2. Excess Profits Tax on Corporations.
3. Civil Government for Porto Rico.
4. Literary Test for Alien Immigrants.
5. Military Measures, namely, Declaration of War against Germany; Liberty Bond Issue; Ship and War Material Act; Draft Law; Food Control; Espionage; War Risk Insurance.
6. Appropriation Bills.
These measures are all of general effect and all require expert knowledge. It appears from a mere reading of the list that they are such as to presume and require in the legislators a knowledge of finance; taxation; shipping; food production; transportation; insurance; and other subjects.
New York state legislation for 1917 dealt with the following subjects, all or nearly all relating to business matters: Court officers and judicial procedure; decedents’ estates; domestic relations, including marriage and illegitimacy laws; penal and criminal statutes; civil service laws; state accounting and budget; state police; municipal government regulations; sales act; warehouse receipt act; partnership; cold-storage; negotiable instruments; extradition; land registration; probate of wills; highways and motor vehicles; dog licenses; railroad crossing protection; commercial regulations relating to trading stamps; patent medicines; food products; blue sky law; insurance laws; corporations; regulation of public utilities; conservation of resources; taxation laws; the care of the insane; building regulations; banking; education; public health; liquor dealing and labor laws. This list is not at all exceptional and the public need of trained and informed men in government service is more apparent every day.
“There is now” (says Willoughby) “demanded on the part of our lawmakers, not only patriotism and political sagacity of the highest order, but scientific knowledge, and strict disinterestedness far beyond that formerly required. Many of the economic interests that are now discussed in our legislative halls require, in the highest degree, scholarly research and judgment.” (Nature of the State, p. 416.)
Now, when manhood suffrage was established here as an institution; when, as the twaddlers like to say, the people took command, it became the privilege and the duty of the ruling populace to establish and enforce proper standards of qualification for its representatives and agents. Its orators professed that they were going to show the world great results of popular government. The wretched practical results we know. But what efforts did they make? What have they in fact done in three generations towards securing efficiency in their elective officers? Absolutely nothing. If any despot had ever shown such complete disregard of decency and propriety in his system of appointments as our manhood suffrage democracy has, he would be held up to public reprobation. Not only are and have been the state and national legislators and other elective officials commonplace or below commonplace in character and ability, but no effort whatever has been made or is being made; no scheme has been even proposed, whereby to secure men of efficiency for these important places in the gift of the people. The manhood suffrage electorates are reckless, unscrupulous and hopelessly behind the age; they never have recognized the growing need for efficiency. As Lowell says, “We are training men for all services but that of the public.”
In fact, the scheme of manhood suffrage makes no provision for efficiency, nor any serious pretence thereof; it ignores it completely in the selection of its agents and otherwise. Whatever efficiency may be secured in a democracy is obtained in some way other than by a manhood suffrage vote. The only test applied by the populace at an election is the oratorical test, and sometimes not even that. Its favorites at the polls are the talkers; by talk they become known; by talk they become candidates; by speeches they gain elections and by speeches they maintain their places. No one knows or cares whether they can do anything else but talk. No one ever heard of a candidate for an elective public office being required to produce proof of his equipment for the place. A candidate for alderman is not expected to have served an apprenticeship in any city department; nor to pass an examination in harbor facilities, sanitation, school management, public lighting, sewage, water supply, transportation nor any of the departments of city government. The candidate for mayor of New York is not required to know the contents of the Charter of the city. Congress is supposed to be the real governing body in this country, and would be such if it were not so scandalously incompetent and untrustworthy. But a man who can get by hook or crook on the machine ticket and can make what the rabble calls “a rattlin’ good speech” is qualified for a seat in Congress. Whoever heard of a candidate for Congress or a state legislature being required to know anything whatever about anything or to have ever done anything as a prerequisite to his candidacy? Such tests would be inconsistent with the very theory of manhood suffrage as now entertained. That standards will ultimately have to be applied even to elective offices if democracy is to prevail no far-seeing man can doubt. And there is nothing impracticable about the suggestion. Even now, in the states where judges are elective, custom requires that the candidate shall have previously passed an examination for admission to the bar. There is no reason whatever why all candidates for elective offices should not be required to be reasonably qualified for the offices they seek; nor why the electors themselves should not be such persons as are qualified to vote, and have proved their fitness for the ballot by the record of their lives in the community. But the essential quality of manhood suffrage is that it rejects all tests for voters, and so beginning at the very source of government its anti-efficient influence extends all along the line, and tends to neutralize every effort to elevate the standard of democratic administration. Its spirit is directly opposed to the demand for efficiency in governmental affairs. Efficiency is exclusive, it applies tests, and rejects those who fail. Beginning with the voter, manhood suffrage refuses to apply to him any tests whatever, and denies not only the policy of their application but the right to use them. It views the elective franchise as the personal belonging of the individual, even the most ignorant and degraded, to be used to justify his whim, his pleasure, his spite, his prejudice. The newspapers, unconsciously perhaps, voice this spirit. We constantly read in the public press urgent invitations to vote, addressed to the careless or indifferent in politics, those who presumably have no compelling opinions and are therefore quite unprepared and unfit to vote. Instead of being warned of the wrong and danger of frivolous and ignorant voting, they are urged by the newspapers to go to the polls as if to take part in an amateur baseball game: “Come, join in; even if you don’t do it well; it’s the national game! There are prizes too, the spoils; and though you don’t compete yourself you may have the fun of seeing them distributed, and root for the victors.” People are more careless in voting for high officials than in hiring an office boy. They vote for men whom they do not know even by sight; whose very names are unfamiliar; and are usually quite unashamed of trifling with the suffrage in a manner deserving punishment. This is one result of our cheapening of the franchise.