Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/48

 36 But—when the union denies to any man the right to earn his living by any honest work which he chooses—when physical violence is used to enforce this denial—then there is a tyranny as utter and as brutal as any ever wielded by absolute monarch. Freedom is a cherished boon in this American republic. Our forefathers gave their blood and their lives to win it. And we their children will not easily yield it at the demand of any man or of any body of men.

Bearing in mind, then, the imbecility of one vital branch of our republican form of government, the grasping and pitiless tyranny of aggregated capital, and the equally brutal tyranny of aggregated labor, it is well to ask ourselves seriously the question whether these ominous dangers are inherent in our republican democracy. They are sapping the national strength. They are disintegrating the national conscience. They are corrupting the national heart. Can we escape them by a monarchy? Is aristocracy really the government of the best? Was the declaration of independence in truth the beginning of our woes?

In trying to answer these questions we should remember in the first place that democracy brings all things into the light. Democracy is eternally inquisitive. The "bright, keen sunlight of publicity" brings out every blemish, searches into every flaw. Our ladies will assure us that it is only a perfect complexion which will stand a blaze of direct light. Shadows and cloudy days soften rugged outlines. It is just so in the state. Surely no autocracy could be more absolute than that of Russia. And could free speech and a free press exploit the reserve of that autocratic administration, there is little doubt that there would be revealed a corruption which would out-Tammany Tammany itself. In other words, we may be very sure that we know the very worst of our democracy. But who knows the quiet things which underlie the smooth surface of hereditary aristocracy? Now and then a Stead drags them into daylight—and he goes to prison for his pains. Now and then a Bastile is stormed—and the secrets of the prison crypts are revealed. Nepotism and sinecures, too, are the horror of democracy—they are the