These evils are not the result of popular government; they are incident to our transitional civilization. They have always existed, probably in a grosser form than to-day. Would a return to monarchical government better things?
Possibly we have anticipated too much of organized democracy. It is still aiming for its ideal. As we have said of liberty, democracy is not a finality; it is only a status by which public opinion for the time being can be most effectively expressed in government.
The reaction, if there be one, is moral and spiritual, rather than political. The American people have been densely absorbed in the material development of our wonderful country. The task has been a huge one. So far as it has been completed, it has been magnificently done. If we have seemed to worship the Golden Calf, we may find in due time how unsatisfying wealth-gathering is. If at present the consumer seems to be throttled by the trust-magnate, on one hand, and the labor-trust on the other, each monopoly working to the common purpose of keeping up prices to be paid by the consumer, the remedy is in his own hands. It is not in riot, revolution, anarchy, by frenzied declamations against those who are doing only what nine-tenths of the human kind would do for themselves, if opportunity were afforded; but by using the power which free government gives to the people, and correcting the evils by what Gladstone called "the resources of civilization." Out of the roar and brawl of the times will come a sharp examination into the system of laws which permit the accumulation of stupendous fortunes by the "cornering" of a commodity which human necessities require; by shrewd manipulations of tariff, patent, corporation and transportation laws, and by other anti-social agencies. The people, the consumers, create all the legislatures, appoint all the judges, execute all the laws. The fortunes of the rich exist because the people so allow. "A breath can make them, and a breath has made," All the creature-comforts, all culture-conquests have been evolved by the people. It is not by a reversion to Asiatic paternalism, or by the assumption of all industrial agencies by the State, which is the present aim of Socialism, or by a retreat into aboriginal lawlessness and intense selfishness—which Anarchism would result in—that social relief will come.
The American people will work these problems out and will work them out right. "The glory of the sum of things" does not come with a flash. There are always remedial agencies actively at work. They have saved civilization again and again, when the economic order seemed about to break down, when effete governments have fallen in cataclysms which have almost wrecked the social fabric; when mankind seemed to be wandering in a wilderness of ignorance, doubt and despair. Human nature is a tough, elastic, expansive article. If common sense is a product of the ages, so is what is termed "the corporate morality" of the race. Everything makes for what Burke said he loved, "a manly, moral, regulated liberty."
It is hard for us to learn the imperative lesson that everything, except moral and spiritual elements, is only transitional. We are too much inclined to think that any existing status has come to stay. Not so. While evils do not cure themselves, evil is only the negative of the good. The human agent, with his enormous plasticity, constantly widening intelligence and marvelous capacity for growth, is always the instrument, guided by the unseen powers, that make for rectitude, to strike at wrong. There is always more good than evil; otherwise society could not hold together. If progress has been slow, it is because it ought to be slow.
In our economic order, the trust, the trade-unions—often in our day instruments of danger—are factors that in the end will tend to good. They are a part of the great synthetic movement which is unifying the race. They will lead to a greater coherency in our industrial life. They are educational in their tendency. Great fortunes, dizzying wealth, have their evil side; they are monstrous creations which have been created by a union of constructive talent with the mechanical inventions of the age. By-and-by, their possessors may see that they are but ashes; intolerable burdens; gilded rubbish. But in our present stage, there is need of wealthy men. They have important uses. Business has heretofore been too largely directed to the acquisition of wealth. This grossness will be succeeded by an era of equitable distribution.
We must remember that the very idea of property implies more or less of selfishness. An ideally altruistic man could not acquire property beyond his immediate needs. What view of it may be taken in remote future ages we know not. At present, however, it is absolutely necessary. To protect life and liberty, government must protect property. Undoubtedly the possession of enormous wealth, thereby generating sharp distinctions between classes, is inimical to the Democratic Ideal. Democracy pre-supposes a tolerable measure of equality in possessions, and an absence of class privilege. The people must perhaps re-cast much of their legislation, to make sure that their public franchises and natural monopolies are not exploited by the few at the expense of the many. In a country where the press is allowed unlimited freedom, and where every man has a share in the government, where laws are flexible and easily modified, there should be little difficulty in curbing the pretensions of insolent wealth and protecting the people from lawlessness.
Possibly in the Socialistic movement, which is now academic, crude and unscientific, and which, in its present stage, offers as a healing balm for industrial evils only the paralysis of state despotism, there may be a curative germ. Certainly, at its base, is the principle of human brotherhood, co-operation and a lofty altruism. It is now in antagonism with the Democratic Ideal; ultimately it may be resolved into an auxiliary in purging society from some of the evils with which it is infected.
If we live in an era of greed and graft, we also live in an era of enormous goodness, unparalleled philanthropy, increasing intelligence and advancing ethical standards. Can there be any doubt which forces will win?
The Democratic Ideal, towards which all nations are drifting by the inexorable sweep of ethical forces, still shines before the American people. Whatever is rotten, vulgar, base, corrupt, in our body politic will be eliminated by the same law of progress, moral, physical, social, spiritual, which has brought the race to its present transitional status. Lincoln's ideal of a government of the people, for the people, by the people, will not perish from the earth. Up from the scum and reek of corruption—unless the ancient power of conscience and intellect are dead; and they are not dead, but live in deathless vigor—will spring a new growth of justice, liberty, love.