The New Freedom by Woodrow Wilson

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Politics differs from philanthropy in this: that in philanthropy we
sometimes do things through pity merely, while in politics we act always,
if we are righteous men, on grounds of justice and large expediency for
men in the mass. Sometimes in our pitiful sympathy with our fellow-men we
must do things that are more than just. We must forgive men. We must help
men who have gone wrong. We must sometimes help men who have gone
criminally wrong. But the law does not forgive. It is its duty to equalize
conditions, to make the path of right the path of safety and advantage, to
see that every man has a fair chance to live and to serve himself, to see
that injustice and wrong are not wrought upon any.

We ought not to permit passion to enter into our thoughts or our hearts
in this great matter; we ought not to allow ourselves to be governed by
resentment or any kind of evil feeling, but we ought, nevertheless, to
realize the seriousness of our situation. That seriousness consists,
singularly enough, not in the malevolence of the men who preside over our
industrial life, but in their genius and in their honest thinking. These
men believe that the prosperity of the United States is not safe unless it
is in their keeping. If they were dishonest, we might put them out of
business by law; since most of them are honest, we can put them out of
business only by making it impossible for them to realize their genuine
convictions. I am not afraid of a knave. I am not afraid of a rascal. I am
afraid of a strong man who is wrong, and whose wrong thinking can be
impressed upon other persons by his own force of character and force of
speech. If God had only arranged it that all the men who are wrong were
rascals, we could put them out of business very easily, because they would
give themselves away sooner or later; but God has made our task heavier
than that,--he has made some good men who think wrong. We cannot fight
them because they are bad, but because they are wrong. We must overcome
them by a better force, the genial, the splendid, the permanent force of a
better reason.

The reason that America was set up was that she might be different from
all the nations of the world in this: that the strong could not put the
weak to the wall, that the strong could not prevent the weak from entering
the race. America stands for opportunity. America stands for a free field
and no favor. America stands for a government responsive to the interests
of all. And until America recovers those ideals in practice, she will not
have the right to hold her head high again amidst the nations as she used
to hold it.

* * * * *

It is like coming out of a stifling cellar into the open where we can
breathe again and see the free spaces of the heavens to turn away from
such a doleful program of submission and dependence toward the other plan,
the confident purpose for which the people have given their mandate. Our
purpose is the restoration of freedom. We purpose to prevent private
monopoly by law, to see to it that the methods by which monopolies have
been built up are legally made impossible. We design that the limitations
on private enterprise shall be removed, so that the next generation of
youngsters, as they come along, will not have to become proteges of
benevolent trusts, but will be free to go about making their own lives
what they will; so that we shall taste again the full cup, not of charity,
but of liberty,--the only wine that ever refreshed and renewed the spirit
of a people.

X

THE WAY TO RESUME IS TO RESUME

One of the wonderful things about America, to my mind, is this: that for
more than a generation it has allowed itself to be governed by persons who
were not invited to govern it. A singular thing about the people of the
United States is their almost infinite patience, their willingness to
stand quietly by and see things done which they have voted against and do
not want done, and yet never lay the hand of disorder upon any arrangement
of government.

There is hardly a part of the United States where men are not aware that
secret private purposes and interests have been running the government.
They have been running it through the agency of those interesting persons
whom we call political "bosses." A boss is not so much a politician as the
business agent in politics of the special interests. The boss is not a
partisan; he is quite above politics! He has an understanding with the
boss of the other party, so that, whether it is heads or tails, we lose.
The two receive contributions from the same sources, and they spend those
contributions for the same purposes.

Bosses are men who have worked their way by secret methods to the place of
power they occupy; men who were never elected to anything; men who were
not asked by the people to conduct their government, and who are very much
more powerful than if you had asked them, so long as you leave them where
they are, behind closed doors, in secret conference. They are not
politicians; they have no policies,--except concealed policies of private
aggrandizement. A boss isn't a leader of a party. Parties do not meet in
back rooms; parties do not make arrangements which do not get into the
newspapers. Parties, if you reckon them by voting strength, are great
masses of men who, because they can't vote any other ticket, vote the
ticket that was prepared for them by the aforesaid arrangement in the
aforesaid back room in accordance with the aforesaid understanding. A boss
is the manipulator of a "machine." A "machine" is that part of a political
organization which has been taken out of the hands of the rank and file of
the party, captured by half a dozen men. It is the part that has ceased to
be political and has become an agency for the purposes of unscrupulous
business.

Do not lay up the sins of this kind of business to political
organizations. Organization is legitimate, is necessary, is even
distinguished, when it lends itself to the carrying out of great causes.
Only the man who uses organization to promote private purposes is a boss.
Always distinguish between a political leader and a boss. I honor the man
who makes the organization of a great party strong and thorough, in order
to use it for public service. But he is not a boss. A boss is a man who
uses this splendid, open force for secret purposes.

One of the worst features of the boss system is this fact, that it works
secretly. I would a great deal rather live under a king whom I should at
least know, than under a boss whom I don't know. A boss is a much more
formidable master than a king, because a king is an obvious master,
whereas the hands of the boss are always where you least expect them to
be.

When I was in Oregon, not many months ago, I had some very interesting
conversations with Mr. U'Ren, who is the father of what is called the
Oregon System, a system by which he has put bosses out of business. He is
a member of a group of public-spirited men who, whenever they cannot get
what they want through the legislature, draw up a bill and submit it to
the people, by means of the initiative, and generally get what they want.
The day I arrived in Portland, a morning paper happened to say, very
ironically, that there were two legislatures in Oregon, one at Salem, the
state capital, and the other going around under the hat of Mr. U'Ren. I
could not resist the temptation of saying, when I spoke that evening,
that, while I was the last man to suggest that power should be
concentrated in any single individual or group of individuals, I would,
nevertheless, after my experience in New Jersey, rather have a legislature
that went around under the hat of somebody in particular whom I knew I
could find than a legislature that went around under God knows who's hat;
because then you could at least put your finger on your governing force;
you would know where to find it.

Why do we continue to permit these things? Isn't it about time that we
grew up and took charge of our own affairs? I am tired of being under age
in politics. I don't want to be associated with anybody except those who
are politically over twenty-one. I don't wish to sit down and let any man
take care of me without my having at least a voice in it; and if he
doesn't listen to my advice, I am going to make it as unpleasant for him
as I can. Not because my advice is necessarily good, but because no
government is good in which every man doesn't insist upon his advice being
heard, at least, whether it is heeded or not.

Some persons have said that representative government has proved too
indirect and clumsy an instrument, and has broken down as a means of
popular control. Others, looking a little deeper, have said that it was
not representative government that had broken down, but the effort to get
it. They have pointed out that, with our present methods of machine
nomination and our present methods of election, which give us nothing more
than a choice between one set of machine nominees and another, we do not
get representative government at all,--at least not government
representative of the people, but merely government representative of
political managers who serve their own interests and the interests of
those with whom they find it profitable to establish partnerships.

Obviously, this is something that goes to the root of the whole matter.
Back of all reform lies the method of getting it. Back of the question,
What do you want, lies the question,--the fundamental question of all
government,--How are you going to get it? How are you going to get public
servants who will obtain it for you? How are you going to get genuine
representatives who will serve your interests, and not their own or the
interests of some special group or body of your fellow-citizens whose
power is of the few and not of the many? These are the queries which have
drawn the attention of the whole country to the subject of the direct
primary, the direct choice of their officials by the people, without the
intervention of the nominating machine; to the subject of the direct
election of United States Senators; and to the question of the initiative,
referendum, and recall.

* * * * *

The critical moment in the choosing of officials is that of their
nomination more often than that of their election. When two party
organizations, nominally opposing each other but actually working in
perfect understanding and co-operation, see to it that both tickets have
the same kind of men on them, it is Tweedledum or Tweedledee, so far as
the people are concerned; the political managers have us coming and going.
We may delude ourselves with the pleasing belief that we are electing our
own officials, but of course the fact is we are merely making an
indifferent and ineffectual choice between two sets of men named by
interests which are not ours.

So that what we establish the direct primary for is this: to break up the
inside and selfish determination of the question who shall be elected to
conduct the government and make the laws of our commonwealths and our
nation. Everywhere the impression is growing stronger that there can be no
means of dominating those who have dominated us except by taking this
process of the original selection of nominees into our own hands. Does
that upset any ancient foundations? Is it not the most natural and simple
thing in the world? You say that it does not always work; that the people
are too busy or too lazy to bother about voting at primary elections?
True, sometimes the people of a state or a community do let a direct
primary go by without asserting their authority as against the bosses. The
electorate of the United States is occasionally like the god Baal: it is
sometimes on a journey or it is sometimes asleep; but when it does awake,
it does not resemble the god Baal in the slightest degree. It is a great
self-possessed power which effectually takes control of its own affairs. I
am willing to wait. I am among those who believe so firmly in the
essential doctrines of democracy that I am willing to wait on the
convenience of this great sovereign, provided I know that he has got the
instrument to dominate whenever he chooses to grasp it.

Then there is another thing that the conservative people are concerned
about: the direct election of United States Senators. I have seen some
thoughtful men discuss that with a sort of shiver, as if to disturb the
original constitution of the United States Senate was to do something
touched with impiety, touched with irreverence for the Constitution
itself. But the first thing necessary to reverence for the United States
Senate is respect for United States Senators. I am not one of those who
condemn the United States Senate as a body; for, no matter what has
happened there, no matter how questionable the practices or how corrupt
the influences which have filled some of the seats in that high body, it
must in fairness be said that the majority in it has all the years through
been untouched by stain, and that there has always been there a sufficient
number of men of integrity to vindicate the self-respect and the
hopefulness of America with regard to her institutions.

But you need not be told, and it would be painful to repeat to you, how
seats have been bought in the Senate; and you know that a little group of
Senators holding the balance of power has again and again been able to
defeat programs of reform upon which the whole country had set its heart;
and that whenever you analyzed the power that was behind those little
groups you have found that it was not the power of public opinion, but
some private influence, hardly to be discerned by superficial scrutiny,
that had put those men there to do that thing.

Now, returning to the original principles upon which we profess to stand,
have the people of the United States not the right to see to it that every
seat in the Senate represents the unbought United States of America? Does
the direct election of Senators touch anything except the private control
of seats in the Senate? We remember another thing: that we have not been
without our suspicions concerning some of the legislatures which elect
Senators. Some of the suspicions which we entertained in New Jersey about
them turned out to be founded upon very solid facts indeed. Until two
years ago New Jersey had not in half a generation been represented in the
United States Senate by the men who would have been chosen if the process
of selecting them had been free and based upon the popular will.

We are not to deceive ourselves by putting our heads into the sand and
saying, "Everything is all right." Mr. Gladstone declared that the
American Constitution was the most perfect instrument ever devised by the
brain of man. We have been praised all over the world for our singular
genius for setting up successful institutions, but a very thoughtful
Englishman, and a very witty one, said a very instructive thing about
that: he said that to show that the American Constitution had worked well
was no proof that it is an excellent constitution, because Americans could
run any constitution,--a compliment which we laid like sweet unction to
our soul; and yet a criticism which ought to set us thinking.

While it is true that when American forces are awake they can conduct
American processes without serious departure from the ideals of the
Constitution, it is nevertheless true that we have had many shameful
instances of practices which we can absolutely remove by the direct
election of Senators by the people themselves. And therefore I, for one,
will not allow any man who knows his history to say to me that I am acting
inconsistently with either the spirit or the essential form of the
American government in advocating the direct election of United States
Senators.

Take another matter. Take the matter of the initiative and referendum,
and the recall. There are communities, there are states in the Union, in
which I am quite ready to admit that it is perhaps premature, that perhaps
it will never be necessary, to discuss these measures. But I want to call
your attention to the fact that they have been adopted to the general
satisfaction in a number of states where the electorate had become
convinced that they did not have representative government.

Why do you suppose that in the United States, the place in all the world
where the people were invited to control their own government, we should
set up such an agitation as that for the initiative and referendum and the
recall. When did this thing begin? I have been receiving circulars and
documents from little societies of men all over the United States with
regard to these matters, for the last twenty-five years. But the circulars
for a long time kindled no fire. Men felt that they had representative
government and they were content. But about ten or fifteen years ago the
fire began to burn,--and it has been sweeping over wider and wider areas
of the country, because of the growing consciousness that something
intervenes between the people and the government, and that there must be
some arm direct enough and strong enough to thrust aside the something
that comes in the way.

I believe that we are upon the eve of recovering some of the most
important prerogatives of a free people, and that the initiative and
referendum are playing a great part in that recovery. I met a man the
other day who thought that the referendum was some kind of an animal,
because it had a Latin name; and there are still people in this country
who have to have it explained to them. But most of us know and are deeply
interested. Why? Because we have felt that in too many instances our
government did not represent us, and we have said: "We have got to have a
key to the door of our own house. The initiative and referendum and the
recall afford such a key to our own premises. If the people inside the
house will run the place as we want it run, they may stay inside and we
will keep the latchkeys in our pockets. If they do not, we shall have to
re-enter upon possession."

Let no man be deceived by the cry that somebody is proposing to substitute
direct legislation by the people, or the direct reference of laws passed
in the legislature, to the vote of the people, for representative
government. The advocates of these reforms have always declared, and
declared in unmistakable terms, that they were intending to recover
representative government, not supersede it; that the initiative and
referendum would find no use in places where legislatures were really
representative of the people whom they were elected to serve. The
initiative is a means of seeing to it that measures which the people want
shall be passed,--when legislatures defy or ignore public opinion. The
referendum is a means of seeing to it that the unrepresentative measures
which they do not want shall not be placed upon the statute book.

When you come to the recall, the principle is that if an administrative
officer,--for we will begin with the administrative officer,--is corrupt
or so unwise as to be doing things that are likely to lead to all sorts of
mischief, it will be possible by a deliberate process prescribed by the
law to get rid of that officer before the end of his term. You must admit
that it is a little inconvenient sometimes to have what has been called an
astronomical system of government, in which you can't change anything
until there has been a certain number of revolutions of the seasons. In
many of our oldest states the ordinary administrative term is a single
year. The people of those states have not been willing to trust an
official out of their sight more than twelve months. Elections there are a
sort of continuous performance, based on the idea of the constant touch of
the hand of the people on their own affairs. That is exactly the principle
of the recall. I don't see how any man grounded in the traditions of
American affairs can find any valid objection to the recall of
administrative officers. The meaning of the recall is merely this,--not
that we should have unstable government, not that officials should not
know how long their power might last,--but that we might have government
exercised by officials who know whence their power came and that if they
yield to private influences they will presently be displaced by public
influences.

You will of course understand that, both in the case of the initiative and
referendum and in that of the recall, the very existence of these powers,
the very possibilities which they imply, are half,--indeed, much more than
half,--the battle. They rarely need to be actually exercised. The fact
that the people may initiate keeps the members of the legislature awake to
the necessity of initiating themselves; the fact that the people have the
right to demand the submission of a legislative measure to popular vote
renders the members of the legislature wary of bills that would not pass
the people; the very possibility of being recalled puts the official on
his best behavior.

It is another matter when we come to the judiciary. I myself have never
been in favor of the recall of judges. Not because some judges have not
deserved to be recalled. That isn't the point. The point is that the
recall of judges is treating the symptom instead of the disease. The
disease lies deeper, and sometimes it is very virulent and very dangerous.
There have been courts in the United States which were controlled by
private interests. There have been supreme courts in our states before
which plain men could not get justice. There have been corrupt judges;
there have been controlled judges; there have been judges who acted as
other men's servants and not as the servants of the public. Ah, there are
some shameful chapters in the story! The judicial process is the ultimate
safeguard of the things that we must hold stable in this country. But
suppose that that safeguard is corrupted; suppose that it does not guard
my interests and yours, but guards merely the interests of a very small
group of individuals; and, whenever your interest clashes with theirs,
yours will have to give way, though you represent ninety per cent. of the
citizens, and they only ten per cent. Then where is your safeguard?

The just thought of the people must control the judiciary, as it controls
every other instrument of government. But there are ways and ways of
controlling it. If,--mark you, I say _if_,--at one time the Southern
Pacific Railroad owned the supreme court of the State of California, would
you remedy that situation by recalling the judges of the court? What good
would that do, so long as the Southern Pacific Railroad could substitute
others for them? You would not be cutting deep enough. Where you want to
go is to the process by which those judges were selected. And when you get
there, you will reach the moral of the whole of this discussion, because
the moral of it all is that the people of the United States have
suspected, until their suspicions have been justified by all sorts of
substantial and unanswerable evidence, that, in place after place, at
turning-points in the history of this country, we have been controlled by
private understandings and not by the public interest; and that influences
which were improper, if not corrupt, have determined everything from the
making of laws to the administration of justice. The disease lies in the
region where these men get their nominations; and if you can recover for
the people the _selecting_ of judges, you will not have to trouble about
their recall. Selection is of more radical consequence than election.

* * * * *

I am aware that those who advocate these measures which we have been
discussing are denounced as dangerous radicals. I am particularly
interested to observe that the men who cry out most loudly against what
they call radicalism are the men who find that their private game in
politics is being spoiled. Who are the arch-conservatives nowadays? Who
are the men who utter the most fervid praise of the Constitution of the
United States and the constitutions of the states? They are the gentlemen
who used to get behind those documents to play hide-and-seek with the
people whom they pretended to serve. They are the men who entrenched
themselves in the laws which they misinterpreted and misused. If now they
are afraid that "radicalism" will sweep them away,--and I believe it
will,--they have only themselves to thank.

Yet how absurd is the charge that we who are demanding that our government
be made representative of the people and responsive to their demands,--how
fictitious and hypocritical is the charge that we are attacking the
fundamental principles of republican institutions! These very men who
hysterically profess their alarm would declaim loudly enough on the Fourth
of July of the Declaration of Independence; they would go on and talk of
those splendid utterances in our earliest state constitutions, which have
been copied in all our later ones, taken from the Petition of Rights, or
the Declaration of Rights, those great fundamental documents of the
struggle for liberty in England; and yet in these very documents we read
such uncompromising statements as this: that, when at any time the people
of a commonwealth find that their government is not suitable to the
circumstances of their lives or the promotion of their liberties, it is
their privilege to alter it at their pleasure, and alter it in any
degree. That is the foundation, that is the very central doctrine, that is
the ground principle, of American institutions.

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