Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1911-01-26
ERA OF DIRECT
LEGISLATION
What William Allen White
Has to Say Of lnsur-
gency.
THE TREND OF THE TIMES
Is Toward Capitalization Of
Power---in Hands Of
the People
THE TREND OF THE TIMES


telling us, in numbers far from mourn
full, that life is not an empty dream,
that enhancing rhetOrician, William
Allen White, gives us another sort
of bird 's-eye view of the decade just
ending and shows us the political pro-
gress we have made. The struggle
for equal opportunity, he says in The
American Magazine, is the great
world-movement, and it is the core
of every great reform the world has
known. With few bold strokes he
puts in the background for his pic
ture of the decade, thus
IN civilization based upon war the
soldiers took the good things for them
selves-the easy jobs, the powerful
places, the social distinctions-the
special privileges. In social order
based upon religion the priests took
the fat and left the lean for the par
fshioners. In days of old when
knights were bold and barons held
their sway the picking all went to
the rulers. One after another of these
holders of special privileges was de-
throned, and Immediately the strong
men of the world organized along
different lines, and in a century or so
the reformer came along, cooked his
eye at the situation and began break
ing down the old order and setting
up the new. We can't change human
nature; strong men will get the best
of weak men. But we can and, thank
Heaven, we do come along every few
hundred years and take the soldier
the priest, or the politician by the
scruff of the neck and lift him gently
but firmly from his high seat at the
apex of the human pyramid and iron
out the pyramid into plane"
Just now it is the capitalist who
has to be attended to and "the insur-
gence of insurgency" in the United
States relates to him and to the "di-
vine right" of capital
The insurgent movement of the de-
cade, continues Mr.. White,has two
objects, one political, one economic
first to get the gun, then to hit some
thing with it. This struggle for the
gun-the political movement-has had
three definite stages. First was the
mild stage, the period of corrupt prac
tices acts and secret ballots. During
the first years of the decade practical
ly every state passed through that
stage. Next came the stage of the
direct primary, which arrays not one
boss against another, but all the
bosses against "the people," In thir
ty-twO American states this stage of
the contest has been entered upon
with varying degrees of efficiency. In
nearly every contest of this kind the
people have won and a new breed of
leaders has appeared, men who know
that their masters are not the great |
public service corporations, but the |
people. The third, or constructive, /
stage is manifest by demand for di /
rect legislation and the recall In
nine American states the principle of |
direct legislatiOn--the initiative and /
referendum-is now recognized Off /
cially. Maine, Missouri, Michigan |
Arkansas, Oklahoma. South Dakota |
Nevada, Oregon and Montana have |
put it in the constitution. A tenth |
state-TeXas-has a modified form of |
it in her primaries law. In eight |
other states-only one, Massachusetts
an eastern state-direct legislation
was this year pledged in the platform
of every party. In all but two of
the northern states west Of the Allie
ghenies, it is in the platform of at
least one Of the great parties In
our cities there are fifteen million
persons living under charters giving
them the referendum. Ten million
have the right of initiative. Two mil,
lion the right of recall The third
phase of the movement means the
direct control of politics by the peo-
pie without the Intervention of bosses,
who were financed by aggregations
of capital seeking special privileges