The Grangeville globe. [volume] (Grangeville, Idaho) 1907-1922, 1912-04-25
Thursday, April 25, 1912.
A CALL TO ARMS.

cratic movement, and a writer of
high authority, has said that in
our country alone have the high
hopes of popular government beer
realized. The experiment of gov
eminent by the people has not
wholly failed in France, but it
has not yet gathered to itself the
full resources of the French peo-
pie, their common loyalty, the
splendid energy Of their magma
ton, their genius for social life.
It has done much in the face
of great obstacles, it has gone far
in spite of serious hindrances and
dangerous opposition, but it has
not yet bound the whole people
to itself in the bands Of great
brotherhood resting immovably on
social justice.
In this country popular gov
eminent has rendered great and
lasting services to humanity. 1t
has kept an open door for all
who wanted to better their con-
dition; it has made education ma
tion-wide; it has show itself capa-
BILE of sublime self-sacrifice in
maintaining the principles for
which it stands; it has been a
colossal public school for the ed
ucation of the people in the uses
of freedom. All this and much
more it has done, but that it has
entirely fulfilled the great hopes
of the lovers of freedom through
out the world no intelligent man
will claim.
Many unjust charges have been
made against it, but too many
charges have been sustained. Its
municipal governments from the
Atlantic TO the Pacific have been
discredited by corruption and in
efficiency, and many of the men
who have directed their affairs
are convicted criminals, and more
ought to be. The states which
are really governed by the peo-
pie can be counted on the fingers
Of two hands. An elaborate sys-
tenn of interlocked business and
politics has assumed such proper
tions that it has, over half the
country, usurped the functions of
government. The politicians talk
much about the Twill of the peo-
pie" as the supreme law, but they
do it with their tongues in their
cheeks; they have advised AN ex-
governmental system which
blocks and defeats that will at
every turn. 1t is not too much
to say that in many states popu-
lar elections are sham. 1t is
the CONSCIOUSNESS that they are
bound hand and foot by invisible
shackles that has filled great
many Americans with kind of
despair and awakened in others
a passionate resentment. The
greed of small group of capital
lists is responsible for the great
revolt against the organized ty-
ranny of money in mean and un-
scrupulous hands; and the stupid
ity of machines and the selfish
ness of politicians who have base
ly organized the generous oppor-
tunities which popular institu-
tons furnish for private ends,
and have betrayed freedom in
the house of its friends, have
set in motion a new struggle for
self-government which will not
stop short, of complete recovery
of the power which has been
stolen and Incorporated.
In Switzerland, and in Swift
zerland alone, has popular govern
ment realized the hopes of the
lovers Of freedom by its effici-
ency and purity; and in that
country, sharply divided by racial
and religious lines, the people
are not only prosperous, but con-
tent. Whyf Because Switzer-
land is a pure democracy, ruled
by the whole people. Democracy
has partly failed in this coun-
try because it has been only part
ly tried, and for a generation
has been practically abandoned.
Many good people accept the gov.
eminent of self-chosen rulers in
this county because they have
lost hope for democracy; many
because they put more faith in
bosses than in the people. If the
government of many of the states