Direct Legislation by the Citizenship through the Initiative and Referendum

by J. W. Sullivan

But the disappearance of the local monopolist would be predestined. The owner of local franchises would already have gone. The local land monopolist would have seen his land values diminished. In every such case, the monopolist's loss would be the producer's gain. The aggregate annual earnings of all the city's producers (the wage-workers, the land-workers, and the men in productive business) would rise toward their natural just aggregate—all production. As between the various classes within the city, a condition approximating to justice in political and economic arrangements would now prevail.

What would thus be likely to happen in our typical city of 50,000 inhabitants would also, in greater or less degree, be possible in all industrial towns and cities. In every such place, self-government and direct legislation could solve the more pressing immediate phases of the labor question and create the local conditions favorable to remodeling, and as far as possible abolishing, the superstructure of government.

Wider Applications of These Principles and Methods.

The political and economic arrangements extending beyond the control of the municipalities would now, if they had not done so before, challenge attention. In taking up with reform in this wider field, the industrial wage-workers would come in contact with those farmers who are demanding radical reforms in state and nation. As the sure instrument for the citizenship of a state, direct legislation could again with confidence be employed. No serious opposition, in fact or reason, could be brought against it. That the mass of voters might prove too unwieldy for the method would be an assertion to be instantly refuted by Swiss statistics. In Zurich, the most radically democratic canton of Switzerland, the people number 339,000; the voters, 80,000. In Berne, which has the obligatory Referendum, the population is 539,000. And it must not be overlooked that the entire Swiss Confederation, with 600,000 voters, now has both Initiative and Referendum. Hence, in any state of the Union, direct legislation on general affairs may be regarded as immediately practicable, while in many of the smaller states the obligatory Referendum may be applied to particulars. And even in the most populous states, when special legislation should be cast aside, and local legislation left to the localities affected, complete direct legislation need be no more unmanageable than in the smallest.

United farmers, wage-workers, and other classes of citizens, in the light of these facts, might naturally demand direct legislation. Foreseeing that in time such union will be inevitable, what more natural for the producing classes in revolt than to unite today in voting, if not for other propositions, at least for direct legislation and home rule? These forces combined in any state, it seems improbable that certain political and economic measures now supported by farmer and wage-worker alike could long fail to become law. Already, under the principle that "rights should be equal to all and special privileges be had by none," farmers' and wage-workers' parties are making the following demands: That taxation be not used to build up one interest or class at the expense of another; that the public revenues be no more than necessary for government expenditures; that the agencies of transportation and communication be operated at the lowest cost of service; that no privileges in banking be permitted; that woman have the vote wherever justice gives it to man; that no force of police, marshals, or militiamen not commissioned by their home authorities be permitted anywhere to be employed; that monopoly in every form be abolished and the personal rights of every individual respected. These demands are all in agreement with the spirit of freedom. Along the lines they mark out, the future successes of the radical social reformers will most probably come. But if, in response to a call nowadays frequently heard, the many incipient parties should decide to unite on one or a few things, is it not clear that in natural order the first reforms needed are direct legislation and local self-government?

To a party logically following the principle of equal rights, the progress in Switzerland under direct legislation would form an invaluable guide. The Swiss methods of controlling the railroads and banks of issue, and of operating the telegraph and telephone services, deserve study and, to the extent that our institutions admit, imitation. The organization of the Swiss State and its subdivisions is simple and natural. The success of their executive councils may in this country assist in raising up the power of the people as against one man power. The fact that the cantons have no senates and that a second chamber is an obstacle to direct legislation may here hasten the abolition of these nurseries of aristocracy.

With the advance of progress under direct legislation, attention would doubtless be attracted in the United States, as it has been in Switzerland, to the nicer shades of justice to minorities and to the broader fields of internal improvement. As in the cantons of Ticino and Neuchâtel, our legislative bodies might be opened to minority representatives. As in the Swiss Confederation, the great forests might be declared forever the inheritance of the nation. What public lands yet remain in each state might be withheld from private ownership except on occupancy and use, and the area might be so increased as to enable every producer desiring it to exercise the natural right of free access to the soil. Then the right to labor, now being demanded through the Initiative by the Swiss workingmen's party, might here be made an admitted fact. And as is now also being done in Switzerland, the public control might be extended to water powers and similar resources of nature.

Thus in state and nation might practicable radical reforms make their way. From the beginning, as has been seen, benefits would be widespread. It might not be long before the most crying social evils were at an end. Progressive taxation and abolition of monopoly privileges would cause the great private fortunes of the country to melt away, to add to the producers' earnings. On a part of the soil being made free of access, the land-hungry would withdraw from the cities, relieving the overstocked labor markets. Poverty of the able-bodied willing to work might soon be even more rare than in this country half a century ago, since methods of production at that time were comparatively primitive and the free land only in the West. If Switzerland, small in area, naturally a poor country, and with a dense population, has gone far toward banishing pauperism and plutocracy, what wealth for all might not be reckoned in America, so fertile, so broad, so sparsely populated!

And thus the stages are before us in the course of which the coming just society may gradually be established—that society in which the individual shall attain his highest liberty and development, and consequently his greatest happiness. As lovers of freedom even now foresee, in that perfect society each man will be master of himself; each will act on his own initiative and control the full product of his toil. In that society, the producer's product will not, as now, be diminished by interest, unearned profits, or monopoly rent of natural resources. Interest will tend to disappear because the products of labor in the hands of every producer will be abundant—so abundant that, instead of a borrower paying interest for a loan, a lender may at times pay, as for an accommodation, for having his products preserved. Unearned profits will tend to disappear because, no monopolies being in private hands, and free industry promoting voluntary coöperation, few opportunities will exist for such profits. Monopoly rent will disappear because, the natural right to labor on the resources of nature made a legal right, no man will be able to exact from another a toll for leave to labor. Whatever rent may arise from differences in the qualities of natural resources will be made a community fund, perhaps to be substituted for taxes or to be divided among the producers.

The natural political bond in such a society is plain. Wherein he interferes with no other man, every individual possessing faculty will be regarded as his own supreme sovereign. Free, because land is free, when he joins a community he will enter into social relations with its citizens by contract. He will legislate (form contracts) with the rest of his immediate community in person. Every community, in all that relates peculiarly to itself, will be self-governing. Where one community shall have natural political bonds with another, or in any respect form with several others a greater community, the circumscription affected will legislate through central committees and a direct vote of the citizenship. Executives and other officials will be but stewards. In a society so constituted, communities that reject the elements of political success will languish; free men will leave them. The communities that accept the elements of success, becoming examples through their prosperity, will be imitated; and thus the momentum of progress will be increased. Communities free, state boundaries as now known will be wiped out; and in the true light of rights in voting—the rights of associates in a contract to express their choice—few questions will affect wide territories. Rarely will any question be, in the sense the word is now used, national; the ballot-box may never unite the citizens of the Atlantic coast with those of the Pacific. Yet, in this decomposition of the State into its natural units—in this resolving of society into its constituent elements—may be laid the sole true, natural, lasting basis of the universal republic, the primary principle of which can be no other thing than freedom.