and the whole world, as when the Wisconsin
legislature proposes direct legislation and the recall in our national
government. But they are being warned against this "extremist" stand by
conservative progressive leaders of the industrial sections like
Ex-President Roosevelt or Governor Woodrow Wilson.

This latter type of progressive not only opposes the extension of
radical democracy to districts like our South and East, numerically
dominated by agricultural or industrial laborers, but often wants to
restrict the ballot in those regions. Professor E. A. Ross, for example,
writes in _La Follette's Weekly_ that "no one ought to be given the
ballot unless he can give proof of ability to read and write the English
language," which would disqualify a large part, if not the majority, of
the working people in many industrial centers; while Dr. Abbott
concluded a lengthy series of articles with the suggestion that the
Southern States have "set an example which it would be well, if it were
possible, for all the States to follow."

"Many of them have adopted in their constitutions," Dr. Abbott
continues, "a qualified suffrage. The qualifications are not the
same in all the States, but there is not one of those States in
which every man, black or white, has not a legal right to vote,
provided he can read and write the English language, owns three
hundred dollars' worth of property, and has paid his taxes. A
provision that no man should vote unless he has intelligence enough
to read and write, thrift enough to have laid up three hundred
dollars' worth of property, and patriotism enough to have paid his
taxes, would not be a bad provision for any State in the Union to
incorporate in its constitution."[38]

Such a provision accompanied by the customary Southern poll tax, which,
Dr. Abbott overlooked (evidently inadvertently), would add several
million more white workingmen to the millions (colored and white) that
are already without a vote.[39]

We cannot wonder, then, that the working people, who are enthusiastic
supporters of every democratic reform, should nevertheless distrust the
democracy of the new movement. It is generally supposed in the United
States that the reason the new "Insurgency" is weaker in the East than
in the West is because of the greater ignorance and political corruption
of the masses of the great cities of the East. But when we see the
radicalism