The conservative objector may not know how the most important bills are often passed in Congress. He may not know that until toward the close of a session the business of Congress is political in the party sense rather than in the governing sense; that on the floor the play is usually conducted for effect on the public; that in committees, measures into which politics enter are made up either on compromise or for partisan purposes; that, finally, in the last days of a session, the work of legislation is a scramble. The second day before the adjournment of the last Congress was thus described in a New York daily paper: "Congress has been working like a gigantic threshing machine all day long, and at this hour there is every prospect of an all-night session of both houses. Helter-skelter, pell-mell, the 'unfinished business' has been poured into the big hopper, and in less time than it takes to tell it, it has come out at the other end completed legislation, lacking only the President's signature to fit it for the statute books. Public bills providing for the necessary expenses of the government, private bills galore having as their beneficiaries favored individuals, jobbery in the way of unnecessary public buildings, railroad charters, and bridge construction—all have been rushed through at lightning speed, and the end is not yet. A majority of the House members, desperate because their power and influence terminate with the end of this brief session, and a partisan Speaker, whose autocratic rule will prevail but thirty-six short hours longer, have left nothing unattempted whereby party friends and protégés might be benefited. It is safe to say that aside from a half dozen measures of real importance and genuine merit the country would be no worse off should every other bill not yet acted upon fail of passage. Certain it is that large sums of money would be saved to the Government." And what observer does not know that scenes not unlike this are repeated in almost every legislature in its closing hours?
As between such manner of even national legislation on the one hand, and on the other the entire citizenship voting (as soon would be the fact under direct legislation) on but what properly should be law—and on principles, on policies, and on aggregates in appropriations—would there be reason for the country to hesitate in choosing?
Among the plainest signs of the times in America is the popular distrust of legislators. The citizens are gradually and surely resuming the lawmaking and money-spending power unwisely delegated in the past to bodies whose custom it is to abuse the trust. "Government" has come to mean a body of representatives with interests as often as not opposed to those of the great mass of electors. Were legislation direct, the circle of its functions would speedily be narrowed; certainly they would never pass legitimate bounds at the urgency of a class interested in enlarging its own powers and in increasing the volume of public outlay. Were legislation direct, the sphere of every citizen would be enlarged; each would consequently acquire education in his rôle, and develop a lively interest in the public affairs in part under his own management. And what so-called public business can be right in principle, or expedient in policy, on which the American voter may not pass in person? To reject his authority in politics is to compel him to abdicate his sovereignty. That done, the door is open to pillage of the treasury, to bribery of the representative, and to endless interference with the liberties of the individual.
THE WAY OPEN TO PEACEFUL REVOLUTION.
What I set out in the first chapter to do seems to me done. I essayed to show how the political "machine," its "ring," "boss," and "heeler," might be abolished, and how, consequently, the American plutocracy might be destroyed, and government simplified and contracted to the field of its natural operations. These ends achieved, a social revolution would be accomplished—a revolution without loss of a single life or destruction of a dollar's worth of property.
Whoever has read the foregoing chapters has seen these facts established:
(1) That much in proportion as the whole body of citizens take upon themselves the direction of public affairs, the possibilities for political and social parasitism disappear. The "machine" becomes without effective uses, the trade of the politician is rendered undesirable, and the privileges of the monopolist are withdrawn.
(2) That through the fundamental principles of democracy in practice—the Initiative and the Referendum—great bodies of people, with the agency of central committees, may formulate all necessary law and direct its execution.
(3) That the difference between a representative government and a democracy is radical. The difference lies in the location of the sovereignty of society. The citizens who assign the lawmaking power to officials surrender in a body their collective sovereignty. That sovereignty is then habitually employed by the lawgivers to their own advantage and to that of a twin governing class, the rich, and to the detriment of the citizenship in general and especially the poor. But when the sovereignty rests permanently with the citizenship, there evolves a government differing essentially from representative government. It is that of mere stewardship and the regulation indispensable to society.