Page:Forty years of it (IA fortyyearsofit00whitiala).pdf/348



Meanwhile, the education of the general mind went on, and we were, after all, tending somewhither. Our experience in the greatest of our tasks demonstrated that, and in the change that gradually took place in sentiment concerning the street railway problem, there was an evidence of the development of a mass consciousness, a mass will, which some time in these cities of ours will justify democracy. It is of course the most difficult process in the world, for a mass of two hundred thousand people to unite in the expression of a will concerning a single abstract proposition. The mass to be sure can now and then as it were rear its head and blaze forth wrath and accomplish some instant work of destruction; even if it be nothing more than the destruction of an individual reputation. That is why the recall is so popular and so generously and frequently employed in those cities that have it. In such elections, with their personal and human center of interest, the people all turn out, while in a referendum involving some abstract principle, the vote cast is always small. That is why the referendum is so important, and the recall, relatively, so unimportant; the use of the first in the long run will afford a fine schooling for the people.

The most familiar expression of this rage of course was the clamor for the indictment and imprisonment of some one connected in sinister ways with the company, a demand with which I never had