III
There are reasons for thinking that such a theory of popular education as has been outlined, and a modified practise based on the theory, are needed at the present time as a measure of social therapeutics. Without joining the prophets of evil who think we are moving swiftly toward a social revolution, one may say in all sobriety that there are signs which look ominous for the future of our democratic experiment. It is not merely that there is wide-spread discontent and a general breaking away from old standards and restraints. All that, which is apt to look so threatening to elderly people, especially if they are not much given to the reading of history, may be nothing but the sign of healthy life and growth. Stable democratic society may consist with almost any amount of discontent, provided it discharges itself by way of legal channels duly provided for the purpose in advance.
But the really menacing symptom of our time, is in a word,—lawlessness. I have not chiefly in mind the shocking and increasing prevalence of outrageous crimes against person and property. That is certainly bad enough. That life and property are not as safe in the United States as they were a generation ago, and not as safe as they are today in the British Empire, France, Germany, Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries, is surely a fact to give us pause. And yet, in that fact alone there is nothing highly ominous for the future of democracy. In all ages, under all forms of government, there have been murderers, thieves and ravishers, but social order has never been destroyed or even seriously imperiled by them. Society has found ways to protect itself. The statistics of crime vary from decade to decade under the operation of causes that are fairly well understood by experts. An excess at any time can be corrected by known methods if a people sets resolutely about it.
The danger lies rather in a diminishing respect for law as such among large masses of the nominally respectable population. Multitudes have come to look on the will of the community as expressed in law, not as an obligation binding on the conscience, but as a sort of solemn joke—something meant for the other fellow. This cynicism with regard to law has become a veritable cancer of the social body. The matter is difficult to treat statistically, but surely there can be no doubt about it. It is no illusion of perspective, not the nightmare of a pessimist, but simple damning truth, that the law-abiding spirit has of late been losing ground rapidly. The case is not stated too strongly by a recent writer when he says:
In spite of his vulnerability he [the capitalist] is of all citizens the most lawless. He appears to assume that the law will always be enforced by some special personnel whose duty lies that way, while he may evade the law, when convenient, or bring it into contempt, with impunity. The capitalist seems incapable of feeling his responsibility as a member of the governing class, in this respect, and that he is bound to uphold the law that others may do the like.... He therefore looks on the evasion of a law devised for public protection, but inimical to him, as innocent or even meritorious.[26]
Of course there are many honorable exceptions; indeed this very remark is made by Mr. Adams himself. It may be said too that the influential men who fall as a class under this sweeping indictment can often allege a colorable excuse for their anti-social conduct—as that the law they try to "beat" was devised in ignorance or malice by corrupt politicians. And so they play the game of money against politics, and are not aware of the social menace of their conduct. They subordinate the greater to the less, and know not what they do—any more than the aristocracy and clergy of France knew what they were doing just prior to 1789. They think themselves the salt of the earth. Many of them are more or less zealous church-members, and have had a "religious education." And yet, in playing fast and loose with the law, they are playing with fire in their own cellars. When a ruling class—our government is a qualified plutocracy—loses its sense of responsibility, and takes to violating the law, it takes the surest way to bring all law into contempt. And when the general contempt for law reaches a certain point, then comes anarchy and—the strong man on horse-back to tell us what to do, and shoot us if we don't do it.
The vocation of the croaker is not lightly tolerated by the public opinion of our day. Every one votes him a nuisance. A deep-seated American optimism expects that we shall somehow weather the storms of the future as we have weathered those of the past. The writer of these reflections has the national temperament, but he thinks the time has come to reef sails and trim ship. For law and obedience to law there must be, if society is to cohere and go on its way; and in a democracy lawlessness is not so much a peril as the peril. We must look to our democratic foundations, lest they be undermined while we go on gaily amusing ourselves, piling up money, and assuring each other that everything is all right in the best government the sun ever shone upon. There is need of a vast co-operative effort on the part of all the ethical forces of society—an effort directed consciously and vigorously to the specific end of checking and turning back the rising tide of lawlessness. There is work for the home, for the church, for the voluntary association; and of course there is work for the school, with which we are here more immediately concerned.