The Art of Public Speaking
reactionary, liberal or conservative. The neutrals do not count. Yet
to-day neither of the old parties is either wholly progressive or wholly
reactionary. Democratic politicians and office seekers say to
reactionary Democratic voters that the Democratic party is reactionary
enough to express reactionary views; and they say to progressive
Democrats that the Democratic party is progressive enough _to_ express
progressive views. At the same time, Republican politicians and office
seekers say the same thing about the Republican party to progressive and
reactionary Republican voters.
Sometimes in both Democratic and Republican States the progressives get
control of the party locally and then the reactionaries recapture the
same party in the same State; or this process is reversed. So there is
no nation-wide unity of principle in either party, no stability of
purpose, no clear-cut and sincere program of one party at frank and open
war with an equally clear-cut and sincere program of an opposing party.
This unintelligent tangle is seen in Congress. Republican and Democratic
Senators and Representatives, believing alike on broad measures
affecting the whole Republic, find it hard to vote together because of
the nominal difference of their party membership. When, sometimes, under
resistless conviction, they do vote together, we have this foolish
spectacle: legislators calling themselves Republicans and Democrats
support the same policy, the Democratic legislators declaring that that
policy is Democratic and Republican legislators declaring that it is
Republican; and at the very same time other Democratic and Republican
legislators oppose that very same policy, each of them declaring that it
is not Democratic or not Republican.
The condition makes it impossible most of the time, and hard at any
time, for the people's legislators who believe in the same broad
policies to enact them into logical, comprehensive laws. It confuses the
public mind. It breeds suspicion and distrust. It enables such special
interests as seek unjust gain at the public expense to get what they
want. It creates and fosters the degrading boss system in American
politics through which these special interests work.
This boss system is unknown and impossible under any other free
government in the world. In its very nature it is hostile to general
welfare. Yet it has grown until it now is a controlling influence in
American public affairs. At the present moment notorious bosses are in
the saddle of both old parties in various important States which must be
carried to elect a President. This Black Horse Cavalry is the most
important force in the practical work of the Democratic and Republican
parties in the present campaign. Neither of the old parties' nominees
for President can escape obligation to these old-party bosses or shake
their practical hold on many and powerful members of the National
Legislature.
Under this boss system, no matter which party wins, the people seldom
win; but the bosses almost always win. And they never work for the
people. They do not even work for the party to which they belong. They
work only for those anti-public interests whose political employees they
are. It is these interests that are the real victors in the end.
These special interests which suck the people's substance are
bi-partisan. They use both parties. They are the invisible government
behind our visible government. Democratic and Republican bosses alike
are brother officers of this hidden power. No matter how fiercely they
pretend to fight one another before election, they work together after
election. And, acting so, this political conspiracy is able to delay,
mutilate or defeat sound and needed laws for the people's welfare and
the prosperity of honest business and even to enact bad laws, hurtful to
the people's welfare and oppressive to honest business.
It is this invisible government which is the real danger to American
institutions. Its crude work at Chicago in June, which the people were
able to see, was no more wicked than its skillful work everywhere and
always which the people are not able to see.
But an even more serious condition results from the unnatural alignment
of the old parties. To-day we Americans are politically shattered by
sectionalism. Through the two old parties the tragedy of our history is
continued; and one great geographical part of the Republic is separated
from other parts of the Republic by an illogical partisan solidarity.
The South has men and women as genuinely progressive and others as
genuinely reactionary as those in other parts of our country. Yet, for
well-known reasons, these sincere and honest southern progressives and
reactionaries vote together in a single party, which is neither
progressive nor reactionary. They vote a dead tradition and a local
fear, not a living conviction and a national faith. They vote not for
the Democratic party, but against the Republican party. They want to be
free from this condition; they can be free from it through the National
Progressive party.
For the problems which America faces to-day are economic and national.
They have to do with a more just distribution of prosperity. They
concern the living of the people; and therefore the more direct
government of the people by themselves.
They affect the South exactly as they affect the North, the East or the
West. It is an artificial and dangerous condition that prevents the
southern man and woman from acting with the northern man and woman who
believe the same thing. Yet just that is what the old parties do
prevent.
Not only does this out-of-date partisanship cut our Nation into two
geographical sections; it also robs the Nation of a priceless asset of
thought in working out our national destiny. The South once was famous
for brilliant and constructive thinking on national problems, and to-day
the South has minds as brilliant and constructive as of old. But
southern intellect cannot freely and fully aid, in terms of politics,
the solving of the Nation's problems. This is so because of a partisan
sectionalism which has nothing to do with those problems. Yet these
problems can be solved only in terms of politics.
The root of the wrongs which hurt the people is the fact that the
people's government has been taken away from them--the invisible
government has usurped the people's government. Their government must be
given back to the people. And so the first purpose of the Progressive
party is to make sure the rule of the people. The rule of the people
means that the people themselves shall nominate, as well as elect, all
candidates for office, including Senators and Presidents of the United
States. What profiteth it the people if they do only the electing while
the invisible government does the nominating?
The rule of the people means that when the people's legislators make a
law which hurts the people, the people themselves may reject it. The
rule of the people means that when the people's legislators refuse to
pass a law which the people need, the people themselves may pass it. The
rule of the people means that when the people's employees do not do the
people's work well and honestly, the people may discharge them exactly
as a business man discharges employees who do not do their work well and
honestly. The people's officials are the people's servants, not the
people's masters.
We progressives believe in this rule of the people that the people
themselves may deal with their own destiny. Who knows the people's needs
so well as the people themselves? Who so patient as the people? Who so
long suffering, who so just? Who so wise to solve their own problems?
Today these problems concern the living of the people. Yet in the
present stage of American development these problems should not exist in
this country. For, in all the world there is no land so rich as ours.
Our fields can feed hundreds of millions. We have more minerals than the
whole of Europe. Invention has made easy the turning of this vast
natural wealth into supplies for all the needs of man. One worker today
can produce more than twenty workers could produce a century ago.
The people living in this land of gold are the most daring and
resourceful on the globe. Coming from the hardiest stock of every nation
of the old world their very history in the new world has made Americans
a peculiar people in courage, initiative, love of justice and all the
elements of independent character.
And, compared with other peoples, we are very few in numbers. There are
only ninety millions of us, scattered over a continent. Germany has
sixty-five millions packed in a country very much smaller than Texas.
The population of Great Britain and Ireland could be set down in
California and still have more than enough room for the population of
Holland. If this country were as thickly peopled as Belgium there would
be more than twelve hundred million instead of only ninety million
persons within our borders.
So we have more than enough to supply every human being beneath the
flag. There ought not to be in this Republic a single day of bad
business, a single unemployed workingman, a single unfed child. American
business men should never know an hour of uncertainty, discouragement or
fear; American workingmen never a day of low wages, idleness or want.
Hunger should never walk in these thinly peopled gardens of plenty.
And yet in spite of all these favors which providence has showered upon
us, the living of the people is the problem of the hour. Hundreds of
thousands of hard-working Americans find it difficult to get enough to
live on. The average income of an American laborer is less than $500 a
year. With this he must furnish food, shelter and clothing for a family.
Women, whose nourishing and protection should be the first care of the
State, not only are driven into the mighty army of wage-earners, but are
forced to work under unfair and degrading conditions. The right of a
child to grow into a normal human being is sacred; and yet, while small
and poor countries, packed with people, have abolished child labor,
American mills, mines, factories and sweat-shops are destroying hundreds
of thousands of American children in body, mind and soul.
At the same time men have grasped fortunes in this country so great that
the human mind cannot comprehend their magnitude. These mountains of
wealth are far larger than even that lavish reward which no one would
deny to business risk or genius.
On the other hand, American business is uncertain and unsteady compared
with the business of other nations. American business men are the best
and bravest in the world, and yet our business conditions hamper their
energies and chill their courage. We have no permanency in business
affairs, no sure outlook upon the business future. This unsettled state
of American business prevents it from realizing for the people that
great and continuous prosperity which our country's location, vast
wealth and small population justifies.
We mean to remedy these conditions. We mean not only to make prosperity
steady, but to give to the many who earn it a just share of that
prosperity instead of helping the few who do not earn it to take an
unjust share. The progressive motto is "Pass prosperity around." To make
human living easier, to free the hands of honest business, to make trade
and commerce sound and steady, to protect womanhood, save childhood and
restore the dignity of manhood--these are the tasks we must do.
What, then, is the progressive answer to these questions? We are able to
give it specifically and concretely. The first work before us is the
revival of honest business. For business is nothing but the industrial
and trade activities of all the people. Men grow the products of the