Page:Notes on democracy - 1926.djvu/48

 obvious moral—and, by an easy step, political—consequences. There are about six and a half million farmers in the United States. Keep in mind the fact that at least six millions of them are forced to live in unmitigated monogamy with wives whose dominant yearning is to save the heathen hordes in India from hell fire, and you will begin to get some grasp of the motives behind such statutes as the celebrated Mann Act. The sea-sick passenger on the ocean liner detests the “good sailor’ who stalks past him a hundred times a day, obscenely smoking large, greasy, gold-banded cigars. In precisely the same way democratic man hates the fellow who is having a better time of it in this world. Such, indeed, is the origin of democracy. And such is the origin of its twin, Puritanism.

The city proletarian, of course, is a cut above the hind, if only because his natural envy of his betters is mitigated and mellowed by panem et circenses. His life may be swinish, but it is seldom dull. In good times there is actual money in his hand, and immense and complicated organizations offer him gaudy entertainment in return for it. In bad times his basic wants are met out of the community funds, and