Before we have advanced far along the new road of conservation we will find it necessary to reconstruct our whole system of administration. The haphazard of politics must be foreign to public business. Everywhere in Europe, especially in Germany and England, the people, including the Socialists, appear satisfied with the efficiency of their administrative machinery. Who would intrust the running of a railroad to our Federal or State governments?
We have reached the extreme of rampant laissez-faire. Our youthful vigor and material wealth have kept us buoyant. Politically we will become more radical, economically less individualistic, in the next cycle of our development. There is no magic that saves a people except the magic of opportunity. In a democracy especially it is necessary to constantly purge society by free-moving currents of talent and virtue. This replenishing stream has its sources in the sturdy, healthy workers of the nation. The movement is from the depths upward. It is the supreme function of the state to keep these sources unclogged.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] J. Ramsay MacDonald, Ethical Democracy, pp. 61-71.
[2] J. Ramsay MacDonald, Socialism and Government, Vol. II, p. 117.
[3] Frederick Engels' Introduction to Marx' Klassenkampf, pp. 16-17, 1895.
[4] The coal strike in England in March, 1912, brought the question of a legalized minimum wage before the people.
[5] On November 28, 1905, a vast army of working men and women, estimated at 300,000 by the anti-Socialist papers, marched under the red flag through the streets of Vienna as a protest against the existing franchise laws. They were given the right of way and walked in silence through the streets of the capital. Their orderliness was more impressive than their vast numbers. It was an object-lesson that the government did not forget.
[6] Jean Jaurès, Studies in Socialism, Eng. ed., p. 25.