Government by “Some of the Governed”
By L. A. S.
The great coal strike, which to the great relief of the public is at last ended, represents a desperate effort on the part of the miners to better the dismal conditions of existence which are experienced by the average employee at the mines. These conditions, as every one who has investigated them knows, are but little removed from a state of actual slavery. They represent, beyond question, a lack on the part of the mine owners of that feeling of regard for their employees which is due to an individual as a human being. In spirit, if not in letter, they represent an invasion of human rights. They represent a strong tendency downward to the social and political levels of the laboring classes in the Old World monarchies. What is true of the industry controlled by the coal trust is true of other leading industries to a greater or less extent. There is a strong tendency on the part of all great combines of capital known as the trusts, to crush out individuality from their employees, to consider men as mere units of force, to make of them mere pins in the great machinery of their industrial enterprises, to be used as long as they will stand the grind, and then to be thrown out and replaced by new ones from the inexhaustible human supply which the country affords. This tends to the division of the people into two widely separated bodies—the “masses” and the “classes,” the latter being the masters, and the former the servants, or slaves; the “classes” having control of the machinery of the government, and the “masses” being under their dictation, the one division being the lords and the other the serfs of the new feudalage into which the industrial system of the nation is rapidly being merged. This is white slavery, and is squarely contrary to the principles of republican government. And at the very time when this tendency to industrial serfdom was beginning to be felt, the pivotal questions upon which the whole matter turns—that of the right of all persons to participate equally in the control of the government under which they live—came up before the American people; and in the national legislature at Washington voices were heard declaring that the Declaration of Independence is false in asserting that governments derive their just powers from “the consent of [all of] the governed,” but that “the consent of some of the governed” is the right source of governmental authority. And those voices have been listened to with respect both at Washington and throughout the States. More than this, that doctrine has been accepted and approved by the American people. It is a recognized principle of the national policy to-day. The very men who are now desperately struggling to keep from sinking beneath the social and political level of free and self-governing human beings, have sanctioned and put into effect in this republic the doctrine of government by consent of some of the governed. What have they done but voted themselves into bondage? In denying that “all men are created equal” in respect to their natural rights, they have admitted that they themselves may not be the political equals of others in the government; that they themselves may not have rights which all others are bound to respect. Right at the time when they most needed to make use of the logic of the Declaration of Independence, they have deprived themselves of all logic by which they might maintain their political vantage ground against the encroachments of unscrupulous wealth. In voting for a system of serfdom under this government for others of a different race, they have unwittingly, but none the less surely, set up a despotism of which they themselves are the destined victims. The wise founders of this republic, having in view the miseries of the people under the bondage of the Old World systems of government, where the “divine right” of kings and the “right” which was synonymous with might were the only rights acknowledged and maintained, set up a government in this New World upon the principle that “all men are created equal.” To-day, this principle has been repudiated with reference to certain foreign peoples that have been subjected to the national authority; but the repudiation will not stop there. A part of the barrier having been torn down, the entering flood soon widens the breach, and no natural stopping point is reached in the process until the whole is leveled. And in the process of establishing control of the government by “some” of the governed, there is no natural stopping point short of the position that “some of the governed” are simply those who have the power to rule their fellows; a return to— “The good old plan
That he may get who has the power,
And he may keep who can.” White men are as ready to make slaves of white men as of black men. White slaves have never been less numerous the world over than those of another color. The principle of the political equality of all men, expressed in the words of the Declaration of Independence, is a safeguard against the creation of such abnormal social gaps as exist between the slave and his master, or between the lords and barons and the serfs who perform their bidding. Now the specter of an industrial serfdom in which, at most, only the forms of civil liberty will be left them, is looming over the heads of American workingmen; and whom but themselves will they have to blame if they shall find themselves excluded from that favored class designated by the phrase “some of the governed,” in whose hands the governmental power shall be reposed? L. A. S.