Popular misgovernment in the United States

by Alfred Byron Cruikshank

Following the argument founded on the justice of the case comes that based upon the superior fitness of members of the propertied class for the function of voters. This fitness is derived from the training which is incidental to the acquisition and care of property in the struggle for life. The property qualification for voters is in effect an educational test, and far more effective than that of mere book learning, which so often turns out to be quite insufficient as a preparation for the conduct of human affairs, and is equally insufficient for the understanding of politics. There is an education in life as well as in books and the education in life is the more valuable of the two. To have acquired and preserved property implies not only ordinary school or theoretical education, but business training as well, and as government is mostly a business affair a property qualification presupposes a special preparatory course of training of the kind which is the best of all for the voter, and in addition such civic and political virtues as are necessary to success in business. “In politics, as elsewhere, only that which costs is valued. The industrial virtues imply self-denial, which prepares their possessors to wield political power; but pauperism raises a presumption of unfitness to share in political power. The person who cannot support himself has no moral claim to rule one who can.” (Lalor’s Cyclopedia; Suffrage.)

It is the actual contact with, and the masterful control of the things of life that fits a man to give judgment on their force and value; and his success therein is the test of his own capacity. In a very able and instructive article on “The Basic Problem of Democracy” in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 1919, written by Walter Lipman, he dwells upon the proposition heretofore generally overlooked that what is most needed in our political system is some means of giving the electorate true information as to facts. He says:

“The cardinal fact always is the loss of contact with objective information. Public as well as private reason depends upon it. Not what somebody says, not what somebody wishes were true, but what is so beyond all our opining, constitutes the touchstone of our existence. And a society which lives at secondhand will commit incredible follies and countenance inconceivable brutalities if that contact is intermittent and untrustworthy. Demagoguery is a parasite that flourishes where discrimination fails, and only those who are at grips with things themselves are impervious to it. For, in the last analysis, the demagogue, whether of the Right or the Left, is, consciously or unconsciously, an undetected liar.”

For the purposes of this argument the point here is that not only the mere rabble but the unpropertied and impecunious from any cause, either from lack of interest or of capacity, live at secondhand in their relations to politics and are not themselves at “grips with things” and therefore easily become the prey of the demagogue, the undetected liar.

The practical value of the property qualification test though not properly appreciated has not been entirely overlooked by previous writers. For example, Bagehot:

“Property indeed is a very imperfect test of intelligence; but it is some test. If it has been inherited it guarantees education; if acquired it guarantees ability; either way it assures us of something. In all countries where anything has prevailed short of manhood suffrage, the principal limitation has been founded on criteria derived from property. And it is very important to observe that there is a special appropriateness in this selection; property has not only a certain connection with general intelligence, but it has a peculiar connection with political intelligence. It is a great guide to a good judgment to have much to lose by a bad judgment; generally speaking, the welfare of the country will be most dear to those who are well off there.” (Parliamentary Reform, p. 320.)

Bagehot, like most political writers and speakers, while recognizing the educative value to the voter of property ownership and management, fails to give sufficient importance to the effect of a business training. He elsewhere dwells upon the beneficial influence upon the voter of leisure, of education, of lofty pursuits, of cultivated society; but he overlooks the obvious fact that all good government is a business enterprise, and that a business training is essential to the instruction of the electorate. This oversight was perhaps natural for two reasons: one the traditionary contempt in which all business was formerly held in England, and by the literary class everywhere. Dickens, for example, had not the least idea of business capacity or of the intelligent life of the business world of London, and Thackeray very little. Their business men are of varying degrees of stupidity. The fact is that the world of art and letters has always been over conceited and inclined on insufficient evidence to believe itself superior in intelligence to the world of work and business. The other reason for the oversight referred to is that in former days business training was far less thorough and extended than it has since become and is today.

Whatever may have been the case in days gone by, in our own time a business training is necessary to enable a voter to make a proper choice of candidates for public office. The only way to secure competent officials is through the demand of the electorate for capable men and by close and intelligent scrutiny of the candidates. But this implies capacity on the part of the voters to pass on the candidates’ qualifications and to make a proper choice; in other words an electorate of trained minds, good judgment and knowledge of men. The voter needs not only understanding of the merits of public controversies and knowledge of the published records of candidates for office but also judgment to weigh their qualities. And just as some knowledge of music is necessary to enable a listener to judge of the ability of a musician, so the voter who is to choose men for office having proper business qualifications should himself have had fundamental business training and experience, and an educated sense of honesty and justice in such matters.

From all which it appears that business and the professions furnish a school of which all voters should be graduates. In this institution established by natural processes and everywhere in operation, citizens are being daily trained in prudence, foresight, self-denial, temperance, industry, frugality, and the capacity to reason. There is a continuous and automatic exclusion of the unfit. First the worthless, very stupid, defective, dishonest and lazy are eliminated. Either they refuse to enter, or from time to time as boys or young men they are rejected and discharged as incompetent; weeded out, and their places taken by the more competent. As years go on the more industrious, clear-headed, honest and frugal of these surpass the others and achieve success in proportion as they display those qualities, together with good judgment and farsightedness; while meantime they establish and maintain families, raise children and acquire more or less property, all the while gaining in training and experience in the affairs of life. They become members of business firms, employers, superintendents, business managers, etc. In agriculture they become successful farmers. In the professions they become known and established as reliable, and acquire and accumulate clients and patients, regular offices, books, equipment, furniture, together with some money or other property. In literature they write successful books. In teaching they become principals and college professors. There you have them, trained and graduated in the school of life’s affairs, the academy of evolution; a class of the fittest armed with Nature’s own credentials, certifying them to be of proper stuff from which to build a safe foundation for the democratic State, and thus has nature herself done the preparatory work of selecting material for an electorate by sifting out the inefficient, the non-social, the passive citizens; by separating and putting in plain sight the efficient members of the Social Commonwealth and stamping them with the seal of competency for active citizenship. So that a property qualification for voters appears upon a proper consideration to be fit, appropriate, practical, effective and in accordance with natural law.

Exceptions there probably are, instances of men of good parts and judgment who through misadventure have been reduced to such poverty that they would be debarred from voting under any fair property qualification rule. But the law cannot provide for such misfortunes any more than for unavoidable absence from the polls on election day. Such minor defaults will not affect the desired result, which is the production of a class of reliable voters, and not merely a few exceptional ones.