The truth is, the longer you live, the more you will find that nothing is perfect, and everything has a side that can be criticised. What you have to do is to sum up the whole, take the average benefit which comes from it, and attempt to increase that average. Now I am an optimist. People say the initiative and the referendum, against which I have talked, are like a ratchet wheel. If you extend power to the people and the voters, you will never get it back again. I agree that is a rule that generally works, but with respect to the initiative and the referendum there is an element that may cause an exception to the rule. The initiative will throw a heavy burden on the electorate. Cranks and their followers will constantly be compelling voters to act upon wild proposals. As the popular disgust grows, the requirements in respect to the number of signers will be made so heavy that a successful petition can rarely be secured. The referendum will then be limited to such matters as the legislature chooses to refer and will then cease to be a practical burden.
We must pray that the injurious excesses which I have been describing as the cost we have to pay for a great reform, may not unsettle the foundation of our government and destroy the self-imposed restraint arranged in the Constitution to make that government just to the individual, to the minority and to those who do not vote. If we do not disturb those foundations, we can count on the common sense of the American people to bring them back to sane views, and we can rejoice and continue to rejoice in the preservation of a popular government that for one hundred and twenty-five years has vindicated its conservatism and justice before the world and will continue to do so forever.
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MORALS IN MODERN BUSINESS. Addresses by Edward D. Page, George W. Alger, Henry Holt, A. Barton Hepburn, Edward W. Bemis and James McKeen.
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