FREE AND EQUAL
This state of affairs proves that the work of 1776 and 1787 was limited practically to one phase of democracy, namely, the political. Washington and Jefferson lived in a day when political equality was the passionate ideal. This they and their associates achieved in ample measure. They gave the waiter or the barber or the bootblack an equal voice in government with themselves.
Let those Americans who think that the abolition of tipping would be too radical a step toward social democracy consider how repulsive the attitude of Washington and Jefferson was to the aristocratic thought of their day. No matter what arguments the aristocrats presented against political democracy, their real objection was just this granting of voting equality to persons whom they rated as socially submerged.
But having founded our government upon political democracy, the straight line of development is toward social and industrial democracy, in order to complete the ideal entertained by Washington and Jefferson. That both of these idealists tipped servants and that Washington owned slaves is indisputable, but they left records that prove that they merely "suffered it to be so now." Washington clearly foresaw the trouble in which slavery would involve his country, and would have freed his slaves if he could have done so without precipitating what to him appeared a greater evil in view of all the circumstances of his day.
The Revolutionary period did all that can be asked of one generation when political equality was established. It remains for our generation to finish the work of democracy by establishing social and industrial democracy. The prospect of a street cleaner or your valet being your social and industrial equal may seem either utopian or undesirable, but it must be remembered, as stated, that two centuries ago the thought of granting an equal vote to such persons was precisely as distasteful to the aristocratic mind.