THE KEYSTONE OF PROGRESSIVISM
MOREOVER, any professed adherence to our other doctrines, while at the same time this doctrine is repudiated, means nothing. During the last forty years the beneficiaries of reaction have found in the courts their main allies; and this condition, so unfortunate for the courts, no less than for the people, has been due to our governmental failure to furnish methods by which an appeal can be taken directly to the people when, in any such case as the cases I have above enumerated, there is an issue between the court and the legislature. It is idle to profess devotion to our Progressive proposals for social and industrial betterment if at the same time there is opposition to the one additional proposal by which they can be made effective. It is useless to advocate the passing of laws for social justice if we permit these laws to be annulled with impunity by the courts, or by any one else, after they have been passed. This proposition is a vital point in the Progressive program.
To sum up, then, our position is, after all, simple. We believe that the government should concern itself chiefly with the matters that are of most importance to the average man and average woman, and that it should be its special province to aid in making the conditions of life easier for these ordinary men and ordinary women, who compose the great bulk of our people. To this end we believe that the people should have direct control over their own governmental agencies; and that when this control has been secured, it should be used with resolution, but with sanity and self-restraint, in the effort to make conditions of life and labor a little easier, a little fairer and better for the men and women of the nation.
[1]Copyright, 1913, by The Century Co. All rights reserved. The republication of this article, either in whole or in part, is expressly prohibited, except through special arrangement with The Century Co.
[1]Copyright, 1913, by The Century Co. All rights reserved. The republication of this article, either in whole or in part, is expressly prohibited, except through special arrangement with The Century Co.
[1]Copyright, 1913, by The Century Co. All rights reserved. The republication of this article, either in whole or in part, is expressly prohibited, except through special arrangement with The Century Co.