apprehensively — but why worry? The world has the habit of going round and it will probably keep right on in spite of all the indications to the contrary. There is at least one encouraging sign. Women are begin- ning to take more than a private and personal interest in this vital issue, and it is to be hoped that their intimate and sympathetic knowledge of all that it involves wiU show them the way for which men have been groping in the dark so long. The birth-rate during the War. After the War had been raging a couple of years and'the young men in the coimtries actively engaged had been slaughtered by the hundreds of thousands, and as many little children had died of hardship and hunger, it was observed that the all too low birth-rate which had prevailed previous to the War had suddenly fallen about fifty per cent in Prance and somewhat less in England. More people were going out of that part of the world than were coming into it. Half the yearly increase had already been lost and the birth barometer was falling steadily. The direct damage of all Germany's infernal machines had not been so great. National extinction loomed on the hori-- zon. The statisticians got out their pencils and figured their countries off the earth. This was alarming. Some- thing had to be done to arouse the people and avert the im- pending euthanasia. The falling birth-rate prior to the War was doubtless due in large measure to voluntary sterility maintained for the purpose of escaping the suffering, danger, personal sacri- fice, and, economic burden of child-bearing and child-rear- ing. The War intensified all of these motives and created others far more impelling. Men were inducted into the armies. Women were inducted into the essential indus- tries. Food was scarce. Fuel was out of the question. The bare necessities of life were precarious and the future 182 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION so uncertain that prudent women were loath .to leave lu- crative employment and face the inevitable tragedy of helpless motherhood. From the standpoint of the State it was important to have children. But from the standpoint of the average individual it was a personal calamity and a crime against the unbegotten too terrible to contemplate. The solons of the nations so rapidly and painlessly approaching their finish would gladly have passed laws providing a surplus population. But how to enforce them? That was the ques- tion. Urged by the imminent danger and their utter in- ability to meet it by any available means, these good men and true began calling aloud for babies. The doctors, preachers, philanthropists, and other social specialists took up this patriotic cry, and it is still heard throughout those lands. Criticalness of the problem. Give us babies or we perish ■^- Jaationally. We lose our jobs. This is a serious matter. The infant industry must be encouraged. Plans were for- mulated forthwith. Committees were appointed. Induce- ments were offered: bonuses; gratuities. And the women of all nations are reading the reports of these committees and looking these gift horses in the mouth. The minute the matter of population is put on a business basis a woman's earning capacity must be taken into ac- count. During the War the average Frenchwomen could earn eight or ten francs a day, on which she was able to live. It is obvious that it costs more to sustain a woman with a child, or several children, and given the earnings of the un- encumbered working-woman as a basis for comparison with the divers and sundry "allocations" designed to induce motherhood, it is clear that the designers had not got within thinking distance of the subject. One French law allows a helpless woman a franc daily for a period of four weeks immediately precedmg and following DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 183 the birth of her child. This is one franc daily more than she gets in most other coimtries, but it will scarcely affect the census of the next generation. Some patriotic employ- ers in the profitable war industries gave small bonuses to their women workers at the time of fheir confinements, but as a matter of fact most of the women who became pregnant were obliged to give up their positions long before that time came. The maternal canteens were of great assistance to such women, and also to nursing mothers, but these were maintained largely by private philanthropy and there is no guarantee that they will be continued. The "homes" usually provided for prospective mothers in different parts of the world are not such as to encourage the undertaking, and one glimpse into the delivery ward of the average great maternity hospital (maintained primarily for the purpose of teaching obstetrics) would tend to diminish any desire a woman might entertain for an intimate personal acquaintance with the institution. A characteristic attempt to solve it. The British Health of Munition Workers Committee made a report that is in- teresting in this connection. On investigation it was found that in some mxmition factories it was customary to dis- charge a woman as soon as it was discovered that she was pregnant, and also, in order to save themselves trouble and possible loss, landladies usually turned such women out of their lodgings betimes. "In many overcrowded districts the lying-in hospitals are notoriously inadequate^ and the workhouses are the only places to which women can go for their confinements." A maternity scheme for the assistance of munition work- ers was considered and approved by this committee. Here is part of it: Maternity homes should be established for women who cannot be confined at home or in their lodgings. . . . Exchequer grants 184 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTEUCTION would be necessary for the establishment of such homes, and also to make good deficits in the cost of working and maintenance, bid the greater part of the maintenance expenses should be met by payments from the women thmnselves.^ These women were doing double military duty, and while they were disabled they were expected, to pay for their care in these homes. This seems almost like charging soldiers wounded in the service for care in the hospitals. The recommendations of this committee regarding nursing mothers are also noteworthy: . It is sometimes suggested that nurseries should be close to fac- tories, so that a mother may be able to nurse her baby diu-ing the dinner interval. On the whole the committee think that it is not usually desirable to have the nursery in dose association with the factory, however, partly because it entails bringing babies or little children, night and morning, on trains which axe often already over- crowded. Further, the usual interval of an hour is scarcely sufficient tor the mother to get her own meal and feed her baby, unless din- ner can be provided for her at the nursery. A nursing mother with a full breast and a hungry baby might have made a practical working member of that committee. A French example of child care. Nurseries were finally established in connection with many of the factories in Prance and England, where working mothers could nurse their babies at three-hour intervals. In one of these places I met an employer who had develojjed a paternal pride in his family of sixty infants. Nothing was left undone that would add to their comfort and welfare. He knew just how much they ought to gain in weight every week. He watched their records as though they were baseball scores, and if they didn't make their averages somebody had to explain. In their healthful quarters they had grown roly-poly and rosy. ' Italics mine. DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 185 They had developed dimples in their knees. And whenever he came in they cooed and smiled up into his face as though they were grateful because he had not taken their mother's milk from them and turned it into money. Besponsible fatherhood is the highest human develop- ment, and those little babies were developing a high type of human being. That man had found the blue bird of happi- ness in his own factory. He had made a wonderful discov- ery. He didn't need to leave this world in order to get to heaven. The kingdom of heaven on earth is the kingdom of little children, and he had created a heaven for himself. He had become so fond of those babies that he had begun to dread the passing of their infancy, iand in order to prevent the necessity of their moving away to a less salubrious place he was beginning to plan a nursery with playgrounds for older children. Prevention of disease. The first principle in the preven- tion and cure of disease is to remove the cause. This applies as truly to disease as it afifects the entire population as it does to the individual case. The rational means of curing a fever due to an abscess is to remove the abscess; or prevent- . ing typhoid fever due to a defective water system is to cor- rect the faults of the system. The great predisposing cause of premature death is pov- erty. Illiteracy, intemperance, vice, dirt, and disease are intimately associated with destitution, and any social scheme that insures a fair standard of living will reduce the death-rate. We should have not only minimum wages upon which men and women can live without working themselves to death, but we should have minimum standards of living below which human beings should not be permitted to fall. If there are peqple who really want to live like swine, let them live in some other coimtry. The entire health service throughout the Nation is much 186 DEMOCBACY IN RECONSTRUCTION concerned about the abatement of nuisances. A nuisance, according to Blackstone, "signifies anything that worketh hurt, inconvenience, or damage." It is self-evident that conditions that condemn millions of people to premature death are public nuisances that should be legally abated without loss of time. Rapid evolution leading to the establishment of an eco- nomic democracy, practical education, woman sufiFrage, pro- hibition — these are fundamental health measures. They work together against poverty, illiteracy, intemperance, vice, dirt, and disease. Prohibition is the greatest pubhc health measure ever adopted by a nation. Directly and indirectly it will afiFect the health of a large proportion of the population. It will tend to diminish the degenerative diseases which may be induced or aggravated by intemperance. It will remove one of the chief causes of poverty, and thereby reduce the number of those ailments due to destitution from which little children suffer so much. Accidents, murders, and sui- cides will be prevented by this measure, and the higher per- centage of sobriety which follows its enforcement will surely result in a lower percentage of venereal disease. Coordination of health agencies demanded. As mat- ters now stand the health agencies of the coimtry are in sad need of organization and coordination. In addition to the public health bureaus, national. State, county, and muni- cipal, which might be advantageously combined in many instances, the private health societies are all operating inde- pendently, gathering and spending money and proudly pro- claiming remarkable achievements which the mortaUty statistics quietly contradict at the end of the year. There are fifty or more volunteer health organizations and most of them are doing good work, but their possibili- ties are limited by the lack of coordination. The American DEMOCEACY AND HEALTH 187 Red Cross might be taken as a model for a national health organization. As a matter of fact it is a national health organization, reaching into villages, hamlets, and remote parts of the comitry where no other health agency is in existence, and the value of its service to this Nation during the recent epidemic is absolutely inestimable. Red Cross emergency hospitals sprang up everywhere. Red Cross men and women devoted themselves to the com- munity service. Milk stations were installed, and hospital supplies, warm clothing, and blankets by the carload were provided for both civil and military use. It is a question whether any or all public health agencies put together were able to accomplish as much as the American Red Cross at the time of our national need. This society was ready when the call came. It had been organized for war service, and therein was its strength. During the War the Red Cross supplemented the Army, Navy, and the United States Public Health Service in every possible way. It is doubtful if any organization effected during peace times could command such universal support. By supplementing the national. State, and mimicipal health agencies this society might make itself as valuable to the Nation in times of peace as it has been throughout the War.^ At any rate, there shoidd be a national health association 1 A Red Cross committee representing the United States, Great Britain, France, Italy, and Japan is formulating a post-war program of Red Cross activities in the interest of humanity to be submitted to the international conference which has been called to meet at Geneva thirty days after peace shall have been declared. Since the foregoing diapter was printed, Mr. Davison, chairman of this committee, has announced that the present thought of the committee, is that the first peace effort of the Red Cross should cover the subject of public health and sanitation including nursings child welfare, tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious diseases. The possibilities of such a program for world relief are inmieastu'able. It is conceivable that international health activities might have prevented the current pandemic from which millions of persons have died. 188 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION auxiliary to the official health agencies, cooperating with the women's organizations of the Nation, coordinating and thereby increasing the usefulness of other health societies. This plan would conserve funds and energy, and these com- bined forces working together should establish health cen- ters that would reach as far as the remotest rural school in the country. The community health centers, or chapters, should be subordinate to the county, State, and national society of which they are constituents. They should be supervised by the State board of health, and it should be the duty of the State health officer and his staflF to lend every possible assistance to their efforts for local betterment. A cooper- ative plan should, of course, be effected between the State board of health and the extension divisions of imiversities, colleges, and other school organizations, for the furtherance of this work. And educational health exhibits devoted par- ticularly to the presentation of health needs of the com- munity and practicable means for the prevention of dis- eases to which the different sections of the country are liable, should be shown at the county and State fairs. Public health education. It goes without saying that the pubUc is sadly in need of education regarding matters pertaining to health in which every individual is personally interested. Literature issued by the State and national health departments, including pamphlets and bulletins on water-supply, sewage disposal, balanced diet, and subjects of practical interest to special communities, should be dis- tributed from these centers. Lectures should be arranged and pictures shown. Instruction should be given in the care of children, and the needs of prospective mothers should receive sympathetic attention. The work of rural nurses would be facilitated by such an organization of the health forces. DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 189 Under present conditions it is difficult for people living in the country to get proper care in case of sickness. The cost is prohibitive. To obviate this hardship some health insurance plan might be worked out. A cooperative scheme, with State assistance, perhaps, might provide for the serv- ices of physicians, nurses, and hospital care when neces- sary. This is especially needful for the protection of child- bearing women and their babies. It is a pity that death cannot be made a common loss, a pocket-touching experi- ence to a community as well as a personal calamity. If the death-tax indicated the death-rate, those who paid the bills would be interested in maintaining healthful conditions, and the health officer would have the united support of the commimity in which he served. In rural communities the water-supply and sewage dis- posal are still the principal health problems. The cities have gone further in regard to these important matters. The necessity for a pure water-supply is fully appreciated, and no expense is spared to provide it. But what about \he milk-supply? The milk-supply is just as important as the water-supply, and when we depended upon private enterprise to deliver water, the supply was, perhaps, a lit- tle less precarious and polluted than our milk is now. While we have babies we must have milk, and it is the first duty of every city to see that its babies have pure milk. Milk is life to little children. It is their sole sustenance, and it should not be subject to the fortuities of trade. Traf- fic in milk is traffic in life — the life of helpless infants. Pure milk — How can it be secured? All kinds of laws purporting to regulate the milk-supply have been enacted, but cities will never get a piu:e milk-supply until they go into the milk business, and the sooner they do it the fewer babies they will lose. This is perfectly feasible. Dairies might be maintained in the country, and milk depots ia 190 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION every health center in the city. Milk might be sold at the cost of production, and in cases where parents were unable to pay for it, some plan to save their children from suffering might be made operative. There might be a baby clinic in connection with these milk depots and health centers, where mothers might be encouraged to bring their babies to be weighed at intervals, in order to be siu:e that they were being properly nourished and developing normally. All large cities maintain ejrtensive laboratories for the ex- amination of milk, and an army of inspectors to watch the different places and persons engaged in the business. Why not save the money and start a milk-producing and distrib- uting system that does not need so much watching ? This would give productive emplojrment to a large number of re- turning soldiers, and a man who is a man would rather have an honest job milking a healthy cow than to occupy the false position of a person who is paid a salary to see that milk from tubercular cows does not reach the infant con- sumer without being properly pasteurized, when he knows in his soul that it is impossible to prevent this wicked thing happening. The quarantine problem. Our quarantine regulations work a double hardship on poor people with large famiUes. During epidemics in places where hospital facilities are inad- equate, it is necessary to quarantine homes as a measure of pubhc protection. This usually means that young children are confined in close quarters with a case of contagious dis- ease. The sustaining member of such a family is either quarantined with the rest, and thereby deprived of his em- ployment, or excluded from the home. The increased cost of living due to sickness is further increased in this way. These people have the same right to protection as the public at large, but instead of getting it they are officially subjected DEMOCRACY AND HEALTH 191 to a forced infection. One after the other is likely to develop the disease, the danger to life and health is increased in pro- portion to the number interned, the life of a youpg mother is jeopardized (the most valuable of all lives, for if she dies her children are less likely to survive), the quarantine is lengthened to the last possible point, and these poor people are compelled to pay a large part of the cost of protecting the pubhc from which the contagion, was originally con- tracted. Hospitalize all contagious cases. Every city should be prepared to hospitalize all cases of contagious disease. Ef- fective segregation cannot be maintained in any other way. This plan would obviate the necessity for quarantining homes, which usually spreads an infection through an entire family, multiplies the chances of a general epidemic, and works an unjust economic hardship on the hapless victims. These diseases belong to the public. They are spread by the public, and they should be cared for at public expense, except in those instances where people are well able to bear the financial burden. The need for pre-natal clinics and maternity hospitals is equally great. Every child-bearing woman should be guar- anteed the best possible care while she is in this service. The charges in private maternity hospitals are beyond the reach of people in ordinary circumstances, and the public ward of a lying-in hospital is the last place where a sensitive woman would want to go. Maternity hospitals should be maintained by municipali- ties and a cost-covering fee should be charged people who are able to pay, and women who are imable to pay should not be subjected to humiliation on that account. There is no danger of pauperizing a parturient woman or a new-born babe. Nature has already pauperized them. They must depend on somebody. Under fair conditions a husband and 192 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION father should be able to make proper provision, but in any case it should be the human duty of every person in every community to safeguard such a woman. Any reconstruction plan which makes for social better- ment wiU improve the health of the Nation. The preven- tion of tuberculosis, the abatement of industrial diseases, and the reduction of infant mortality, are some of the prob- lems which must be met by the health agencies. In addi- tion to a large number of measures promising indirect benefit, special health programs have beeii recommended by the Labor Department, the Children's Bureau, and the United States Public Health Service. IX THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDERS MARY ELIZABETH TITZEL "There is no wealth but life. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings." Ruskin. Lessons from the War. The experiences of the nations dimng the War furnish a valuable ground-work for a recon- struction program of child welfare; for the War so intensified many peace-time problems as to make them immediate and unescapable and crystallized into action theories concerning the public protection of children that had slowly developed during the past half-century. Almost every country has contributed during the War something that is of value in formulating a scheme for child-welfare work in peace time. These war-time contributions are remarkable, first, for the tendency to put the responsibility for the protection of chil- dren upon the State, and, second, for the emphasis they place upon preventive measures. They have emphasized 1 Editors' Note: Shortly before sailing for Europe late in the year 1918, Miss Julia Lathrop, Chief of the Children's Bureau,' United States Department of Labor, acceded to our request to provide a monograph on the subject of child welfare. It was, however, necessary for her to have the actual work of assembling and arranging the materials done by another hand and she selected for the purpose one of her aids in the Bureau, Miss Mary Elizabeth Titzel. The diapter here presented was prepared by Miss Titzel. As it came into our hands it was accompanied by a separate section on "Children in Need of Special Treatment," which had been prepared by Miss Emma B. Lundberg, also of the Children's Bureau. Miss Lundberg is a recognized specialist on the topic she treated and the editors deeply regret the necessity, due to space limitations, of excluding her contribution from these pages. 194 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION the fact that child-welfare work, while it cannot and would not ignore the exceptional child, must have, as its chief aim, the protection of all children from harmful influences and the provision for all children of opportunities for growth and development. The " Children's Year." Upon the anniversary of the entry of the United States into the War, the Children's Biueau of the United States Department of Labor, in cooperation with the Council of National Defense, inaugu- rated a year's campaign in the interest of children. Thie program for this " Children's Year " might well be taken as a point of departure for a reconstruction program of child welfare in the United States; for it has as a background, not only the very valuable work done in Europe during the War, but the five years' intensive study that has been made by the Bureau into conditions affecting children in America.' The program is included under five main topics; four of them concerned primarily with the needs of normal children living in their own homes, and the fifth concerned with the problems of children whose homes have broken down or who are otherwise so handicapped as to be in need of special care. These topics are as follows: 1. Public protection of mothers, infants, and young children. £. Home care and income. 3. Child labor and education. 4. Recreation. 5. Children in need of special care. Though these topics were formulated with an eye to war- time needs, the very fact that they, in a measure, antici- pated and sought to guard against the breaking-down of the social structure at its weakest points under long-continued ' Children's Year Leaflets, Nos. 1 and 3 (Children's Bureau Publica- tions, Nos. 36 and 10). Washington, Government Printing OfiSce, 1918. THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDER 195 war, makes them of value now; for the weak points of our social structure are the same in peace as in war. Infant and maternal welfare. No phase of child welfare has received so much attention during the War as have the problems relating to infancy and early childhood.^ The War has brought home the enormity of permitting the needless waste of life represented in the deaths of thousands of infants and young children each year. There is a growing conviction in the world that no nation can truly prosper unless it seeks to remedy the conditions that result in death for thousands of babies and little children. Those same conditions, it is beginning to be realized, sentence thousands of the children who survive them to lives of unhappiness and ill-health and inefficiency. The rejection of men from the armies for physical defects, many of which had their origin in infancy and childhood and might have been remedied if taken in time, have alone been sufficient to bring home the necessity of better protection for children. In our own case those rejections amounted to 29.11 per cent of the men examined in the first draft.^ Child losses in America. Incompleteness of death regis- tration makes it impossible to ascertain exactly the annual number of infant deaths in the United States. It is esti- mated, however, that we lose about 300,000 children imder five years of age each year, at least half of them from pre- ventable causes. Our infant mortality rate for 1916 was 101 per thousand live births for the birth-registration area, which included in that year 32.4 per cent of the total popu- lation. That an infant mortality rate need not be so high ' Grace L. Meigs, M.D.: "Infant-Welfare Work in War-Time," Ameri- can Journal o/ Diseases of Children, August, 1917, vol. xiv, pp. 80-97. » Report of the Provost Marshal General to the Secretary of War on the First Draft under the Selective Service Act, 1917. Washington, Government Printing Office, 1918, p. 84. 196 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION may be deduced from a study of the following table, which shows the infant mortality rates for ten foreign countries: Intant Mohtauty Rates m Dippeeb)nt Cotjnthies fob Specified Yeab (Deaths under 1 year per 1,000 Live Bibthb) Infaid morMUy Comtry rote* New Zeabnd (1917) t 48 Australian Commonwealth (1915) 68 Norway (1914) 68 Sweden (1913) ,. 70 Netherlands (1915) 87 Switzerland (1914) 91 Ireland (1913) 83 Denmark (1915) 95 England and Wales (1916)t 91 United States (birth registration area, 1916) 101 * All rates, irith the exception of those for Nev Zealand and England and Wales and Ireland, were obtained from Birlk Statistics, 1916, Bureau of Census, p. 19. t Annual Report, Central Council and Dunedin Branch, Royal New Zealand Sodety tor the Health of Women and Children, May, 1918, p. 14. 1 79th Annual Report qf the Registrar General, qf Births, Deaths, and Marriages in England and Wales, 1916, vol. lxxxt. Remedies for excessive infant mortality. That infant mortality rates can be lowered is shown by the experience of New Zealand where ten years of active eflFort in behalf of mothers and children have seen a gradual reduction of the infant mortality rate imtil that rate is now the lowest re- ported for any country. ^ Both England and Germany, moreover, even in the midst of war, effected a reduction in infant mortality rates which it is safe to attribute, in part at least, to special endeavors in behalf of children. The rec- ords of dozens of American communities can be produced to show a gradual lowering of infant mortality rates simul- * New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children: An example of methods of baby-saving work in small towns and rm:al districts. Children's Bureau Publications, No. 6. Washington, 1914. THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDER 197 taneously with the development of organized work for the protection of infancy. There can be small doubt of the efficacy of such work. The question seems simply one of method. Perhaps the most important tendency that is to be noted in recent methods of infant-welfare work, is the tendency to get back to first causes. In the past we have worked backward. At first we were concerned only with the sick or the defective or the pauper. Then we became interested in prevention, and agitated ourselves against communicable diseases, impure milk,.and imhealthful surroimdings. Then we added to our program the education of the mother in child care. Now we are beginning to realize that the previ- ous health of a child's parents, and especially the condition of the mother during pregnancy and in confinement, have a very important bearing upon the child's chances for health and happiness. Care of mothers is fundamental. Infant-welfare work in Europe during the war emphasized most strongly the public protection of maternity as essential to any eflfective pro- tection of infancy. That better protection for mothers is needed in the United States is shown clearly by available figures.^ Each year in the United States some sixteen thousand mothers die in childbirth from causes which are largely preventable. The effect of neglect of the mother reaches beyond her to her children. The infant mortality studies conducted by the Children's Bureau have shown that life is especially hazardous for the motherless child.* These studies and studies of maternal mortality made by ' Grace L. Meigs, M.D.: Maternal Mortality from ail Conditions Con- nected with Childbirth in the United States and Certain Other Countries. Children's Bivreau Publications, No. 19. Washington, 1917. 2 Estelle B. Hunter: Infant Mortality: Results of a Field Study in Water- bury, Conn., based on Births in One Year, Children's Bureau Publications, No. 29. Washington, 1918. 198 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION the Bureau, show, moreover, that many mothers not only do not receive the care necessary for their own and their babies' safety, but cannot obtain it. Even in cities where, as a rule, hospital and medical care are available, many women are not informed of the necessity for proper prena- tal care, skilled attendance at confinement, and competent nursiag service immediately after chUdbirth. In rural dis- tricts remoteness from towns, combined with bad roads and lack of facilities for transportation and even for communi- cation, adds to the diflSculties of obtaining proper care for mothers. The studies made by the Children's Bureau in rural sectirais of various States have revealed: 1. That maternal mortality rates are in many rural dis- tricts higher than the average for the United States as a whole. 2. That a majority of rural mothers in the districts stud- ied receive no advice and trained care during pregnancy and that many have no trained attendance of any kind at con- finement. S. That hospitals, doctors, and nurses are not only inac- cessible, but often entirely lacking. There is practically no organized effort in rural communi- ties of the United States to meet the need for instruction in prenatal and infant hygiene and for trained care during preg- nancy and confinement. There is, however, at the present writing, a bill before Congress which provides Government aid for States undertaking work for mothers and children. No one can doubt that there should be available to all mothers in both city and rural districts opportimity for physical examination, instruction in their diet and general hygiene during pregnancy, skilled care at confinement, and expert advice on the care of their babies in health. From the work that has been developed in many cities in the United States and abroad, it is apparent that a staff of well- THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDER 199 paid visiting nurses,* working under competent medical direction and able to instruct mothers ia the hygiene of pregnancy and the care of well babies, is essential to suc- cessful infant-welfare work. Another essential is the consultation center ^ where moth- ers may go for advice and examination by a physician during pregnancy and to which they may bring well babies for medical supervision. The object of such a center is prima- rily an educational one; cases needing treatment are referred to a private physician, clinic, ot hospital. The Maternity Bill now before Congress will make the nursing service and the consultation center available for rural mothers as they are now available for mothers in many cities; it will provide instruction for girls and women ia maternal care and hygiene and in the care and feeding of infants; and it will, where necessary, make provisions for hospital care and medical treatment. Infant-welfare work of this sort is not a charity any more than is the work done by agricultural demonstra- tion agents in rural communities. It is simply a means of protecting the community, through practical education, against the loss involved in preventable human misery. The pre-school age. The years between two and six have been called the " neglected age " of childhood. It is true that the public to the present date has taken small interest in the welfare of the child who has passed b^ond the total helplessness of infancy and has not yet comeimder the pro- tection of the school; yet the pre-school age is one of the im- portant periods of life. It is a period of intensive develop- ment of body and of mind. From his first to his sixth year the normal child should gain at least five pounds yearly in 1 The Public Health Nurse : How She Helps to Keep the Babies Well. dUdren's Year Leaflet, No. 6 (Chadren's Bureau Publications. No. 47). Washington, 1918. ' Children's Health Centers. Children's Year Leaflet, No. 5 (Children's Bureau Publications, No. 44). Washington, 1918. 200 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION weight and three inches in height. Bones are hardening; muscles strengthening; brain and nervous system are devel- oping, as are many other organs. The young organism, de- prived of the immunity gained from the mother in utero and through breast-feeding, and not yet having established its own inmiimity, is at this time particularly susceptible to disease; the developing mind is alert to impressions; habits of living and thinking are being formed. And yet the child in those tender, formative years too often is not only ignored by the community, but neglected by a busy mother. He does not get the proper food. Studies made by the Chil- dren's Bureau in several large cities to find out whether babies and little children are getting enough milk to diink have revealed that many children between two and seven do not receive any milk — though milk is an essential food for proper growth and development.* In many cases, in- deed, the young child has been found to be receiving the family diet, including tea and coffee and other imsuitable foods. Often children of pre-school age are left largely to the attention or neglect of the older children of the family, to pick up speech and manners that may or may not be good, and frequently to pick up the colds and " children's dis- eases," which many mothers still regard with the indiffer- ence of fatalists. Baby clinics — Weighing and measuring. The nation- wide weighing and measuring test* for children under six years old, which was the first activity of the " Children's Year," has awakened many communities to the pUght of the pre-school child. Many small children have been found to be under weight for their height; and where a physical * Studies in the Use of MUh by Families Saving Little Children. Chil- dren's Bureau Publications, Washington, 1918. * Children's Year: Weighing and Measuring Test. Children's Year Leaflet, No. 2 (Children's Bureau Publications, No. S8). Washington, 1918. THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDER 201 examination has been made in connection with the test, parents have learned of defects in their children — malnutri- tion, enlarged tonsils and adenoids, infected glands, rickets, cardiac diseases, and tuberculosis — defects that may be remedied if taken in time, but that are likely to result in future ill-health and unhappiaess if they are neglected. To all this may be added the danger to mind and character in- volved in lack of proper care and supervision. Home care best. What is needed is better knowledge on the part of the mother and of the community concerning the needs of the pre-school child, especially the necessity of proper diet and of protection against the common contagious diseases which leave so many ills in their train. There should be within the reach of every mother a consultation center to which she may take children between two and six years of age for advice concerning care and feeding and for periodic examination by a physician. Such work will do much toward fitting children to enter school in a good physi- cal condition. But of course the prime need for all children of all ages — a good home and a mother's care — is not de- pendent solely upon intelligence or education. It is largely dependent upon family income. Infant-welfare stations, children's health centers, the visiting nurse, the school lunch- eon, the playground, the community center — all of these are admirable and will doubtless become more and more a necessary part of our national life; but none of them can or should take the place of the home. In an address delivered before the General Federation of Women's Clubs at Hot Springs last May, Miss Julia C. Lathrop, Chief of the Chil- dren's Bureau pointed out: "One great trouble with our overworked schools is that they are compelled to stop teach- ing and patch up children physically so that they are able to learn. Given intelligence and adequate family income, we shall be able to see all children go to school, as do all fortu- 202 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION nate children, well fed and clothed, with eyes and ears and teeth and feet and throats in order; and the school can put its fuU inventive genius in developing minds, not patching bodies." Home care and income. The aim of modem child-welfare work must be to insure the proper care o^ the child by the mother in her own home. While such care is partly depend- ent upon the character and intelligence of the parents, it is dependent, even to a greater extent, upon the financial re- sources they have at their command. There is perhaps no better test of adequacy of income than infant mortality rate, which is, in the familiar words of Sir Arthur News- holme, the most sensitive index we possess of social welfare. In eveiy country and every age, extreme poverty and high infant mortality rate have gone hand in hand. " It is not race or climate, or the irreducible minimum of physical de- fect which account for a large part at least of the present infant death-rate. In the same towns, among people of the same stock, twice, sometimes three times, as many infants in proportion to the number bom die in the wards where the poorer classes live as die in the wards where the well-to-do live. The excess is mainly due to ignorance, to malnutri- tion, to all the noxious influences that go with poverty. Not nature, but social conditions are to blame." ^ The findings of the Children's Bureau in connection with studies of infant mortality in seven American cities seem to bear out this statement. In each of the cities studied the infant mor- tality rates have been tabulated in connection with the earnings of the father up to $1250. Data were secured about the fathers of 22,281 babies, including stillborn chil- dren. More than one fourth (27.7 per cent) of these fathers ' The Rt. Hon. Herbert Samuel, M.P., President of the British Local Government Board in the Introduction to Maternity: Letters from WorMng- Women. G. Bell & Sons, Ltd., London, 1915. THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDER 203 earned less than $550 during the year following the baby's birth. Only one in ten (10.4 per cent) earned as much as $1250. In general, as the following table shows, the infant mortality rate in all of the cities studied, increased as the father's earnings fell: Inpant Moktautt Rates by Father's Eabnings Cilu All cities Manchester.. Brockton. .. . Saginaw New Bedford Waterbury. . . Akron Baltimore Deaths of Ir^tmit under one year of age per 1000 live btrthe, by specified annwu earnings qffiUher All earnings $1860 and over Under $650 110.0 69.1 147.2 165.0 68.3 204.2 96.7 73.6 67.1 84.6 22.2 142.0 130.3 69.9 168.7 122.7 68.4 151.1 85.7 40.0 117.6 103.6 64.7 138.0 Meaning of the term " income." Income is to be tested, of course, not by its size, but by what it can buy. If it does not permit of a decent home, it must be deemed inadequate. If it does not permit the mother to remain in the home and give her time to her children, again it must be deemed inadequate. In Manchester, New Hampshire, where there is a great demand for women workers in the textile trades, 679 mothers were employed dinring the year following the baby's birth; 885 were not employed. While the rate for the babies of mothers who were able to give their time to the care for their households was 122, that for babies whose mothers were employed outside the home was 312.9, and that for mothers gainfully employed in the home — taking in washing, keeping lodgers, etc. — was 136.^ ' Beatrice Sheets Duncan and Emma Duke. Infant Mortality: Results erf a Field Stvdy in Mandiester, N.H., based on Births in One Year. Chil- dren's Bureau Publications, No. 20. Washington, 1917. 204 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION That mothers of young children do not usually go to work unless there is real need for their earnings is shown by the fact that employment of mothers is commonest where the husband's wages are low. In Manchester, 65.7 per cent of the mothers whose husbands earned less than $550 were gainfully employed during the year following the baby's birth, while only 9.5 per cent of the mothers whose husbands earned over $1250 were so employed. The effect of the employment of women upon the infant mortality rate is, as Sir Arthur Newsholme, of the British Local Government Board, points out, often obscured by other conditions attendant upon poverty, which themselves have a pernicious effect upon the health of mother and child until it becomes a question as to whether or not the extra money brought in by the mother compensates for the danger to herself and her children involved in her employment; but any work in or out of the home that imposes severe strain upon the pregnant woman, that prevents the mother from suckling her infant, and that hinders her from giving the older child proper care and supervision, is imdoubtedly harmful. During the War we found an international recognition of the importance of keeping up the home, in spite of difficul- ties, in the amounts of separation allowances and pensions, which have been generally larger than they have been during any previous war,' as well as in the extension of maternity and nursing benefits provided for mothers. Siu:ely the home is as important in peace as in war; and it should be upheld by the provision of such a wage as will enable a man to support his family in comfort. Child labor and education. The authorities of a commun- * Government^ Promsipns in the United States and Foreign Countries for Members of the MUUary Forces and their Dependents. Prepared under the direction of Captain S. Herbert Wolfe, Q.M., U.S.A., detailed by the Secre- tary of War. Children's Bureau Publications, No. 28. Washington, 1917. THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDER 205 ity where the law permits children to go to work at the age of twelve in case of need, once announced that they would issue the so-called " poverty " permits in the future only to "children with dependents." In spite of its apparent absurdity there is a great deal of bitter truth in this an- nouncement. There are children with dependents. It is the old question, ever recurrent in child-welfare problems, of insufficiency of income. Many families are dependent upon the earnings of boys and girls to make up for the low wages, or in some cases the absence or incapacity of the natural wage-earner. Of course all the million children between fourteen and sixteen years of age who leave school in the United States each year to go to work are not forced into industry by poverty; many of them are unaware of the ad- vantages of an education or are moved simply by youthful restlessness or distaste for school. But it is safe to say that every child who enters industry prematurely does his part to round out a vicious circle of ill-health, industrial ineffi- ciency, low wages, unemployment, and poverty. For this reason a reconstruction program should seek so far as is possible to protect children from excessive or pre- mature employment, to coordinate their school life and their work life, making the one a more effective preparation for the other, and to provide for the child entering employment some guidance in the choice of occupation. Existing conditions. Before formulating recommenda- tions concerning child labor, however, it is necessary to take stock, briefly, of existing conditions governing the work and education of children in the United States. A new Federal Child-Labor Law, which provides for an excise tax upon the profits derived from the work of children, has just been passed. This law, in effect, prohibits the employment of children under fourteen in manufacturing estabUshments (including carmeries) and of children under sixteen at any 206 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION time in mines and quarries, and in factories for more than eight hours daily or before six in the morning and after seven in the evening. The number of children affected by the Federal Child-Labor Law is small, however, compared with the total number of working children in the United States. Although exact figures relating to the employment of chil- dren are not to be obtained, the latest of any reliabihty — those of the census of 1910 — give the total number of working children between ten and sixteen years of age as in the region of two million, about three fourths of them em- ployed in agriculture. Considerably under three hundred thousand children, according to the same source, were in occupations coming within the scope of the Federal Child- Labor Law. Since such occupations are as a rule those best regulated by State statutes, many of which have been passed during the past ten years, probably a far smaller number of children will be affected by the new law. Even with the Federal law in force, children under four- teen will be able to work at some time and in some occupa- tion in the majority of our States. Although the minimum age of foiurteen years which is named by the Federal law is by no means high, many States permit children imder that age to enter employment. Only six States fix a minimum age higher than fourteen, and of these five offer exemptions from the law. In three States no minimum age is fixed for any employment save in certain dangerous or injurious occu- pations. While only two of the States that have age restric- tions have named a minimum age lower than fourteen years, this does not mean that children under fourteen cannot work ia any of the thirty-eight States (including the District of Columbia) that have established fourteen years as the basic minimum age. In a large number of these States exemptions permit employment under fourteen in certain occupations, during vacation, or under other specified conditions. THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDER 207 When it comes to hours, a similar irregularity is found. The laws of seventeen States permit the employment of children under sixteen for more than eight hours a day and forty -eight hours a week, two States place no limit whatever upon a child's hours of work, and many, even, of the thirty States (including the District of Columbia) which fix an eight-hour day or a forty-eight-hour week either fall short of covering all occupations or, under certain conditions, ex- empt children from compliance with the law. Seven States have no laws forbidding night work for children; many other States prohibit the employment of children at night only in specified occupations; and of the sixteen States where the night-work prohibition for children under six- teen specifically appHes to all gainful occupations (except, often, agriculture and domestic service), four permit em- ployment to an hour later than that set by the Federal law. Employment in agricultiu« or domestic service is generally exempt from the operation of the State laws. Even States that prohibit such employment during school hours usually fail to restrict it out of school hours. Yet children can work long hours at injurious tasks in homes and fields as well as in factories. The country child is singularly neglected. Not only are there few if any restrictions regarding his work, but his schooling is often greatly curtailed. The terms for rural schools are as a rule much shorter than those for city children and attendance laws are frequently not enforced. It is not surprising that more rural children than city chil- dren are " behind " in school or even that the country child often does not measure up to the city child in physical condition.^ ' Ruth Mclntire, Children in Agriculture. National Chfld Labor Com- mittee, Pamphlet No. 284. New York, 1918. Edward N. Clopper, Ph.D., Causes of Absence from Rural Schools in Ohlahoma. Child Labor Bulletin, vol. vi. No. 2, August, 1917. Edward N. Clopper, Ph.D., Farmwork and Schools in Kentucky. Child Labor Bulletin, vol. v. No. 4, February, 1917. 208 DEMOCRACY IN BECONSTSUCTION A good law. A good child-labor law should establish a minimum age of at least fourteen years, and preferably six- teen years, for employment in any occupation, including agricidture; should limit the working hours of children to at most eight hours daily and forty-eight hours weekly; and should prohibit work at least between 7 p.m. and 6 a.m. It should require 'that a child shall come up to certain stand- ards of health and education, and should require physical examination and adequate educational tests for all appli- cants for employment certificates.^ It should provide for efficient administration, including factory inspection, and should be accompanied by a law that will insure the at- tendance at school of the child who is not at work. Such a law represents, not the ultimate to be desired in child- labor legislation, but a minimum such as it is entirely possi- ble to establish imder existing conditions. Educational readjustment. A program of reconstruction should not limit itself to legislation. It should concern itself with the provision of more schools, that no child shall be deprived, on account of the inaccessibility of the school, of the education to which he has a right in a democracy. It shoiJd ainfL for the better adaptation of education to the needs of modem life, and especially for the provision of vocational education under the Smith-Hughes Act which provides Federal aid for States establishing vocational training.'' It should point to the need for compulsory, part- time continuation schools for all working children, at least up to the age of eighteen." It should urge advice in regard to choice of occupation for aU children and the placement of boys and girls leaving school in suitable occupations,* and ' Helen L. Sumner, Ph.D., "Standards Applicable to Child Labor," Journal of Sociologic Medicine, vol. xviii. No. 2, April, 1917. ' See Publications of Federal Board for Vocational Education. ' Report cf Bureau of Vocational Guidance, Chicago Public Schools, 1916. Vocaiional Guidance in Secondary Education. A report of the Commission THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDER 309 medical inspection of all children in school and at work. Education of parents, children, and the public to the value of education, to the need for better schools, and to the harm resulting from early and excessive employment for boys and girls, is one of the big tasks of reconstruction.' A still greater task is to bring about a general recognition that an income adequate to keep his children in school until they are sufficiently developed in mind and body, so that they may go to work without danger to health or to future opportu- nities for happiness and usefulness, is the right of every American. Recreation. A reconstruction program of child welfare, with its suggestions for measures to safeguard the child at home, in school, and at work, caimot be complete without some suggestions concerning recreation. Recreation is necessary to round out a wholesome life for children at every stage of development. That fact is corroborated in scientific treatises as well as in the homely experiences of mothers. It is corroborated from another, sterner angle by the records of juvenile courts. The importance of recreation in community life has been emphasized during the War. The provision of clean, whole- on the Reorganization of Secondary Education appointed by the National Education Association. Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 19, Washing- ton, 1918. Advising Children in their Choice of Occupation and Supervising the Working Child. Children's Year Leaflet, No. 10 (Children's Bureau Publications, No. 63). Washington, 1919. > Back-to-School Drive. Children's Year Leaflet, No. 7 (Children's Bureau FubUcations, No. 49). Washington, 1918. Suggestions to Local Committees for the Back-to-School Drive. Children's Year Leaflet, No. 8 (Children's Bureau Publications, No. 50). Washington, 1918. Scholar- ships for Children. Children's Year Leaflet, No. 9 (Children's Bureau Publications, No. 51). Washington, 1918. The Visiting Teacher. Chil- dren's Year Leaflet, No. 11 (Children's Bureau Publications, No. 66). Washington, 1919. The Employment Certijicaie System, A Safeguard for the Working Child. Children's Year Leaflet, No. 12 (Children's Bureau Publications, No. 56). Washington, 1919. 210 DEMOCEACY IN RECONSTRUCTION some recreation in war-camp commmiities was part of our Government's program to keep up the morale of our men in training camps and of the inhabitants of near-by cities and towns. As a result we have had an army that has been freer, perhaps, than any in history from the old camp- followers, vice and drunkenness and diseases. And while providing for our army, the morale of our non-combatant .citi^ns has not been neglected. In oiu- first year of the War fifty-two cities, that had previously had no public pro- vision for recreation, opened playgrounds and neighborhood recreation centers. Over two milKon dollars more was spent for playgrounds, recreation centers, and athletic fields dur- ing that year than had been spent in the year before the War.' In the summer of 1918 the Children's Bureau, in coopera- tion with the Council of National Defense, inaugiu-ated a "Recreation Drive" with a view to encouraging the kind of play that would increase the physical vigor of growing chil- dren and develop group action, and with a view, also, to fos- tering interesting and profitable leisure-time activities. The recreation drive culminated late in the fall with a Patriotic Play Week." As a result of these activities n^w playgrounds were opened and new recreational activities established in many communities. Meager resources were turned to good account. In rural localities school yards were fitted out with simple, home-made equipment. Athletics became a part of school life. Schoolhouses were adapted to serve as community centers. In small towns useless courthouse squares were converted into playgrounds; plays and page- ants were planned and presented. In crowded cities, streets were roped off for dances and "block parties." 1 The Playground, vol. xn. No. 1, April, 1918. " Patriotic Play Week, Suggestions to Local Committees. Children's Year Leaflet, No. 4 (Children's Bureau Publications, No. 44). Washington, 1918. THE CHILD AND THE NEW ORDER 211 There is perhaps nothing that needs to be brought out more clearly than the fact that opportunities for recreation, "abundant, supervised, and free from exploitation," are necessary for all children, not merely for the children of the poor or for those in crowded, city slums. In the past a great burden has been placed upon instinct. Mothers were once supposed to know, by mother instinct, how to care for their children. Gradually, however, we have come to realize that the fondest mother, lacking direction, may kill her child through improper care. And gradually we are coming to realize that the play -instinct does not always teach children how to play — that it may, indeed, lead them into forbidden and dangerous ways. The right sort of recreation is a stimulus to mental and physical development and it is per- haps the greatest moral safeguard that can be bestowed upon youth. The provision of a legitimate "somewhere to go" and a legitimate "something to do" — positive substi- tutes for the old "thou shalt not" — becomes, accordingly, part of a commimity's responsibility toward all its citizens, but especially toward those who are young and eager for whatever of enjoyment or knowledge may be held out to them. X THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR SAMUEL P. CAPEN and CHARLES R. MANN The entry of the United States into the War immediately placed before the Government and the people three major problems. They were: (1) to raise an army and train it for modem warfare in the shortest possible time; (2) to equip and supply that army both in this coimtry and abroad with a vast quantity of materials, some of which were not manu- factured in times of peace; (3) to foster and maintain in the whole population a spirit of self-sacrifice and national service; in other words, to develop the people's morale. Two of these problems were obviously educational prob- lems; namely, the first and the third. The training of a large modem army made up of citizens of all classes and occupations was an educational task such as the Nation had never before undertaken. The polarization of the thoughts of all the people toward the national welfare, the steeling of the people's will to win at whatever cost to the individual, the clarification and intensification of the Nation's ideaUsm — these processes which entered into the development of the national morale could likewise only be accomplished by educational means, deployed upon a scale hitherto un- known. The second problem, that of supply, was found, upon examination and after costly trial and error, to be in large measure an educational problem also. There did not exist individuals enough possessed of the varying degrees of skill needed for the wholesale production of munitions and ord- THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 213 nance and aircraft and ships and food. In every one of these vital spheres of activity workers and leaders had to be trained before production rose level with the demands of the military establishment. The Nation has therefore just passed through an educa- tional experiment both intensive and extensive. Vast numbers of individuals have been subjected to intensive training for particular jobs, ranging in difficulty from crude blacksmithing to the oversight of large administrative enter- prises. Still greater numbers have experienced the steady, subtle pressure of educational influences, directed from the seat of the Government and coextensive with the boundaries of the United States. We have constantly been assured by the billboards that " Food will win the War " ; " Fuel will win the War"; "Ships will win the War." It is now possible to say with equal dogmatism that education has won the War. For seventeen months Uterally the whole country has been at school. Public realization of the fact may still be lacking, but the fact remains. In many cases the agencies which have conducted this great experiment have not been the orthodox instruments of education, although most of the established educational machinery has been used. This may, in part, account for the failure of the public to recog- nize what has happened. Now that the crisis is over these new agencies deserve to be identified. Their methods, in so far as these have been new and unprecedented, deserve to be described. The les- sons to be drawn from their experience for the future edu- cational development of the United States deserve to be recorded. With these matters this monograph is concerned. Educational agencies in times of peace. In times of peace the educational efifort of the Nation is carried on pri- marily by local and State establishments. Public schools are maintained chiefly by local taxation and controlled by 214 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION local authorities. The local outlays are supplemented in most States by greater or smaller State contributions, de- signed to equalize educational opportunities. The extent of State support varies as between States and as between the different types of communities within the State. State support carries with it a certain measure of State control, but the degree to which the several States exercise direction over the educational affairs of local communities is again not uniform. As a rule, however. State direction is con- cerned with the maintenance of educational standards. Public education, which in the majority of States includes college and university education as well as elementary and secondary training, is reinforced nearly everywhere by pri- vately supported institutions of all grades. In the older States of the East and South and Middle West, the private schools are numerous and well developed, often, indeed, superior in equipment and standards to the public institu- tions. All private foundations are amenable to the laws of the States in which they are located, but in practice they are subjected to a very slight amount of State oversight. Education in the United States is conceived as a function of the State, not of the National Government. Neverthe- less the Federal Government has come to participate on a constantly increasing scale in the Nation's educational enter- prise. Up to the entry of the United States into the War, the Government's participation was confined to the stimula- tion and partial support of various kinds of vocational train- ing, to the dissemination of information about educational conditions and progress, and to research. A series of acts, beginning with the Morrill Act of 1862, have provided funds for the establishment of colleges of agriculture and mechanic arts by grants to the States, for the further support of these institutions and the subsidization of certain types of instruc- tion, for the support of agricultural experiment stations in THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 215 connection -with the agricultural colleges, for the extension of agricultural teaching, for the promotion of industrial and agricultural instruction of , secondary grade, and for the training of teachers in these branches. The distribution of the annual grants for these purposes is assigned in part to the Bureau of Education in the Department of the Interior, in part to the Department of Agriculture, and in part to the Federal Board for Vocational Education. In addition to the provision of money for these ends and for the education of dependent groups, like the Indians and Esquimos, the Federal Government endeavors, through investigations and the publication of reports, to spread information concerning educational conditions and to promote educational move- ments judged to be of general pubKc benefit. ^ These activi- ties are carried on in no less than twenty separate bureaus, commissions, and departments; for example, the Public Health Service of the Department of the Treasury under- takes investigations in school hygiene; the Children's Bureau in the Department of Labor investigates matters pertaining to the welfare of children; the Smithsonian Insti- tution is "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men"; etc., etc. The Govenmient's participation in education, even in normal times, is therefore seen to be very large. And it is constantly growing. The principle of stimulation of desir- able educational movements by annual grants that must be matched by the States receiving them — a principle exem- plified in the Smith-Lever Act for agricultural extension, passed in 1914 — has been applied in the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917 and appears in several bills now before Congress appropriating in the aggregate considerable sums of money. What is probably the most striking aspect of the Govern- ' This was the original statutory function of the Bureau of Education. It is now shared by numerous other Government offices. 216 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION ment's educational activities, however, is their total lack of coordination. Not only are large funds parceled out to different Federal offices to distribute, not only are these and other governmental offices engaged in expensive educational investigations and publications; but there is no connection whatever between the several undertakings. The inevitable results are competition between the departments, duplica- tion of effort, diffusion of power, confusion of the public mind. Such was, in brief, the situation at the time of the entry of the United Statep into the War. These were the agencies, both central and local, with which it was equipped to meet the educational problems defined at the beginning of this monograph. New educational agencies of war-times. The definition of these problems is easy in retrospect. They were only dimly apprehended at the outset. It took several months for the authorities at Washington to appreciate the need of organizing means for the education of the general public. It took nearly; a year for the officials of the miUtary estab- lishment to recognize the magnitude and the diversity of the task involved in training a modem army and its supporting workers. It is now manifest that the instruction of the public and the training of specialists, dissimilar as they may seem at first glance, were essentially inseparable. Both were parts of a single educational effort, the development of the Nation's human resources in knowledge and skill and intention for the accomplishment of a common task. Viewed in this light it is clear that the lack of national pre- paredness on the educational side constituted one of the greatest ha,ndicaps to the early effective participation of the United States in the War. Instead of a loose, feudal con- federation of bureaus each jealously guarding its narrow preserves and fearing to overstep their limits, a single agency THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 217 was needed, capable of studying the field as a whole, of formulating a national educational program, and of appor- tioning to the several instrumentalities — Federal, State, and local — those parts of the work which each was best fitted to perform. Had there been such an agency, many irritating delays might have been prevented and many valu- able lives saved. Throughout the War a series of more or less conscious attempts were made to repair this deficiency. The root of the evil was never reached, however. In place of a consoli- dation of the central machinery for education, a bewildering array of committees and administrations was added, each charged with particular educational functions. In defense of these substitutes it should be said that they brought to the solution of the educational problems precipitated by the War fresh talents and new methods — and they did the job. Space does not permit the complete eniuneration of these special war-time agencies for education and the detailed description of their several tasks. A few of the more promi- nent of them, however, should be mentioned. Afterwards the peculiar contributions in the way of educational phi- losophy and methods for which they are responsible will be discussed. The new creations to which fell the major portions of the work of educating the country for war were the Council of National Defense, the Committee on Public Information, the Food Administration, and the Committee on Education arid Special Training of the War Department. The Council of National Defense. The establishment late in 1916 of the Council of National Defense was without doubt the most useful step in the direction of national pre- paredness taken by Congress before the declaration of war. The Council of National Defense, it wiU be recalled, con- sists of the Secretaries of War, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, 218 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Commerce, and Labor. With it is associated an Advisory Commission composed of seven civilians expert in the fields of transportation, munitions, supplies, raw materials, en- gineering, labor, and medicine. The Cotmcil employs an executive staff made up of a director and assistants. The functions of the Council are to investigate the resources of the country, to devise methods for utilizing them most efficiently for the national defense in an emergency, and to recommend to Congress and to the departments such action as seems necessary to prepare the Nation for eventual hos- tilities. Each member of the Advisory Commission associ- ates with himself committees of experts, to assist in the collection of data and the formulation of poUcies. The Council of National Defense was created while the United States was still at peace. It was designed primarily as an investigative and advisory body. It had no executive powers. Confronted almost on the morrow of its organiza- tion with an actual war situation that demanded quick executive action, it proved an ineffective instrument for conducting the war business of the country, a large part of which was immediately thrust upon it. It had to be supple- mented by still other boards and commissions endowed with power to deal authoritatively with the great questions of supply and transportation. Nevertheless, the existence of the Coimcil of National Defense at the outbreak of hostili- ties proved to be httle short of providential. It is, indeed, unpleasant to surmise what the war record of the United States would have been without it. The Council was flexi- ble enough and representative enough to serve temporarily as the connecting link between Government departments and to focus the best civilian opinion on the tasks and prob- lems of the War. Through the committees attached to its Advisory Commission, the foremost leaders in manufactur- ing and in the professions were brought into an advisory THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 219 relationship with the operating branches of the war ma- chine. Education was not originally included in the field of the Council's activities. But as soon as the United States entered the War it was apparent that educational problems as well as problems of production and transportation were involved in the transference of the country from a peace to a war basis. The Commissioner for Engineering of the Advisory Commission of the Council was accordingly charged with the consideration of these. There was an immediate reaction from the schools, particularly from the colleges and UDQiversities. They had been impatiently waiting for an opportunity to serve. By the score they had already offered to the Government their resources in men and equipment for the national service. But the Govern- ment in its relations with education was an amorphous thing. No one of the many offices dealing with educational affairs was in a position either to accept these offers or to direct the efforts of the schools into useful channels. With the recognition of education as one of the concerns of the Council of National Defense the schools concluded that in this body was to be found at last the personification of the Government which could lead and utilize them. Their expectations were in part fulfilled — but only in part. The Coimcil of National Defense was able to bring together the representatives of higher and secondary educa- tion, to formulate with their aid certain general policies for the guidance of different types of institutions, and to get these policies endorsed by the executive departments.^ It was in a position also to investigate, through its committees ' For detailed accounts of the action of the Council of National Defense in the formulation of educational policies and in bringing about the use of civilian institutions by the War Department, see Bureau of Education, Higher Education, Circulars Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 14. 220 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION appointed by the Commissioner for Engineering and Educa- tion, questions relating to the training of technical men for the military establishment and to the use of higher institu- tions by the Army and Navy as training centers. These were important contributions, especially in the first stages of the country's war activities. They served the double purpose c)f steadying the schools and of directing the atten- tion of the harassed executive departments to those educa- tional aspects of the military endeavor which were likely to be overlooked in the midst of the multitude of affairs de- manding immediate action. But more important than its actual contributions to the solution of educational problems was the principle involved in these early activities of the Council of National Defense. It is the principle of coopera- tion between civilians and the Government and between the several governmental agencies themselves. The principle will be further discussed at the end of this monograph, where a unified scheme for Federal participation in education is proposed. The Council of National Defense labored under a double handicap in dealing with the educational situation as well as in its other relationships. It could only recommend; it could not force action. And it was supplied with so Uttle money that its activities, even as an advisory educational body, were limited. Although it embodied a useful princi- ple, therefore, it could not adequately coordinate and direct the educational strength of the country in an emergency. The Committee on Public Infonnation. The education of the general pubHc to an intelligent comprehension of the issues of the war was never attempted on a comprehensive scale by the Council of National Defense. In the very beginning the schools, particularly the colleges, undertook it, following the example of the Canadian institutions. It was soon apparent, however, that a central official agency THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 221 was needed, not only to furnish reliable data, but also to give consistency and point to the scattered efforts of indi- vidual bodies. The task fell almost by force of gravity to the Committee on PubUc Information, which was originally estabhshed to supply the press of the country with accurate information concerning the Government's war activities. A detailed commentary on the strictly educational work of the Committee on Pubhc Information is imnecessary. It is suflBcient to point out that it prepared, with the aid of the best historical scholarship, the Red, White, and Blue series of popular monographs on the background and issues of the War; that it organized the Four-Minute Men and furnished them with material for their extraordinary cam- paign of propaganda; that it conducted a great journal for the iastruction of the teachers of the Nation; and that by means of moving pictures and pubhc lectures it brought the facts of the War vividly before thousands of popular audi- ences. In times of peace there would be no call and no jus- tification for such a wholesale attempt to manufacture pub- lic opinion. Nevertheless, one aspect of the work of the Committee on Public Information is worthy of perpetuation ia connection with any complete plan for organizing edu- cation on a national scale. The Committee on Public In- formation developed and applied to the whole country the methods and purposes of university extension. And a great system of educational extension which will reach the mass of the people whose school-days are over, and enlighten them on matters of common concern, is a powerful in- strument for the creation of an inteUigent democracy.* The Food Administration. The singularly successful ' Temporarily, until the expiration of the emergency appropriation, the educational extension work of the Committee on Public Information has been transferred to the Bureau of Education. Congress has been asked to continue it under the Bureau's direction. 222 DEMOCRACY EST RECONSTRUCTION campaign of the Food Administration is so familiar to every citizen of the United States that any description of it is superfluous. Two characteristics should, however, be noted. One is that the campaign was reaUy popular educa- tion on an unprecedented scale. The Food Administration maintained that the people must be taught the relation of food to the success of the AUies' cause, and the obligation of each individual as a consumer of food. The rest of its task would then be easy. The other characteristic is the perfect adaptation of the educational methods employed to the psychology of the American people. The generosity and idealism of the Nation must be appealed to. The people must be asked, not ordered, to save and to give, and they must be told the truth. If this were done, it was held that the response would be nearly imanimous, and it was. Herein lies a lesson which may be taken to heart by any Federal agency for education now existing or hereafter to be estabHshed. The people of the United States distrust the officiousness and petty tyranny of a bureaucracy. It is in part the instinctive dread of the deadening influence of bureaucratic methods that has so long delayed the creation of appropriate Federal machinery for the handling of the Nation's educational interests. That the existence of such machinery, if rightly organized and limited, is not incom- patible with complete freedom of initiative on the part of the schools will presently be shown. The War Department's Committee on Education and Special Training. The War Department trained for active military service nearly four million men. It was concerned directly with the training of many thousand more who were essential to the business of supply. The formal miUtary training which constituted the major portion of the task was, of course, fundamentally standardized and traditional. Special modifications were demanded by the new appliances THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 223 and conditions of the present war, but at bottom it remained unchanged. The mere training of great bodies of soldiers was not suffi- cient. This was a war of specialists. In addition to being soldiers, large mmibers of men both at the front and behind the lines must be skilled in one or more of several hundred occupations ranging in difficulty from simple metal-working to the most delicate scientific operations. ^ In the beginning it was assimied that the necessary specialists could be se- cured by draft or enlistment from among the civil popula- tion, but the occupational classification of the first incre- ments of the Army revealed a large discrepancy between the number of specialists in the service and the number needed. Moreover, the peculiar Army applications of many occupations practiced in civil life demanded additional special training. The War Department first sought to have these different kinds of training supplied by voluntary out- side agencies. By Januaiy, 1918, however, this method of recruiting a skilled persoimel had been proved a failure. The Department then created the Committee on Education and Special Training "to study the needs of the various branches of the service for skilled men and technicians; to determine how such needs shall be met, whether by selective draft, special training in educational institutions, or other- wise; to secure the cooperation of the educational institu- tions of the country; to represent the War Department in its relations with such institutions; and to administer such plan of special training in colleges and schools as may be adopted." Although this Committee did not have charge of tie whole educational task of the War Department, its duties were steadily extended up to the conclusion of hostili- ties. Its work was intimately related also to the educational 1 For a description of these specialties, see the Army Occupational Inden, Government Printing Office, 1918. 224 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION effort of other divisions of the War Department. Owing both to the nature of the training for which it was respon- sible and to its contacts with the civilian educational sys- tem, its experience embodies many of the most valuable educational lessons of the War. The work of the Committee falls into two large divisions. The General Staff first required it to furnish by October, 1918, 100,000 mechanics trained in some thirty-five different trades. To meet this demand the Committee established training courses at 147 different schools and colleges (mostly engineering schools or engineering departments of universi- ties). By July, 50,000 men were in trainilng, and before the armistice 130,000 had been delivered to the military service, each equipped with a working knowledge of one of the desig- nated trades, and at the same time trained as a soldier. Most of the courses were but eight weeks long. One or two were shorter, a few longer. Reports from the military agencies using the Committee's product indicate that the men were thoroughly satisfactory, both as specialists and as soldiers. The second portion of the Committee's task (it began to be recognized in the spring of 1918)- was the provision of a very large supply of officer material trained particularly in the technical branches, for service with the new armies planned for the end of 1918 and for 1919. It was apparent that this material could not be fashioned out of hand from among the civilian volimteers or drafted men. The col- leges and universities must be relied upon to produce it. The Committee therefore set up at 517 colleges training centers for officers of the line and of the staff corps. In both cases the Committee contracted with the institu- tions for the housing, feeding, and instruction of men under militajy regime. The institutions participating in either plan thus became for the lime being Army posts. And THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 225 nearly all institutions were eager to participate. The prac- tical result was a vbluntary union of the colleges of the country into a single training plant for the production of specialists and officers for the Army. Now both the training of mechanics, as carried on from April to December, 1918, in what were first called the National Army Training Detachments,' and the training of officers in the Students' Army Training Corps, developed certain new concepts and methods which deserve to be incorporated in the educational practice of the Nation in times of peace. Educational contributions of the Committee on Education and Special Training. Several dominating conclusions emerge from the committee's experience: 1. Motivation.^ The educational processes of peace have used but a portion of the individual's capacity. They have not supphed a compelling motive and they have been too academic. Given a motive and a method of instruction which is at once practical and interesting, and the acquisition of knowledge or skill proceeds at a pace which is astounding. This is an old theory; it has merely received a new demon- stration. Each man under training was animated by a double motive: the imselfish spirit of service and the desire to better his position in the military organization. The method of instruction for which the Committee stood was the "job method." It was consistently carried out in the trade training of the National Army Training Detach- ments. Its application to more advanced work in the col- legiate section of the S.A.T.C. was inaugurated, but the demobihzation of the S.A.T.C., because of the armistice, came before it could be perfected. The "job method" of instruction is sometimes defined as learning by doing. Men assigned for training as automobile mechanics, for example, were set to work at once to take down and reassemble motor * Later known as Section B of the S.A.T.C. 226 DEMOCRACY IN EECONSTRUCTION cars. Carpenters were put at simple building operations. Civil engineers were introduced at the outset to the prac- tical problems of military road- and bridge-building or camp sanitation. The theoretical instruction, the formal presen- tation of principles came after, not before the practical experience with the jobs for which the men were being trained. Sporadic attempts to apply the "job method" of instruc- tion to different kinds of vocational training have been made for generations in the ields both of secondary and higher education.' It has been the basic tenet in the creed of the most advanced educational thinkers. It has represented the dream of the men of affairs. In the training of the United States Army ^ it has been put into operation on a comprehensive scale, involving hundreds of thousands of men. And the results appear to justify the most sweeping contentions of its advocates. 2. Individual capacities. The Committee succeeded in making nearly every man assigned to it useful for the mili- tary service. The human raw material varied infinitely in natural capacity, preliminary training, and experience. Prom time to time it was carefully classified and sorted. Those who proved unable to master the occupations to which they were originally assigned were transferred to others. Less than one per cent had to be rejected as incapable of training. It should be instructive to compare this record with the appalling wastage that takes place in every school system and almost every private educational institution. Of course, other causes than inabihty to carry on the educa^ tional work operate to eliminate before graduation seventy ' The coSperative part-time plan introduced in the training of engineers at the University of Cincinnati is the most conspicuous modem application of this method in the field of higher education. * The "job method" was fundamentally the method employed in officers' training camps also. THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 227 per cent of the elementary-school pupils, and sixty-one per cent of those who enter high schools. Nevertheless, a large proportion of these boys and girls go out because they do not fit that part of the school machinery into which they happen to be dropped. Devices to determine what training each may take with profit are infrequent. Still more rare is a real adaptation of the school machinery to the manifold tastes and capacities of the whole school population. The Army could afford to waste none of its himian resources. Can society at large afford it better? 3. Adaptation to needs. The Committee's whole training program was based on a careful estimate of the Army's needs. 1 It discovered, for instance, that 75,000 more auto- mobile mechanics than could be secured through draft or enUstment would be required by the autumn of 1918; that of these 23,000 must be skilled drivers, 52,000 general repair men, etc.; that the field artillery would need 2000 oflBcers a month; that the infantry would need 3000 a month, from October, 1918. It also analyzed the work which the mem- bers of each of these groups of speciaUsts woidd have to per- form. Courses were then established to fit men directly and without loss of time for the several tasks. The number of men assigned to each course corresponded to the number re- quired in that branch of the service for which the particular course was designed to train. Moreover, the survey of needs was a constant process. The estimates of the num- bers of different kinds of specialists required were continu- ally revised as the military program developed. The Committee followed its graduates into the field, to deter- mine whether the training offered was actually adapted to ' This estimate was formulated in coiSperation with the Committee on Classification of Personnel in the Army, whose extraordinary work in analyzing and recording the military and technical resources of the Army constitutes one of the most valuable contributions made by any agency to the military e£Sciency of the United States. 228 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION the exigencies of active service. • Courses wete constantly modified to keep pace with the clearer comprehension of the precise nature of the various specialties. The instruction manuals prepared by the Committee for the use of the schools thus came to represent a pedagogy which stood the pragmatic test. The needs of an army in skilled personnel can be more accurately defined than the needs of a city or a state or a nation. No such close integration of job with job, of group with group, of worker with worker, prevails in the social body as in a military organization. Nor does a democratic society possess the coercive power of a military general staff to assign men arbitrarily to a particular occupation. Never- theless, a much closer adjustment of training to industrial and social needs is possible than is secured through the blind operation of the law of supply and demand. The tragic fringe of shortage and surplusage and maladaptation which trails behind a community committed to the policy of educa- tional laissez faire can be curtailed. To achieve this result new agencies both local and national would have to be cre- ated. But they need be neither complicated nor expensive. A simple machinery for investigating and reporting to the schools the numbers of workers required in each major field of activity and the kinds of training necessary to fit them for their tasks, would enable educational authorities to direct the flow of pupils to the vocations with the largest opportun- ities, and to adapt training progressively to the specific demands of each job. It may not be out of place to indicate a type of machinery both local and Federal which would suffice to coordinate training with needs. Locally it should pivot on the public offices for the administration of education. A small State commission on educational needs with facilities for directing investigations could be attached to the State department of THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 229 education. Two unpaid advisory boards should be associ- ated with the commission; one composed of delegates from the central State bodies representing agriculture, commerce, transportation, manufacturing, and labor; the other com- posed of representatives of educational interests such as State teachers' associations. State associations of colleges, etc. The commission would investigate the demand within the State for persons with various kinds of training, the rela- tion of the prospective supply to the commercial, industrial, or professional needs of the State, and the methods of train- ing best suited to prepare young people for productive effi- ciency. The advisory board representing productive inter- ests would assist in determining the sequence and range of the commission's investigations and would enUst the cooper- ation of the industries. The educational advisory board would aid in devising methods of instruction and in inter- preting to the schools the purposes underlying the work of the commission. An important result of the commission's activities would be this bringing together of the representa- tives of education and of industry through the agency of its Advisory Board representing Educational Interests Advisory Board representing Agriculture Transportation Labor Commerce Manufacturing 230 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION advisory boards. The findings of the commission would be promulgated through the channels of the State department of education. The same machinery could be reproduced in connection with the local school department by cities choos- ing to supplement the State effort in studying their special local needs. The accompanying diagram on page 229 may Serve to make the proposed organization clear. Identical principles could be followed in the creation of national agencies for correlating education with national needs. Failing the establishment of a Federal department of education (which is later advocated and to which the commission could be attached), the national commission on needs would properly include representatives of the more important Federal education offices now existing, notably the Bureau of Education, the Federal Board for Vocational Education, and the Department of Agriculture. It would work back through these offices in conveying its conclusions to the schools.^ With the creation of a Federal department of education, the analogy with the suggested State organiza- tion would, of course, be complete. It is apparent that such machinery as has been described could easily be set up, and that it would be cheap. Strong State departments of education could doubtless provide for it without special legislation. State departments in the earlier stages of development would need definite authoriza- tion and a small appropriation to cover the commission's expenses. The initial outlay required for the proper equip- ment of a national commission would be insignificant in proportion to the ends to be accomplished. In no other '■ Consolidation of the Government's educational interests might perhaps be effected for the purpose in hand by attaching the national commission on needs to the Council of National Defense. Indeed, in the absence of a department of education, this procedure would have distinct advantages. It would tend to unify the Government's educational enterprise at one point, at least, and bring it into relationship with other Government activities. THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 231 respect has the War Department's educational experience furnished a more practical object lesson than in this. 4. The liberal element. The War Department did not give a narrow training exclusively vocational, in spite of the pains taken to assure the preparation of competent special- ists in the shortest possible time. Every man assigned to the National Army Training Detachments was first of all to be a soldier, a soldier with capacity to perform some tech- nical or special task, but at all times a soldier. And the soldier specialist differed from the popular conception of the civilian specialist in more than his familiarity with the Man- ual at Arms. The American soldier that the General Staff aimed to produce was primarily a resourceful, adaptable man, with the quality of initiative and the habit of team play; a man, moreover, who knew why he was at war. The ideal of the General Staff — which was measurably attained, as the record of the A.E.F. shows — exercised a decisive in- fluence on the training offered by the Committee on Educa- tion and Special Training. In three fundamental respects this training differed from the traditional kinds of both secondary and higher voca- tional training. First of all, it was combined with military exercises and conducted under military discipline. In the second place, it was so organized that men were promoted from one job as soon as they had mastered its technique and principles to another requiring the application of new prin- ciples and skill. Throughout the training they were con= stantly confronted with practical problems demanding inde- pendence and initiative. The mihtary training helped to develop physical tone and the perfect coordination of physi- cal powers. The vocational training cultivated resourceful- ness and an all-round imderstanding of the particular trade. As a result the majority graduated from the courses practical journeymen, with the readiness of the soldier to imdertake any problem however diflScult. 232 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION Thirdly, the Committee made humanistic or liberal train- ing an integral part of the vocational preparation. For the National Army Training Detachments there were proAaded weekly lectures and discussions on the war aims of the United States. These discussions presented the historical background of the War, the forms of government of the bel- ligerents, the economic and social conditions antecedent to and resulting from the War, and the expression of different national ideals in literature and philosophy. The Commit- tee avoided propaganda. It made no effort to inculcate an official point of view. It concerned itself rather with the presentation of facts and materials which would enable each soldier to answer for himself the questions on the great na- tional issue which rose in his mind. Indeed, the questions actually asked by members of the first training detachments were arranged to form instruction guides for the subsequent use of teachers of the war-aims courses and were made the basis of the extensive bibHographies prepared by the Committee.' It will be observed that the war-aims course did not corre- spond with any of the artificial divisions of subjects or de- partments traditional in academic organization. It was not history, or economics, or literature. It represented rather a true fusion of the essential elements of all these and other subjects. The design was to furnish the soldier with facts, criteria, and inspiration, which would enable him to under- stand his world and to relate his conduct to the major issues of his Ufe. This has in all epochs been the purpose of a lib- eral education. The proof of the validity of the Commit- , tee's experiment hes in the keen interest with which the sol- diers themselves participated in these discussions and in the enhancement of morale which resulted from them. ' See questions on the issues of the war. Circular Ce. 21, the Committee on Education and Special Training, 1918. THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 233 In the short vocational courses of the National Army Training Detachments it was possible to give but the rudi- ments of liberal education. But the principle estabhshed there was applied on a broader basis in the organization of the work of the S.A.T.C. The war-aims course was ex- panded into a series of courses on the issues of the war, some, or all, of which were required of every oflGicer candidate in training. In giving these courses the several college depart- ments concerned were requested to cooperate and to work out a unified plan of instruction. Thus the Committee helped temporarily to break down the arbitrary and imrea- sonable barriers between departments which have long been regarded as a regrettable defect in academic organization. The demobilization of the S.A.T.C. occurred before the col- legiate courses on the issues of the War had been fairly tested in practice. In over three hundred institutions, how- ever, the principle involved has won recognition to such an extent that these courses are to serve as the model for or- ganizing the substantial elements of peace-time humanistic training. Perhaps the best statement of this principle and its application to normal conditions of collegiate institutions is that of Dean Woodbridge of Columbia: " In the past, edu- cation was liberaUzed by means of the classical tradition. It afforded for educated men a common background of ideas and commonly understood standards of judgment. For the present that tradition no longer suffices. If education is to be UberaUzed again, if our youth are to be freed from the confusion of ideas and standards, no other means looks so attractive as a common knowledge of what the present world of human affairs really is. The war has revealed that world with the impeUing clearness which tragedy alone seems able to attain. That our student soldiers may see the issues is of immediate consequence. But the war and its issues will be the absorbing theme of generations to come. To the 234 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION thoughtful, therefore, the course affords the opportunity to introduce into our education a liberaUzing force which will give to the generations to come a common background of ideas and commonly understood standards of judgment." 5. ObjMive tests. The college section of the S.A.T.C. was recruited in the first instance from among students who had satisfied the customary admission requirements of colleges. Many competent men who could not ordinarily afford to go to college werfe enabled to attend because the Government assumed their expenses and paid them soldiers' pay. But it was apparent at once that even with these additions to the student body a sufficient number to meet the needs of the Army for officer material could not be obtained. The , S.A.T.C. would have to be recruited from that much larger stratum of the population which possessed the capacity to pursue work of college grade, but could not absolve the formal entrance requirements. ' • A system of recruitment was therefore devised, which was about to be announced when the armistice was signed and recruitment ^ ceased. The plan combined the following elements: a. At each institution a board of admission was to be established, consisting of the commanding officer, the personnel officer, and three members of the faculty. The board was to receive all applications for admission to the corps and to interview each applicant. Upon appearing before the board the appUcant was to be examined as to his schooling, his military, vocational, and athletic experience, and his other general qualifi- cations. Appropriate forms were to be provided for recording and estimating these matters. b. Each applicant was to be given the Army intelligence test (the so-caUed "Alpha test"), which had already been given to approximately a million and a half THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 235 officers and men.i The test is designed to measure mental alertness and general intellectual ability. It represents the result of eighteen months' work by the leading experimental psychologists of the country who have been engaged in examining and classifying the Army personnel. There has been considerable skep- ticism both in academic circles and among the gen- eral public as to the possibility of deterrmning mental capacity by psychological methods. But the ratings derived from the Army intelligence test show so close a correspondence to the estimates placed upon the same men by miUtary commanders and employers that Army authorities have come to place more and more reliance upon it as an index of power. c. Certain mechanical and professional courses as, for example, the courses designed for heavy artillery offi- cers, engineering courses, and medical courses de- mand special preparation in one or more subjects. The board of admission was to enforce the established technical requirements for these, in addition to con- sidering the candidate's general qualifications, in the manner described above. Since the War Department had no occasion to use this plan of recruitment and did not announce it, the essential features of it were subsequently described to the colleges by the Bureau of Education, with the suggestion that it be used to. admit returning soldiers to academic coiu-ses in case they could not meet the regular entrance requirements.^ Some seventy institutions, among them many of the strong- est in the country, have signified their willingness to adopt the plan for that purpose. ' Copies of the test and directions for its use may be secured by schools on application to the Committee on Education and Special Training of the War Department. ' Circular of the Bureau of Education, Suggestions to Colleges Concerning the Admission of Returning Soldiers, December, 1918. 236 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION The implications of this method of testing fitness for col- lege study are momentous. For years colleges have been elaborating a system of admission which depends largely upon mechanical measurement of the time spent in prepar- atory study and involves only secondarily an examination of the actual capacity of the student to pursue collegiate instruction. Failure of the individual to meet the purely quantitative requirements generally debars him from en- trance, no matter how strong the evidence of his mental maturity. The lack of reliable objective tests of ability, combined with the desire to maintain high standards, is, of course, primarily responsible for the position taken by the colleges. But the work of psychologists in sorting and rating the personnel of the Army has now furnished an im- mense body of data for the development of objective tests. This material will shortly be available for general study and application to academic conditions. It is for the colleges themselves to take the next step. The way appears to be open to escape from the tyranny of mechanical standards and to make admission to higher education dependent upon the possession of power to do the work. The application of objective tests in dealing with the 'product of the Committee's training courses passed beyond the state of a tentative plan. Soldiers in the vocational courses were subjected to trade tests, i.e., actual perform- ance tests, to determine their ability before assignment to field units. These were comparatively simple to devise and to administer. An objective method of rating which would divide the men in the collegiate section of the S.A.T.C. into officer material, non-commissioned officer material, and privates, became necessary immediately after the organization of the corps. Such a method was prepared with the assistance of the psychologists of the Committee on Classification of THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 237 Personnel in the Army and had already been tried out in several institutions when the S.A.T.C. was demobilized. The plan provided for rating men upon the following seven traits: (1) intellect; (2) character; (3) military studies and practice; (4) physique; (5) command of men; (6) athletics, mechanical; (7) scrupulousness. The men quahfied to be officers having been selected, they were assigned to one branch or another of the service according as they possessed those physical and mental characteristics which the particu- lar branch requires. For example, successful pilots in the aviation service must be men of determination and of great athletic and mechanical skill. They need not be especially intellectual. Their abiUty to command men is a negligible factor. Men who ranked high in traits 2, 4, and 6 would be assigned for training as pilots. It is not proposed that the determination of the relative standing of students in respect to the qualities just men- tioned would furnish even a partial substitute for the ordi- nary tests of academic proficiency appHed by higher institu- tions in times of peace; but the effort to sum up the whole man and to direct him into a career in which his dominant characteristics would find the fullest expression, is a process that has great educational significance. As supplementary to the regular tests for promotion and graduation, it is worthy of serious consideration by the colleges. ^ 6. Progress and ability. It has been pointed out that the Committee turned first to the engineering schools to estab- lish the short intensive courses for the training of mechanics and technicians. These courses were not college courses, but were distinctly of secondary grade. A few institutions > For an account of actual experiments with objective tests in collegiate work, see A Study of Engineering Education, by Charles Biborg Mann, Bulletin No. 11, Carnepe Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, pp. 67-74. 238 DEMOCBACY IN RECONSTRUCTION distrusted the mixing of trade training with higher educa- tion. They were disposed to regard it as inconsistent with the dignity and standing of higher institutions. They were ready to make the sacrifice in the national emergency, but viewed the procedure distinctly as a sacrifice. The conver- sion of these institutions to a recognition of the vitaUty of this supposedly lowered type of training and its tonic effect on the whole higher educational enterprise is one of the sur- prising results of the War Department's educational ven- ture. Many college officers are now convinced that the methods employed in the vocational courses may, and should, be largely applied to the higher grades of profes- sional training, and that the presence of a body of men en- gaged in practical processes with an immediate vocational goal in view, strengthens rather than weakens the academic morale. The present stratification of the educational system is the product of long-time social and economic pressures. It unquestionably makes for economy of operation. Un- doubtedly it furthers the development of some of the special types of institutions which each community needs. It is, of course, well known that the existence of preparatory de- partments in colleges checked the growth of pubUc high schools and that their discontinuance in recent years has stimulated the evolution of public secondary education. But like many wholesome tendencies, this movement toward the sublimation of the college has had certain unwholesome consequences. The effect on the college itself has been to disconnect it from the realities of life. On the social body as a whole the effect has been more serious still. In most com- munities there remains no institution where men of maturity and ambition, but without formal schooling, can secure practical and liberal training which will enable them to im- prove their condition as producers and as human beings. THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 239 Many of these men if once caught up in the educational machinery would prove competent to go forward to more advanced education. The War Department's experience suggests that colleges, and especially the higher technical institutions, should consider whether the provision of courses for such men does not constitute both an obhgation and an opportunity. 7. Discipline. No educational result of the war period has been more obvious or more generally recognized than the efifect of mUitary training on the bearing and physique of young men. The Committee's training program was made possible by military discipline and the physical well-being that is the by-product of mihtary training. Educational authorities are now awake to the necessity for a vastly greater development of physical training and are everywhere taking steps to bring it about. How far the essential ele- ments of military discipline can be preserved in the peace- time processes of education is still an open question. It has already been said that an analysis of the War De- partment's enterprise reveals the supreme importance of motivation in intellectual training. Motivation was equally important in the development of military discipline. The vital quaUty of military discipline depends more upon mo- rale than upon autocratic authority. This motivation was secured primarily through the operation of the Selective Service Law. The draft reached into every community and into nearly every family group. It brought home to nearly every individual a sense of his personal obligation to serve the country. The drafted man himself was forced to a moral right-about-face. Instead of pursuing success for selfish ends, he was compelled to expend his energies, perhaps to give his life, for the national welfare. This moral repolariza- tion was often a painful process; but it was speedy and e£Pec- tive because the Nation in its most palpable incarnation. 240 DEMOCRACY IN BECONSTRUCTION namely, the Army, applied the pressure. The spirit of the American Army was notably exalted. It was this perfection of morale that made its discipline so splendid and so easy to maintain. How can the spirit of self-sacrifice engendered by the na- tional emergency be transformed into a spirit of service to the conummity and to the Nation in peace? This is the problem now before the schools. Its solution is admittedly difficult. But unless it is solved, America will have lost the best fruits of the War. The authors are conviaced that a partial solution may be reached by relating education di- rectly to the actualities of the present world situation and to productive efficiency in the ways that have been described above. However, these devices will merely seciu-e intel- lectual motivation. That alone is insufficient. The great driving force behind the Nation at war has been emotional and spiritual. Can these reservoirs of feeling and high im- pulse which have been the ultimate sources of discipline be permanently tapped? Again the experience of the War Department and the other war-time agencies for education point the way. The draft need not be just a measure to meet a military emer- gency. It can be incorporated into our national life through a law providing for universal service. Such service need not be primarily military. Indeed, if the conclusions reached in this paper are sound, it is not the strictly miUtary aspects of the Army's work that have unified the Nation and made it stronger than ever before. A universal service law which obligated every youth to undergo training of mind and body and to spend a specffied portion of his time under national direction in productive labor for the public service would help to preserve in peace the discipline and morale which have been developed in war. Its efficacy would be enhanced if it were reinforced by the same kind of propaganda for pub- THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 241 lie enlightenment that has been employed in the campaign of the Food Administration. Universal service is as much an educational as a military measure. It belongs in the category of those major educa- tional policies so vital to the Nation's welfare which are now left to the haphazard determination of bodies preoccupied with other than educational tasks. The decision as to whether or not it is to be adopted should be made with the aid of the most enlightened educational opinion of the coun- try. If adopted, it could be successful only if the educa- tional strength of the Nation were behind its administration both at the seat of the Government and in every community. A national policy in education. The experience of the War has shown that education is no longer a parochial affair; it is a national concern. It is fundamental to the Nation's strength. It imderKes every great national enterprise, whether of war or of peace. The provision of adequate means for the development of a unified national poUcy in education is therefore more necessary than ever before. The War has also thrown into reUef the principles on which national direction of education should be based. It has discredited bureaucratic control. It has demonstrated that vitality lies in the cooperation of the best civiKan thought with the estabUshed agencies of the Government. National leadership in education must be a leadership of ideas. Government departments can never maintain a monopoly of ideas. To avoid stagnation they must con- stantly seek ideas at their sources. The essential character of a new Federal agency for education is then clearly indi- cated. It must be designed primarily as a focus for the leading minds of the country. Its powers must be chiefly powers of influence and persuasion. They must be derived from pubhc confidence in the validity of its conclusions. A department of education which included most of the 242 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION present Federal agencies for education and which possessed in addition large facilities for investigation and for enlisting the foremost men in all occupations to assist in determining national policies, would undoubtedly be the most effective instrument for the purpose.^ The department would ad- minister the already existing Federal subsidies for education. It would perhaps be charged also with the distribution of other and still larger subsidies for the equalization of educa- tional opportunities and the elimination of illiteracy.^ But the administration of subsidies should not be its main busi- ness. Indeed, Congress should recognize that the power to give or withhold financial support constitutes a very real menace to the department's genuine capacity for leadership. In the creation of the department, this function should be strictly subordinated to its more important activities. What these activities ought to be has been implied in the foregoing pages. They may be briefly summarized as fol- lows: a. The study and definition of the educational needs of the Nation in the fields of industry, commerce, politics, and social organization. 6. The determination of a national program of education and research with the aid of the best non-oflBcial advice. c. The allocation among existing agencies of different por- tions of the task of training and investigation. d. The promotion of educational relationships between the United States and foreign countries. In the prosecution of the first three of these activities, the Department of Education would coordinate and interpret much of the work of already established Government de- ' This is an application of the principle of the "national conference'' which is developed in "The Commonwealth Conference," Chapter XXII of this volume. 2 Bills now before Congress provide for subsidies for rural schools, for physical training, for Americanization, and for the elimination of illiteracy. THE EDUCATIONAL LESSONS OF THE WAR 24S partments. If the principles indicated were observed in its organization, it would unify and nationalize the mental life of the country without hampering local freedom or checking local initiative. It would furnish an effective agency for the self-guidance and self-improvement which are essential to progressive democracy. In the darkest hours of the War, the British Parliament passed an act which recast the educational system of Eng- land. It provided among other things for a vastly greater national expenditure for education, for the lengthening of the period of compulsory schooling and for the establish- ment of vocational and technical training on an imprece- dented scale. Why did Great Britain, while fighting for her life, turn aside to consider the essentially peaceful busi- ness of education? Why did she authorize large appropria- tions for a future educational program at a time when every available penny was demanded for the national defense? The answer is plain. Because education, an education adapted to the conditions and needs of the present hour, is the basis of national defense. Because a nation is strong in proportion to its enlightenment and its productive capac- ity. Because these truths stood suddenly revealed in the baleful light that flickered on the destructive battle-fields of Flanders and Gallipoli. The manhood and resources of the United States have not, like those of Great Britain, been drained by four dis- astrous years of war. Its share in the common undertaking has been relatively easy and its burden Ught. But the same conclusions which Great Britain drew as to what constitutes national strength in an emergency arise inevitably from our own brief experience. The United States is equally con- cerned in laying secure foundations for a developing democ- racy in the new era upon which the world has entered. XI SAVING AND THRIFT WILLIS H. CAROTHERS Extravagance our national sin. It has been said both here and abroad that extravagance is the great transgression of the American people. In fact, it has been so often re- peated in our presence that we have gradually assumed an attitude of calloused indifference with reference to it. If, however, extravagance is enervating Western civiUzation, the ways and means of regulating it should naturally be in- cluded in a program of readjustment. Closing our eyes to a natural habit which has caused the downfall of great nations of the past is not the part of statesmen, and will not be the policy of the American people. Democracy is slow to act, but it is also more hkely to act judiciously when the action takes place. Explanation — New industrialism. A customary way to begin the analysis of a situation is to search for the nature of the cause which creates it, an element which seldom lies on the surface. Our extravagance has been attributed in part to the great wealth and independence of the nation, which is a logical reason but not a sufficilent one. A better explana- tion may be found in the changed social and economic condi- tions incident to the passing of the Western frontier, the factory system, and the rapid growth of cities. Until very recently we have been almost wholly an agri- cultural nation. This was especially true up to the close of the Civil War, As late as 1880 more than seventy per cent of our people was classified as rural. Since that time SAVING AND THRIFT 245 changes have taken place whereby not only do the cities con- tain one half of our population, but from 1900 to 1910 there was an actual decrease of rural population in four of the most prosperous States of the Union. There are economic reasons why the growth of cities will continue until by far the major fraction of our people will be found within them. Farm life induces thrift. This great industrial reorganiza- tion has left its mark on American character. This is not to be wondered at, for the way a people makes its living has been the most influential factor in determining its habits and attitudes of mind. Agriculture, of all occupations, is most conducive to thrift. Lecky, one of the careful observ- ers of social phenomena, says: " Thriftiness flourishes among men placed outside the great stream of commerce, and in positions where wealth is only to be acquired by slow and steady industry, while the speculative character is common in great centers of enterprise and wealth." Lecky does not consider the natural process of selection by which the speculative natures may be attracted to the cities and those of the thrifty tendencies left behind. It is of little consequence to us whether agriculture selects thrifty natiu-es or trains them in habits of thrift, if it is a fact that the coun- try affords an environment more congenial to the growth and development of the habit. He also fails to explain why the farmer is more thrifty than the artisan, although in the case of both "wealth is only to be acquired by slow and steady industry." It is evidently some factor other than the specific method of gaining a liveUhood which breeds ex- travagance, for the artisan's occupational habits, if any, should tend to create habits of thrift and economy. Contrast with the artisan class. The artisan, however, is not "placed outside the great stream of commerce" as is the farmer, a fact which may have greater influence on the quantity and quaUty of his saving than the occupation as 246 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION such. He lives constantly in the midst of a crowd, and crowds create attitudes and habits which plainly distinguish the rural from the urban dweller in every part of the world. Another general difference in the habits of these two classes may be cited. Thrift has been explained as a check on impulse. The harvest season which comes once a year is in marked contrast with the weekly pay envelope of the artisan. The farmer who prepares the groimd for wheat, conscious that the grain will not be harvested vmtil a year from that date, by so doing assumes an attitude of provi- dence. The practical necessity which confronts the farmer of storing up .enough food to carry himself and his depend- ents over the inter-harvest season establishes the habit of thrift in its purest form. Providence and necessity put a brake on the impulse to consume unwisely. Thorstein Veblen argues that the city with its numbers stimulates the social instincts of display and approval more than does the country, and this explains the greater waste of the city. He says: Conspicuous consumption of valuable goods is a means of reput- ability to the gentleman of leisure. As wealth accumulates on his hands, his own unaided efforts will not avail to sufficiently put his opulence in evidence by this method. The aid of competitors is therefore brought in by resorting to the giving of valuable presents and expensive feasts and entertainments. Elsewhere he says: From the foregoing survey of the growth of conspicuous leisure and consumption it appears that the utility of boli alike for the purposes of reputability lies in the element of waste that is common to both. In the one case it is a waste of time and effort, in the other it is a waste of goods. Both are methods of demonstrating the possession of wealth and the two are conventionally accepted as equivalents. The choice between them is a question of adver- tising expediency simply, except so far as it may be affected by other standards of propriety springing from a different source. . • . SAVING AND THRIFT 247 Consumption becomes a larger element in the standard of living in the city than of living in the country. Among the country population its place is to some extent taken by savings and home comforts known through the medium of neighborhood gossip sufficiently to serve the like general purpose of pecuniary repute. These home comforts and the leisure indulged in — where the indulgence is' found — are, of course, also in great part to be classed as items of conspicuous consumption; and much the same is to be said of the saving. " The smaller amount of the savings laid up by the artisan class is no doubt due, in some measure, to the fact that in the case of the artisan the savings are a less effective means of advertising relative to the environment in which he is placed, than the savings of the people living on farms and in the small villages. Among the latter, everybody's affairs, especially everybody's pecuniary status, are known to everybody else. Considered by itself simply — taken in the first degree — this added provocation to which the artisan and the urban laboring classes are exposed may not very seriously decrease the amount of savings; but in its cumulative action through raising the standard of decent expendi- ture, its deterrent effect on the tendency to save cannot but be very great. This original tendency in people to gratify the strong social instincts by such means as the environment provides must be considered a potent influence in the irrational con- sumption of goods. It may be added also that the "deter- rent effects on the tendency to save" of modern city life are no longer confined as formerly to the city, for the reason that the telephone, automobile, and newspaper are drawing the country into closer relations with the city and every decade brings about a marked change in the psychology of country people. It may be said also that the change has taken place without reciprocity. It does not require effort to make common people dissa;tis- fied with their lot. The vivid descriptions of city life with its wealth, power, and luxury emphasized in newspapers, magazines, and books of fiction, arouse the imagination of the isolated farmer and alter his philosophy of life. People 248 DEMOCRACY IN RECONSTRUCTION do not save because they like to; saving springs from a sense of duty to self and one's dependents, which requires careful training to develop. It appears, therefore, that inasmuch as twentieth-century society will be mainly urban in nature, there is great need for a stabilizing factor which will regulate the habits of the present ^nd future generations in their new environment. h Our national wealth. It may be asked whether what is termed extravagance cannot be justified by our increased wealth and earning power. If a nation has the wealth, does it not have the right to indulge its desires? "The luxuries of to-day," it is isaid, "are the necessities of to-morrow." A summary of our productive power convinces one that if the amount of wealth possessed by a people can be used as a measure of their right to consume, we have reached the point of special privilege. We lead the world in the production of com, oats, tobacco, coal, cotton, petroleum, pig iron, steel, copper, and silver. Official Government figures for 1914 emphasize our great economic strength as well as the depend- ence of the remainder of the world on our products. Although the United States includes less than six per cent of the earth's surface and contains only about six per cent of the earth's population, it produces thirty-three per cent of the wealth of the world. The following table, based on pre-war conditions, shows the percentage of the world wealth produced in the United States by conunodities: 76 per cent of all the com. 72 fiC tt " oil. 70 « €t " cotton. 59 tt St