Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
divide all possible ideas and plans between two great parties, modern
legislatures in advanced nations tend to develop smaller and smaller
minority groups, while government is carried on by temporary coalitions.
For a time we inveighed against this and sought to consider it a
perversion of the only possible method of practical democracy. Today we
are gradually coming to realize that government by temporary coalition
of small and diverse groups may easily become the most efficient method
of expressing the will of man and of setting the human soul free. The
only hindrance to the faster development of this government by allied
minorities is the fear of external war which is used again and again to
melt these living, human, thinking groups into inhuman, thoughtless, and
murdering machines.
The persons, then, who come forward in the dawn of the 20th century to
help in the ruling of men must come with the firm conviction that no
nation, race, or sex, has a monopoly of ability or ideas; that no human
group is so small as to deserve to be ignored as a part, and as an
integral and respected part, of the mass of men; that, above all, no
group of twelve million black folk, even though they are at the physical
mercy of a hundred million white majority, can be deprived of a voice in
their government and of the right to self-development without a blow at
the very foundations of all democracy and all human uplift; that the
very criticism aimed today at universal suffrage is in reality a demand
for power on the part of consciously efficient minorities,--but these
minorities face a fatal blunder when they assume that less democracy
will give them and their kind greater efficiency. However desperate the
temptation, no modern nation can shut the gates of opportunity in the
face of its women, its peasants, its laborers, or its socially damned.
How astounded the future world-citizen will be to know that as late as
1918 great and civilized nations were making desperate endeavor to
confine the development of ability and individuality to one sex,--that
is, to one-half of the nation; and he will probably learn that similar
effort to confine humanity to one race lasted a hundred years longer.
The doctrine of the divine right of majorities leads to almost humorous
insistence on a dead level of mediocrity. It demands that all people be
alike or that they be ostracized. At the same time its greatest
accusation against rebels is this same desire to be alike: the
suffragette is accused of wanting to be a man, the socialist is accused
of envy of the rich, and the black man is accused of wanting to be
white. That any one of these should simply want to be himself is to the
average worshiper of the majority inconceivable, and yet of all worlds,
may the good Lord deliver us from a world where everybody looks like his
neighbor and thinks like his neighbor and is like his neighbor.
The world has long since awakened to a realization of the evil which a
privileged few may exercise over the majority of a nation. So vividly
has this truth been brought home to us that we have lightly assumed that
a privileged and enfranchised majority cannot equally harm a nation.
Insane, wicked, and wasteful as the tyranny of the few over the many may
be, it is not more dangerous than the tyranny of the many over the few.
Brutal physical revolution can, and usually does, end the tyranny of the
few. But the spiritual losses from suppressed minorities may be vast and
fatal and yet all unknown and unrealized because idea and dream and
ability are paralyzed by brute force.
If, now, we have a democracy with no excluded groups, with all men and
women enfranchised, what is such a democracy to do? How will it
function? What will be its field of work?
The paradox which faces the civilized world today is that democratic
control is everywhere limited in its control of human interests. Mankind
is engaged in planting, forestry, and mining, preparing food and
shelter, making clothes and machines, transporting goods and folk,
disseminating news, distributing products, doing public and private
personal service, teaching, advancing science, and creating art.
In this intricate whirl of activities, the theory of government has been
hitherto to lay down only very general rules of conduct, marking the
limits of extreme anti-social acts, like fraud, theft, and murder.
The theory was that within these bounds was Freedom--the Liberty to
think and do and move as one wished. The real realm of freedom was found
in experience to be much narrower than this in one direction and much
broader in another. In matters of Truth and Faith and Beauty, the
Ancient Law was inexcusably strait and modern law unforgivably stupid.
It is here that the future and mighty fight for Freedom must and will be
made. Here in the heavens and on the mountaintops, the air of Freedom is
wide, almost limitless, for here, in the highest stretches, individual
freedom harms no man, and, therefore, no man has the right to limit it.
On the other hand, in the valleys of the hard, unyielding laws of matter
and the social necessities of time production, and human intercourse,
the limits on our freedom are stern and unbending if we would exist and
thrive. This does not say that everything here is governed by
incontrovertible "natural" law which needs no human decision as to raw
materials, machinery, prices, wages, news-dissemination, education of
children, etc.; but it does mean that decisions here must be limited by
brute facts and based on science and human wants.
Today the scientific and ethical boundaries of our industrial activities
are not in the hands of scientists, teachers, and thinkers; nor is the
intervening opportunity for decision left in the control of the public
whose welfare such decisions guide. On the contrary, the control of
industry is largely in the hands of a powerful few, who decide for their
own good and regardless of the good of others. The making of the rules
of Industry, then, is not in the hands of All, but in the hands of the
Few. The Few who govern industry envisage, not the wants of mankind, but
their own wants. They work quietly, often secretly, opposing Law, on the
one hand, as interfering with the "freedom of industry"; opposing, on
the other hand, free discussion and open determination of the rules of
work and wealth and wages, on the ground that harsh natural law brooks
no interference by Democracy.
These things today, then, are not matters of free discussion and
determination. They are strictly controlled. Who controls them? Who
makes these inner, but powerful, rules? Few people know. Others assert
and believe these rules are "natural"--a part of our inescapable
physical environment. Some of them doubtless are; but most of them are
just as clearly the dictates of self-interest laid down by the powerful
private persons who today control industry. Just here it is that modern
men demand that Democracy supplant skilfully concealed, but all too
evident, Monarchy.
In industry, monarchy and the aristocracy rule, and there are those who,
calling themselves democratic, believe that democracy can never enter
here. Industry, they maintain, is a matter of technical knowledge and
ability, and, therefore, is the eternal heritage of the few. They point
to the failure of attempts at democratic control in industry, just as we
used to point to Spanish-American governments, and they expose, not
simply the failures of Russian Soviets,--they fly to arms to prevent
that greatest experiment in industrial democracy which the world has yet
seen. These are the ones who say: We must control labor or civilization
will fail; we must control white labor in Europe and America; above all,
we must control yellow labor in Asia and black labor in Africa and the
South, else we shall have no tea, or rubber, or cotton. And yet,--and
yet is it so easy to give up the dream of democracy? Must industry rule
men or may men rule even industry? And unless men rule industry, can
they ever hope really to make laws or educate children or create beauty?
That the problem of the democratization of industry is tremendous, let
no man deny. We must spread that sympathy and intelligence which
tolerates the widest individual freedom despite the necessary public
control; we must learn to select for public office ability rather than
mere affability. We must stand ready to defer to knowledge and science
and judge by result rather than by method; and finally we must face the
fact that the final distribution of goods--the question of wages and
income is an ethical and not a mere mechanical problem and calls for
grave public human judgment and not secrecy and closed doors. All this
means time and development. It comes not complete by instant revolution
of a day, nor yet by the deferred evolution of a thousand years--it
comes daily, bit by bit and step by step, as men and women learn and
grow and as children are trained in Truth.
These steps are in many cases clear: the careful, steady increase of
public democratic ownership of industry, beginning with the simplest
type of public utilities and monopolies, and extending gradually as we
learn the way; the use of taxation to limit inheritance and to take the
unearned increment for public use beginning (but not ending) with a
"single tax" on monopolized land values; the training of the public in
business technique by co-operation in buying and selling, and in
industrial technique by the shop committee and manufacturing guild.
But beyond all this must come the Spirit--the Will to Human Brotherhood
of all Colors, Races, and Creeds; the Wanting of the Wants of All.
Perhaps the finest contribution of current Socialism to the world is
neither its light nor its dogma, but the idea back of its one mighty
word--Comrade!
The Call
In the Land of the Heavy Laden came once a dreary day. And the King, who
sat upon the Great White Throne, raised his eyes and saw afar off how
the hills around were hot with hostile feet and the sound of the mocking
of his enemies struck anxiously on the King's ears, for the King loved
his enemies. So the King lifted up his hand in the glittering silence
and spake softly, saying: "Call the Servants of the King." Then the
herald stepped before the armpost of the throne, and cried: "Thus saith
the High and Mighty One, who inhabiteth Eternity, whose name is
Holy,--the Servants of the King!"
Now, of the servants of the king there were a hundred and forty-four
thousand,--tried men and brave, brawny of arm and quick of wit; aye,
too, and women of wisdom and women marvelous in beauty and grace. And
yet on this drear day when the King called, their ears were thick with
the dust of the enemy, their eyes were blinded with the flashing of his
spears, and they hid their faces in dread silence and moved not, even at
the King's behest. So the herald called again. And the servants cowered
in very shame, but none came forth. But the third blast of the herald
struck upon a woman's heart, afar. And the woman straightway left her
baking and sweeping and the rattle of pans; and the woman straightway
left her chatting and gossiping and the sewing of garments, and the
woman stood before the King, saying: "The servant of thy servants, O
Lord."
Then the King smiled,--smiled wondrously, so that the setting sun burst
through the clouds, and the hearts of the King's men dried hard within
them. And the low-voiced King said, so low that even they that listened
heard not well: "Go, smite me mine enemies, that they cease to do evil
in my sight." And the woman quailed and trembled. Three times she lifted
her eyes unto the hills and saw the heathen whirling onward in their
rage. And seeing, she shrank--three times she shrank and crept to the
King's feet.