THE STRUGGLE FOB EQUALITY 545 



within us. No Caesar or Napoleon has seized " the reins of government 

 with a strong hand." 



A wide suffrage is a mental stimulus to the whole community. By 

 abolishing everything that smacks of caste in voting, it arouses in the 

 common man a desire to better his social and economic condition. It 

 promotes an interest in public affairs. It helps the newspapers to keep 

 the public mentally receptive. It fosters a system of education at pub- 

 lic expense which begins at the kindergarten and ends with the univer- 

 sity. It makes for the amelioration of social conditions. It discourages 

 the growth of an educated aristocracy. It puts the more enlightened 

 under the necessity of persuading the less enlightened to its way of 

 thinking, a work that is no less helpful to the former than to the latter. 

 It helps to widen the circle of readers and stimulates the popularization 

 of knowledge. The market for the numerous books and periodicals that 

 are published to-day depends in part upon universal suffrage. The rule 

 of the people does not necessarily mean government by either the most 

 ignorant or the most enlightened, but it raises the general level of in- 

 telligence. 11 



The right to vote has a sobering effect. It arouses a sense of responsi- 

 bility. It develops self-respect. It makes for patriotism. It gives the 

 foreign-born a sense of oneness with ourselves. It deprives violent men 

 of any valid excuse for violence. It gives zest to freedom of discussion. 

 The right to talk relieves the feelings of the man who talks. The right 

 to vote offers a remedy for all grievances real and imaginary. Neither 

 the reckless utterances of the strike leader nor those of the politician 

 should be taken too literally. The responsibility of office usually sobers 

 the latter, and the former, if placed on the police force, often proves a 

 staunch defender of law and order. 



A democratic suffrage is manifestly not suited to every stage of 

 civilization. The wholesale enfranchisement of the negro by the fif- 

 teenth amendment was probably a mistake. It is notorious that many 

 of the Latin- American peoples have never achieved anything more than 

 a paper democracy. It is said that Venezuela has averaged one revolu- 

 tion a year during the last thirty years and that one is now six months 

 overdue. Such highly unstable societies exemplify not the rule of the 

 many, but the tyranny of the few. It is as patent, however, that we have 

 progressed beyond the kindergarten stage in democracy as that certain 

 other peoples have not yet reached that stage. 



Probably there is no better evidence of this than that supplied by 

 the state of Wisconsin. In freeing themselves from the humiliation of 

 corporate rule, in subjecting the railways of the state to public control, 

 in regulating the public service corporations, in distributing the burden 

 of taxation more equitably, in electoral reform, in articulating the state 



11 Charles W. Eliot, "American Contributions to Civilization," pp. 21-30. 



