The Signs of
the Times

:by:

WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES
BY
WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

AN ADDRESS GIVEN BEFORE THE
ELECTRICAL MANUFACTURERS' CLUB
AT HOT SPRINGS, VIRGINIA
NOVEMBER 6, 1913

PUBLISHED BY
THE ELECTRICAL MANUFACTURERS* CLUB
NOVEMBER, 1913

Preface
The following address was delivered by Hon.
William H. Taft to the members of the Electrical
Manufacturers' Club on the occasion of their annual
meeting on November sixth, 1913, at Hot Springs,
Virginia. The Club, in printing this address, desires not
only to give it permanent form, but to obtain for it
a wider publicity than would be possible were the
paper to remain only in the archives of the Club.

A. B, Houghton, Chairman
L, A. OSBOENE
A. D. Page
L, M. Downs
H. B. Ckousb

« Committee

The Signs of the Times
Gentlemen of the Electrical Manufacturers'
Club, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I propose in this paper, which you have been good
enough to invite me to prepare and read, to discuss
the Signs of the Times. Under this title I shall con
sider the causes which have led to our present some
what confused and chaotic conditions, political and
social, to consider the present symptoms which are
manifesting themselves, to determine what of these
are ephemeral, and what are indicative of a perma
nent change for good or evil, and how far by the
united efforts of those who see them clearly, the
dangers of the present situation can be neutralized
or mitigated, and the part of our heritage from our
ancestors in this Republic that is valuable and
indispensable can be retained for the benefit and
happiness of the present and coming generations.
It is most diflficult for one drawn hither and thither
in the conflicting currents of politics and society, to
tell clearly in what direction the main stream is
really tending. I have been reading a most inter
esting book called "The Foundations of the Nine
teenth Century," in which the author traces the
history of the controlling causes of progress from the
Christian era to the beginnings of the 19th Century
as a basis for a subsequent consideration of the
epoch-making character of that century. The rela-

tively small importance of many movements that
seemed to contemporaries to be controlling and the
insignificant part that men of prominence in their
day really played in the light of such a history, make
one hesitate to express a judgment on current events
and discourage effort through individual activity to
check dangerous national or race tendencies. Such
a review leads almost to fatalism and a sense of sub
mission to whatever may come, and a paralysis of
effort to make things better. It produces a benumb
ing sensation like that which affects one who, while
excited by the critical importance of the affairs of his
own community, is suddenly introduced by an
astronomer to a study of the universe, and whose
imagination is thus stirred to comprehend the many
times greater worlds than ours that are being drawn
through infinite space at a speed beyond our con
ception. Yet this is the only world we have, and for Ameri
cans, ours, the only country we have, or are ever
likely to have. Our earthly interest in it is limited
to one or two or at most three generations; and while
we, as individuals, can make hardly a ripple in the
general current of world events, as seen from the
standpoint of an historian of centuries, we can not,
and ought not to escape, by such a plea, personal
responsibility for what happens around us. Those
who, in the genius of their writings and their deeds
have made themselves world figures and really played
such a part in civilization's advance as to keep them
on the stage of history forever, have only embodied

and given expression and effect to the spirit of prog
ress that has lain, uninterpreted, in the minds of
their contemporary fellowmen. Therefore, it falls
to everyone who is a member of the community of
any age to do his httle part to help the welfare of the
body politic and the body social, with the hope that
through his effort, united with that of millions of
others, there may develop, in one or more, a genius
of leadership and a movement of progress in the
right direction. It is in an humble spirit, therefore,
and with no cocksureness that I take up this subject
that attracts me much, with the hope that I may
perhaps effect a little in the interpretation of the
confused tongues we hear today.
The material progress of an age is very much
easier to describe with accuracy than the moral and
intellectual changes. No one can question the enor
mous and most exceptional material advancement
that the 19th century has brought to the world and
to this country. The changes which have been
effected by the application of steam to machinery
and by the innumerable improvements in mechan
ical devices and their application to transporta
tion, to agriculture, to manufactures, and in
other ways, have wrought an improvement in the
comfort of life for every individual that can be
measured without surmise or conjecture. The elec
tric telegraph, the application of electricity to
mechanics, the electric light, the electric motor, the
electric street car, the telephone, the automobile,
with the numberless devices for increasing the pro-

ductiveness of labor, have reduced the cost of the
necessities of life in everything but food and have
brought easier living to the great mass of the people.
Of bodily comforts, the humblest laborer today has
more than Queen Elizabeth, in the heyday of her
power, or indeed than George III. These comforts
we have grown so used to, that everyone feels them
a necessity, and holds a deprivation of them to be
a cruelty and a suffering. Statistics show, too, that
wealth and capital have increased in greater propor
tion than the population. The average wage, in
spite of the high cost of living, furnishes to the
laborer a much closer approximation to the possible
comforts of the rich than ever before. The public,
through the Government, is doing much more than
formerly in caring for the unfortunate, in offering
opportunity for self-elevation to the poor youth of
the community, and in spreading general education
among all classes. But human nature has not been
changed, and this betterment of material comfort and
this greater approach to equality of opportunity do
not satisfy the average man or check his desire for
further improvement, or silence complaints over
things that are. It is well that this is so. If it were
not otherwise, there would be no hope of future prog
ress. This discontent with what we have is at the
bottom of all energy and activity that make for
further accomplishment. But while this spirit is
indispensable to progress, it may, if wrongly directed,
manifest itself in such a way as to retard further
progress by sapping the foundations of that already

made. The truth is that so much progress has been
made, so many things have been done which it was
thought could not be done and were beyond the
conception of men a century ago, that many intelli
gent people, infused with the confidence of success,
are dangerously conceited as to what we can do in
the future. We are told by radical leaders that we
should not hamper ourselves by lessons from the
past, that we have entered upon a new era that
opens possibilities that were never dreamed of, and
in the onward march to something very like a mil
lennium, "He who dallies is a dastard and he who
doubts is damned," or, as Lowell in his Bigelow
Papers put it,
"For John P,
Robinson, he
Says they didn't know everthin'
Down in Judee."
Yet it is often just at the time when the confidence
of would-be leaders is greatest, that a danger
suddenly makes itself clear and the unexpected
catastrophe comes to show their lack of judgment
and their failure to appreciate the real effect of that
which they unwisely advocate.
"There are no pages in history more instructive,"
says Lecky, "and there are few which are more
humiliating than those which record the judgments
of great thinkers and politicians on the verge of the
changes that have most profoundly affected the
destiny of mankind."

"Though for a long time," says Marmontel, re
garding the violent change in government which he
lived through in France — "Though for a long time
the situation of public affairs and the fermentation
of men's minds through all ranks of the state, ap
peared to threaten the approach of some great crisis,
it is nevertheless true that it (the change of govern
ment) happened, through the imprudence of those
who obstinately persisted in thinking it impossible,"
These quotations, which I take from the installa
tion address of President Hinman, of Marietta Col
lege, are apt in considering our present situation.
The causes of the present conspicuous tendencies
in our American civilization today it is difficult to
state separately and with accurate definition, because
they run into each other. But it may help to try to
do so, however imperfectly, as follows:
1st. The great crusade of the people of the
United States against the imminent danger of plutoc
racy due to corrupt corporate control of politics and
government agencies,
2nd. The increase of the real spirit of brother
hood in society and the increased sense of responsi
bility of each for the other and of all for one.
3rd, The growth of Trade Unions in number,
membership and power.
I shall take up these causes in their order and
attempt to trace out the effects that have followed
them, both good and bad, and finally consider the
reason for hoping that the bad effects may ultimately
be minimized, 10

1. The enormous expansion in wealth and popu
lation that came to this country after its recovery
from the immediate effects of the war, between the
resumption of specie payments in 1878 and 1900,
dulled the sensibilities of the people in the discharge
of their political duties. They sympathized with,
and were much affected by, the great plans for
extending the investment of capital in railroads and
other enterprises and its profitable return. All were
intoxicated by the brilliancy of business achieve
ment, and the attention and energy of the people
were focused on the material task of developing our
resources. This created a prodigal liberality and
unwise tolerance in the granting of opportunities for
the private exploitation of what really should have
been restricted to the benefit of the public, and led
to too little censure upon the control which those in
charge of great enterprises began to exercise over
politics, legislatures, municipal councils, and even
Congress. This was not all of it brought about
by direct corruption, but much was effected through
more insidious influence, and by furnishing the funds
that political exigencies in important electoral con
tests called for. The time was, and we all know it,
when in many of the directorates of the great corpo
rations of the country, orders for the delivery of dele
gates in a convention and of members of the legis
lature for purposes of corporate control were issued
with the same feeling of confidence in their fulfillment
as an order for the purchase of machinery or the
enlargement of the pay-roll. Finally the danger of
11

such political control by combinations of capital
forced itself upon the people. Their interest in our
material expansion began to pall and their moral
sense was aroused. Throughout the country began
to be manifested a determination to destroy the
power of the plutocracy. In the last ten years we
have seen this work done. We have seen the wrath
of the people thus aroused make itself felt in legis
latures, in the Congress and in elections, while the
great corporations have been relegated to a position
of serving the public interest and of regulation by
public authority. The interstate commerce rail
roads and all other public utilities have come under
government or state scrutiny and control and a revo
lution in the relation of such quasi public corporations
to the public they serve has been effected. Com
binations of capital in corporate form that have used
illegal and improper means of suppressing competi
tion in order to maintain monopolies and control
prices have been brought to the Bar of Justice. The
prodigality of the United States Government in its
land grants and the opportunities it gave to private
investors to possess themselves of the natural re
sources which lie in the public domain, in mineral
wealth, in forests, in water power, and in supplying
other industrial needs, attracted the condemnation
of the public, and led to a program of conservation
so strict indeed that the people of the States in which
it is to be carried out have resented the extremes to
which they think it has gone in the withdrawal by
executive order of these resources from any kind of
12

use by them in the development of their local com
munities. We are now in a transition period, in
which a plan must be formulated more carefully
guarding the ultimate rights of the public and the
ultimate control that may be retained over the use
of such resources. Corporation franchises are scru
tinized with much greater care. Lobbies have been
regulated. The suspicion that corporate agencies
are at work for any candidate greatly impairs his
chances of election. Corporations have really been
driven out of active political work. The cry of
bossism was never so potent as a campaign argument
against a candidate or party supposed to be controlled
by a regular machine. Every one with the good of
his country at heart must rejoice in this crusade and
its chief effect. Corruption has not disappeared
entirely of course, but the political atmosphere has
been cleansed of the poisonous miasma that was
threatening the Republic's life.
It is impossible, however, to arouse a leviathan
like the people to spirited action and limit that
action to judicial measure. After the people have
accomplished their purpose, they not infrequently
pursue it with excesses which are ill advised, which
will prove to be dangerous to the public weal in the
long run, and from which, after actual trial shows
their evil effect, the people's good sense will lead to
a wise reaction.
The conditions under which plutocracy became so
threatening occurred under a representative form of
government, both in the states and in the nation,
13

and the corruption was, much of it, effected through
members of legislative bodies. The argument that
the representatives of the people are not to be trusted
and that the representative form of government is
responsible for the corruption which obtained, there
fore, had great force with the people and has led to a
profound popular distrust of legislatures and munic
ipal councils. They fail to perceive that under the
influences that were controlling and under their own
neglect of their electoral and political duties, any
system of government would have yielded the same
discouraging results. But the mind of the enter
prising American turns to machinery as the cure-all
for everything. It makes him impatient to be told
that effective changes to accomplish good results
must be slow, must be detailed, must be studied.
He wishes to treat people and human nature as he
does matter, and to think that the analogy of the
devices for the use of steam and electricity and for
the wonderful saving of labor can also be followed in
the realm of politics and in government and in the
improvement of a people; and, therefore, he ignores
the real cure which is in greater activity by the
people themselves in the discharge of their political
duties and greater care in the election of their repre
sentatives and greater scrutiny of their conduct. But
this is a slow and tedious process. It is one that does
not show itself at once on the statute book or in
concrete form. It has been easy, therefore, for the
inventors of patent devices for the improvement of
general conditions to convince the people that it
14

was the old machinery of government that was the
cause and not the people themselves. They are told,
and believe, that it was the system that permitted
the manipulation of the wicked men and not the
neglect of the electorate that made the evils of the
past possible. The representative system has, there
fore, been made the subject of condemnation and
popular disapproval under this propaganda, and a
wave has swept over the country for its abolition, or
at least its substantial modification, through the
introduction of direct government by the electorate.
The initiative, the referendum and the recall, to
gether with a complete adoption of the direct pri
mary as a means of selecting nominees and an entire
destruction of the convention system are now all
made the sine qua non of a real reformer and everyone
who hesitates to follow all of these or any of them is
regarded with suspicion and is denounced as an
enemy of popular government and of the people.
Such denunciation finds great sympathy in many
quarters. But not only is our representative system attacked,
but because we had courts during the time when the
plutocracy nearly gained mastery, the same kind of
an argument is directed toward them. As they were
institutions under which these abuses were possible,
they too are said to be lacking in the proper elements
needed to secure the rights and happiness of the
people and a radical change must be made in them
by a recall of judicial decisions, a patent device, the
approval of which is also made an indispensable
15

article of the faith of a real progressive. The result
is the doctrine that to prevent the possible future
triumph of corruption through the representative
system, and by acquiescence of the courts, the people
must be given means of direct expression not only
as to what the law shall be, but what it is. It is
said we can only have a popular government by
having the people make laws at the polls and over
rule judicial decisions at the same place. All ques
tions of right and justice and of equity are to be
settled by election.
Senator Lodge, in one of his addresses, has quoted
from a very great historian, Lord Acton, a passage
which is so apt, I cannot refrain from repeating it.
Lord Acton was speaking of the spirit of the Athenian
Democracy, He said:
"The philosophy that was then in the ascendent
taught them that there is no law superior to that of
the State — the lawgiver is above the law.
"It followed that the soverign people had a right
to do whatever was within its power, and was bound
by no rule of right or wrong, but its own judgment
of expediency. On a memorable occasion the assem
bled Athenians declared it monstrous that they should
be prevented from doing whatever they chose. No
force that existed could restrain them; and they
resolved that no duty should restrain them, and that
they would be bound by no laws that were not of
their own making. In this way the emancipated
people of Athens became a tyrant; and their Govern
ment, the pioneer of European freedom, stands con-
16

demned with a terrible unanimity by all the wisest
of the ancients. They ruined their city by attempt
ing to conduct war by debate in the market place.
Like the French Republic, they put their unsuccessful
commanders to death. They treated their depend
encies with such injustice that they lost their mari
time empire. They plundered the rich until the
rich conspired with the public enemy and they
crowned their guilt by the martyrdom of Socrates.
"When the absolute sway of numbers had endured
for near a quarter of a century, nothing but bare
existence was left for the State to lose; and the
Athenians, wearied and despondent, confessed the
true cause of their ruin. *** The repentance of the
Athenians came too late to save the Republic. But
the lesson of their experience endures for all times,
for it teaches that government by the whole people,
being the government of the most numerous and
most powerful class, is an evil of the same nature as
unmixed monarchy, and requires, for nearly the same
reasons, institutions that shall protect it against
itself, and shall uphold the permanent reign of law
against arbitrary revolutions of opinion."
It is exactly this spirit that has prompted the
pressing of the so-called reforms known as the recall
of judicial decisions. It is said that there is to be no
divine right of judges; that they are nothing but the
servants of the people, and, therefore, they must
decide as the people will have them decide. What
is the decision of the people thus relied on? It is
ascertained by the plurality vote of the electorate
17

at a single election. Now who constitute the lawful
electorate.? They are not twenty per cent of the
whole people, probably considerably less. At the
elections in which there is the greatest popular
interest, perhaps 75 per cent of those entitled, vote.
That is a high percentage. At other elections, the
percentage will run down to 65 per cent. A majority
or plurality of that percentage gives expression to
what is said to be the voice of the whole people.
These percentages are shown in the election of offi
cers; but when it comes to the direct vote by the
electorate upon measures, under the initiative and
the referendum, we find that the proportion of those
who vote is generally not more than 60 per cent and
not infrequently as low as 30 per cent of those who
vote at the same election for officers. V/hat then is the
result of the calculation.'* The total electorate does
not exceed 20 per cent of the population. At ordi
nary elections, not presidential, the total vote is only
65 per cent of this 20 per cent, or about 13 per cent of
the total population, and of this it is fair to say that
upon ref erendums, there is not, on the average, a total
vote of more than 50 per cent of those who vote for
candidates at such elections. The total vote, there
fore, upon referendums is about 6^/^ per cent of all the
people and a majority of that, or something more
than 3 per cent of the people are supposed to express
in their votes at one election that popular will which
is to be the standard of righteousness and morality
and of equality and justice. Of course where at a
subsequent election the same small body shall take
18

a different view and establish a different rule of
righteousness and justice, there may be some embar
rassment. In the wave of popular approval with which these
new remedies are received, it seems useless to point
out that it is not the representative system that is to
blame. The system works well when the people are
aroused. There has been no difficulty in making
it do the will of the people when they take a little
trouble. The present reforms they have effected
under it, leave no doubt of that. Moreover, how is
this new machinery going to work any better when
the people grow lax again? To make it work prop
erly, much more political activity is required of the
people than that needed in the representative system.
By the instrumentality of the initiative, from 5 to
8 per cent of those of the electorate who register are
permitted to compel the submission to the electorate
of any measure they may devise. This has put the
power in the hands of cranks and blind enthusiasts
to increase the burden of the electors so much that
many fail to discharge their electoral duties. The
result is an enactment of laws by small minorities
and not by the people at all.
It is no answer to all this to say that those who do
not vote, forfeit their right to do so. In voting they
are not doing something for themselves alone; they
are exercising a trust for the whole people and the
great majority of the people who are not given the
franchise have the right to insist that all vote so that
their welfare may be protected by the average intel-
19

ligence and patriotism of the whole electorate. It too
often happens that the multiplication of the duties
of the electorate is much more likely to keep the
intelligent from the polls than those less qualified to
vote rightly. Clearly, therefore, the representative
system with any proper degree of popular attention is
certain to result in laws which much more certainly
reflect the real public opinion than this so-called
direct machinery.
More than this, the tendency to submit legislation
to the referendum grows until we have the result
that thirty or forty different complicated laws are
submitted to the people, involving the printing by
way of explanation and with arguments pro and con
of a volume of two hundred and fifty closely lined
pages in order that the people may know what they
are to vote upon. Of course the result is that in
respect to many such laws whose effect is indirect or
not easily understood, the election is no test of public
opinion at all. With the initiative, which seems to
be regarded as an inseparable companion of the refer
endum and to which I shall make further reference,
the form of the law to be enacted is left to the
coterie who get up the required petition. There
is no method of amendment or legislative discussion
over its sections or language. The electorate must
accept or reject it as a whole. It is hardly
necessary to point out what gross errors can creep
into such legislation and what an opportunity for
"jokers" of which we have heard so much. Is it any
wonder that, with thirty or forty laws to read and
20

secure some dim idea of, with a volume of 250 pages
to digest, the voters, many of them, go to the polls,
vote for the candidates and decline to vote on the
laws submitted to them? The fact has already been
stated that the ballots cast on laws initiated and
referred vary all the way from 60 per cent of the
votes for candidates at the same election in some
states to 25 per cent in others. Is not this an
eloquent witness that the electorate itself in its heart
favors the representative system under which it
considers itself competent to select agents to do its
legislative work but has neither capacity nor time
to attend to it directly? What is true of legislation
is equally true of judicial questions to be submitted
to voters under the fantastic system of recall of
judicial decisions.
Another and most dangerous result of this direct
government and direct judicial decision by the people
is utterly to break down the sanctity of our consti
tution as fundamental law and to make no distinction
between an appropriation bill and a bill of rights.
It takes away all the security we have in the consti
tutional guaranty of personal rights. The constitu
tion loses altogether its function as a restraint self
imposed by the people upon the temporary action of
the electorate. It is a little startling to think that
if these new methods are to be introduced into our
Federal System as proposed, there is nothing we hold
dear in our individual rights of life, liberty, property,
that might not be seriously impaired, and infringed
by the result of one election. Of course the adoption
21

of these nostrums in such states as have adopted
them do not now seriously affect even the citizens of
those states in the security of the rights they enjoy
because the Federal constitution and the Federal
Courts offer a bulwark of protection upon which they
can still rely. But the advance is upon our Federal
system and it is formidable.
In the founding of our government, in the Civil
War, and from time to time at various crises, we
have shown that we were a moral people, that through
the majority of our electorate we could manifest high
ideals, make real sacrifices and exercise self-restraint.
But these judgments were after long contests in
which there were many elections indicating a tem
porary prejudice and error. If we now give up the
restraining influence of a constitution upon tem
porary and fitful popular expression, who can tell
the disasters that may follow?
MUCKRAKING
The stirring of the people against the influence of
corporate influence in politics necessarily involved
personal attack upon prominent leaders under the
old system, and the impeachment of the purity of
their motives. This was doubtless justified in many
cases, but it was so effective as a campaign weapon
that it became the vogue to attack all public men and
to fill the press and magazines with unfounded alle
gations and insinuations against their integrity.
Matter of this kind came to be known as "muck
raking." It had a bad effect. It sowed suspicion
22

of all men in political life in the minds of the people.
It kept the reading public in a state of constant and
morbid expectancy, and their appetites were whetted
for coming revelations showing corrupt rottenness
in new quarters. Years hence the historian will
study the events of recent congressional sessions at
Washington and will find it difficult to understand
the political advantage that could lead the Houses of
Congress to occupy so much of the public time,
waste so much of the public money and so greatly
interfere with the cause of government business
merely to give currency to sensational statements
impeaching the motives and besmirching the char
acter of prominent persons from the lips of self-
confessed perjurers and political hirelings. I ask you
what the historian of this century will think when he
considers in the headlines of the press the importance
attached to the revelations of Colonel Mulhall, or to
the fifty other examinations and investigations upon
the event of which the hearts of political Washington
stood still in anticipation of the popular earthquake
that was to follow their disclosure. During that
period, the terrorism that prevailed was in a sense
equal to that which we read of being produced by the
deposit of accusations in the lion's mouth to be con
sidered by the Council of Ten in Venice. And yet
what has it all amounted to in giving substantive
facts for the useful information of the public? Who
can remember one important circumstance brought
out? I don't mean to say that this muckraking for

23

purely selfish political and journalistic profit has not
had an effect upon the public. I think it has. It has
had an evil effect. It has had a tendency to destroy
the lack of respect for knowledge, for experience and
for honorable public service. It has impaired the
authority of those who should be real leaders of
public sentiment. Beginning with those real male
factors of wealth against whom just criticism may
be aimed, it extends to all that part of the com
munity that have been successful in business, and
they are held up as enjoying their success and com
fort at the expense of the needy and unfortunate
who are treated as the victims of society. All this
movement toward direct governmental action at the
polls accompanied by class antagonism tends to
create not the safe party divisions by vertical lines,
in each of which various classes of the community
are represented, but a horizontal cleavage in the
electorate producing a faction, filled with a con
sciousness of new power, inspired by persistent
suspicion of, and hostility to, the well to do and the
more intelligent, and seeking to induce those who
have little, to unite and form a party whose aim
shall be to control the government and to adopt rad
ical changes in our political institutions. It needs no
seer or oracle to tell the result if this succeeds. The
guaranty of personal property rights in the consti
tution would not be worth the parchment it is re
corded in.
A faction means a group in the electorate consti
tuting either a majority or minority which allows its
24

policy and action to be controlled wholly by selfish
desire for its own benefit, or by unjust bitterness
toward others in the community differently situated,
and which is not moved by any appeal to a broad
spirit of patriotism and interest in the general wel
fare. Madison, in Chapter 10 of the Federalist,
spoke of factions when he said:
"If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief
is supplied by the republican principle which enables
the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular
vote. *** When a majority is included in a faction,
the form of popular government, on the other hand,
tables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest
both the public good and the rights of other citizens."
I do not intend to be understood as asserting that
the movement toward the form of government by
the initiative, referendum and recall finds its main
spring in a factional spirit like this. I have no doubt
that it was, and is, chiefly promoted by a feeling
that such machinery would prevent a recurrence of
corruption in legislative bodies under the representa
tive system, and without any realization of the
peculiar evils of their own which the new devices
would in practice develop. But I do mean to say
that the arguments of many of the leaders in the
movement tend to rouse a spirit of faction and class
hatred and are intended to implant in the minds of a
majority of the electorate a consciousness of the
power that its members have by mere union to make
the policy of the government what they choose, to
gratify their feeling against those whom they suspect
25

and dislike, and all this without sense of responsi
bility to any one. Such a feeling on their part is
greatly increased by the attitude of these leaders
toward the courts and the doctrine that the will of
the people is the basis for all justice and equity and
morality, and that the only infallible standard is the
result of a single election on any question of law or
ethics. These elements add to the lack of respect
for authority already referred to. The factional
principle is not equality of right before the law, not
equality of opportunity, but equality of knowledge,
equality of character, equality of experience. One
man's judgment, one man's motives, one man's
knowledge, one man's experience are just as good as
another's. It is the philosophy of the dead level, the
destruction of real leadership and the elimination of
any such thing as quality in citizenship or political
usefulness. It has been well said that the future
success of popular governriient in its numerous and
increasingly complicated functions is going to de
pend upon its power to avail itself of the service of
experts, of men qualified to give to its necessary
work the highest efficiency. It is hardly necessary
to point out that the spirit I have been describing
is utterly at variance with the use of such assistants
in government.
I come now to the third phase of the aftermath of
the popular uprising against political corruption.
It was not to be expected that there should be a nice
discrimination between honest capital and honest
investments of a corporate character and those whose
26

managers used abhorrent means to control politics,
although, of course, a broad distinction between
them has always existed. The crusade has neces
sarily carried with it a popular distrust and hostile
scrutiny toward all corporate investments, leading
to some ill-advised legislation and executive action,
adopted to meet what has been thought to be the
public demand. The consequence has been to make
capital timorous, and to halt new and large invest
ments. It makes the refunding of railroad and other
corporate bonds and stocks difficult. It frightens
those whose confidence in our business strength as a
country once made a most valuable European mar
ket for our securities. This is a part of the cost of a
real reform that we are bound to meet and pay, and
all we can do is to hope and pray that the unreason
able hostility to legitimate corporate prosperity will
exhaust itself before it brings about such interference
with our business conditions as to throw a great
burden on the poor people of the country.
SPREAD OF FRATERNAL SPIRIT
2. I come now to a change for the better in
society which is countrywide, and which it is a real
pleasure to dwell upon. I refer to a change from
the commercial spirit and intense selfish application
to business and the making of money, to a marked
increase in the responsibility that members of society
feel for those who are suffering and are in want, who
have been unfortunate in the race of life, who are
oppressed by present conditions, and who need help
27

to enable them to share in the general improvement
in bodily and domestic comfort of the community.
There is no mistaking the existence of such a spirit,
and it finds expression in several ways. In the first
place, it would seem as if the game and pleasure of
the pursuit of the dollar and the increase of capital
and the enormous material development due to this
had palled on the public taste and had brought home
to the members of the community a sense of the
narrowness and selfishness of it all, unless its highest
development helps to abate the suffering, hardship and
misfortune in the lot of everyone. It seemed to arouse
a shame in the whole community that they had been
intoxicated with material success, and it gave them
a pause in which they stopped to consider the fate
of those who in spite of the brilliant achievements of
the business community, did not share in the result.
Nor can we ignore in this reaction toward a wider
charity and a deeper human sympathy, the strong
influence of the crusade against plutocracy to which
the people were aroused. That intensified the self-
condemnation of society, and gave additional zest
to the reaction. One of its signs has been the greater
responsibility that men of wealth have shown not
only in their great gifts to philanthropic causes, but
in the time and effort that they have been willing to
take in order to make that their money thus given
would be effectively spent, and become a real aid to
the beneficiaries intended. Nor has this movement
been confined to those who have had money to give,
but it has widened greatly the organization of private
28

charities by the effort of people of moderate and of
little means, and much increased their activities. It
has developed the science of sociology, and stimulated
public interest in it. It has led to a change in govern
mental policy. Under the laissez faire school of
economists, the paternalism in government had been
regarded as vicious. The warnings of that school
have been ignored, and the public funds raised by
taxation have been devoted to the most extensive
plans for increasing the opportunities of the poor to
secure an education not alone of a primary and
secondary character, but of a practical use for voca
tional purposes. Great improvement in the health
agencies in the community has been effected. Many
phases of human suffering and hardship in great
communities not before known have been brought
to public notice. Legislation improving the housing
of the poor has become general and provision at the
public expense has been made for their amusement
and recreation. The same impulse has led to the
pure food, and the white slave laws. It has given us
the free rural delivery, the postal savings bank and
the parcels post. It has prompted the effort by law
to limit the hours of labor, to compel the furnishing
of safe and healthful places in which, and safety
appliances with which, to work. It has led to the
change of relations between employer and employe,
putting the latter on a plane much nearer that of
equality in dealing with his employer than was his
condition under the common law. It would be
impossible to enumerate the great variety of laws
29

which have been enacted under this inspiration and
which are working benefit for the poor, the needy
and the suffering, as well as for the community at
large. This stirred human sympathy is nowhere
more emphatically shown than by the recognition
it receives at the hands of the press, from the pulpit,
and by the politicians. It means, I believe, a per
manent change in the attitude of the general com
munity toward those of its members who, whether
through their own fault or through their own weak
nesses, find themselves in a slough of despond from
which they need outside aid to rescue them.
SOCIALISM
Great as has been the benefit of the uprising
against corrupt politics and of this wider human
brotherhood, however, we cannot ignore the eager
ness with which the state of public mind has been
used by wild enthusiasts to promote the coming of
state socialism in which it is proposed to absorb all
the privately owned sources and means of produc
tion and put them under the operation and control
of the government, and following in its wake is the
movement toward a socialism pure and simple which
in one form or other ultimately involves the serious
impairment of the right of property, the taking away
of the motive which is indispensable to human
material progress and the substitution of an arbi
trary method of determining by executive tribunal
the rewards which members in the community are
to receive for their contributions of effort to the
30

common weal. The danger from this should not
be treated lightly. There are many who are being
carried along unconsciously by their enthusiasm for
the betterment of mankind to the final advocacy of
such doctrines. Of course they look with very
great favor upon any system like that of the initia
tive and referendum and the subserviency of the
courts to electoral decisions, because thereby the
guaranty of private property may cease to obstruct
the realization of their theories and hopes.
POLITICAL USE OF WIDER HUMAN SYMPATHY
Cunning politicians and demagogues, not social
ists, do not hesitate to use the wider human sympathy
for selfish political purposes and in so doing they
arouse in one an indignation like that of Dr. Johnson
when he said that patriotism was the last refuge of
a scoundrel. A reflection of it, too, is in a kind of
hysteria among the weak and impressionable in the
community, and in the outbursts of maudlin sentimen
tality, colored by prejudice and factional spirit against
the well to do. This impetus to wider interest in
charity has led many people of most excellent inten
tion and earnest enthusiasm in the community to
focus their eyes on the suffering in the community,
and to consider only the hardship and sin which are
gathered together in certain nuclei in large cities.
Their view comes to be that a civilization which
permits such degradation is one to be utterly con
demned. They lose their sense of proportion. They
are unwilling to admit that government can not do
31

everything. They fail to recognize the immense
progress that has been made in the average comfort
and happiness of the individual in the country as
well as in the cities. They estimate the whole value
of society by its success or failure in reforming the
particular evil which has claimed their earnest
sympathy and aid. To secure a reform of this,
they seem to be willing to sacrifice anything else
in society. Of course this leads to a perverted
view of what is needed for the community in
general. Consider the investigation into the cause of prosti
tution and the effort tp make the proprietors of
cooperative stores and other large employers of
female labor responsible for it, on the ground that
they don't pay enough wages to their employes to
enable them to live without vice. Could anything
be more unjust than this charge of conspiracy against
the virtue of young womanhood? Could there be
a greater lack of judgment and sense of proportion
than in this sensational hunt for some other
explanation of crime and sin than that, we
already know, of the weakness of human nature and
the yielding to temptation? What injustice is done
to the virtue of American womanhood by the sug
gestion that because a woman only gets $7.00 a
week, she must yield to vice. It is common know
ledge that women seek positions in stores and in
factories because the hours are short and they have
an independence that they can not have if they
become domestic servants. Yet in domestic service,
32

with the comfortable homes they would have, their
real compensation and their opportunity to save
would be greatly better. It is difficult to secure
good domestics and the field is not crowded. There
fore, the unfounded alternative conclusion to which
these investigators are driven in their woeful logic
is that young women prefer a life of sin to the restric
tions of service in a family.
The truth is that the present interest in the wel
fare of humanity and the disposition to use govern
mental machinery and laws to promote it, offer an
opportunity that is eagerly seized upon by officious
busybodies, who are seeking^cthe limelight, and wish
ing to reform, not themselves, but other people.
There is nothing quite so satisfactory as to become
virtuously indignant about the mote in somebody
else's eye and to enthuse about its removal. There
is no royal road to learning; neither is there to moral
betterment of the world. Obstructions to progress
may be removed in the form of unjust social laws and
conventions, and in the furnishing of greater oppor
tunity for everyone to lift himself. Individual suf
fering may be alleviated by charity, but in the end
society must depend for its advance on the moral
fabric and stamina of the individual man or woman,
on his industry, his staying powers, his courage in
overcoming obstacles, his resistance to temptation,
his providence, his self-restraint, his willingness to
make sacrifices to accomplish his purposes, his fore
sight in neglecting the temporary gain to seek the
permanent advancement, his sense of duty, his sense
33

of loyalty to those he serves, his mental and moral
honesty and his proper ideals. Life to be useful
and successful cannot be easy — character is made by
struggle and difficulty. We are tending to fiabbiness
of moral muscle. In many a sense, we are sparing
the rod and spoiling the child. We are hunting
scapegoats for the sins of the individual.
Take another instance. A gentleman went to the
penitentiary, clothed himself as a convict, and
remained in prison a week. When he came out he
made the announcement, which was headlined in all
the newspapers, that life in the penitentiary is
unpleasant. It was treated as a discovery. He
also said that ripe pears were rotting on his farm
that the convicts would enjoy eating. Now of
course it is of the highest importance that our
criminals who are convicted should not be treated
with cruelty and should have their surroundings as
healthful as the necessary condition of confinement
will permit, but the penitentiary is not provided for
the purpose of making the life of the classes who are
detained there, a picnic. A penitentiary is, by the
very derivation of the name, a place for punishment.
Such misdirected sentiment grows out of the same
spirit to which I have referred, of treating the con
victs as the victims of somebody else and of hunting
some scapegoat upon whom to put the burden of
their sins.
Another person who had the ear of the public and
probably will receive it again, a man of great literary
talent, the unworthy son of an honored sire, goes to
34

the penitentiary involuntarily, and after he has
served his term for an offence against honesty, comes
out and announces the beginning of a crusade for the
better treatment of criminals, on the ground that
heredity and their environment are the occasion
for their crimes.
These instances are all of a piece with the apparent
view of many people that Thaw is a hero and de
fender of social purity, struggling for liberty, instead
of the degenerate and dangerous paranoaic that he
is, with a taste for the limelight and money enough
to secure it. It is rather gratifying that this undis-
criminating hysteria manifested itself in Canada as
well as here because it shows that we are not alone
in the possession of many foolish people.
In the new school of political philosophy, the com
mon law principle of society, that every man should
be allowed freedom to enjoy his rights so long as he
does not injure the rights of another, is rejected and
instead it is said that the proper goal of society
should be to satisfy the wants of everyone in so far
as that is consistent with satisfying the wants of
others. Without discussing the difference, if any,
between these two views, I wish to speak of a
doctrine that sounds a little like this latter day
philosophy. The principle of the kindergarten, of awakening
the desires of the child for information and then of
gratifying the desires thus awakened, for a time
spread to all grades of education, and the purpose
seemed to be to make everything as easy as possible
35

for the student. This was a great departure from the
safe old method of developing strength of character
through a training in the overcoming of obstacles
and the doing of things which the learner did not wish
to do. Under the old system, his brain cells which did
not respond well to certain mental effort were made
to develop as dormant muscles in the body are
developed by exercise. For some years the new
liberal optional system had the warm approval of the
authorities in several Universities. It was tried and
its demoralizing effect proven by experience. A
reaction from this view greatly to the benefit of the
educated youth of this country is already here.
But the most absurd evidence of the weak and
flabby sentimentality that has followed in the train
of the present social tendencies is in the strikes of
school children. In several cities children to the
number of one thousand have struck because a board
of education or a school superintendent has seen fit
to transfer a popular principal to some other school.
The children have gone to their homes and told their
parents, and those silly parents, far sillier than their
children, have encouraged them and taken pride in
the action they had taken. Nothing could have
occurred more demoralizing to the children, more
destructive to all discipline leading to the develop
ment of good character than this. Instead of
encouraging them and feeling pride in what they had
done, each parent ought to have spanked his child
and stood for the authority that the child's highest
welfare required should be sustained. This was a
36

referendum to the children. It was the logical
outcome of the doctrine of general equality of
knowledge, wisdom and experience, and rested on the
proposition that the children ought to be treated as
knowing as much about who was a good principal
a^ either the school superintendent or the Board of
Education. I can not think that such exhibitions
of mushy sentimentality and such lack of virile
common sense are anything but a passing symptom
of the extremes to which the so-called reform senti
ment will carry some foolish people. But these are
among the signs of the times and are instances of that
lack of respect for authority, learning, wisdom and
experience which is needed to steady society under
popular government. TRADES-UNIONISM
3. A powerful force among the social currents of
the day is that of trades-unionism. It had its
beginnings in a just demand on the part of the
workingman that he be accorded an equality of
position in dealing with his employer. Alone he was
subject to the overwhelming power of the man or
corporation which paid him wages. United with his
fellows in a demand for an improvement in his
condition, with the threat of their leaving the employ
ment in a body, he put himself at once upon an
equality with his employer, and the effect has been
clearly visible in the industrial history of the country.
It has greatly improved the condition of those who
labor. It has done more. The members of the
37

various trades-unions thus organized combined for
political action, seem so formidable that their
leaders have been able to command the attention
of legislatures and of Congress and to secure many
legitimate enactments for their industrial better
ment. I have already referred to many. The
safety appliance acts, the labor hours laws, the
change of relations between the employer and
employe in dangerous employments, and the working-
man's compensation act, were all due to the inter
vention of labor unions. It was not that their
forces were so large, because the unorganized part of
labor is much more numerous than the organized,
but it was that as between the parties they seemed
to hold a balance of power, and they have exercised
the utmost ingenuity to make it felt. But they have
their serious faults. The danger of trades-unionism
is that in the desire to present a solid front, they
make a level of efficiency among their members,
and in so doing they level down and not up. They
have a tendency to take away the incentive to good
work because they insist upon equality of reward
for their members, though they may differ in the
effectiveness and skill of their labor. Indeed the
spirit of trades-unionism in its determination to
sacrifice the interests of all other classes to the
promotion of its members is a selfish development
that really can not be reconciled to the general
movement toward the welfare of the entire commu
nity. The rider on the Sundry Civil appropriation
law, exempting them from anti-trust law prosecutions
38

under the specific appropriation of that law, was a
most gla,ring example of their willingness to terrorize
Congress into securing special and undue privilege for
their own class.
The selfish disregard of the interest of the com
munity was seen in the unanimous vote of the New
York and New Haven engineers to give their leaders
authority to order a strike because the heads of the
railroad were determined to change a seniority rule
so as to secure competent engineers, and this even
after the loss of many passengers' lives in a number
of awful accidents, some of which were due in part
to the incompetency and lack of care of the engineer.
This class spirit of unionism is seen in the refusal
of the leaders properly to condemn murders admit
tedly committed by the explosion of dynamite to
terrorize people into acquiescence in the demands of
certain unions. CONCLUSIONS
I have thus reviewed what seem to me to be the
three strongest currents in our present political and
social condition. The movement toward the initia
tive, the referendum and the recall is growing and
the danger of injury to our form of government and
our constitutional protection is threatening. The
duty of those who love their country and see clearly
the dangers I have pointed out is by a constant
propaganda to bring before the people the inestimable
value of the government we have and the irreparable
loss that we shall sustain in weakening the soKd
foundations upon which we have attained our present
39

growth. We must talk out and tell the truth. We
must not be discouraged by electoral defeats, we
must not be discouraged by a lack of popular dis
crimination between the causes that are good and the
tendencies that are unwise or disastrous. We must
rely on the bitter lessons of experience to make them
heed our warnings and to restore them to the common
sense view for which the American people have in the
past been remarkable.
The system of states, with some conservative and
others radical, makes for a check upon an immediate
adoption of all these new and dangerous nostrum^,
and the Federal form of government is more difficult
to change than that of any State. As long as we
retain the Federal Constitution and the Federal
Judiciary, we can be sure of the conservation of those
elements of our strength as a people and a country
that have enabled us to live through many more
threatening crimes in our history. The tendency to
state socialism will be hindered by the failure of
public credit. Contending candidates for office who
promise to substitute new governmental agencies for
private enterprise will be embarrassed by inability
to float municipal and state bonds. The impossibil
ity of raising the necessary funds for such schemes
except by incurring great unpopularity in higher
taxes, will tend to prevent a rapid advance in this
direction. In respect to the initiative, we shall find that the
extreme activity of the cranks and promoters of fads
in submitting legislation to the people will ultimately
40

so tire and disgust them that if they do not abolish
the initiative, they will at least impose such con
ditions on its use as to make it comparatively harm
less, and when the initiative is thus restricted, and
the referendum is then left to the discretion of the
legislature to use or not, this new machinery will
be practically consigned to the scrap heap. It is
said that the granting of power to an electorate
operates hke a ratchet wheel in mechanics, and that
any power granted can never be withdrawn. But
this has exceptions, and there is nothing so likely to
create an exception as the nuisance character of the
initiative, which can not but in the long run irritate
the electorate.
In respect to trades-unionism it will always be
with us, and it ought always to be with us, but its
pohtical power is not as great as the politicians
suppose. They will find this out. It has not the
solidarity in political action that it claims. Men
have defied its power and been elected. Such
exhibitions as it made in the McNamara case, in
the Heywood case, and that it came near making
in the New York and New Haven case has weakened
its influence and will tend to restrain it to a more
reasonable exercise of its power.
One of the developments in trades-unionism is the
outburst in various labor centers of the Independent
Workers of the World. Their doctrines of annihi
lation of society and their battle cry, "No God, no
Country", and their reckless spirit of anarchy are a
blessing in disguise in their good effect upon the
41

spirit of modern trades-unionism, and have illustrated
to organized labor and to the community at large
what may be the result of failing to restrain tenden
cies to lawlessness and a disregard of authority and
hostility to society in general that not infrequently
have shown themselves within the ranks of organized
labor. The controversy in the trades-unions between
those who favor and those who are opposed to social
ism is an excellent circumstance that, as it continues,
will tend to clarify the issue and demonstrate the
utterly chimerical character and the entire hopeless
ness of the socialistic theory.
I have not the slightest idea that we are coming
to socialism and the taking away of the stimulus to
human progress in the right of private property,
but the question is how near we shall get to it and
how far we shall need to retrace our steps.
I am glad to think that this spirit of universal
brotherhood has aroused the churches to extra effort,
and while we find hysterical clergymen yielding to
what they think is the movement toward a millen
nium and embracing all these new nostrums, we can
be sure that as the church goes on and regains the
authority that it has lost, it will make for righteous
ness, for equality and justice and for a conservation
of those pillars of government and of society involved
in a preservation of individual rights and in the
integrity, independence and high sense of justice of
our courts.
We shall find in the working out of economic laws
and the jolts that will be given to those who would
42

ignore them, severe lessons that will have their effect
and will prick the bubble of demagoguery by hard
experience. Capital can easily take wings and when
we find both the public and the private credit
exhausted for lack of general security in society,
we shall begin to realize how dependent the prosperity
of all is on doing justice to those who have saved and
accumulated that without which material progress
can not be made.
Therefore, while I think that probably the ten
dencies that I have described will grow stronger
for a time and the conditions they cause will grow
worse, — ^perhaps they must grow worse before they
grow better, — in any case we have a right ultimately
to rely on the ability of the American people, not at
one election and not at another, but in the course
of a decade or a generation, to learn the lessons that
bitter experience will teach them, to return to so
much of the old institutions as that experience shows
to be valuable, and to preserve the heritage which as
Americans we ought to be proud to enjoy and pro
tect, of the best government that was ever devised
for securing the wise and beneficent rule of the people.

43

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