continue
indefinitely, or that it will spread to all parts of the country, it is
already sufficient to throw the balance of political power in favor of
the capitalists in the national elections. If we put the total number of
voters in the country at 15,000,000, we can see how significant is the
fact that more than a million, black and white, have already been
directly disfranchised in the South alone.

In view of these numerous methods of thwarting democracy in this country
(and there are others) there is no reason why the capitalists should not
permit political leaders after a time to accept a number of radical and
even revolutionary reforms in political methods. The direct election of
senators, though it was bitterly opposed a few years ago, is already
widely accepted; the direct nomination of the President has become the
law in several States; Mr. Roosevelt threatens that the "entire system"
may have to be changed, that constitutions may be "thrown out of the
window," and the power of judges over legislation abolished, which, as
he notes, has already been advocated by the Socialist member of
Congress[40]; the Wisconsin legislature formally calls for a national
constitutional convention and proposes to make the constitution
amendable henceforth by the "initiative"; Governor Woodrow Wilson
suggests that _many_ of our existing evils may be remedied by national
constitutional amendments[41], and two such amendments are now nearing
adoption after forty years, during which it was thought that all
amendment had ceased indefinitely.

Whether it will be decided to take away the power of the Supreme Court
over legislation and make it directly responsible to Congress or the
people, or to call a constitutional convention, is doubtful. A
convention, as Senator Heyburn recently pointed out in the Senate, is
"bigger than the Constitution" and might conceivably amend what is
declared in that instrument not to be amendable, by providing that the
States should be represented in the Senate in proportion to population.
Even then the existing partial disfranchisement of the electors would
prevent a new constitution from going "too far" in a democratic
direction. It is also true, as the same senator said, that the habit of
amending the Constitution is a dangerous one (to capitalism), and that
it might some day put the capitalistic government's life at stake[42].
But this after all amounts only to saying that political evolution, like
al