The Call of the Twentieth Century | Page 3

two points." If something needs doing, do it; the more plainly, directly, honestly, the better.
The earlier centuries cared little for the life of a man. Hence they failed to discriminate. In masses and mobs they needed kings and rulers but could not choose them. Hence the device of selecting as ruler the elder son of the last ruler, whatever his nature might be. A child, a lunatic, a monster, a sage,--it was all the same to these unheeding centuries. The people could not follow those they understood or who understood them. They must trust all to the blind chance of heredity. Tyrant or figurehead, the mob, which from its own indifference creates the pomp of royalty, threw up its caps for the king, and blindly died for him in his courage or in his folly with the same unquestioning loyalty. In like manner did the mob fashion lords and princes, each in its own image. Not the man who would do or think or help, but the eldest son of a former lord was chosen for its homage. The result of it all was that no use was made of the forces of nature, for those who might have learned to control them were hunted to their death. The men who could think and act for themselves were in no position to give their actions leverage.
When a people really means to do something, it must resort to democracy. It must value men as men, not as functions of a chain of conventionalities. "America," says Emerson, "means opportunity;" opportunity for work, opportunity for training, opportunity for influence. Democracy exalts the individual. It realizes that of all the treasures of the nation, the talent of its individual men is the most important. It realizes that its first duty is to waste none of this. It cannot afford to leave its Miltons mute and inglorious nor to let its village Hampdens waste their strength on petty obstacles while it has great tasks for them to accomplish. In a democracy, when work is to be done men rise to do it. No matter what the origin of our Washingtons and Lincolns, our Grants and our Shermans, our Clevelands or our Roosevelts, our Eliots, our Hadleys, or our Remsens, we know that they are being made ready for every crisis which may need their hand, for every work we would have them carry through. To give each man the training he deserves is to bring the right man face to face with his own opportunity. The straight line is the shortest distance between two points in life as in geometry. For the work of a nation we may not call on Lord This or Earl That, whose ancestors have lain on velvet for a thousand years; we want the man who can do the work, who can face the dragon, or carry the message to García. A man whose nerves are not relaxed by centuries of luxury will serve us best. Give him a fair chance to try; give us a fair chance to try him. This is the meaning of democracy; not fuss and feathers, pomp and gold lace, but accomplishment.
Democracy does not mean equality--just the reverse of this, it means individual responsibility, equality before the law, of course--equality of opportunity, but no other equality save that won by faithful service. That social system which bids men rise must also let them fall if they cannot maintain themselves. To choose the right man means the dismissal of the wrong. The weak, the incompetent, the untrained, the dissipated find no growing welcome in the century which is coming. It will have no place for unskilled laborers. A bucket of water and a basket of coal will do all that the unskilled laborer can do if we have skilled men to direct them. The unskilled laborer is no product of democracy. He exists in spite of democracy. The children of the republic are entitled to something better. A generous education, a well-directed education, should be the birthright of each one of them. Democracy may even intensify natural inequalities. The man who cannot say no to cheap and vulgar temptations falls all the lower in the degree to which he is a free agent. In competition with men alert, loyal, trained and creative, the dullard is condemned to a lifetime of hard labor, through no direct fault of his own. Keep the capable man down and you may level the incapable one up. But this the Twentieth Century will not do. This democracy will not do; this it is not now doing, and this it never will attempt. The social condition which would give all men equal reward, equal enjoyment, equal responsibility, may be a condition to dream of. It may be Utopia; it is not democracy.