During any period, such as that in which we are now living, when society is rapidly assuming a higher ethical type, it is inevitable that much resistance should be made to the enforcement of the new standard of justice. Old methods of business and old political practices are not easily repressed, even when the public opinion of the community has come to regard them as socially injurious. Forms of conduct once permitted, but now regarded as anti-social, tend to persist in spite of the effort of law and public opinion to dislodge them. The more rapid the ethical progress of society, the more frequent and the more pronounced will be the failure of the morally backward individuals to meet the requirements of the new social standard. At such a time we always see an increase in crimes, misdemeanors and acts which enlightened public opinion condemns. This is due, however, not to any decline in public morality, but to the fact that the ethical progress of society as a whole has been more rapid than that of the offending class.
There is another source of error which we must guard against. Social immorality is not always detected even when it exists. Much that is socially immoral both in politics and in business escapes observation. Nevertheless, the agencies for ferreting out and holding up to public condemnation offences against society, are far more efficient and active to-day than they have ever been in the past. Both the corrupt public official and the unscrupulous business man dread the searchlight of public opinion, which is becoming more and more effective as a regulator of conduct with the growth of intelligence among the masses. Nor is it surprising that when the hitherto dark recesses of politics and business are exposed to view, an alarming amount of fraud and corruption should be revealed. We are too prone to forget, however, that publicity is something new—that in our day the seen may bear a much larger proportion to the unseen than it has in the past. What appears, then, to be an increase in business and political immorality may, after all, be largely accounted for as the result of more publicity. Here, again, we see that the facts usually taken to indicate a decline in public morality are susceptible of a very different interpretation.
Another feature of present-day society which deserves careful consideration by reason of its far-reaching effect upon public morality is the change now taking place in theological beliefs. Heretofore the church has been by far the most important agency for enforcing conformity to the accepted moral standard. The hope of reward or fear of punishment in the world to come has been the chief support upon which the church has in the past rested its system of social control. But this other-world sanction is now losing its compelling force in consequence of the growing disbelief in the old doctrine of rewards and punishments. The fear of the supernatural, which has its highest development in the savage, steadily declines with the progress of the race. When the general level of intelligence is low, the supernatural sanction is a far more potent means of regulating conduct than any purely temporal authority. But, just in proportion as society advances, the other-world sanction loses its potency and increasing reliance must, therefore, be placed upon purely human agencies.
The immediate effect of this change in our attitude toward the hereafter and the supernatural has been to remove or at least to weaken an important restraint upon anti-social tendencies. There is no reason, however, for apprehension as to the final outcome. Society always experiences some difficulty, it is true, in making the transition from the old to the new. In every period of social readjustment old institutions and beliefs lose their efficacy before the new social agencies have been perfected. But if the new is higher and better than the old, the good that will accrue to society will in the long run greatly outweigh any temporary evil.
But great as has been the change in our point of view with reference to the church, our attitude toward the state has been even more profoundly changed. We do not have to go very far back into the past to find government everywhere controlled by a king and privileged class. The ascendency of the few was everywhere established by the sword, but it could not be long maintained by force alone. The ignorance of the masses was in the past, as it is now, the main reliance of those who wished to perpetuate minority rule. Fraud and deception have always been an indispensable means of maintaining class ascendency in government. The primitive politician no less than his present-day successor saw the possibility of utilizing the credulity of the masses for the purpose of furthering his own selfish ends. This explains the long-continued survival of that interesting political superstition which for so many centuries protected class rule under the pretended sanction of a God-given right.
The growth of intelligence among the masses by discrediting the doctrine of divine right made it necessary to abandon the old defense of class rule. From that time down to the present the disintegration of the old political order has been rapid. Every effort has been made by the defenders of the old system to find some means of justifying and maintaining class rule—a task which is becoming more and more difficult with the growing belief in democracy. At the present time we are in a transition stage. The divine theory of the state, which was the foundation and support of the old system of class rule, is no longer accepted by intelligent people in any civilized country. But class rule still has its advocates, even in the countries that have advanced farthest in the direction of popular government. The opponents of democracy, however, comprise but a small part of the population numerically, yet, owing to their great wealth and effective organization, their influence as a class is everywhere very great. Over against these is arrayed the bulk of the population, who are struggling, though not very intelligently always, to overcome the opposition of the few and make the political organization and the policy of the state a complete and faithful expression of the popular will. No modern state has yet passed entirely through this transition stage. Everywhere the movement toward democracy has been and is now being energetically resisted by those who fear that thoroughgoing popular government would deprive them of economic or political privileges which they now enjoy. Let us not deceive ourselves by thinking that the old system of class rule has been entirely overthrown. No fundamental change in government or any other social institution ever comes about suddenly. Time, often much time, is required for those intellectual and moral readjustments without which no great change in social institutions can be made. And when we remember that only a century ago every government in the Western world was avowedly organized on the basis of minority rule, we can readily understand that society has not yet had sufficient time to outgrow the influence of the old political order.
No one can discuss intelligently the question of political morality if he ignores the effect of this struggle between the old system of minority domination and the new system of majority rule. And yet scarcely ever do our text-books or magazine articles dealing with present political evils even so much as allude to this most important fact—the one, indeed, on which hinges our whole system of business fraud and political corruption. We often hear the opinion expressed by people of more than ordinary intelligence that the public immorality so much in evidence in this country is the natural and inevitable result of popular government. This view is industriously encouraged by the conservative and even accepted by not a few of those whose sympathies are with democracy. Yet no conclusion could be more erroneous. It would be just as logical to attribute the religious persecutions of the Middle Ages to the growth of religious dissent. If there had been no dissenters, there would have been no persecution; neither would there have been any reformation or any progress toward a system of religious liberty. Persecution was the means employed to repress dissent and defeat the end which the dissenters had in view. Corruption sustains exactly the same relation to the democratic movement of modern times. It has been employed, not to promote, but to defeat the ends of popular government. No intelligent person should any longer be in doubt as to the real source of corruption. It is to be eradicated, not by placing additional restrictions on the power of the people, but by removing those political restraints upon the majority which now preclude any effective popular control of public officials. We forget that when our government was established the principle of majority rule was nowhere recognized—that until well along into the nineteenth century the majority of our forefathers did not even have the right to vote. The minority governed under the sanction of the Constitution and the law of the land. Then a great popular movement swept over the country, and in the political upheaval which followed, the masses secured the right of suffrage. But universal suffrage, though essential to, does not ensure popular government. The right to vote for some, or even all, public officials, does not necessarily involve any effective control over such officials by, or any real responsibility to, the majority of the voters. Nor is any constitutional system set up to achieve the purpose of minority rule likely to contain those provisions which are necessary for the enforcement of public opinion in the management of political affairs. It was thought by the masses, of course, when they acquired the suffrage that they acquired the substance of political power. Their expectation, however, was but partially realized. Indirect election, official independence, and the rigidity of the constitutional system as a whole, with its lack of responsiveness to popular demands, largely counteracted the results expected from universal suffrage. But the extension of the suffrage to the masses, though having much less direct and immediate influence upon the policy of the state than is generally supposed, was in one respect supremely important. In popular thought it worked a transformation in the form of the government. The old view which recognized the political supremacy of the minority was now largely superseded by the new view that the will of the majority ought to be the supreme law of the land.
The minority, however, still continue to exert a controlling influence in most matters of public policy directly affecting their interests as a class, although the extension of the suffrage made the exercise of that control a much more difficult matter and left little room for doubt that actual majority rule would ultimately prevail. A large measure of protection was afforded them through the checks which the Constitution imposed upon the power of the majority. There was no certainty, however, that these checks could be permanently maintained. A political party organized in the interest of majority rule, and supported by a strong public sentiment, might find some way of breaking through or evading the constitutional provisions designed to limit its power. Certain features of the Constitution, however, afforded excellent opportunities for offering effective resistance to the progress of democratic legislation. Entrenched behind these constitutional bulwarks, an active, intelligent and wealthy minority might hope to defeat many measures earnestly desired by the majority and even secure the adoption of some policies that would directly benefit themselves. Here we find the cause that has been mainly responsible for the growth of that distinctively American product, the party machine, with its political bosses, its army of paid workers and its funds for promoting or opposing legislation, supplied by various special interests which expect to profit thereby. With the practical operation of this system we are all familiar. We see the results of its work in every phase of our political life—in municipal, state and national affairs. We encounter its malign influence every time an effort is made to secure any adequate regulation of railways, to protect the people against the extortion of the trusts, or to make the great privileged industries of the country bear their just share of taxation. But the chief concern of those in whose interest the party machine is run is to defeat any popular attack on those features of the system which are the real source of the great power which the minority is able to exert. Try, for example, to secure a constitutional amendment providing for the direct election of United States senators, the adoption of the initiative and the referendum, a direct primary scheme, a measure depriving a city council of the power to enrich private corporations by giving away valuable franchises, or any provision intended to give the people an effective control over their so-called public servants, and we find that nothing less than an overwhelming public sentiment and sustained social effort is able to make any headway against the small but powerfully entrenched minority.
Many changes will be required before efficient democratic government can exist. The greatest and most pressing need at the present time, however, is for real publicity, which is the only means of making public opinion effective as an instrument of social control. The movement toward publicity has been in direct proportion to the growth of democracy. Formerly the masses were not regarded by the ruling class as having any capacity for political affairs, or right to criticise governmental policies and methods. With the acceptance of the idea of popular sovereignty, however, the right of the people to be kept informed concerning the management of governmental business received recognition; but practice has lagged far behind theory.
Much would be gained for good government by extending publicity to the relations existing between public officials and private business interests. This would discourage the corrupt alliance which now too often exists between unscrupulous politicians and corporate wealth. The public have a right and ought to know to what extent individuals and corporations have contributed money for the purpose of carrying elections. The time has come when the political party should be generally recognized and dealt with as a public agency—as an essential part or indispensable organ of the government itself. The amount of its revenue, the sources from which it is obtained, the purposes for which it is expended, vitally concern the people and should be exposed to a publicity as thorough and searching as that which extends to the financial transactions of the government itself. The enforcement of publicity in this direction would not be open to the objection that the government was invading the field of legitimate private activity, though it would bring to light the relations which now exist between the party machine and private business, and in so doing would expose the true source of much political corruption.