Preferential Voting.—The second problem of political science and art which presses upon the attention of our electorate is one which is bound up in methods of selection and election of our legislators and executives. The ever-recurring question of, "For whom shall we vote?"—rests back upon the deeper question, "For whom shall we have a chance to vote?" The primary was supposed to end the acknowledged corruption and inadequacy of the caucus system. The primary is an advance on the secret caucus with its choice of men for the highest office by a few partisan politicians only, whose business it is to keep party lines strong and to make them carry their candidate into office. The primary, however, we see, is a very expensive method and open to many dangers, and progressive students of political methods are not satisfied with it. Why can we not move, and strongly, for preferential voting? For some plan by which it shall be the public purse only which secures the necessary printing and circularizing for required information, and no personal differences in wealth shall have any weight in the listing of names on the ballot? To have a law by which any legally named number of voters (a sufficient number to keep out lonely cranks, but not a sufficient number to suppress considerable minorities) should indicate by petition desire for a chance to vote for a specific representative of their political ideals? The legal requirement that such persons so named should have a place on the official ballot and that all voting citizens should be able to indicate their graded preference for all candidates thus officially listed, would give the people of a democracy a chance to really choose the kind of legislators they want and the kind of executives they think they need. In the present situation the independent mind and conscientious purpose often has a choice only between "necessary evils" or the refuge of the political "woods."
Proportional Representation.—The adoption of some form of preferential voting can alone give the voters a chance for proportional representation of their ideals and aims in legislative bodies. We are seeing that the limits of useful partisanship in politics are narrower than was once thought. No sane and sensible person really believes that all of goodness and of wisdom is contained in his party and that its success is a valid reason for "turning out the rascals" of the other party. No sane and sensible person believes that there is such a thing as "Democratic" economy, or "Republican" justice, or "Socialistic" efficiency, or "Labor Party" good government. There are only economy, efficiency, justice, and good government. Each party may have a different ideal of the best method of attaining these political necessities, and, therefore, since truth is not gained by dogmatic assumptions of any one set of persons but by approach to problems of mind and character from different angles of experience and of study, each party should have its representatives in the legislative bodies of nation, state, and community. And every new idea of political reform and social progress that by dint of hard work among the intellectual and moral élite has gained a substantial following in public opinion of even a relatively small minority, has, in justice, and in demand for constant advance in human affairs, a right to a place in the high debate of political leadership. It is, therefore, for those who believe in the worth and use of freedom and of mutual tolerance and respect, in political discussion and action, to work for some method of selection of political representatives of the people which will make our legislative bodies more truly official sections of the thought and moral ideal of the whole life of the body politic. This is, perhaps, the greatest of the political calls for increased wisdom and practical sense in our country.
The third problem which presses for attention, study and possible solution upon the voters of the United States, and one in which the new voters, the women, are peculiarly concerned and in a position of past experience and of present activity to add much weight and value to the debate it occasions, is this:
What Shall Public and What Shall Private Social Service Attempt?—How far and by what ways shall the varied philanthropic and educational activities which are named in mass "social work," and which have been developed and are now so largely operated by private and volunteer agencies and organizations, be made a part of the official service of the father and the mother state? In this social work, so far, the few have set a pattern of aid to individuals, which public agencies have tended to take over without much serious study of whether in any particular case the transfer was necessary or wise. This change has often been made, also, without determining whether or not further supervisory work by the private citizen was needed to keep the social enterprise true to its original and tested principles of action. The time has come when in all such changes from private and volunteer work of a few to the demand for support and the dependence upon guidance of the many, through public officials, we should have some clear guiding principle. What that principle may be it is not the purpose here to discuss, but the state that is now doing so much that only families were formerly expected to do, and is attempting to do so much that only trained and devoted service of experts chosen by acknowledged leaders in social service has previously tried to accomplish, must be tutored and must be supervised by a more intelligent electorate if it is to do its more ambitious tasks well. No private agency should allow its finest fruits of longest study and effort to be absorbed by official provision and control, unless it can gain assurance that those fruits will be secure in the transfer.
This all indicates that women voters who have, happily, no past bondage to partisanship to overcome, who entered upon their political power with no pledges to any one party to hamper their free action, and who, being indebted to progressive party leaders in every one of the political divisions, have friends in every one, may and should do much to help progressive and independent men voters to solve the deeper problems of our political situation with clarity of judgment and true patriotic devotion.[21]
Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen.—We have the most mixed of populations. We have the greatest variety of inherited national and racial backgrounds in the electorate. We have the widest stretches of country, and therefore the most difficult adjustments to any centralized system of government. We have the most mobile common life, our people moving from State to State, and from one sectional interest to another with bewildering frequency. We have as yet no universal schooling even in the rudiments of reading and writing of the English language to serve as common basis for common knowledge. We have a lack of ethical unity in many basic problems of the family, the industrial order, the type of tax-supported schooling, and the ideals of patriotism. These conditions seem to make it more difficult to become a first-class American citizen than to achieve political competency in any other government on earth. Even with the confusion in countries abroad, even in the European tangles of feuds and suspicions and the horrible weight of starvation and physical weakness of the Old World, we may yet, if serious in our judgment of American life, soberly acknowledge the greatest difficulties of all political adjustment which lie within our own political life. Such acknowledgment is not to any true American of the older stock and the more noble patriotism a confession of discouragement or an apology for social failures in our common life. It is rather, for all nobler and wiser citizens, a stimulant to constant vigilance in defence of inherited liberties and a call to deeper consecration and more devoted service in our political relationship. Finally, the father and the mother state does not try or want to live to itself alone. We have learned that selfishness in the private family leads to social ills and weakness which society in general, which surrounds all private families, must correct and amend. Are we not learning in the awful light of the recent world conflagration that selfishness in nations leads to social ills and weakness which can be corrected only by world organization for world well-being?
Our Country a Member of the Family of Nations.—That America we love and would serve with a higher patriotism and a wiser political method is a part of the great family of nations, and if it has learned any lessons of fatherly and motherly function of state care and development of the individual life, it has learned those lessons not for isolated national culture, but as a part of the universal schooling in the gospel of human brotherhood.
Rightly to understand and rightly to apply that teaching of race-experience in all the complicated life of international relationship is more truly to serve the best interests of every smallest community within our own nation. As Immanuel Kant declared so long ago, "The constantly progressive operation of the good principle works toward erecting in the human race, as a community under moral laws, a kingdom which shall maintain the victory over evil and secure under its domination an eternal peace."
It has been urged that patriotism is the piety of the school, and brotherhood is the gospel of the church, and justice is the righteous law of industry, and mutual reverence and mutual affection are the heart of the family life. If this be true, then patriotism itself is the working-out in ever-widening circles of that ideal of coöperation for the common good, which shall at last make every Father and Mother State a worthy member of the Family of Nations.
Vows of Civic Consecration.—The Athenian youth took a solemn pledge when he arrived at the age when his relation to the City became consciously one of loyal service. This vow may be translated as follows: "We will never bring disgrace to this our City by any act of dishonesty or cowardice nor ever desert our comrades. We will fight for the ideals and sacred things of the City both alone and with many. We will revere and obey the City laws and do our best to incite a like respect and reverence in others. We will strive unceasingly to quicken in all the sense of civic duty, that thus in all ways we may transmit this City, greater, better and more beautiful to all who shall come after us." Should not some such solemn act of consecration mark the advent of each youth into the actual citizenship of his town and his country? A modern writer, Thomas L. Hinckley, has summed up a "Municipal Creed" as the utterance of the "Spirit of the Modern City," as follows: