THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY. 13 



duties already mentioned there would be much less occasion than 

 now to appeal to the courts. But, whenever the occasion arises, it 

 should involve no cost to the person that feels that his rights have 

 been invaded. 



Thus will be solved indirectly all the probleius of democracy 

 that social and political reformers seek in vain to solve directly. 

 With the diminution of the duties of the state to the preservation 

 of order and the enforcement of justice w'ill be effected a reform 

 as important and far reaching as the suppression of chronic war- 

 fare. When politicians are deprived of the immense plunder now 

 involved in political warfare, it will not be necessary to devise 

 futile plans for caucus reform, or ballot reform, or convention re- 

 form, or charter reform, or legislative reform. Having no more 

 incentive to engage in their nefarious business than the smugglers 

 that the abolition of the infamous tariff laws banished from Eu- 

 rope, they will disappear among the crowd of honest toilers. 

 The suppression of the robberies of the tax collectors and tax 

 eaters, who have become so vast an army in the United States, 

 will effect also a solution of all labor problems. A society that 

 permits every toiler to work for whomsoever he pleases and for 

 whatever he pleases, protecting him in the full enjoyment of all 

 the fruits of his labor, has done for him everything that can be 

 done. It has taught him self-support and self-control. In thus 

 guaranteeing him freedom of contract and putting an end to the 

 plunder of a bureaucracy and privileged classes of private indi- 

 viduals, the beneficiaries of special legislation, it has effected the 

 only equitable distribution of property possible. At the same time 

 it has accomplished a vastly greater work. As I have shown, the 

 indispensable condition of success of all movements for moral re- 

 form is the suppression not only of militant strife, but of political 

 strife. While they prevail, all ecclesiastical and pedagogic efforts 

 to better the condition of society must fail. Despite lectures, de- 

 spite sermons and prayers, despite also literature and art, the 

 ethics controlling the conduct of men and women will be those of 

 war. But with the abolition of both forms of militant strife it be- 

 comes an easy task to teach the ethics of peace, and to establish a 

 state of society that requires no other government than that of 

 conscience. All the forces of industrialism contribute to the work 

 and insure its success. 



" This thirst for shooting every rare or unwonted kind of bird," says 

 the author of an article in the London Saturday Eeview, " is accountable 

 for the disappearance of many interesting forms of life in the British 

 Islands." 



