uestioning and makes obedience a habit.
Let that infallibility come to be doubted, as in Russia to-day, and
natural impulses reassert themselves, the great impositions begin to
weaken. The methods of the Chicago Commission would require a tyranny, a
powerful, centralized sovereignty which could command with majesty and
silence the rebel. In our shirt-sleeved republic no such power exists.
The strongest force we have is that of organized money, and that
sovereignty is too closely connected with the social evil, too dependent
upon it in a hundred different ways, to undertake the task of
suppression.

For the purposes of the Commission democracy is an inefficient weapon.
Nothing but disappointment is in store for men who expect a people to
outrage its own character. A large part of the unfaith in democracy, of
the desire to ignore "the mob," limit the franchise, and confine power to
the few is the result of an unsuccessful attempt to make republics act
like old-fashioned monarchies. Almost every "crusade" leaves behind it a
trail of yearning royalists; many "good-government" clubs are little
would-be oligarchies.

When the mass of men emerged from slavish obedience and made democracy
inevitable, the taboo entered upon its final illness. For the more
self-governing a people becomes, the less possible it is to prescribe
external restrictions. The gap between want and ought, between nature and
ideals cannot be maintained. The only practical ideals in a democracy are
a fine expression of natural wants. This happens to be a thoroughly Greek
attitude. But I learned it first from the Bowery. Chuck Connors is
reported to have said that "a gentleman is a bloke as can do whatever he
wants to do." If Chuck said that, he went straight to the heart of that
democratic morality on which a new statecraft must ultimately rest. His
gentleman is not the battlefield of wants and prohibitions; in him
impulses flow freely through beneficent channels.

The same notion lies imbedded in the phrase: "government must serve the
people." That means a good deal more than that elected officials must
rule for the majority. For the majority in these semi-democratic times is
often as not a cloak for the ruling oligarchy. Representatives who
"serve" some majorities may in reality order the nation about. To serve
the people means to provide it with services--with clean streets and
water, with education, with opportunity, with beneficent channels for its
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