Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 10.djvu/757

POPULAR INITIATIVE 74 1 stitutional, by that fact, without any further action, it becomes imperative to refer the law in question to a vote of the people. The decision of the people settles at once, and without further dispute, the constitutionality of the law.

There is pending in Congress a bill for a compulsory eight-hour law, and the American Federation of Labor, which is sponsor for it, insists that it shall prohibit working-men from working more than eight hours a day, as well as prohibit employers from requiring them to do so. The same bill, practically, was before the Fifty-seventh Congress, and was favorably reported by the Senate committee. But an attempt to forbid by law one man to work for another more than a certain number of hours a day, regardless of circumstances, and to punish him for so doing, is rightly characterized as an act of tyranny, and is simply one more forcible illustration of what would be attempted under the initiative.

Whether or not such dangerous power would ever be used to the extent that our constitution and bill of rights would be annulled is not the question for discussion. The danger of bestowing such power is the thing to be considered. Usurpation of power is just as possible by a democracy as by a tyrant, and history is replete with testimony that it has been used in just as tyrannical a manner.

When measures imposing burdens and taking away rights are to be passed into laws by this means, what will hinder the majority from so imposing the burdens that they will fall on other shoulders than their own, and so distributing the blessing that they will fall upon themselves?

A despotism of democracy, with its ignorance, brutality, and class-hatred, as continually exhibited in industrial turmoils, is the worst kind of despotism. Says Lecky:

A tendency to democracy does not mean a tendency to parliamentary government, or even a tendency toward greater liberty. On the contrary, democracy may often prove the direct opposite of liberty. A despotism resting on a plebiscite is quite as natural a form of democracy as a republic, and some of the strongest democratic tendencies are directly adverse to liberty. Equality is the idol of democracy, but with the infinitely various capacities and energies of men, this can only be attained by a constant, energetic, stringent repression of their natural development.

No student or thinker will for a moment deny that delibera-