"Nations are the citizens of humanity as individuals are the citizens of the nation. As any individual should strive to promote the power and prosperity of his nation through the exercise of his special function, so should every nation in performing its special mission perform its part in promoting the prosperity and progressive advance of humanity."--MAZZINI.
"Our country hath a gospel of her own To preach and practise before all the world,-- The freedom and divinity of man, The glorious claims of human brotherhood."
--LOWELL.
=The Socialization of the Modern State.=--In a previous book before mentioned[20] and in many special articles published elsewhere, the idea has been stressed that society is now witnessing a remarkable coalescence of two ethical movements which are of special significance in the new political equality of men and women. These two movements are, first, the call for the application to women of the principles embodied in our national Bill of Rights; and, second, the introduction of what is called social welfare work into governmental provisions and administration. The first marked the reaction of women, belated but strong, and at last successful in realization of purpose, to the eighteenth Century demand for the recognition of human rights regardless of color, s.e.x, or previous condition of servitude. The second was a reaction of social sympathy and a growing sense of social responsibility for the better development of the common life. These two movements so worked together that as women marched toward the citadel of political power and responsibility, political action became more and more permeated by forms of social interest in which women were already alert, and by forms of social activity in which women were already proficient. This is particularly noticeable in the United States. For example, in our country we have changed the common point of view and the general governmental approach to individual and private life in the following important particulars:
1. Health--public and private, in matters of prevention of disease and in care of the sick and the convalescent.
2. Education--in respect to all ages and to all peculiar needs of special training.
3. Philanthropy, or the social care of the dependent, the poverty-bound, the defective, and the juvenile delinquent.
4. Penology, or the laws and their administration which deal with crime and criminals and with both the victims of and the panderers to vice.
5. Recreation and all manner of publicly provided opportunity for helpful use of leisure time.
6. Conservation of natural resources in the interest of common wealth.
7. Checks upon economic exploitation by the greedy and strong of the young, the weak, and the ignorant.
8. Checks upon those commercialized forms of recreation which tend to despoil childhood and youth of innocence and refinement.
9. Official standardizing of ways of living found to be conducive to physical, mental, and moral well-being, and social aids toward vocational training and guidance.
10. The union of Federal with State and Local efforts for the general welfare.
=The Interest and Work of Women in This Process of Political Change.=--In every one of these new forms of approach to individual life by the general public through law, tax-supported opportunity, or special grant of official aid, women have played a distinct and a large part. When, therefore, women entered formally into the body politic of these United States, they entered into a place of power already familiar to them in many of its activities. Indeed, they had helped to outline and to make effective many of those activities and came into a new relation to them only by virtue of a recognized access of control over their administration. When government was merely a restraining or a military power over individual life, there might be to many minds an incongruity in women a.s.suming voter"s privileges and duties. When government became a means for conserving and nurturing and developing individual life, mothers, at least, could be easily seen to have proper part in its functions.
=Health a Social Enterprise.=--To briefly rehea.r.s.e this list of political activities is to show marked changes in social ideals. We have entered upon a crusade against preventable disease and for the better physical development of all citizens and potential citizens.
This crusade now makes the official Boards of Health, the hospital and medical service, the nurse"s vocation, and the lay volunteer support of all these, the outstanding features of our community life.
Epidemics used to be considered visitations of an avenging Providence for the people"s sins. So they are in essence and in modern translation of old ideas, a punishment by Nature for broken laws; experiences to be ashamed of now that we know how to prevent them.
Deaths of babies, once mysterious dispensations of Infinite power, have come to mean indictments of community and family for failure to furnish right conditions for infant life. Deaths of mothers in childbirth, leaving older children without suitable protection and care, once thought events to which to be resigned, however sad and pitiable, are now seen to be preventable calamities for which society is to blame. Avoidable cripplement and invalidism of workmen, once considered either their own fault or unexplained misfortune, are now listed as cause for receipt of sickness and accident benefits under Workmen"s Compensation Laws. Premature old age, due to overwork and undernourishment, is on its way to be proceeded against as a record of social neglect. All waste of life"s vigor and happiness which is indicated by lower levels of health and strength in any cla.s.s or age than can be secured by the more favored is from now on recorded as social failure and social fault. Hence, the state and all manner of private agencies are at work to make physical standards higher and physical conditions better for all. When we remember that the pioneer worker in organization of Boards of Public Health and the founder of the American Public Health a.s.sociation, Dr. Stephen Smith, has just pa.s.sed away after reaching the hundred year mark of life"s usefulness, we can readily see how rapid has been the growth in scientific attention to health and social agencies for its advance.
=General and Vocational Training for All.=--In education we have not accomplished all that the leaders in that field outlined for us two generations ago, but there is a movement all along the line to make it possible for every person to have at least a fair start toward education in the compulsory free school; and for adults, younger or older, to make up for early deficiencies by constantly increasing later opportunities of special and of general training in the things every citizen should know. Allusion to new specialties of varied educational facilities has before been made.
No one can doubt that as teachers and helpers to teachers, as members of educational societies, and as acting on official boards by appointment, women have been long serving in the ranks and needed the ballot only to make their function more inclusive and more commanding in directive power. When we remember that it is only since 1837, when Horace Mann published the first Report of a State Board of Education and began his great work for the Common School of his country, that we have had even a distinct social goal in this great field of endeavor we cannot be pessimistic about future accomplishment. When that educational leader declared in response to those who remonstrated with him for turning aside from the usual and, for him, brilliant opportunities of the law, "The next generation is to be my client," he started a new profession, and the present effort in education is but the widening of that social furrow. When we recall that Mary Lyon, in opening Mt. Holyoke Seminary for Girls in that same year of 1837, offered the first opportunity to girls of limited means of what could be called higher education, we can better realize how rapid has been the movement to fit women for educational service. We, at least, now have a clearer aim in education and are at liberty to use fit men and fit women alike for its realization. The one great contribution of later times is the determination to share with all the opportunities once held sacred to a select few.
=Women"s Work in Philanthropy.=--In philanthropy there has been so great a transformation both in ideal and in method that it amounts to a change in the centre of gravity. Charity once had for its aim the easing of unbearable misery, the giving of alms to relieve the starving, and personal aid of all sorts to those who were not expected to be lifted out of the category of the poor, those who must be always helped, but should be helped in a spirit of kindness. Now we have the command for permanent care for the helpless where they will not handicap the normal. We have the varied agencies for preventing delinquency in youth and many a new type of moral rehabilitation for all who have stepped but a short distance out of the ordered path of life. We have the ideal of every defective child in permanent custodial homes, every insane person cared for with humanity and trained intelligence, every dependent child readjusted to family life by adoption or trained happily and usefully in residential school, every aged person protected from want and misery in public or private homes, every widowed mother helped to take care of her own children, and every sick person aided by hospital and clinic and visiting nurse and convalescent home in readjustment to normal activity. Finally, we have boldly replaced the motto, "Relieve Poverty," by the new slogan, "Abolish Poverty," and we are impatient with ourselves and with social arrangements if any considerable number of our fellow-beings are obliged without fault of theirs to receive material relief. In all this, what a part has been played by women! Dorothea Dix revolutionized the care of the insane in the United States. Louisa Lee Schuyler organized and for fifty years energized and directed the work of the New York State Charities Aid a.s.sociation which made over into humane and intelligent social care-taking the inherited inst.i.tutions of a more ignorant and indifferent time. The first woman to serve on the State Board of Charities in New York, Josephine Shaw Lowell, whose motherhood in the family and the state knew no bounds and whose statesmanship comprehended every social relation, is not the last to so serve. "The lady with the lamp," Florence Nightingale, who pioneered in trained nursing has had many a follower in this as in other countries. The annals of all charitable agencies show that at every step, whether recognized as responsible members of the body politic or not, women have done the work in large and efficient measure when the state took over a new job of life-saving and of life-nourishment.
In the realm of penology we have moved far from the old private prison into which the n.o.ble could cast his enemy and no one question his acts. We have moved far from the early prison which was easily neglected in all sanitary as in all moral conditions, since it was then only a stopping place, often for a short time only, on the way from court condemnation to hanging or mutilation, flogging or exile.
When the prison became a place for longer sojourn, and sentence to it became in itself a legal punishment, humane men and women began to feel the importance of knowing what went on in the places set aside for offenders against the law, and Howard and others set the tendency toward a more humane and reasonable treatment of criminals. We now are at work finding out who are real criminals and who are accidentally caught in the meshes of hurtful circ.u.mstances, who among the offenders against the law are mentally responsible, and who are but children of adult bodily size, and what to do for and with the intentional enemy of social order. We have not yet learned to apply the ideals we have gained in wise and effective treatment of the small minority of men, and far smaller minority of women, who cannot or will not walk the safe and well-outlined road of the law-abiding, but we have some concepts that promise to guide us in this particular and the new Penology is born. Men and women alike are working out details of direction and shouldering the heavy social work demanded. The thing that is most conspicuous in Penology is the new att.i.tude of courts of law, of judges and even of juries. This is an att.i.tude of humane inquiry into causes of moral breakdown, and humane dealing with criminals as of right ent.i.tled to a fair chance. Surely this is a fatherly att.i.tude taking the place of old punitive ideas.
=Culture Aids to the Common Life.=--When we come to the new work of making the streets safer for the spirit of youth, and the life of all more protected and happy by recreative measures standardized for personal uplift, we are distinctly in the area of parental functions of the modern state. It takes fatherly men and motherly women to run the public playground, and to make the parks, the museums, the settlement clubs and cla.s.ses, and the children"s rooms in public libraries what we now will that they shall be,--the centres of eager interest and the nursery of character development. The mention of the free public library suggests what is probably the most potent of all the higher social influences in our American life. In the large city and in the small town alike, and even in remote rural districts served by the Loan Libraries, the opportunity to find what will feed the mind and lead toward the delight of the printed page is one that has meant more to more people who were aspiring and able to become leaders in any sphere of life than has any other opportunity; perhaps than even the public school after the main essentials of early grade teaching have been gained.
To sit in a public library and watch the eager interest of each newcomer, to see the patience, the understanding, the sympathetic att.i.tude and the earnest effort to be of utmost service which the librarian almost invariably shows, and to see the absorbed attention of the readers in what they have been a.s.sisted in selecting, is to bless the generosity and public spirit of every one who has made the public library so common a blessing. Not all books are equally helpful, not all give equal pleasure, it is true, but when one gets a book with a message in it for him, what a joy!
One often thinks of the lovely song of Emily d.i.c.kinson when sitting thus in a public library:
"He ate and drank the precious words, His spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor Or that his frame was dust.
He danced along the dingy ways And this bequest of wings Was but a book. What liberty A loosened spirit brings!"
=Many Languages in One Country.=--In this connection must be noted the effort of many to limit this "bequest" to the language of the country.
In another connection we have noted the difficulty that inheres in having many differing tongues in one community, the difficulty of reaching a common ideal and method of living when language is a barrier and not an aid to companionship. This barrier of language to the foreign-born is often cited as a reason why the immigrant is handicapped. It is also a reason why social efforts and religious influences often fail of success and why so many native-born Americans fail to understand the newer Americans. If, as many prophesy, the English language becomes the standard tongue for business and diplomacy and literature, all the best products of every nation being made available by translation, at least, for those speaking English, it can become that ruling tongue only by slow degrees. Meanwhile, the chasm between citizens of a common country made by differing languages may be bridged by far greater effort on the part of older Americans gifted in the use of foreign tongues. We see women by the hundreds flocking to Europe and the East to "get local color" and perfect themselves in foreign languages, who might find at their own doors, among those illiterate in English, but with a wealth of knowledge of their own native literature and speech, men and women who would be able, if rightly approached, to exchange national values both in literature and history to mutual advantage. The need of adult education on the part of the foreign-born is not always a need to be met by condescending from above to those of low intellectual estate. It is often a mere requirement to master another form of speech by those, already linguists, or at least in possession of a broader use of language than is the average citizen of the United States. The ways of social helping in this line are many and of the highest political importance. The variety of languages spoken in the United States, however, is not so serious an obstacle to the intercommunication of our population for political information and in organization for common ends of the public good as is the shameful condition of illiteracy among the electorate.
The foreign-language publications in the United States numbered, in 1914, 1404, of which 160 were dailies, with total circulation per issue of 2,598,827, and 868 weeklies with a total circulation per issue of 4,239,426, and other publications to the number of 376 with a total circulation per issue of 3,609,735. These foreign-language journals are not all or many of them devoted to "stirring up strife" and do not prevent absorption of the foreign-born in the body politic. They are, on the contrary, necessary means of making those who speak foreign tongues acquainted with facts and conditions which newcomers need to know and understand. During the Great War our government used these foreign-language publications to spread broadcast appeals for financial and personal support. The excellent "Foreign Language Information Service," still existing and having Federal backing, has in hand the introduction into the princ.i.p.al foreign-language publications of information and appeal calculated to make good American citizens.
The demand that has been made in moments of excitement for the abolition of the foreign-language press is therefore as stupid as it is unfriendly. Only by the use of his native tongue can a man who does not yet understand English be made to feel and act as a genuine part of the citizenship of his adopted country. It is for those who cherish real Americanism to try to get into these publications, which are the strategic point of contact between older and newer Americans, all that is deemed vital to the welfare of our common country. Through a wise use of this material in every free public library and in the multiplied Loan Libraries in remote districts, the newcomers in our country who read intelligently their own language and are eager to learn, may gain all that a good citizen needs to know. And if in parallel columns the English with the foreign language should be used to convey the same thought, the progress will be doubly fast in true Americanization.
=Personal Conservation.=--In the conservation of natural resources for the benefit of all the people we have been slow to understand either our social danger, or our social opportunity, but our Federal Government is setting us notable lessons and local communities are trying to learn and follow them, and Women"s Clubs all over the country are staying up the hands of officials and trying to help save the people"s inheritance for the people"s wealth; surely a fatherly and a motherly office if any state function can be. When we enter the area of protection of the young and weak and ignorant against the exploitation of vice and greed and selfishness, we are in the very centre of that parental care which the modern state now seeks to give to its citizens. When the Great War turned into training camps the flower of our youth, these agencies for moral protection and social watch-care which had been so largely developed as volunteer and private social work, became the resource of a government bent on keeping men "fit to fight," and on preserving young women in the vicinity of the camps both from giving and receiving harmful influences. Since then, more than ever, such agencies for moral protection have become official in civic life and have the endors.e.m.e.nt and the aid of government. It is one new feature of all modern protective work that women are employed as members of the police, as matrons in public places supported by tax, and indeed in places of commercial recreation, as judges of special courts where parole and methods of suspended sentence are used, and in all places where boys and girls are exposed to danger and to temptation. Thus the home influence is spreading out toward the work-place and the play-centre--truly a retranslation of family service in terms of the public life.
=The Children"s Bureau.=--Our government at Washington used to be limited in its function to those political services which no state organization could accomplish by itself, but now the Federal departments are busily at work setting standards, if only through authentic information and suggestion, which aim to raise the average life in all directions, economic and social. The Children"s Bureau is preeminently a standardizing body, although with no power to issue or enforce decrees. The Bureaus which have to do with foods and animal life and farm management are setting higher and higher levels of attainment for the common people in their home life and in their vocational work. There is a strong movement to enlarge the educational influence at the very heart of our national government with a Cabinet Head to set a high standard of attainment in both the art, the science, and the administration of education as well as to aid in equalizing educational opportunity. Moreover, there is a strong tendency, seen most recently and vividly in the provisions of the Maternity Aid Bill, for all social efforts to ask and to be granted Federal financial aid on the fifty-fifty plan. There is not a consensus of opinion among the thoughtful as to the wisdom of thus placing upon the general government the burden of social schemes upon which a minority of the people, be that minority large or small, are alone agreed. The force of persuasion may secure national legislation in advance of that which many local communities already have or are seeking to secure. The increase of national power through the work of national officials is not deemed politically sound by some persons who favor specific action by the states alone in such matters as maternity aid. The tendency is, however, a proof of two things, one that we are as a people becoming a nation; that is more a centralized and united governmental force--and the other that more and more people are trying in every way to secure a more uniform as well as a higher standard of living for all our citizens.
=A Women"s Lobby at the National Capitol.=--It is said that the most powerful lobby in Washington is "the Public Welfare Lobby backed by seven million organized American women." This lobby is composed of representatives of the following organizations of women with number of members estimated as indicated:
National League of Women Voters 2,000,000 General Federation of Women"s Clubs 2,000,000 Women"s Christian Temperance Union 500,000 National Congress of Mothers and Parent-Teacher a.s.sociations 310,000 National Women"s Trade Union League 600,000 Daughters of the American Revolution 200,000 American Home Economics a.s.sociation 1,800 National Consumers" League (No number given) American a.s.sociation of University Women 16,000 National Council of Jewish Women 50,000 Girls" Friendly Society 52,000 Young Women"s Christian a.s.sociation 560,000 National Federation of Business and Professional Women 40,000 Women"s League for Peace and Freedom 2,500
This represents a formidable influence upon public affairs, one that may do some harm along with much good, unless it goes to school to social facts and balances its social sympathy (already shown in such alert attention to the needs of the weaker and younger portion of the nation) with sober and sane understanding of the difficulty of getting progress in any line unless a majority of the people are unitedly in favor of it and willing to sacrifice something in order to secure it.
There are signs already that among the leaders of women in the new organization of Women Voters there is a feeling that the pendulum may swing too far toward philanthropic measures, for some of which the general public is as yet unprepared. The call is already made for more concentration upon the better enforcement of existing laws, rather than upon constant demand for new legislation in the interest of social welfare.
=Women"s Interest in Public Life a Social a.s.set.=--The fact, however, that so many women are actively engaged not only in watching legislation and in learning the character and ability of political leaders in the national Congress, but also in trying to raise the average life of the people of the country by and through better laws and more efficient enforcement, is cause for great encouragement. It shows that women came into their kingdom of political power just as the state was ready to take on the functions no longer fully expressed within the family circle. If we must be shocked by learning that a baby a day is being given away in New York City through advertis.e.m.e.nts in the daily papers, and with a haste and carelessness that proves lack of responsibility in parents and guardians, we may be relieved of fear that love of children is dying out when we see what are the things that millions of women are now banded together to secure for the betterment of all child-life. Largely owing to such efforts, fewer babies die during the first year of life now in any listed one hundred thousand, than ever before in our American history. If we find that many people are living without the comforts they need and in conditions inimical to health and morality, we can at least take comfort in the fact that fewer go to the "poorhouse" than used to be found there when all sorts of dependents were sent to that one inst.i.tution. With the state"s new discrimination and graded a.s.sorting of young and old and sick and well and sane and insane and normal and subnormal, the state care is on lines at once more humane to the individual and more helpful to social organization.
The state is indeed turning father and mother in its newer agencies for social conservation and social aid to the distressed and miserable. And as the state thus does the work that once was attempted and poorly done by the collective family, it must more and more call to its service the men and women of parental quality and of fit and devoted expression of the protective and the nurturing elements of human nature.
=Social Service in Peace.=--The state has always called for sacrificial service from its members. It has called most of all for such sacrificial service when danger seemed to threaten the national existence, or enemies of the government lifted treasonable intent against the peace and order to which the majority of citizens were devoted. Now we are called upon, if only we can realize the new claims upon the higher patriotism, to make the country we love what all countries should be, a home of freedom, of mutual helpfulness, of economic well-being and of incorrupt and progressive political order.
It has been said and truly, "The ideas of great men are apprehended slowly, and a free and rational society must in part exist before the dream of such a society can be interpreted." We have a dream of a free, a n.o.ble, a competent, a happy people in our America. We must be careful at every point lest by carelessness of political forms or lack of understanding of what those forms should be, we hinder the development of that free and rational society in which the n.o.blest thoughts and highest ideals of the best and finest of our leaders can alone find root and grow.
=Problems Voters Must Solve.=--Three special problems are before the voters of our country, problems commanding in importance and not easy of solution. They are, first, the problem which inheres in our union of States, with their wide divergence of climate, soil, industries, population, standards of action and ideals of national and local action. The problem is this: what shall we decide is the measure of wise and useful division between the laws and conditions we shall make national in extent of social control and in practical functioning of political administration, and those of smaller autonomous units? What shall belong to the Federal Government and make field for its activity? What shall belong to the various States and make up their separate systems of law and administration? And what shall be left to each locality, or each county of each State, for its own political activity? These are not easy questions to answer, and the constant movement toward centralization of power, not only of standardization but of control in the National Government (a movement which received such an immense impetus during the war), is likely to make this a movable problem of differing answers as our nation grows older. The division of States may give a geographical symbol of deep inherent differences of background of culture and even of race, or that division may mean only a superficial mark of geographic outline between two sets of communities alike in all their inheritance and tendency. In any case, how much weight shall still be attached to "States Rights," and how much shall we press for a uniform life throughout all the land? What shall be the special duties of each local community toward its common needs of education, of recreation, of moral protection, and social order? How much in any given place shall the tendency of neighbors to be unwilling to testify against each other when wrong-doing is practised, and unable to withstand any evil influence when near the centre of its working, lead us to unite in demanding a larger unit for the Juvenile Court or the enforcement of laws against commercialized vice or any other social concern where justice demands a free hand and no favor to any group? These are questions with which some of our volunteer agencies of social work have wrestled. The answers that wise and good people have made to them should have weight in any decision we may make as to the right and effective divisions of law and its enforcement in our American system.
This problem of division of authority has within it a puzzling counter-interpretation of our original Const.i.tution and of our history up to date. The doctrine of "States Rights," it is said, received its death blow in the Civil War, but the equal political and civil rights of the negro, which that war was supposed to establish as a national concern, vary with the varying att.i.tudes of people of the different states toward the enforcement of the Const.i.tutional Amendments which were intended to secure those rights. The Southern States, it is said, still stand for the dignity and autonomy of each Commonwealth in matters of restriction upon labor and of provision for tax-supported education, but the inner stronghold of the Federal Prohibition Amendment is the section of the country south of Mason and Dixon"s line. The new States, again it is said, are more tenacious of national centralization of government because more evidently drawing their powers from the federal centre, but in the valley of the Mississippi from north to south,--that section which promises to have the determination of the course of American history in its hands for the next hundred years,--there are signs that the state autonomy and the state jealousy of invasion of local authority in the interest of national conformity to federal law are not by any means unknown.
There should be some more carefully outlined and more commonly understood principles of judgment to lead us to decisions, when a thing we believe it good to do or a law we desire to set in place and in operation call upon us for support, as to the best way of using that support. Whether to try for a federal amendment or a national statute, whether to work wholly within each State, or whether it is matter which so depends upon local sentiment and local cooperation that each smallest community centre must work out its own salvation, or secure its own advance in independent work,--this is the problem.
=Comparison Between National and Local Effort.=--One reason why some elements of social progress lag behind others which are not more firmly believed in is that confusion of effort has followed the contrary forms of attack upon the national, the state, or the local governments for the furtherance of the object in which all parties believe. Instances are not needed in this connection for every person who has worked or who desires to work for social betterment finds this question at the gateway of organized effort. Shall one turn to the centralizing tendency in political life of our country for support of a given measure, or shall one make a breakwater in that tendency and concentrate attention upon the smaller political units?
=Preferential Voting.=--The second problem of political science and art which presses upon the attention of our electorate is one which is bound up in methods of selection and election of our legislators and executives. The ever-recurring question of, "For whom shall we vote?"--rests back upon the deeper question, "For whom shall we have a chance to vote?" The primary was supposed to end the acknowledged corruption and inadequacy of the caucus system. The primary is an advance on the secret caucus with its choice of men for the highest office by a few partisan politicians only, whose business it is to keep party lines strong and to make them carry their candidate into office. The primary, however, we see, is a very expensive method and open to many dangers, and progressive students of political methods are not satisfied with it. Why can we not move, and strongly, for preferential voting? For some plan by which it shall be the public purse only which secures the necessary printing and circularizing for required information, and no personal differences in wealth shall have any weight in the listing of names on the ballot? To have a law by which any legally named number of voters (a sufficient number to keep out lonely cranks, but not a sufficient number to suppress considerable minorities) should indicate by pet.i.tion desire for a chance to vote for a specific representative of their political ideals? The legal requirement that such persons so named should have a place on the official ballot and that all voting citizens should be able to indicate their graded preference for all candidates thus officially listed, would give the people of a democracy a chance to really choose the kind of legislators they want and the kind of executives they think they need. In the present situation the independent mind and conscientious purpose often has a choice only between "necessary evils" or the refuge of the political "woods."
=Proportional Representation.=--The adoption of some form of preferential voting can alone give the voters a chance for proportional representation of their ideals and aims in legislative bodies. We are seeing that the limits of useful partisanship in politics are narrower than was once thought. No sane and sensible person really believes that all of goodness and of wisdom is contained in his party and that its success is a valid reason for "turning out the rascals" of the other party. No sane and sensible person believes that there is such a thing as "Democratic" economy, or "Republican"
justice, or "Socialistic" efficiency, or "Labor Party" good government. There are only economy, efficiency, justice, and good government. Each party may have a different ideal of the best method of attaining these political necessities, and, therefore, since truth is not gained by dogmatic a.s.sumptions of any one set of persons but by approach to problems of mind and character from different angles of experience and of study, each party should have its representatives in the legislative bodies of nation, state, and community. And every new idea of political reform and social progress that by dint of hard work among the intellectual and moral elite has gained a substantial following in public opinion of even a relatively small minority, has, in justice, and in demand for constant advance in human affairs, a right to a place in the high debate of political leadership. It is, therefore, for those who believe in the worth and use of freedom and of mutual tolerance and respect, in political discussion and action, to work for some method of selection of political representatives of the people which will make our legislative bodies more truly official sections of the thought and moral ideal of the whole life of the body politic. This is, perhaps, the greatest of the political calls for increased wisdom and practical sense in our country.
The third problem which presses for attention, study and possible solution upon the voters of the United States, and one in which the new voters, the women, are peculiarly concerned and in a position of past experience and of present activity to add much weight and value to the debate it occasions, is this:
=What Shall Public and What Shall Private Social Service Attempt?=--How far and by what ways shall the varied philanthropic and educational activities which are named in ma.s.s "social work," and which have been developed and are now so largely operated by private and volunteer agencies and organizations, be made a part of the official service of the father and the mother state? In this social work, so far, the few have set a pattern of aid to individuals, which public agencies have tended to take over without much serious study of whether in any particular case the transfer was necessary or wise.
This change has often been made, also, without determining whether or not further supervisory work by the private citizen was needed to keep the social enterprise true to its original and tested principles of action. The time has come when in all such changes from private and volunteer work of a few to the demand for support and the dependence upon guidance of the many, through public officials, we should have some clear guiding principle. What that principle may be it is not the purpose here to discuss, but the state that is now doing so much that only families were formerly expected to do, and is attempting to do so much that only trained and devoted service of experts chosen by acknowledged leaders in social service has previously tried to accomplish, must be tutored and must be supervised by a more intelligent electorate if it is to do its more ambitious tasks well.
No private agency should allow its finest fruits of longest study and effort to be absorbed by official provision and control, unless it can gain a.s.surance that those fruits will be secure in the transfer.
This all indicates that women voters who have, happily, no past bondage to partisanship to overcome, who entered upon their political power with no pledges to any one party to hamper their free action, and who, being indebted to progressive party leaders in every one of the political divisions, have friends in every one, may and should do much to help progressive and independent men voters to solve the deeper problems of our political situation with clarity of judgment and true patriotic devotion.[21]
=Difficulty in Being a Good American Citizen.=--We have the most mixed of populations. We have the greatest variety of inherited national and racial backgrounds in the electorate. We have the widest stretches of country, and therefore the most difficult adjustments to any centralized system of government. We have the most mobile common life, our people moving from State to State, and from one sectional interest to another with bewildering frequency. We have as yet no universal schooling even in the rudiments of reading and writing of the English language to serve as common basis for common knowledge. We have a lack of ethical unity in many basic problems of the family, the industrial order, the type of tax-supported schooling, and the ideals of patriotism. These conditions seem to make it more difficult to become a first-cla.s.s American citizen than to achieve political competency in any other government on earth. Even with the confusion in countries abroad, even in the European tangles of feuds and suspicions and the horrible weight of starvation and physical weakness of the Old World, we may yet, if serious in our judgment of American life, soberly acknowledge the greatest difficulties of all political adjustment which lie within our own political life. Such acknowledgment is not to any true American of the older stock and the more n.o.ble patriotism a confession of discouragement or an apology for social failures in our common life. It is rather, for all n.o.bler and wiser citizens, a stimulant to constant vigilance in defence of inherited liberties and a call to deeper consecration and more devoted service in our political relationship. Finally, the father and the mother state does not try or want to live to itself alone. We have learned that selfishness in the private family leads to social ills and weakness which society in general, which surrounds all private families, must correct and amend. Are we not learning in the awful light of the recent world conflagration that selfishness in nations leads to social ills and weakness which can be corrected only by world organization for world well-being?
=Our Country a Member of the Family of Nations.=--That America we love and would serve with a higher patriotism and a wiser political method is a part of the great family of nations, and if it has learned any lessons of fatherly and motherly function of state care and development of the individual life, it has learned those lessons not for isolated national culture, but as a part of the universal schooling in the gospel of human brotherhood.