Note 43 — Chapter III

Miss Jessie Wallace Hughan in her "American Socialism of the Present Day" (page 184) has quoted me as saying (in the New York Call of December 12, 1909) that the amendability of the Constitution by majority vote is a demand so revolutionary that it is exclusively Socialist property. Within the limitations of a very brief journalistic article I believe this statement was justified. It holds for the United States to-day. It does not hold for agrarian countries like Australia, Canada, or South Africa, for backward countries like Russia, or dependent countries like Switzerland or Denmark, where there is no danger of Socialism. And before it can be put into effect, which may take a decade or more, the increased proportion in the population of well-paid government employees and of agricultural lessees of government lands and similar classes, may make a democratic constitution a safe capitalistic policy, for a while, even in the United States.