The world has long realized that a slave in bondage and ignorance cannot render the most helpful service. We were many centuries in reaching the broad-minded view that the master was a loser as well as the slave. Today we have the same problem, although on a higher level, and it demands an even broader and more humanistic view. This brings us to the usual task of all reforms-that of convincing one element that to yield to a proper readjustment will, in the end, be beneficial to all. This in turn places before the philanthropist and sociologist the problem of securing justice rather than that of evolving schemes of philanthropy or paternalism.

That this effort at intellectual freedom is the real basic cause of the present world-crisis, rather than that of a desire for physical concessions or political control, seems evident. That much of the discussion is in terms of physical possession or political action seems only incidental to the nature of the situation. It follows from the necessity, under present conditions, of physical support and political opportunity as a means to intellectual activity.

This being the case, although this demand is often in terms of wages, wages spent in living or placed in the bank, or even invested in the industry when no opportunity for active participation results, afford no permanent satisfaction to the desire for intellectual freedom. It therefore results that demands for wage increases pile up with apparently no place for stopping, and with most unreasonable wage standards being demanded in certain cases. No doubt but that in many cases the workman does not realize just what impulse is behind his demand. He feels an unsatisfied craving that takes possession of him, and not knowing what else to do he goes through the formal and habitual process of applying for an increase in wages or of demanding some change in time or working conditions. With the proper opportunity for intellectual activity denied, he wastes his wages in fruitless efforts for intellectual satisfaction, only to find disappointment and an ever-increasing feeling that he is not receiving his share of industrial benefits, yet not realizing just what that lack is. Thus this constant demand for wage increases may easily continue, to the

destruction of industry and the injury of the workers as well as of capital, for satisfaction can never come by this means.

It would seem that the solution of this problem lies only in a change from present attempts to satisfy industrial workers by wage increases to that of recognition of increased industrial intelligence and the necessity for granting proper opportunities for the exercise of this intelligence. That this recognition has been given in certain instances and with marked promise of success is indicative of the correctness of this thesis.

Reduced to its final analysis, the problem in the present worldcrisis is not the giving to the industrial masses a larger share of product, nor of turning over to them either political or industrial control, but of recognizing the advance in intelligence by co-operation in affording opportunities for the exercise of that telligence in all lines of human endeavor in which it may properly function, while restricting it within its rightful limits that no injustice may be done to other members of society.

With labor holding its rightful place, and fully protected in all rightful activities, paternalistic enterprises and combative organizations of all forms must cease, and with them all industrial disorder, because there would then be no one who would care to give up his larger freedom in order to become a subject of such limitations as these organizations necessarily impose. In a free industrial society each would get his full share of wages and opportunities and know that he has a square deal; in any other system he must receive less.

THE ETHICAL BASES OF DEMOCRACY

FREDERICK G. HENKE

Allegheny College, Meadville, Pennsylvania

"Making the world safe for democracy," we are discovering, means more than merely winning the war on the battlefields of Europe. If we are content to suffer events at this juncture of the world's history, rather than (following the advice of Marshal Foch) create them, our victory will be of little value; for the old impulses greed, hate, rivalry, self-assertion, pugnacity-will continue their domination in the affairs of men and nations. The world will be safe for democracy only when love and sympathy, properly guided by intelligence, are the controlling motives of society; and for this reason the ethical bases of democracy cannot be overemphasized. They are the living principles which in recurring ages give life to the institution, though its outer form be crushed to earth. Like the ancient phoenix, democracy may burn itself on the altar; but as long as its spirit lives, it, like the sacred bird, will rise from its ashes.

Democracy is in its essence a movement rather than an accomplished fact. We speak of the Athenian democracy not so much because a real democracy was actually achieved, as for the reason that in certain of its aspects the government was a movement in which the spirit of democracy was present. Actually, notwithstanding the political freedom of the twenty-five thousand Athenian citizens, three hundred thousand slaves lived in Attica, women were not enfranchised, and the relation of the central governments to the dependencies was imperialistic. In the instance of modern democratic governments also, the best claim they have to be called democratic is in the direction they are taking and in the spirit which pervades them. In one of her aspects England is a democracy; in another-specifically in certain of her colonial relations— she is the vitalizing center of an empire. The United States of America is in a real sense a leader among democracies, having made

the cause of democracy her chief international interest; but withal wealth has been the dominant factor in America's industrial and social life, and in a real sense also in her religion and politics. Some of the more naïve political philosophers of the past may have believed in the dictum, "Vox populi, vox Dei"; the typical modern plutocrat views the people as something to be exploited, and in this he is unsocial and undemocratic.

Our forefathers, when they laid the foundations of our country, thought of democracy as something essentially negative-the absence of political oppression and of taxation without representation. Dissatisfied with their home government across the sea, they insisted upon the right of self-government. They held the truths to be self-evident "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness"; but at the same time (1776) one-sixth of the population were chattel slaves. South Carolina disfranchised all but free white men believing in God, Heaven, and Hell, with a freehold of fifty acres or a town lot, or who had paid a considerable tax. "In Delaware the candidate for office was obliged to 'profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, and in the Holy Ghost, one God blessed evermore,' and to ‘acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be given by divine inspiration."" In New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, the right to vote was based on the ownership of property or upon the payment of equivalent taxes. He who aspired to become governor of South Carolina had to be worth £10,000, for only well-to-do Christian men could enter the gubernatorial

contests.

The America of 1776 was a democracy in the sense of freedom from the oppression of the mother-country: the colonies were no longer subject to the king, and were self-governing. But mere external freedom is vastly different from effective freedom, especially when formal freedom pertains to only a portion of the population, those measuring up to the religious and property qualifications imposed.

Walter E. Weyl, The New Democracy (Macmillan, 1912), p. 9.

Nor was the United States of 1787 democratic in any but the most general sense. The constitution was framed by men who differed widely in their attitude toward the common people, some of them harboring violent distrust. Alexander Hamilton, who was a leading spirit, "desired a life-elected president with an absolute veto on all legislation, appointing governors with absolute vetoes over all the states." The constitution as finally adopted inaugurated a republican form of government, securing the election of government officials by the enfranchised persons in the different states. The ten amendments, guaranteeing certain civil and political rights, were added to gain the good-will of the common people.

Our country was passing through a serious crisis during the decade or more subsequent to the close of the war of independence. The immediate problem before the founders of the new republic had a twofold aspect: to form a stable union and to devise means of restoring the credit of the country. That these might be secured, it was above all necessary to enlist the interest and loyalty of the wealthier citizens; and for this reason provision was made for a national bank, a protective tariff was levied, and payment of state debts was assumed. Thus at the very beginning the American government was democratic only as representing a democratic tendency.

Since that time much progress has been made in the direction of further democratization. The emancipation amendment prohibited slavery; the fourteenth made provision for the equal protection of all citizens of the United States; the fifteenth enfranchised the negro; the seventeenth placed the election of the senators into the hands of the people. The Supreme Court, originally instituted to serve as a check to the people and the several states, has in these latter days become more interested in promoting human welfare than in the preservation of the status quo of legal and political organization. The development of American democracy has steadily taken the direction of government by the people, until today it may be said that the chief checks to effective freedom and complete democratization are economic. Except for the restrictions placed upon women citizens and upon the negro in certain