DEMOCRACY

There once was a man who knew what a palladium was. He died without bequeathing the mystery, and so we are bereft of a positive knowledge on the subject. There is, however, a tradition that our constitution is the palladium of our liberties. Hence we should have reverent regard for palladiums.

How grateful we should be that we are privileged to live in a glorious democracy. Each man a sovereign! All are equals! No rulers! The administrators—servants of the people; no aristocracy.

In this great democracy each man is at work under the palladium. All are laborers. There are variant degrees of labor. Some are better pleased with their job than others. But there are always and everywhere malcontents who are dissatisfied with the work assigned them. Some of these creatures complain because he who performs the most laborious services receives the slenderest reward; as though the delight in rendering service were in itself not sufficient.

Yes, it is true, that many of those on whom is conferred the honor of performing the hardest tasks, do not appreciate the distinction thus lavished upon them. Society could not exist without classes. Our best people would be in pitiful plight if there were not a tired class from which to recruit its asylums, its social settlement work, its houses of prostitution, and its police force.

Society requires a class that must build houses, plan and supply the furnishings for these edifices, make the roads, grow foodstuffs and fashion the clothing. It also needs a class that will use the stuff created. We need people to live in the houses, make use of the roads, eat the stuff which is grown, and wear the clothes fashioned. Then we need another class to keep the peace between them that make the things which they care not to use, and the class that uses the things but makes none. I once asked one of these working fellows why he wanted to be on the police force. He replied that he might as well have an easy job as any other fellow, and, he added, “we must have a police force, just as we must have sunlight. Life and property would not be safe otherwise.”

It would seem that the less one has the more he requires protection for what he has not, against the other fellow who also has nothing.

Workers of another class are those that do not work with the hands. Theirs is brain work. They furnish the intelligence for the manual laborer, and give him permission to work. They are called employers of labor. They work the workers and become forceful factors in social life. What would become of our poor ignorant working-classes who know only how to work and obey were it not for our better classes who furnish employment for them?

I remember hearing of an occurrence that illustrates how sadly our workfolk would fare if they were not given employment. During the reconstruction days following the close of the Civil War, an old darkey sauntered into the handsomely appointed offices of the Freedmen’s Bureau at Memphis.

“Is dis yer de Freedmen’s Beuoh?” he asked, in open-mouthed admiration of the walnut and brass fittings of the handsome quarters.

“This is the place,” courteously answered the sole occupant, who appeared to be the officer in charge.

“Well, wot yer gwine do fer de cullud man?” was his next inquiry.

“We can’t do anything for you just now,” said the functionary. “The last appropriation for this office was only about enough to put up these fixings and pay our salaries, and Congress will not—”

“Lor bress ye, suh,” interrupted the recently emancipated citizen, “I aint axin’ fur no money, no suh! All I want is jess a job er wukk. Kain’t you all fine me airy job?”

The Mississippi was high at the time, and lots of driftwood was floating down the stream. The official tried a bit of pleasantry.

“I’ll give you a job,” he said to the old man. “There’s lots of driftwood coming down the river. You go out there and gather all you can, and I’ll give you half you get.”

“All right, boss,” said the darkey to his new employer; and away he went.

By next night the diligent employee had piled up a considerable stack of wood. He was congratulating himself on the success of his work, and making a mental survey of his half of the proceeds, when he was approached by a man whose gold-braided cap gave evidence of officialdom.

“That’s a pretty good pile of wood you’ve gathered, uncle,” said the newcomer. “I’ll take this half over here,” he said as he indicated one end of the pile.

“Lor’ bless my soul!” ejaculated the old fellow. “You doan look like de Freedman’s Beuoh gemman.”

“No,” he replied; “I have nothing to do with the Bureau, but I’m the wharf master, and according to the city ordinances I’m entitled to one-half the wood that’s piled up on this levee.”

“Ef dats de law, all right; go ahead. You tekk your harf, and de Freedman’s Beuoh tekk his harf—only I hope you gemmen won’t mine ef I tekk one little stick off’n you all’s harfs so’s I kin mekk a fiah to cook me any little ting I mout be able to steal fore mornin’.”

I tell this little story to illustrate in a convincing way that there’s no excuse for any able-bodied man ever to be out of a job. There are always benevolent employers who will give us work. We can hear this same truth from every pulpit, though perhaps lacking the anecdotal form. And there is always some sort of government that stands ready to protect the producer against the curse of a surplus. Nor do these various governmental agencies neglect to protect the employer in his share of the product—and help him get it from the producer.

Brain work is very effective. It gathers more in one hour than the toiler can produce in twelve. Therefore the brain-worker does not need to work as long as does the man who works with his hands. It is a fine disposition of things.

The brain-worker requires an occasional vacation. The manual laborer can dispense with such a rest. The latter needs to work longer and more continually so as to keep him out of mischief. The employer’s food, too, must be of better quality, his clothing of finer texture, and he must have servants to wait on him. The working person must learn habits of thrift, and should not partake of expensive foods. Indeed, adulterated and coarse food is more in keeping with his position in life; while shoddy clothing will give him a feeling of decent humility, without which he could not so readily be kept under the wholesome control of his benefactor.

Then there are workers who teach others how not to work. This is one of the most important branches of our Democracy. We call it education, and worship at its shrine. The end and aim of education is to impress upon its victims the necessity for a ruling class; and the rewards which are promised to the faithful pupils is either entrance into the aristocracy or a good job serving the people. The teacher may truly be said to be engaged upon brain-work, for the efforts of the teacher’s brain is to stunt that of the pupil. Neither the teacher nor the pupil brag about this openly; both of them are very much impressed with the nobility of their mission. An utter absence of a sense of humor assures the teacher of promotion and the pupil of appreciation.

The nobility of the teacher’s mission is one of our most sacred beliefs. We know that the teacher is overworked and underpaid. The work consists of twenty-two to thirty hours per week for eight or nine months in the year. During a year’s work the average teacher can instruct fully one hundred pupils in the mystery of escaping work. The ignorant masses who are taught only the dignity of labor do not appreciate the fine work of teaching. The masses must be taught a more proper esteem for intellect, and all our teachers are beautifully intellectual.

The work of priest and parson is another branch of labor that is highly regarded. These check the criminal intent of man. They teach peace and brotherhood. They are the spiritual guides of society, God bless them! Horror on horror’s head would accumulate were it not for these indefatigable workers. Society requires of them only two hours’ work per week, on the first day thereof, which being the Lord’s day is not reverently regarded by the lords, but has some recreative value to those who are not in the lord class.

The work of the Sunday workman is to convince the poor man that he has a better chance to get to heaven than has his master. For this teaching the master willingly and generously pays the hire of the Sunday workman. The laborer of the pulpit proves to the masses that it is foolish to desire earthly possessions—that the rich are better able to endure the pangs of Hell, hence all earthly possessions should be turned over to them, out of which to pay the parson’s salary. Many fine preachments may be heard during those two Sunday hours. We learn that the poor man needs only to inform the pastor that he is hungry and instantly he will be fed with advice concerning Good Citizenship and the proper humility of those whom it has pleased God to cast for the humbler parts.

Were it not for these laborers in the vineyard of the Lord we should never have discovered the close relationship between religion and art. The trouble, we are told, with the disinherited is, that they are soul-hungry. Let them go to the art museum during the Saturday half-holiday, and to church on Sunday, and all will be well.

Now and then a preacher or college professor succumbs to the temptation of the devil. They blaspheme the highest and mightiest of earth. They see smirch and taint on the wealth from which they have been fed. There are not many of these, and they are easily silenced. They are not taken seriously by the good people, and are consistently ignored by the masses. They are the victims of the sympathetic temperament. They commiserate the poor. They suffer agonies of excruciation through their compassion for the sufferings of the downtrodden. And their pain is all for naught. For the very people with whom these generous souls sympathize are not suffering, in actuality, anything like the pangs that their champions are enduring in their commiseration.

The downtrodden do not chafe. The poor do not suffer. They are lulled to sleep by the hope that they, too, shall have their innings at the lord game. Dear me! if the disinherited should ever really get to the point of suffering that the “reformers” think has already been reached—but why dwell on that picture? We did not like what happened in the French Reign of Terror. That was too large a dose of democracy to contemplate complacently.

As education is the teaching of methods whereby we can find the way to let others do our work, so religion seems to be a method of saving lost souls that are not lost. A shepherd who left his flock afield and strayed into the village tavern insists to this day that it was the sheep who were lost. There is no soul that so much needs saving as his who thinks all others are lost.

I lost my garter this morning, and the loss caused me much worry. It is very annoying to lose one’s garter. The loss of a garter implies loss of control of the stocking. However, there’s an immense difference between the loss of a garter and the loss of a soul. In both instances there is a minus mark involved, but as to the garter one loses, one seeks to recover it for herself, while in the matter of a soul one can scarcely lose it before all one’s neighbors are diligently undertaking to save it for her. Moreover, one is promptly made aware of the loss of a garter by the unrestrained and licentious behavior of the stocking, while one may lose her soul and go about her usual avocations without any sense of stress or strain. To judge from the demeanor of those who have been gathering lost souls, it is a fair inference that all the decrepitude of their many finds has clung to the finders. A sour lot of souls some of them must have assimilated in the saving.

And some souls seem to require frequent if not periodic saving. It’s like a fellow with two shirts that he sends to the laundry each week. In the course of the year he had one hundred and four shirts washed, yet he has but the two. Hence when we hear the ardent soul-saver recount his triumphs, and he tells of ten thousand souls saved, we are justified in demanding an itemized account. Did he save the same soul ten thousand times? Or two souls on five thousand several occasions? Or—but the mathematical combinations are infinite.

I attended a revival meeting once, and saw the operators in the act of saving souls. The revivalist by one sentence saved fifty souls, and the sentence was “Where will you be one hundred years from now, where will you be one thousand years from now, where will you be ten thousand years from now?” And I wondered how many souls he could save if he would ask his audience where they were one hundred years ago, where they were one thousand years ago and where they were ten thousand years ago? That would be more convincing, as there is a larger class of people who can tell what transpired yesterday than who can tell what is going to happen to-morrow. The soul-savers always appear eager to go where the well-fed souls require saving. They discern a “call” to a more populous field with much less difficulty than if the call chance to be to a smaller town. The fact that the larger the town the larger the salary has, of course, nothing whatever to do with the case. The “call” from one pastorate to another is not the only kind of pastoral call. There is another kind, and the envious say invidious things of the pastoral calls that are made while the man of the house is away for a day or on a journey. A Kentucky preacher received a call to a religious conference; so did a Chicago woman. He moved to Chicago and has been calling ever since.

One of the triumphs of Democracy which Mr. Carnegie may interweave into some future edition of his edifying book on that topic, is the discovery of the law of compensation within the realm of triumphant democracy. Our heavenly guide has shown us that the more spiritual the work the more material commodities should be exchanged as fair compensation.

He has located heaven away off toward the zenith, and bids you to look up—and while you are looking up he looks down. Should he discover that you are burdened with possessions that are calculated to imperil your attainment of the goal toward which you are looking, he deems it no less a duty than a privilege to effect a change of owners. For all the world like the game I used to play on my baby brother—telling him, in my artful little way, to look up at the bird, while I possessed myself of his goodies. The essential difference between my cute little game and the preacher’s is, that I filched the dainties for the fun of teasing Buster, while his reverence “plays for keeps.”

Little brother fooled me once by refusing to be fooled. When I bade him look at the bird he only laughed and reached for his goodies. Funny what a queer child he was. If big folks were not wiser than babies it would make a substantial difference in the bank account of His Holiness.

While the pedagogue is teaching the young idea to overreach, and the parson is busy saving souls, let it not be thought that our material welfare is being overlooked. Our lawmakers and judges are giving their serious attention to such matters. Fortunately for our country there are always many patriotic and generous souls ready to sacrifice themselves to serve their country in legislative and judicial capacities. There is a legend that once there was a lawyer who declined to immolate himself on the altar of patriotism. It is further stated that he would have had to surrender a practice worth $1,200 per annum for a judgeship at that time paying but $900 a year. Later he was sufficiently patriotic to accept a job as senator at $8,000 a year.

The duties of the lawmaker are to provide protection for society. To carry out his purpose in the line of his duty, he must see to it that the humble poor are protected against the predatory rich. Of course, the rich as a class have some rights, too, which cannot be overlooked. It is truly refreshing to observe with what a wealth of patriotic zeal they engage upon their task. To look at them in session you would esteem them as mere, ordinary, plain men. This is because of the democratic spirit of our age. Our greatest, wisest, noblest, and best take a pardonable pride in masquerading as humble citizens. But their work shows how sapient and pure they are. Elected by the enlightened masses, they are truly representatives of the source from whence they spring. The ballot is a very wizard in selecting for us our choicest and finest and most sagacious.

I have known a disreputable tavern-keeper who pandered to the most depraved people in his district; whose word was not accepted by even the most credulous, who, when he became a “grave and reverend seignor” in our state senate, immediately became the paragon of statesmen, the model of virtue, and the pattern of the boys in the high school of his district. This shows the wisdom of the ballot. That statesman associated himself with the vile and disreputable in order to discover their real needs so that he might understand and supply those needs after his election. He really was a great man in disguise.

There is a dignity about public service which private service somehow does not grant. Our legislators are public servants. When we consider the difficulty inherent in serving some one person, we can understand the sacrifice that our public servants make in the multiplied duty of serving the many.

I once told my cook that she ought to be very proud to be a servant. “All our great men are servants,” I assured her. Thereupon she called me a fool, and took other service. She served me at last by giving me some occupation for my alleged thoughts. The burden of my cogitations is to discover how she found me out.

The public servant is he who protects us from all evil. He saves us from the vicious elements in society.

His work is hard on the brain, and therefore he must have an abundance of material things to compensate the great drain on his system. He loves to serve the public. So much so indeed, that he is inclined to be jealous of the like service being rendered by any other person than himself. He often spends more than one-half of the emoluments of his job in order to keep from being supplanted by some other servant who would dearly love to serve the public.

The public servant is often a glittering and conspicuous success as a financier. Without any special training in finance, before assuming the duties and responsibilities of being a public servant, he early discovers methods whereby it is possible for him to save, during his incumbency, anywhere from 97 per cent to 2,463 per cent of his salary. These mathematics are not taught by the laborers who teach young children, but the results of that system of financiering are held up to the tender and plastic mind of childhood as worthy of all emulation, and indicative of great merit.

The labor of being a public servant may be summed up as being good business and scintillant patriotism. A fool might be pardoned for considering it as patriotic business.

There be other laborers, too, who sit astride the necks of the lower classes. All of them have no greater desire than to benefit the worker who works, but they are not willing to dismount. And the worker who works and carries his additional burden seems disposed to feel a vague sort of pride in being a part of the system whereby he can sustain the entire load of society. The merit, however, is not so much his as that of the masterly trainers who keep him contented with his lot. When we see a particularly well-trained dog we give our admiration to the trainer—not to the dog.

Great is Democracy! Under its palladium even the humblest of us has a voice. We are permitted to vote. We elect our public servants. Then we permit our good masters to select a committee to watch our appointees. Then we have a voters’ league to keep an eye on the committee. Then we have a society to watch the voters’ league. And so ad infinitum.

An English writer would not even deprive his poultry of the franchise. He tells us that when he kills a hen for his dinner he always consults the fowl as to her preference in the matter of her cooking. If she is too stolid (as so many of our voters are) to signify her preference, of course he goes ahead in his own way. She has had her day at the polls, and having failed to exercise her privilege, has practically abandoned her rights. Should the chicken protest against being plucked, that would be anarchy, and she would then suffer death as a penalty.

Our public servants manipulate the taxing power very much as my English friend wields his cleaver on chicken-killing day. Plucking is good for chickens, and taxing is good for the producers of commodities.

A fire insurance company protects us from loss by fire; an accident insurance company from loss by accident; a life insurance company from monetary loss by death.

But government is a combine. All rights are taken under its wings and protected. The charge is small, and is collected whether you agree or not. You pay it when you buy the things you need. They are getting the trading-stamps instead of you, and for that you get so much protection that it is almost incomprehensible.

For the payment of a certain sum, an accident, life, and burglar insurance company will pay you the amount insured on your furnishing the evidence that you sustained the loss against which they insured you.

How different it is with government. The government charges you so much for being protected from all aggressions, and when they have failed to protect, and you have been aggressed, there are more fees which you pay, by way of expense of trying the aggressor, and if the aggressor has been proven guilty (which means that the government has not kept its contract to protect you) there is another cost to you to defray the expense of feeding and clothing the aggressor.

If a person would run an insurance company on that basis, how insured would the insured ones be?

Altogether we should be very proud of our Democracy.