Popular Misgovernment in the United States

CHAPTER I. Past Failure and Future Dangers of Unlimited Suffrage

PAST FAILURE AND FUTURE DANGERS OF UNLIMITED SUFFRAGE

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God.--WASHINGTON

Great numbers of discerning Americans must by this time have been brought to realize that something practical must shortly be done in this country by the believers in private property and private property rights to safeguard the nation from its threatened invasion by Bolshevism, Socialism and other various forms of anti-individualism, or else we are in for a hard and possibly a bloody struggle to maintain the very fundamentals of our social and political systems. From time to time in this country as in every other there occur periods of extraordinary danger to the political structure. In the past we have had several such episodes, the most noted being that of the secession movement culminating in 1860 and 1861. The seriousness of the present menace of communism in its various forms is due not so much to the strength of the communist faction, considerable though it be, as to the weakness of our civic structure consequent upon the long continued and increasing general distrust and suspicion of our actual political agencies and the confirmed popular dissatisfaction with their operations. Meantime, nothing adequately effective either in the way of strengthening our institutions or of disarming opposition thereto is being done or has even been proposed. A lot of vigorous denunciation has been directed against native and foreign Bolshevism, all thoroughly deserved and not without effect on the public mind, but falling far short of positive acts of defense or protection. Bolshevism is in the field not merely as an abstract doctrine, to be answered with words, but as an active and aggressive force which must be met by measures of active resistance. Such measures to be effective must take the shape of the creation of practical means and methods of offense and defense. The case is not one which admits of trifling; the attack is fundamental, the danger is vital, and cannot be effectually met by superficial expedients.

Now there is happily one available measure of protection and defense against Bolshevism and all its assaults, one which is manifestly appropriate and will be absolutely efficacious. It is one which has long been highly desirable for other reasons hereinafter set forth, but which in view of the menace of radicalism is now imperatively demanded. It consists in such a reform of the electorate itself as will make it impassible and impervious to every influence subversive of our basic institutions. An electorate of male private property owners of twenty-five years of age and upwards would constitute an absolute barrier against all attacks on private property from any quarter; its establishment would summarily and forever terminate all hopes of Bolshevistic revolution in this country and ensure the American people freedom to enjoy the noble future which Providence has made possible to them.

The cause of private property rights is in the truest sense the American cause and that to which all other national causes political and social are subordinate. Those rights involve almost everything which is dear to the American heart. Even our governmental institutions are of secondary importance, they are the instruments merely; the means whereby we seek to obtain among other aids and aims the protection of private property, the absolute assurance to each American of the use and enjoyment of the fruits of his toil, of his self denial and of his foresight. This view is not novel in our politics. It was thoroughly familiar to our Eighteenth Century statesmen, it was part of the political faith of some of the most prominent among them, including a majority of the political leaders of the Revolutionary epoch. They endeavored to secure these ends and to ensure the future of the new nation by requiring wherever possible a property qualification for voters. Had this practise and its underlying principle been adhered to and (with proper modifications for changed conditions as they might occur) had the government been continued on the basis on which the wise and prudent men of that time endeavored to establish it, it would at this moment represent a satisfactory approximation of a true and scientific democracy able to hold in safe derision its critics and enemies. But the principle of a properly qualified electorate, so vitally essential to an efficient democracy has been repudiated and abandoned; the practise of unlimited white suffrage has been general amongst us for about ninety years, and today there can be no doubt that there is a prospect of danger to our country, not because of lack of courage and loyalty in her sons, but because of the unhealthy organism of our body politic, whose modern basic principle, unlimited suffrage, ignores property rights, and looks to control by the representatives of the inefficient and the proletariat whenever they can secure a numerical majority at the polls, thus incidentally accomplishing what Bolshevism directly aims at.

And now that private property rights heretofore considered as unquestionable are openly attacked, we must prepare for their defense, for the defense of the family, of the American social system and the free individual life, all three of which depend on private property for their existence. The time has come when the institution of private property must be formally recognized and defended as fundamental to our existence as a nation, and such recognition requires and involves the allotment to that institution of a place and influence in our electoral system. Private property cannot safely rely for its defense upon officials who are dependent upon the votes of the non-property holding populace. There is no way of final avoidance of the issue, or even of long postponing it. This nation must either declare itself definitely as adhering to the principle of private property rights or it must expect disaster. And first, the cause of private property rights needs organization and self consciousness. Property holders cannot properly defend a cause which has never declared itself and which has neither standard nor leaders, while its enemies have both, and are not only proclaiming their convictions with courage, but have enacted them into living statutes wherever they have power. If the institution of private property is to endure in this country it must be formally recognized as representing a sacred cause, to be carefully committed into the hands of its friends; the electorate must be made over into a property qualified body, and all temptation to Bolshevism must be removed from the American politician. Let this be done, let the constitution of every State be amended so that our voting mass shall be virile and substantial, and freed from the element of effeminacy and inefficiency now so controlling; give the conservative good sense of the nation a rallying point, an official standard, an authoritative creed, and it will speedily make short work of the enemies of social order and of sound political institutions.

But there is a great deal more to be said in favor of a property qualification for voters than that it will be a wall against Bolshevism. It will act on our political internal system as a tonic and a purifier. It sometimes occurs in politics and statesmanship that two mischiefs are so bound together that they can be destroyed at one blow. Such was the case in 1861-1865, when the causes of the perpetuation of the Federal Union and the emancipation of the black race became by the logic of events so involved as to be practically united, and when by the triumph of the northern armies the mischiefs of chattel slavery and disunion politics were made to perish together. And in like manner we now find not only that unqualified or manhood suffrage is the chief source of our weakness in dealing with Bolshevism, but that it has been in the past and still is the principal cause of our political corruption and governmental inefficiency. And therefore it has come about that the cause of private property and property rights is so bound up with the cause of administrative purity and efficiency in our government that by the one measure of the establishment of a property qualification for voters the perils of the menace of Bolshevism and the mischiefs of political corruption and inefficiency may be dispatched together.

It is in fact principally to the corruption and inefficiency of manhood suffrage government that we owe the popular dissatisfaction out of which the hopes of American Bolshevism are bred and nourished. The failure of democratic institutions in this country must be admitted and it is almost entirely due to the operation of manhood suffrage. We have aimed at theoretical perfection, the natural conditions have been most favorable; we have loudly called the world to witness the experiment, and the world has condemned it as a political failure. This statement will hardly be challenged, but it is well supported by available proof, and need not rest merely on the assertion or opinion of the writer. And right here the reader may as well be informed that it is the author’s intention to support his material assertions with such evidence as the nature of the subject permits. Such readers as are tolerably familiar with American political history will recognize the truth of most of the statements of fact contained in these pages; but the reasonable doubts of the politically uninstructed will be removed as far as conveniently possible by reference to records and to the testimony of reliable witnesses. Here therefore we quote on this branch of the subject from an address of Henry Jones Ford, President of The American Political Science Association, delivered at the Annual Meeting at Cleveland, December 29, 1919.

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