method of elective control not
a part but the whole of the fortunes of humanity, to commit to it not
merely the form of government and the necessary maintenance of law,
order and public safety, but the whole operation of the production and
distribution of the world's goods, the case is altered. The time is ripe
then for retrospect over the experience of the nineteenth century and
for a realization of what has proved in that experience the peculiar
defects of elective democracy.

Mr. Bellamy pictures his elected managers,--as every socialist has to
do,--as a sagacious and paternal group, free from the interest of self
and the play of the baser passions and animated only by the thought of
the public good. Gravely they deliberate; wisely and justly they decide.
Their gray heads--for Bellamy prefers them old--are bowed in quiet
confabulation over the nice adjustment of the national production, over
the petition of this or that citizen. The public care sits heavily on
their breast. Their own peculiar fortune they have lightly passed by.
They do not favor their relations or their friends. They do not count
their hours of toil. They do not enumerate their gain. They work, in
short, as work the angels.

Now let me ask in the name of sanity where are such officials to be
found? Here and there, perhaps, one sees in the world of to-day in the
stern virtue of an honorable public servant some approximation to such a
civic ideal. But how much, too, has been seen of the rule of "cliques"
and "interests" and "bosses;" of the election of genial incompetents
popular as spendthrifts; of crooked partisans warm to their friends and
bitter to their enemies; of administration by a party for a party; and
of the insidious poison of commercial greed defiling the wells of public
honesty. The unending conflict between business and politics, between
the private gain and the public good, has been for two generations the
despair of modern democracy. It turns this way and that in its vain
effort to escape corruption. It puts its faith now in representative
legislatures, and now in appointed boards and commissions; it appeals to
the vote of the whole people or it places an almost autocratic power and
a supreme responsibility in the hands of a single man. And nowhere has
the escape been found. The melancholy lesson is being learned that the
path of human progress is arduous and its forward movement slow and that
no mere form of government can aid unle