Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 84.djvu/197

Rh One of the most salutary uses of political agitation is, by sounding a note of caution, to keep business from running to that excess from which it is sure to rebound. Even agitation that is purely destructive may serve this purpose, however harmful it may be in other ways. The complete cessation of political agitation among a people so self-confident as those of the United States would in all probability result in such a reign of speculative activity as to prove a calamity. The politician helps to keep the industrial ship from becoming topheavy.

The fact that political agitation brings out the social side of modern life goes far to compensate for any unwarranted interference by agitators with business affairs. The various facilities, such as schools, books and magazines, which quicken the popular intelligence, would exist to little purpose if the ethical relations in which the age is so rich were barred from discussion. But for politics, considerations of public policy and the equity of social and industrial relations would receive all too scant attention. Few things bring out better the fact that we are all members one of another, or do more to turn people aside from sordid and purely personal ends. There is no game in which the nation finds more delight than politics. Few matters are so frequently the subject of editorial comment or occupy more space in the newspapers and magazines.

Our recurring presidential campaigns have an educational value which the preferential primary by compelling rival candidates to make their appeals directly to the voters promises to enhance. The discussion of such questions as free silver, the tariff, conservation, and the regulation of trusts and railways stimulates the popular intelligence. Viewed simply as a schoolmaster, Mr. Bryan has for years rendered the country an invaluable service. The wisdom of electing state officers and both houses of a legislature every year, as in Massachusetts, is more than doubtful. It is a fair question, however, whether the gain in having our presidential elections come every six years in place of quadrennially is worth what would be lost educationally. The discussion of national issues helps to preserve our sense of nationality. The primary purpose of democracy is not that men may become rich, but that human nature may be perfected by discussion, deliberation and criticism, by exercising the power of self-control, and by learning to give due weight to the rights of others. Any civilization is to be judged by the way it reacts upon the moral and spiritual side of man, and not by the extent, to which it heaps up riches, however necessary the latter may be to human wellbeing and progress.

In politics, as elsewhere, discretion is sometimes the better part of valor. The protected interests have mainly themselves to thank for the reduction of the tariff which they have experienced at the hands of the