will develop. One chamber would then represent
a man's sectional interests as a consumer: the
other his professional interests as a producer.
The railway workers, the miners, the doctors, the
teachers, the retail merchants would have direct
representation in the "Interessenvertrag." You
might call it a Chamber of Special Interests. I
know how that phrase "Special Interests" hurts.
In popular usage we apply it only to corrupting
businesses. But our feeling against them should
not blind us to the fact that every group in the
^64!
THE RED HERRING
community has Its special Interests. They will
always exist until mankind becomes a homogeneous
jelly. The problem is to find some social adjust-
ment for all the special interests of a nation.
That is best achieved by open recognition and
clear representation. Let no one then confuse
the "Interessenvertrag" with those existing legis-
latures which are secret Chambers of Special
Privilege.
The scheme Is worth looking at for it does do
away with the present dilemma of the citizen in
which he wonders helplessly whether he ought to
vote as a consumer or as a producer. I believe he
should have both votes, and the *'Interessenver-
trag" Is a way.
These devices are mentioned here as Illustra-
tions and not as conclusions. You can think of
them as arrangements by which the red herring
Is turned from a pest Into a benefit. I grant that
in the rigid political conditions prevailing to-day
a new Issue Is an embarrassment, perhaps a
hindrance to the procedure of political life. But
instead of narrowing the scope of politics, to
avoid It, the only sensible thing to do Is to Invent
methods which will allow needs and problems
and group Interests avenues Into politics.
But a suggestion like this Is sure to be met with
265
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
the argument which Woodrow Wilson has In
mind when he says that the ''questions Involved
are social and moral and are not susceptible of
being made parts of a party program." He
voices a common belief when he insists that there
are moral and social problems, "essentially non-
political.'^ Innocent as it looks at first sight this
plea by Woodrow Wilson is weighted with the
tradition of a century and a half. To my mind
It symbolizes a view of the state which we are out-
growing, and throws Into relief the view towards
which we are struggling. Its Implications are
well worth tracing, for through them I think we
can come to understand better the method of
Twentieth Century politics.
It Is perfectly true that that government Is
best which governs least. It is equally true that
that government Is best which provides most. The
first truth belongs to the Eighteenth Century:
the second to the Twentieth. Neither of them
can be neglected In our attitude towards the state.
Without the Jeffersonian distrust of the police we
might easily grow into an Impertinent and tyran-
nous collectivism: without a vivid sense of the
possibilities of the state we abandon the supreme
instrument of civilization. The two theories need
to be held together, yet clearly distinguished.
^66
THE RED HERRING
Government has been an exalted policeman: it
was there to guard property and to prevent us
from quarreling too violently. That was about
all It was good for. Yet society found problems
on Its hands — problems which Woodrow Wilson
calls moral and social In their nature. Vice and
crime, disease, and grinding poverty forced them-
selves on the attention of the community. A
typical example Is the way the social evil com-
pelled the city of Chicago to begin an investiga-
tion. Yet when government was asked to handle
the question It had for wisdom an ancient con-
ception of Itself as a policeman. Its only method
was to forbid, to prosecute, to jail — In short, to
use the taboo. But experience has shown that
the taboo will not solve "moral and social ques-
tions" — that nine times out of ten It aggravates
the disease. Political action becomes a petty,
futile, mean little intrusion when Its only method
is prosecution.
No wonder then that conservatlvely-mlndedl
men pray that moral and social questions be kept
out of politics; no wonder that more daring souls
begin to hate the whole Idea of government and
take to anarchism. So long as the state is con-
ceived merely as an agent of repression, the less
it interferes with our lives, the better. Much of
267
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
the horror of socialism comes from a belief that
by increasing the functions of government its
regulating power over our daily lives will grow
into a tyranny. I share this horror when certain
socialists begin to propound their schemes. There
IS a dreadful amount of forcible scrubbing and
arranging and pocketing implied in some social-
isms. There is a wish to have the state use its
position as general employer to become a censor
of morals and arbiter of elegance, like the benevo-
lent employers of the day who take an Impertinent
Interest in the private lives of their workers.
Without any doubt socialism has within it the
germs of that great bureaucratic tyranny which
Chesterton and Belloc have named the Servile
State.
So it is a wise instinct that makes men jealous
of the policeman's power. Far better we may
say that moral and social problems be left to
private solution than that they be subjected to
the clumsy method of the taboo. When Wood-
row Wilson argues that social problems are not
susceptible to treatment in a party program, he
must mean only one thing: that they cannot be
handled by the state as he conceives it He is
right. His attitude is far better than that of
the Vice Commission: It too had only a pollce-
^68
THE RED HERRING
man's view of government, but It proceeded to
apply it to problems that are not susceptible to
such treatment. Wilson, at least, knows the limi-
tations of his philosophy.
But once you see the state as a provider of
civilizing opportunities, his whole objection col-
lapses. As soon as government begins to supply
services, it is turning away from the sterile
tyranny of the taboo. The provision of schools,
streets, plumbing, highways, libraries, parks, uni-
versities, medical attention, post-offices, a Panama
Canal, agricultural information, fire protection —
is a use of government totally different from the
ideal of Jefferson. To furnish these opportunities
is to add to the resources of life, and only a doc-
trinaire adherence to a misunderstood Ideal will
raise any objection to them.
When an anarchist says that the state must be
abolished he does not mean what he says. What
he wants to abolish Is the repressive, not the
productive state. He cannot possibly object to
being furnished with the opportunity of writing
to his comrade three thousand miles away, of
drinking pure water, or taking a walk In the park.
Of course when he finds the post-office opening
his mail, or a law saying that he must drink
nothing but water, he begins to object even to
269
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
the services of the government. But that Is a
confusion of thought, for these tyrannies are
merely intrusions of the eighteenth century upon
the twentieth. The postmaster Is still something
of a policeman.
Once you realize that moral and social problems
must be treated to fine opportunities, that the
method of the future Is to compete with the devil
rather than to curse him; that the furnishing of
civilized environments is the goal of statecraft,
then there is no longer any reason for keeping
social and moral questions out of politics. They
are what politics must deal with essentially, now
that it has found a way. The policeman with
his taboo did make moral and social questions
Insusceptible to treatment in party platforms.
He kept the issues of politics narrow and Irrele-
vant, and just because these really Interesting ques-
tions could not be handled, politics was an over-
advertised hubbub. But the vision of the new
statecraft in centering politics upon human In-
terests becomes a creator of opportunities Instead
of a censor of morals, and deserves a fresh and
heightened regard.
The party platform will grow ever more and
more Into a program of services. In the past It
has been an armory of platitudes or a forecast of
^70
THE RED HERRING
punishments. It promised that It would stop this
evil practice, drive out corruption here, and
prosecute this-and-that offense. All that belongs
to a moribund tradition. Abuse and disuse char-
acterize the older view of the state: guardian
and censor It has been, provider but grudgingly.
The proclamations of so-called progressives that
they will jail financiers, or ''wage relentless war-
fare" upon social evils, are simply the reitera-
tions of men who do not understand the uses of
the state.
A political revolution Is In progress: the state
as policeman Is giving place to the state as pro-
ducer.
£71
CHAPTER IX
REVOLUTION AND CULTURE
THERE Is a legend of a peasant who lived
near Paris through the whole Napoleonic
era without ever having heard of the name of
Bonaparte. A story of that kind is enough to
make a man hesitate before he indulges in a flam-
boyant description of social changes. That peas-
ant is more than a symbol of the privacy of human
interest : he is a warning against the incurable ro-
manticism which clings about the idea of a revolu-
tion. Popular history is deceptive if it is used to
furnish a picture for coming events. Like drama
which compresses the tragedy of a lifetime Into a
unity of time, place, and action, history foreshort-
ens an epoch into an episode. It gains In poign-
ancy, but loses reality. Men grew from infancy to
old age, their children's children had married and
loved and worked while the social change we
speak of as the Industrial revolution was being
consummated. That is why It Is so difficult for
272
REVOLUTION AND CULTURE
living people to believe that they too are In the
midst of great transformations. What looks to
us like an Incredible rush of events sloping to-
wards a great historical crisis was to our an-
cestors little else than the occasional punctuation
of dally life with an exciting Incident. Even
to-day when we have begun to speak of our age
as a transition, there are millions of people who
live in an undisturbed routine. Even those of
us who regard ourselves as active in mothering
the process and alert In detecting Its growth are
by no means constantly aware of any great
change. For even the fondest mother cannot
watch her child grow.
I remember how tremendously surprised I was
In visiting Russia several years ago to find that
In Moscow or St. Petersburg men were Interested
in all sorts of things besides the revolution. I
had expected every Russian to be absorbed In
the struggle. It seemed at first as If my notions
of what a revolution ought to be were contra-
dicted everywhere. And I assure you It wrenched
the Imagination to see tidy nursemaids wheeling
perambulators and children playing diavolo on
the very square where Bloody Sunday had gone
into history. It takes a long perspective and no
very vivid acquaintance with revolution to be
^73
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
melodramatic about It. So much is left out of
history and biography which would spoil the ef-
fect. The anti-climax is almost always omitted.
Perhaps that is the reason why Arnold Ben-
nett's description of the siege of Paris in *'The
Old Wives' Tale" is so disconcerting to many
people. It Is hard to believe that daily life con-
tinues with its stretches of boredom and its per-
sonal Interests even while the enemy Is bombard-
ing a city. How much more difficult Is It to
imagine a revolution that Is to come — to space It
properly through a long period of time, to con-
ceive what it will be like to the people who live
through It. Almost all social prediction Is catas-
trophic and absurdly simplified. Even those who
talk of the slow "evolution" of society are hkely
to think of it as a series of definite changes easily
marked and well known to everybody. It Is what
Bernard Shaw calls the reformer's habit of mis-
taking his private emotions for a public move-
ment.
Even though the next century Is full of dramatic
episodes — the collapse of governments and labor
^ars — these events will be to the social revolu-
tion what the smashing of machines In Lancashire
was to the Industrial revolution. The reality that
Is worthy of attention Is a change In the very tex-
274
REVOLUTION AND CULTURE
ture and quality of millions of lives — a change
that will be vividly perceptible only in the retro-
spect of history.
The conservative often has a sharp sense of the
complexity of revolution : not desiring change, he
prefers to emphasize its difficulties, whereas the
reformer is enticed into a faith that the intensity
of desire is a measure of its social effect. Yet
just because no reform is in itself a revolution, we
must not jump to the assurance that no revolution
can be accomplished. True as it is that great
changes are imperceptible, it Is no less true that
they are constantly taking place. Moreover, for
the very reason that human life changes its quality
so slowly, the panic over political proposals is
childish.
It is obvious, for instance, that the recall of
judges will not revolutionize the national life.
That is why the opposition generated will seem
superstitious to the next generation. As I write,
a convention of the Populist Party has just taken
place. Eight delegates attended the meeting, which
was held in a parlor. Even the reactionary press
speaks in a kindly way about these men. Twenty
years ago the Populists were hated and feared
as if they practiced black magic. What they
wanted is on the point of realization. To some
^75
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
of US it looks like a drop in the bucket — a slight
part of vastly greater plans. But how stupid was
the fear of Populism, what unimaginative non-
sense it was to suppose twenty years ago that the
program was the road to the end of the world.
One good deed or one bad one is no measure
of a man's character: the Last Judgment let us
hope will be no series of decisions as simple as
that. "The soul survives its adventures," says
Chesterton with a splendid sense of justice. A
country survives its legislation. That truth should
not comfort the conservative nor depress the radi-
cal. For it means that public policy can enlarge
its scope and increase its audacity, can try big
experiments without trembling too much over the
result. This nation could enter upon the most
radical experiments and could afford to fail in
them. Mistakes do not affect us so deeply as
we imagine. Our prophecies of change are sub-
jective wishes or fears that never come to full
realization.
Those socialists are confused who think that
a new era can begin by a general strike or an
electoral victory. Their critics are just a bit
more confused when they become hysterical over
the prospect. Both of them over-emphasize the
importance of single events. Yet I do not wish
276
REVOLUTION AND CULTURE
to furnish the Impression that crises are negligible.
They are extremely important as symptoms, as
milestones, and as instruments. It is simply that
the reality of a revolution is not in a political
decree or the scarehead of a newspaper, but in
the experiences, feelings, habits of myriads of
men.
No one who watched the textile strike at
Lawrence, Massachusetts, in the winter of 19 12
can forget the astounding effect it had on the
complacency of the public. Very little was re-
vealed that any well-informed social worker does
not know as a commonplace about the mill pop-
ulation. The wretchedness and brutality of Law-
rence conditions had been described in books and
magazines and speeches until radicals had begun
to wonder at times whether the power of lan-
guage wasn't exhausted. The response was dis-
couragingly v/eak — an occasional government in-
vestigation, an impassioned protest from a few
individuals, a placid charity, were about all that
the middle-class public had to say about factory
life. The cynical indifference of legislatures and
the hypocrisy of the dominant parties were all
that politics had to offer. The Lawrence strike
touched the most Impervious: story after story
came to our ears of hardened reporters who sud-
277
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
denly refused to misrepresent the strikers, of
politicians aroused to action, of social workers
become revolutionary. Daily conversation was
shocked Into some contact with realities — the
newspapers actually printed facts about the situa-
tion of a working class population.
And why? The reason is not far to seek.
The Lawrence strikers did something more than
insist upon their wrongs; they showed a disposi-
tion to right them. That Is what scared public
opinion Into some kind of truth-telling. So long
as the poor are docile In their poverty, the rest
of us are only too willing to satisfy our con-
sciences by pitying them. But when the down-
trodden gather Into a threat as they did at Law-
rence, when they show that they have no stake
in civilization and consequently no respect for its
institutions, when the object of pity becomes the
avenger of its own miseries, then the middle-class
public begins to look at the problem more in-
telligently.
We are not civilized enough to meet an issue
before it becomes acute. We were not Intelligent
enough to free the slaves peacefully — we are not
Intelligent enough to-day to meet the industrial
problem before it develops a crisis. That is the
hard truth of the matter. And that is why no
278
REVOLUTION AND CULTURE
honest student of politics can plead that social
movements should confine themselves to argu-
ment and debate, abandoning the militancy of the
strike, the insurrection, the strategy of social con-
flict.
Those who deplore the use of force in the
labor struggle should ask themselves whether the
ruling classes of a country could be depended
upon to inaugurate a program of reconstruction
which would abolish the barbarism that prevails
in industry. Does anyone seriously believe that
the business leaders, the makers of opinion and
the politicians will, on their own initiative, bring
social questions to a solution? If they do it will
be for the first time in history. The trivial plans
they are introducing to-day — profit-sharing and
welfare work — are on their own admission an
attempt to quiet the unrest and ward off the
menace of socialism.
No, paternalism is not dependable, granting
that it is desirable. It will do very little more
than it feels compelled to do. Those who to-day
bear the brunt of our evils dare not throw them-
selves upon the mercy of their masters, not
though there are bread and circuses as a reward.
From the groups upon whom the pressure is most
direct must come the power to deal with it. We
^79
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
are not all immediately Interested In all problems:
our attention wanders unless the people who are
Interested compel us to listen.
Social movements are at once the symptoms
and the Instruments of progress. Ignore them
and statesmanship Is Irrelevant; fall to use them
and It Is weak. Often In the course of these
essays I have quoted from H. G. Wells. I must
do so again: *'Every party stands essentially for
the Interests and mental usages of some definite
class or group of classes In the exciting community,
and every party has Its scientific minded and con-
structive leading section, with well defined hinter-
lands formulating Its social functions in a public
spirited form, and its superficlal-mlnded follow-
ing confessing Its meannesses and vanities and
prejudices. No class will abolish Itself, ma-
terially alter Its way of living, or drastically re-
construct Itself, albeit no class Is indisposed to
co-operate In the unlimited socialization of any
other class. In that capacity for aggression upon
other classes lies the essential driving force of
modern affairs.'*
The truth of this can be tested in the socialist
movement. There Is a section among the social-
ists which regards the class movement of labor
as a driving force in the socialization of industry,
^80
REVOLUTION AND CULTURE
This group sees clearly that without the threat
of aggression no settlement of the issues is possi-
ble. Ordinarily such socialists say that the class
struggle is a movement which will end classes.
They mean that the self-interest of labor Is iden-
tical with the Interests of a community — that it
is a kind of social selfishness. But there are
other socialists who speak constantly of "working-
class government" and they mean just what they
say. It is their intention to have the community
ruled in the Interests of labor. Probe their minds
to find out what they mean by labor and in all
honesty you cannot escape the admission that they
mean industrial labor alone. These socialists
think entirely in terms of the factory population
of cities: the farmers, the small shop-keepers, the
professional classes have only a perfunctory in-
terest for them. I know that no end of phrases
could be adduced to show the inclusiveness of the
word labor. But their Intention Is what I have
tried to describe: they are thinking of govern-
ment by a factory population.
They appeal to history for confirmation: have
not all social changes, they ask, meant the emer-
gence of a new economic class until It dominated
society? Did not the French Revolution mean
the conquest of the feudal landlord by the mlddle-
^81
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
class merchant? Why should not the Social
Revolution mean the victory of the proletariat
over the bourgeoisie? That may be true, but It
Is no reason for being bullied by It Into a tame
admission that what has always been must always
be. I see no reason for exalting the unconscious
failures of other revolutions Into deliberate models
for the next one. Just because the capacity of
aggression In the middle class ran away with
things, and failed to fuse Into any decent social
Ideal, Is not ground for trying as earnestly as
possible to repeat the mistake.
The lesson of It all. It seems to me. Is this:
that class Interests are the driving forces which
keep public life centered upon essentials. They
become dangerous to a nation when It denies them,
thwarts them and represses them so long that they
burst out and become dominant. Then there is
no limit to their aggression until another class
appears with contrary Interests. The situation
might be compared to those hysterias in which
a suppressed Impulse flares up and rules the whole
mental life.
Social life has nothing whatever to fear from
group Interests so long as It doesn't try to play
the ostrich In regard to them. So the burden of
national crises Is squarely upon the dominant
REVOLUTION AND CULTURE
classes who fight so foolishly against the emergent
ones. That Is what precipitates violence, that Is
what renders social co-operation Impossible, that
is what makes catastrophes the method of change.
The wisest rulers see this. They know that the
responsibility for Insurrections rests In the last
analysis upon the unimaginative greed and end-
less stupidity of the dominant classes. There Is
something pathetic in the blindness of powerful
people when they face a social crisis. Fighting
viciously every readjustment which a nation de-
mands, they make their own overthrow Inevitable.
It Is they who turn opposing interests into a class
war. Confronted with the deep insurgency of
labor what do capitalists and their spokesmen do?
They resist every demand, submit only after a
struggle, and prepare a condition of war to the
death. When far-sighted men appear In the rul-
ing classes — men who recognize the need of a
civilized answer to this increasing restlessness, the
rich and the powerful treat them to a scorn and
a hatred that are incredibly bitter. The hostility
against men like Roosevelt, La Follette, Bryan,
Lloyd-George is enough to make an observer be-
lieve that the rich of to-day are as stupid as
the nobles of France before the Revolution.
It seems to me that Roosevelt never spoke
A PREFACE TO POLITICS
more wisely or as a better friend of civilization
than the time when he said at New York City
on March 20, 19 12, that "the woes of France
for a century and a quarter have been due to the
folly of her people In splitting Into the two camps
of unreasonable conservatism and unreasonable
radicalism. Had pre-Revolutlonary France lis-
tened to men like Turgot and backed them up