Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/743

 POPULAR INITIATIVE 727

golden rule is founded on brute strength, demands it. It is a doctrine founded on might as expressed by numbers, taking no account of the rights of the minority. It appeals to men who abominate order and stability.

Much the same may be said with exact truth of the publica- tions that are the most persistent advocates of the initiative. It is claimed that there are some 3,000 newspapers and periodicals in the United States that indorse the initiative and referendum. Nothing can be found to substantiate it ; a great majority of them are merely for the referendum. It is significant, moreover, that the relatively few daily newspapers which are hot advocates of the initiative are, with rare exceptions, of the class afflicted with moral strabismus notorious panders to morbid sensationalism and class-hatred. The explanation is obvious.

It may truthfully be said that the principal arguments of all the writers in the country favoring the initiative are based upon the declarations quoted at the beginning of this chapter. With these assertions as texts, thousands of pamphlets and a con- siderable number of books have been produced in which it has been argued ad libitum that the people have been steadily robbed of their rights; that congresses, legislatures, and councils have grown steadily more corrupt ; and that the only beneficent scheme of salvation for all political and social ills is to place the law- making power in the hands of the populace and trust entirely to the wisdom of the majority.

Throughout the literature of the radical initiative protago- nists runs this raucous song and refrain : " Laws are passed that the people don't want, and laws they do want are not passed. Legislatures cannot be trusted, for they are creatures of corrupt agencies. Only the initiative can destroy the private monopoly of legislative power and establish public ownership of the gov- ernment ! " This might be credited to any one of them, but it is enough to cite Parsons, Direct Legislation, p. 22.

Nothing could be more demagogical. There is no evidence to bear out the wail. There are, in absolute fact, very few meretricious laws in force in any of the states. Bad laws are sometimes passed, but they seldom stand long. The writer has