Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum Part 6

THE WAY OPEN TO PEACEFUL REVOLUTION.

What I set out in the first chapter to do seems to me done. I essayed to show how the political "machine," its "ring," "boss," and "heeler,"

might be abolished, and how, consequently, the American plutocracy might be destroyed, and government simplified and contracted to the field of its natural operations. These ends achieved, a social revolution would be accomplished--a revolution without loss of a single life or destruction of a dollar's worth of property.

Whoever has read the foregoing chapters has seen these facts established:

(1) That much in proportion as the whole body of citizens take upon themselves the direction of public affairs, the possibilities for political and social parasitism disappear. The "machine" becomes without effective uses, the trade of the politician is rendered undesirable, and the privileges of the monopolist are withdrawn.

(2) That through the fundamental principles of democracy in practice--the Initiative and the Referendum--great bodies of people, with the agency of central committees, may formulate all necessary law and direct its execution.

(3) That the difference between a representative government and a democracy is radical. The difference lies in the location of the sovereignty of society. The citizens who a.s.sign the lawmaking power to officials surrender in a body their collective sovereignty. That sovereignty is then habitually employed by the lawgivers to their own advantage and to that of a twin governing cla.s.s, the rich, and to the detriment of the citizenship in general and especially the poor. But when the sovereignty rests permanently with the citizenship, there evolves a government differing essentially from representative government. It is that of mere stewardship and the regulation indispensable to society.

_The Social Forces Ready for Our Methods._

Now that our theory of social reform is fully substantiated by fact, our methods shown to be in harmony with popular sentiment, our idea of democratic government clearly defined, and our final aim political justice, there remains some consideration of early possible practical steps in line with these principles and of the probable trend of events afterward.

Having practical work in view, we may first take some account of the princ.i.p.al social forces which may be rallied in support of our methods:--

To begin with: Sincere men who have abandoned hope of legislative reform may be called to renewed effort. Many such men have come to regard politics as inseparable from corruption. They have witnessed the tediousness and unprofitableness of seeking relief through legislators, and time and again have they seen the very officials elected to bring about reforms go over to the powers that exploit the ma.s.ses. They have seen in the course of time the tricks of partisan legislators almost invariably win as against the wishes of the ma.s.ses. They know that in politics there is little study of the public needs, but merely a practice of the ign.o.ble arts of the professional politician. Here, however, the proposed social reorganization depends, not on representatives, but on the citizens themselves; and the means by which the citizens may fully carry out their purposes have been developed. A fact, too, of prime importance: Where heretofore in many localities the people have temporarily overthrown politician and plutocrat, only to be themselves defeated in the end, every point gained by the ma.s.ses in direct legislation may be held permanently.

Further: Repeatedly, of late years, new parties have risen to demand justice in government and improvement in the economic situation. One such movement defeated but makes way for another. Proof, this, that the spirit of true reform is virile and the heart of the nation pure. The progress made, in numbers and organization, before the seeds of decay were sown in the United Labor party, the Union Labor party, the Greenback-Labor party, the People's party of 1884, and various third-party movements, testify to the readiness of earnest thousands to respond, even on the slightest promise of victory, to the call for radical reform. That in such movements the ma.s.ses are incorruptible is shown in the fact that in every instance one of the chief causes of failure has been doubt in the integrity of leaders given to machine methods. But in direct legislation, machine leaders profit nothing for themselves, hold no reins of party, can sell no votes, and can command no rewards for workers.

Again: The vast organizations of the Knights of Labor and the trades-unions in the American Federation of Labor are evidence of the willingness and ability of wage-earners to cope practically with national problems. And at this point is to be observed a fact of capital significance to advocates of pure democracy. Whereas, in independent political movements, sooner or later a footing has been obtained by a machine, resulting in disintegration, in the trades organization, while political methods may occasionally corrupt leaders, the politician labor leader uniformly finds his fellow workmen turning their backs on him.

The organized workers not only distrust the politician but detest political chicanery. Such would equally be the case did the wage-workers carry into the political field the direct power they exert in their unions. And in politics this never-failing, incorruptible power of the whole ma.s.s of organized wage-workers may be exerted by direct legislation. Therewith may be had politics without politicians. As direct legislation advances, the machine must retire.

Here, then, with immediate results in prospect from political action, lies encouragement of the highest degree--alike to the organized workers, to the men grown hopeless of political reform, and to the men in active rebellion against the two great machine ridden parties.

Encouragement founded on reason is an inestimable practical result.

Here, not only may rational hope for true reform be inspired; a lively certainty, based on ascertained fact, may be felt. All men of experience who have read these pages will have seen confirmed something of their own observations in direct legislation, and will have accepted as plainly logical sequences the developments of the inst.i.tution in Switzerland. The New Englander will have learned how the purifying principles of his town meeting have been made capable of extension. The member of a labor organization will have observed how the simple democracy of his union or a.s.sembly may be transferred to the State. The "local optionist" will have recognized, working in broader and more varied fields, a well tried and satisfactory instrument. The college man will have recalled the fact that wherever has gone the Greek letter fraternity, there, in each society as a whole, and in each chapter with respect to every special act, have gone the Initiative and the Referendum. And every member of any body of equal a.s.sociates must perceive that the first, natural circ.u.mstance to the continued existence of that body in its integrity must be that each individual may propose a measure and that the majority may accept or reject it; and this is the simple principle of direct legislation. Moreover, any mature man, east or west, in any locality, may recall how within his experience a community's vote has satisfactorily put vexatious questions at rest.

With the recognition of every such fact, hope will rise and faith in the proposed methods be made more firm.

_Abolition of the Lawmaking Monopoly._

To radical reformers further encouragement must come with continued reflection on the importance to them of direct legislation. In general, such reformers have failed to recognize that, before any project of social reconstruction can be followed out to the end, there stands a question antecedent to every other. It is the abolition of the lawmaking monopoly. Until that monopoly is ended, no law favorable to the ma.s.ses can be secure. Direct legislation would destroy this parent of monopolies. It gone, then would follow the chiefer evils of governmental mechanism--cla.s.s rule, ring rule, extravagance, jobbery, nepotism, the spoils system, every jot of the professional trading politician's influence. To effect these ends, all schools of political reformers might unite. For immediate purposes, help might come even from that host of conservatives who believe all will be well if officials are honest.

Direct majority rule attained, inviting opportunities for radical work would soon lie open. How, may readily be seen.

The New England town collects its own taxes; it manages its local schools, roads, bridges, police, public lighting and water supply. In similar affairs the Swiss commune is autonomous. On the Pacific coast a tendency is to accord to places of 10,000 or 20,000 inhabitants their own charters. Throughout the country, in many instances, towns and counties settle for themselves questions of prohibition, license, and a.s.sessments; questions of help to corporations and of local public improvement. Thus in measure as the Referendum comes into play does the circ.u.mscription practicing it become a complete community. In other words, with direct legislation rises local self-government.

_The Principles of Local Self-Government._

From even the conservative point of view, local self-government has many advantages. In this country, the glaring evils of the State, especially those forming obstacles to political improvement and social progress, come down from sources above the people. Under the existing centralization whole communities may protest against governmental abuses, be practically a unit in opposition to them, and yet be hopelessly subject to them. Such centralization is despotism. It forms as well the opportunity for the demagogue of to-day--for him who as suppliant for votes is a wheedler and as politician and lawgiver a trickster. Centralization confuses the voter, baffles the honest newspaper, foments partisanship, and cheats the ma.s.ses of their will. On the other hand, to the extent that local independence is acquired, a democratic community minimizes every such evil. In naturally guarding itself against external interference, it seeks in its connection with other communities the least common political bonds. It is watchful of the home rule principle. Under its local self-government, government plainly becomes no more than the management of what are wholly public interests. The justice of lopping off from government all matters not the common affairs of the citizens then becomes apparent. The character of every man in the community being known, public duties are intrusted with men who truly represent the citizens. The mere demagogue is soon well known. Bribery becomes treachery to one's neighbor. The folly of partisanship is seen. Public issues, usually relating to but local matters, are for the most part plain questions. The press, no longer absorbed in vague, far-off politics, aids, not the politicians, but the citizens. Reasons, every one of these, for even the conservative to aid in establishing local self-government.

But the radical, looking further than the conservative, will see far greater opportunities. In local self-government with direct legislation, every possibility for his success that hope can suggest may be perceived. If not in one locality, then in another, whatever political projects are attainable within such limits by his school of philosophy may be converted by him and his co-workers from theory to fact. Thence on, if his philosophy is practicable, the field should naturally widen.

The political philosophy I would urge on my fellow-citizens is summed up in the neglected fundamental principle of this republic: Freedom and equal rights. The true point of view from which to see the need of the application of this principle is from the position of the unemployed, propertyless wage-worker. How local self-government and direct legislation might promptly invest this slave of society with his primary rights, and pave the way for further rights, may, step by step, be traced.

_The Relation of Wages to Political Conditions._

The wages scale pivots on the strike. The employer's order for a reduction is his strike; to be effective, a reserve of the unemployed must be at his command. The wage-worker's demand for an increase is his strike; to be effective it must be backed up by the indispensableness of his services to the employer. Accordingly as the worker forces up the scale of wages, he is the more free, independent, and gainer of his product. To show the most direct way to the conditions in which workers may command steady work and raise their wages, this book is written. For the wages question equitably settled, the foundation for every remaining social reform is laid.

To-day, in the United States, in scores, nay, hundreds, of industrial communities the wage-working cla.s.s is in the majority. The wage-workers commonly believe, what is true, that they are the victims of injustice.

As yet, however, no project for restoring their rights has been successful. All the radical means suggested have been beyond their reach. But in so far as a single community may exercise equal rights and self-government, through these means it may approximate to just social arrangements.

Any American city of 50,000 inhabitants may be taken as ill.u.s.trative of all American industrial communities. In such a city, the economical and political conditions are typical. The immediate commercial interests of the buyers of labor, the employers, are opposed to those of the sellers of labor, the employed. To control the price of labor, each of these parties in the labor market resorts to whatever measures it finds within command. The employers in many branches of industry actually, and employers in general tacitly, combine against the labor organizations.

On the wage-workers' side, these organizations are the sole means, except a few well-nigh futile laws, yet developed to raise wages and shorten the work day. In case of a strike, the employers, to a.s.sist the police in intimidating the strikers, may engage a force of armed so-called detectives. Simply, perhaps, for inviting non-unionists to cease work, the strikers are subject to imprisonment. Trial for conspiracy may follow arrest, the judges allied by cla.s.s interests with the employers. The newspapers, careful not to offend advertisers, and looking to the well-to-do for the ma.s.s of their readers, may be inclined to exert an influence against the strikers. The solidarity of the wage-workers incomplete, even many of these may regard the fate of the strikers with indifference. In such situation, a strike of the wage-workers may be made to appear to all except those closely concerned as an a.s.sault on the bulwarks of society.

But what are the bulwarks of society directly arrayed against striking wage-workers? They are a ring of employers, a ring of officials enforcing cla.s.s law made by compliant representatives at the bidding of shrewd employers, and a ring of public sentiment makers--largely professional men whose hopes lie with wealthy patrons. Behind these outer barriers, and seldom affected by even widespread strikes, lies the citadel in which dwell the monopolists.

Such, in outline, are the intermingled political and economic conditions common to all American industrial centres. But above every other fact, one salient fact appears: On the wage-workers falls the burthen of cla.s.s law. On what, then, depends the wiping out of such law? Certainly on nothing else so much as on the force of the wage-workers themselves. To deprive their opponents of unjust legal advantages, and to invest themselves with just rights of which they have been deprived, is a task, outside their labor organizations, to be accomplished mainly by the wage-workers. It is their task as citizens--their political task. With direct legislation and local self-government, it is, in considerable degree, a feasible, even an easy, task. The labor organizations might supply the framework for a political party, as was done in New York city in 1886. Then, as was the case in that campaign, when the labor party polled 68,000 votes, even non-unionists might throw in the reinforcement of their otherwise hurtful strength. Success once in sight, the organized wage-workers would surely find citizens of other cla.s.ses helping to swell their vote. And in the straightforward politics of direct legislation, the labor leaders who command the respect of their fellows might, without danger to their character and influence, go boldly to the front.

_The Wage-Workers as a Political Majority._

Suppose that as far as possible our industrial city of 50,000 inhabitants should exercise self-government with direct legislation.

Various cla.s.ses seeking to reform common abuses, certain general reforms would immediately ensue. If the city should do what the Swiss have done, it would speedily rid its administration of unnecessary office-holders, reduce the salaries of its higher officials, and rescind outstanding franchise privileges. If the munic.i.p.ality should have power to determine its own methods of taxation, as is now in some respects the case in Ma.s.sachusetts towns, and toward which end a movement has begun in New York, it would probably imitate the Swiss in progressively taxing the higher-priced real estate, inheritances, and incomes. If the wage-workers, a majority in a direct vote, should demand in all public work the short hour day, they would get it, perhaps, as in the Rockland town meeting, without question. Further, the wage-workers might vote anti-Pinkerton ordinances, compel during strikes the neutrality of the police, and place judges from their own ranks in at least the local courts. These tasks partly under way, a change in prevailing social ideas would pa.s.s over the community. The press, echo, not of the widest spread sentiments, but of controlling public opinion, would open its columns to the wage-working cla.s.s come to power. And, as is ever so when the wage-workers are aggressive and probably may be dominant, the social question would burn.

_The Entire Span of Equal Rights._

The social question uppermost, the wage-workers--now in political ascendency, and bent on getting the full product of their labor--would seek further to improve their vantage ground. Sooner or later they would inevitably make issue of the most urgent, the most persistent, economic evil, local as well as general, the inequality of rights in the land.

They would affirm that, were the land of the community in use suitable to the general needs, the unemployed would find work and the total of production be largely increased. They would point to the vacant lots in and about the city, held on speculation, commonly in American cities covering a greater area than the land improved, and denounce so unjust a system of land tenure. They could demonstrate that the price of the land represented for the most part but the power of the owners to wring from the producers of the city, merely for s.p.a.ce on which to live and work, a considerable portion of their product. They could with reason declare that the withholding from use of the vacant land of the locality was the main cause of local poverty. And they would demand that legal advantages in the local vacant lands should forthwith cease.

In bringing to an end the local land monopoly, however, justice could be done the landholders. Unquestionably the fairest measure to them, and at the same time the most direct method of giving to city producers, if not free access to land, the next practicable thing to it, would be for the munic.i.p.ality to convert a part of the local vacant land into public property, and to open it in suitable plots to such citizens as should become occupiers. Sufficient land for this purpose might be acquired through eminent domain. The purchase money could be forthcoming from several sources--from progressive taxation in the direct forms already mentioned, from the city's income from franchises, and from the savings over the wastes of administration under present methods.

From the standpoint of equal rights there need be no difficulty in meeting the arguments certain to be brought against this proposed course--such sophistical arguments as that it is not the business of a government to take property from some citizens to give to others. If the unemployed, propertyless wage-worker has a right to live, he has the right to sustain life. To sustain life independently of other men's permission, access to natural resources is essential. This primary right being denied the wage-workers as a cla.s.s, any or all of whom, if unemployed, might soon be propertyless, they might in justice proceed to enforce it. To enforce it by means involving so little friction as those here proposed ought to win, not opposition, but approval.

Equal rights once conceded as just, this reasoning cannot be refuted.

Discussed in economic literature since before the day of Adam Smith, it has withstood every form of a.s.sault. If it has not been acted on in the Old World, it is because the wage-workers there, ignorant and in general deprived of the right to vote, have been helpless; and if not in the New, because, first, until within recent years the free western lands, attracting the unemployed and helping to maintain wages, in a measure gave labor access to nature, and, secondly, since the practical exhaustion of the free public domain the industrial wage-workers have not perceived how, through politics, to carry out their convictions on the land question.

Our reasoning is further strengthened by law and custom in state and nation. In nearly every state, the const.i.tution declares that the original and ultimate ownership of the land lies with all its people; and hence the method of administering the land is at all times an open public question. As to the nation at large, its settled policy and long-continued custom support the principle that all citizens have inalienable rights in the land. Instead of selling the national domain in quant.i.ties to suit purchasers, the government has held it open free to agricultural laborers, literally millions of men being thus given access to the soil. Moreover, in thirty-seven of the forty-four states, execution for debt cannot entirely deprive a man of his homestead, the value exempt in many of the states being thousands of dollars. Thus the general welfare has dictated the building up and the securing of a home for every laboring citizen.

In line, then, with established American principles is the proposition for munic.i.p.al lands. And if munic.i.p.alities have extended to capitalists privileges of many kinds, even granting them gratis sites for manufactories, and for terms of years exempting such real estate from taxation, why not accord to the wage-workers at least their primary natural rights? If any property be exempted from taxation, why not the homesite below a certain fixed value? And if, for the public benefit, munic.i.p.alities provide parks, museums, and libraries, why not give each producer a homesite--a footing on the earth? He who has not this is deprived of the first right to do that by which he must live, namely, labor.

_Effects of Munic.i.p.al Land._

A city public domain, open to citizen occupiers under just stipulations, would in several directions have far-reaching results.

Should this domain be occupied by, say, one thousand families of a population of 50,000, an immediate result, affecting the whole city, would be a fall in rents. In fact, the mere existence of the public domain, with a probability that his tenants would remove to it, might cause a landlord to reduce his rents. Besides, the value of all land, in the city and about it, held on speculation, would fall. Save in instances of particular advantage, the price of unimproved residence lots would gravitate toward the cost, all things considered, of residence lots in the public domain. This, for these reasons: The corner in land would be broken. Home builders would pay a private owner no more for a lot than the cost of a similar one in the public area. As houses went up on the public domain, the chances of landholders to sell to builders would be diminished. Sellers of land, besides competing with the public land, would then compete with increased activity with one another. Finally, just taxation of their land, valueless as a speculation, would oblige landowners to sell it or to put it to good use.

Even should the growth of the city be rapid, the value of land in private hands could in general advance but little, if at all. With the actual demands of an increased population, the public domain might from time to time be enlarged; but not, it may reasonably be a.s.sumed, at a rate that would give rise to an upward tendency of prices in the face of the above-mentioned factors contributing to a downward tendency.