We may conclude, therefore, that there is no more danger to extra-legal government in the recall than there is in frequent elections and independent nominations by petition. On the other hand, the free use, or freely threatened use, of the recall by the extra-legal government will give it a power over officeholders and judges greater than that which it now has.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] See post, [chap. xvii].
CHAPTER X
INDEPENDENT MOVEMENTS AND THE NEW PARTY
Independent movements have been launched in different localities from time to time. These have been prompted by the too open and too violently selfish use of power by the extra-legal government. They have often been temporarily successful. But they have been available only upon extraordinary occasions and have proved of merely temporary effect. In the first place they did not develop any organization of professional advisers and directors to the politically ignorant voter. They did not continuously put forth the effort to establish a centralized extra-legal government which the condition of decentralized legal government demanded. Secondly, the independent movement suffered under the disadvantage of operating in opposition to the candidates of the two great historical parties—the Democratic and the Republican. This was an almost insuperable obstacle when the local, state and national elections were held together.
One of the important independent movements of the last fifty years is that which brought into existence the Progressive party. The spark which touched this off was what appeared to a large number of voters to be the refusal of those who legally controlled the Republican National Convention to make a nomination for president of the United States in accordance with the express wishes of a majority of the rank and file of the party. It was in effect an exhibition of the arbitrary action of the minority in refusing to carry out the expressed will of the majority. Those legally in control of the convention were supported principally by the delegates who had been sent as the result of the action of local political organizations in the states where no primaries had been held. Those who did not legally control the convention were supported by the delegates who were directed by the majority of the party electorate actually voting in the primaries, to nominate Mr. Roosevelt. In short, a great independent revolt had been started in the Republican party at the primaries. In the convention the popular will was directly matched against the forces, similar in appearance, if not in fact the same, to those of the usual extra-legal government. Naturally the efforts of the new party have been expressly dedicated to the disrupting of extra-legal government in this country. For the first time a national party has begun to proclaim the fact that extra-legal government does exist; that it can maintain and exercise its power against the will of a majority, and that it must be destroyed.
These utterances are of enormous value, but when we look at the platform of the new party for the ways and means of accomplishing the result the outlook is not encouraging. We find the new party approving of the primaries, the initiative, the referendum, and the recall of officers other than judges. These proposals, as we have already analyzed them, hold out no promise of permanently disrupting extra-legal government. It is true the short ballot is advocated, but as yet there seems to be no clear perception of the connection between the long ballot, the decentralization of governmental power, the political ignorance of the voter even when he is an intelligent man, and the rise and permanent acquisition of governmental power by the extra-legal government. The short ballot seems to be included in the Progressive party’s platform, not because it embodies a theory of government which is entirely opposed to that upon which our state governments were founded and have been developed, but because it is one of several panaceas and because of its superficial and obvious appeal. The Progressive party does not reveal itself as yet ready to assume a theory of government which lies at the basis of the short ballot and which insists upon the centralization of governmental power exercised in subordination to the popular will, as distinguished from the decentralization of governmental power exercised in subordination to the influence of an extra-legal government not readily answerable to the popular will.
If our state governments remain as they are with only such alterations as come from a shorter ballot, the primary, the initiative, the referendum, and the recall, extra-legal government will not be eliminated. The Progressive party must then either cease to exist, as so many other lesser independent movements have done, or it must acquire an organization precisely such as the old parties have had. It must acquire the same multitude of legal vote-directing machines, the same feudal hierarchy of politocrats, and by this means establish an extra-legal centralized government to run the decentralized legal government. Whichever happens, the new party, as the champion of the power of the electorate against the power of the politocrats, will have failed. The new party is indeed doomed to failure unless it can so change our theory of government and induce the making of new governmental arrangements pursuant to that theory, that extra-legal government on its present grand scale will no longer be possible.
CHAPTER XI
THE SECURITY OF EXTRA-LEGAL UNPOPULAR GOVERNMENT BY POLITOCRATS IN THE UNITED STATES
Extra-legal unpopular government rests fundamentally upon the fact that a few are able to cast the ballots of the voters for them. This is accomplished through the process of advising and directing the voter how to vote. The opportunity to do this at all is presented whenever the voter is politically ignorant and still insists upon voting with an apparent show of intelligence. The opportunity to advise and direct the voter how to vote is presented on a large scale when the entire electorate, no matter what its average intelligence may be, is made politically ignorant concerning a majority of the candidates for office. The decentralization of governmental power, as manifested in the multiplication of elective offices and the frequency of elections, has placed upon the voter—even when he is a most intelligent man—a burden which he does not and practically cannot carry. He therefore goes to the polls politically ignorant and the essential condition is presented upon which the rise and establishment of an extra-legal unpopular government rests. It may be observed, therefore, of all efforts to disrupt and destroy a system of extra-legal unpopular government, that so long as the assault upon it consists of a more frequent appeal to the electorate on occasions of ever-lessening importance, the more the assault will in reality contribute to the condition which makes the existence of some extra-legal government unassailable.