DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL EVOLUTION. By PAUL SMITH, of De Pauw University. BIOGRAPHICAL. Paul Smith was born in a Methodist parsonage in Iowa, in 1884. His family moved to New York city upon the election of Dr. W. T. Smith, his father, to the General Secretaryship of the Missionary Society, and Mr. Smith spent three years in Hamilton Military Academy. This was followed by a winter in California and a year of travel in the West Indies. In 1906, while a junior in De Pauw University, Mr. Smith won the seventeenth victory for the college in the State contest, and despite one-tenth place on manuscript, took second in the Inter-State. As athletic manager during this same year, as literary editor of the De Pauw, as president of the oratorical association, and finally as student field secretary for the University, Mr. Smith has demonstrated a capacity for work which promises well for future years. After graduation, he will go east for post-graduate study, to be followed by two years abroad in final preparation for the ministry. THE ORATION. Delivered at the Inter-State Oratorical Contest at Topeka, Kansas, May 4, 1906, taking second prize. Judges: Prof. Ringwalt, Prof. SCOTT, Prof. SELLERY, Pres. ANDREWS, Chief Justice DEEMER, and Dr. EVANS. At a climax of history, the tyrant John of England stood beside the river Runnymede, facing alone the armed forces of his united subjects. "I will never grant such rights as make your king a slave!" he exclaimed; yet the Magna Charta received at last the royal seal, and that day's sun looked down upon a liberated England. The panorama of all social progress is but a repetition of that memorable scene. Today priest, king, capitalist, hold absolute dominion; tomorrow, layman, citizen, workman, protest in religious revolutions, political rebellions, or economic conflicts. Through evolutionary ages the rising spirit of freedom has asked, "Does the worshipper exist for the prelate or the prelate for the worshipper; the man for the monarch or the monarch for the man; labor to enrich capital, or capital to give life to labor? Shall the social leader be supreme, or the follower?" The question has challenged the passing centuries. Statesmen in legislative halls, cannon wreathed in smoke of battle, have borne impressive testimony to its paramount significance. In the land of the Czar, hearts weary with a hopeless thrall are repeating the ancient appeal, and men are dying, as our fathers died, to make their answer live. And while by the Volga and the Don is fought the first Slavic struggle for freedom, America, inheriting an added thousand years of liberty, faces a final phase of the issue in the present industrial crisis. Thus this race-wide, agelong problem stands today preeminent and inclusive, changing the form of governments, determining the character of institutions, fixing the meaning of life. Three adjustments of the relationship are possible: the leader supreme, the follower supreme, or interaction for mutual interest. The despotic principle enthrones the leader and assumes for him dictatorship. Priestcraft reigns, and a polluted Borgia stifles his people's supplications. Or a political Napoleon becomes absolute, wasting the wealth of empires in mad lust for aggrandizement. Or capital has supremacy, and a modern Croesus, of sinister fame, measures his millions by the degradation of labor. Affirming self-interest, repudiating social obligation, despotism is endurable only in benevolent form. It martyred a Savonarola, gave France as a bauble to Marie Antoinette, and today lays a free nation under tribute to its commercial lords. By this code, might makes right, power warrants oppression, manhood is slavery, and earth's object becomes the welfare of the privileged few. But an extreme begets its opposite. Destructionist dreamers, brooding over these evils, have sought a remedy in the annihilation of leaders. And at times the multitude, maddened beyond endurance, have surged into the courts of their masters, shouting, "Away with them! Away with them!" Behold Louis XVI., dragged in a royal tumbrel to the guillotine, amid execrations which foretell the Reign of Terror to come! This is anarchy, frenzied, atrocious, impossible. The plea for equal condition, heretical twin to anarchy, would deny increased reward for economic leadership. Lost in contemplation of a Utopian picture, it forgets the God-made order of unequal ability. Admit the principle, and ress is no more. Silent then the throbbing factories, and once again must housewives wield the prog spindle. Unseen then the rushing railway, and once again across the plains must toil the patient ox-carts. Idle then the inventor, thriftless the captain of industry, and vanished like the shadows of a forgotten dream this mighty industrial system, with life turned back to primitive forms and ambition dead forever. Thus experience forbids enforced supremacy of leadership and reason warns against a leaderless society. Progress solves the social problem, not by suppressing either factor, but by harmonizing their interest. With despotism displaced by a gentler code, the individual becomes at last not a means, but an end; not impersonal energy, but enlightened personality; and thus the system bids each man climb up to face his life, untrammeled, unafraid. It bids the rising genius welcome,"an infant Pascal's lines and rounds" or the untaught eloquence of a boyish Webster. Here egoism is tempered with altruism, ability implies social obligation, the glory of the leader is the welfare of the follower, and earth's object becomes the greatest good of the greatest number. This spirit touched the unknown wilds of America, and in a fleeting hundred years transformed untrodden forests into traffic-worn cities, carpeted endless prairies with growing grain, and lifted a flag as a universal symbol of mankind's hope. History has christened this ultimate order with a name virile yet sweet, half-musical like a battle-song; a name enshrined in a thousand sacred associations: it is Democracy. The transition is wrought by the application of three essential principles: freedom in the choice of leaders, equal privilege to attain leadership, and equal obligation of leader and follower, each in his own sphere. The development of the first principle marks the upward march of the masses: from chattel slaves to serfs belonging to the soil; from unrewarded serfs to wage-earning subjects; from subservient subjects to citizens with liberty in the choice of leaders. Supreme now is the "Ablest Man," raised to that proud eminence by the sovereign people's voice; a ruler who "represents, not reigns, And is no despot, though twice absolute; Granted such a commonwealth, and the result is a nation of freemen, with property secure, human life sacred, and the humblest spirit lifted toward the stars. Add the second principle, right to attain leadership, and by one great deed individualism is provided, ambition spurred, and the touch of progress transforms the land. Equality of privilege -an open door to every man, and he who is able may enter; with merit for the measure of reward, fair play all and the best man win. Let Creon carve his Grecian sculptures though a slave. Let barefoot Christine Nilsson charm the world with song. Let not Franklin's humble kin bedim the glory of his career, nor penniless beginnings lessen |