break them down. The foreign elements in America loom large. Massachusetts in 1920 had 2,170,792 foreigners or of foreign parentage and only 1,230,773 native born. That is what a high tariff and manufacturing by foreign cheap labor has brought her to. Is materialism worth that price? Sisson well says of these labor importations generally, "Great is the responsibility of those forces and those individuals who have carried on this importation of what, in a very true sense corresponds to the importation of slave labor into a free country." 99 1 The English have no such problem on their hands. England reserves itself for its own people. Speranza says "England, for example, has been the classic land of refuge for the persecuted, politically or religiously, from every part of the world; yet, before the World War, the foreign-born in the great cosmopolitan city of London were less than two per cent of the total municipal population." 2 The purity of the race is preserved. That country may again become a beacon light for America if America loses its way, and meantime we need the English and Scotch as immigrants. Professor Usher of Washington University well says, "There is in the world at present only one power whom we are able to serve in our present condition, only one power who is likely to render us at present the services we really need. We can afford to pay the necessary price for an alliance with this power. We can strengthen her and she can in turn strengthen us. Nor will an alliance in any way interfere with the security of both nations. Her position does not threaten ours, nor does ours menace hers. It is also supremely fortunate that this power, with whose interests ours so nearly coincide, should be that nation clearly allied to us in language, blood, law, and religion. Institutions, traditions, and ideals are also in substantial harmony; their habits of thought are in the main ours; those supreme ends of national existence for which they struggle are all but the same as our

PART IV

DANGERS, PROBLEMS AND SAFEGUARDS OF THE REPUBLIC

A

DANGERS OF THE REPUBLIC

THERE are four: (1) An unbridled majority rule and attacks on the Constitution and the Supreme Court; (2) Demand for equality of condition as distinguished from equality of opportunity and rights - Communism -Socialism - Unrest; (3) Class interests and sectional interests; (4) Dismantling of the States by greater and greater power to the federal government. Other dangers are transitory. Tariff laws, excessive railroad rates, confiscatory railroad rate reductions, railroad wage laws, excessive tax laws, "social uplift" laws, and governmental paternal laws come and go. If good, they are retained; if bad, they are repealed. Experimental laws do no great harm, and the country is rich enough to pay the price. But "measures which, under the pretext of correcting abuses, would immeasurably extend the state's sphere of action and reduce the liberty of the citizen" are a menace and a warning that individuality, the basis of American character and institutions, may disappear.

There is no danger of the republic falling apart. The war of 1861 settled that and now no one really desires separation. The mutual interests, mutual markets, spirit of nationality, and manifold advantages have bound the Union together with hoops of steel. Nor is there danger from abroad. No invasion is possible. America does not seek an adventurous career in the way of expansion. Its attitude towards foreign nations is one of good will, fairness, coöperation, and friendliness. America's dangers are from within.

CHAPTER XXIX

AN UNBRIDLED MAJORITY RULE AND ATTACKS ON THE CONSTITUTION AND THE SUPREME COURT

WHEN the checks and balances of the Constitution prevent the majority of the voters, legislators, and congressmen from having their own arbitrary way, or when Congress passes a law and the Supreme Court declares it unconstitutional, or a state legislature passes a law and the Supreme Court declares it unconstitutional, the cry goes up that the majority should rule absolutely and that the checks imposed by the Constitution mark it as an outworn and superannuated document. The very thing which the framers of the Constitution sought most to prevent, namely, the tyranny of an unbridled majority, is now denounced as a cardinal defect of the Constitution itself. The majority would sweep on unchecked to its will. First of all it would destroy the power of the Supreme Court. In fact, that citadel of constitutionality has been attacked by furious factions from time to time for over a hundred years. The radicals want their way without regard to the constitutional rights of the minority. The provisions protecting life, liberty, and property and dividing governmental powers between the federal government and the states, thereby preventing Congress from invading state powers and preventing states from invading federal powers, are denounced and a demand made that they be construed away or the power of the Supreme Court restricted or the Constitution itself changed.

This is revolutionary, and if carried out would destroy the republic. The majority already rule and should rule within constitutional limitations. Those limitations check hasty action

and guard fundamental rights. The Constitution does not stand in the way of progress. The law moves forward, but more carefully than hasty public sentiment. In fact, the law already is profoundly modifying old ideas and in a regular way. Public service corporations, such as railroads and local public utilities, are being subjected to "regulation," which invades more and more the supposed vested rights. Regulation of rents is doing the same as to real estate. Taxation of inheritances is breaking up great fortunes. Soon the state may limit inheritances going to one person. Liberty of contract is also departing from the ideas of the early days of the republic. Labor laws, anti-trust laws, public service commission laws, child labor laws, laws affecting women, profiteering laws, rent laws, and blue sky laws all based on an extension of the "police power" show the movement of the age. The important point is that any desirable change can be and is worked out constitutionally without an arbitrary overriding of the minority. A recall of judges or a destruction of their power is like Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple. An unbridled democracy leads to revolt and that leads to the "man on horseback," a savior of society, who promptly becomes emperor and establishes an aristocracy. The majority in this country are a mighty power, but if they ever destroy the checks of the Constitution on their power they will pull down the ruins over their head. Lyman Abbott points out that "de Tocqueville said 'If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority.' They emphasize the truth that the absolutism of democracy is as dangerous as any other form of absolutism, and that it is as necessary for the protection of society to limit the power of a democratic State as it is to limit the power of an individual monarch."1 "The issue," said Professor Sumner of Yale, is the "republican issue which cleaves down through our entire political and social fabric, the issue to which parties must ever return and about which they will always form so long as

this experiment lasts the issue, namely, of constitutionalism versus democracy, of law versus self-will; the question whether we are a constitutional republic whose ultimate bond is the loyalty of the individual citizen to the Constitution and the laws, or a democracy in which at any time the laws and the Constitution may give way to what shall seem, although not constitutionally expressed, to be the will of the people." Professor Santayana of Harvard recent'y wrote " It would be well if people in England and America woke up to the fact that it is in the name of natural liberty and direct democracy that enemies both within and without are already rising up against their democracy and their liberty." 2

1

A defeated litigant in the highest court, state or federal, tries to forget his disappointment, but a defeated class, interested in a statute declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, excitedly demands that the court be abolished or its power restricted. There is always a way to change the law if the public want a change badly enough to persist. But that is considered too slow and difficult. An attack is made on the court itself the most original, unique, and preservative of all American institutions. This attack is made by a loud-mouthed faction which wishes to use the government, state or federal, to carry out some "reform" or advance some class interest. And the wilder the scheme the greater the noise. It is the demagogue's opportunity. The attacks know no end. Fortunately the public is accustomed to these outbursts and declines to become excited or even disturbed. The issue would be much more dangerous if a majority really sought to sweep away the powers of the Supreme Court. The alarming thing is that some University professors are teaching that the Constitution should be thrown into the discard. It matters not to them that so recent an English statesman as Gladstone said "The American Constitution is the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man." An assistant professor in one of our leading Univer