The New Republic/Volume 1/Number 1/A Narrow Escape for the Democrats

A Narrow Escape for the Democrats

THE returns of the election on Tuesday indicate that the Democrats have retained by a narrow margin their hold on the confidence of the country. Their majority in the House of Representatives has been cut down to the barely necessary figure. Their majority in the Senate will remain about stationary. But the loss, severe as it is, has stopped short of being disastrous. The Democrats remain in responsible and effective control of all the departments of the national government. They have managed to keep this control, as they gained it, not because anything like a majority of the voters are Democrats, but because of division among their opponents. In 1912 the larger proportion of the divided opposition were Progressives. In 1914 a vastly larger proportion are Republicans. Although the change is enormously significant, it does not affect the central fact, which is the continued ascendancy of the Democrats for at least two years more.

The Democrats deserved more success than they have obtained. The administration of President Wilson and its supporting majority in Congress have made a surprisingly good record. Their defeat at the polls would not have been well-merited condemnation; it would have been due to a meaningless and purposeless fluctuation of popular opinion. The American people are to be congratulated on the fact that the reaction stopped short of being decisive, and that we are to spared the spectacle of futile partisan squabbling which is the inevitable result of divided governmental control.

The Democrats came into power pledged to accomplish a tolerably progressive economic program by means of the traditional partisan political machinery. They were to be progressive, in the sense that American public opinion understands progressivism; but they were not to allow their progressivism to make them any less loyally partisan. Under the relentless yet adroit leadership of President Wilson they succeeded in reconciling their apparently incompatible objects much better than had the Republicans. Their success in satisfying the progressive element in public opinion was sufficiently indicated by the embarrassment of their opponents. In order to justify their own party progressivism, the Progressives needed to fasten upon the Democracy the stigma of being reactionary; and this they were totally unable to do. Their campaign did not rise above an unsuccessful attempt to defeat certain local "bosses," who were more generally Republican than Democratic, and whose candidacy had in every case been endorsed at a direct primary election. The Republican vote benefited from the weakness of the Progressives and the consequently renewed vitality of the bipartisan system; but as an alternative to the Democrats they certainly cut, in reference to the merits of the discussion, a sorry figure. The best they could do was to raise the old and meretricious cry of business depression, and thus to betray how completely they were still living in the past. Under the circumstances the Democrats were fairly entitled to a longer lease power.

During this campaign the Democrats made much of their legislative record, of which they could be justifiably proud. They had been courageous enough to eradicate the worst abuses of the protectionist system, and by so doing to incur a real risk of unpopularity in many farming and industrial districts. Their Federal Reserve Act brought about a desirable centralization of the banking resources of the country, while at the same time it satisfied the demands of local centers of business for a larger measure of financial independence of New York. The reorganization of the national banking system is the more remarkable, because it is the only example of constructive economic legislation ever passed by the Democratic party during almost four generations of continuous existence. It deserves to be considered as the most promising single achievement of President Wilson's administration. The anti-trust legislation also proved to be better than the preliminary advertisements prophesied. The Trade Commission Act has fastened upon an administrative body an immediate responsibility for preventing unfair competitive methods. The Clayton Bill will probably do more harm than good, but the final draft constituted such a marked improvement upon the earlier versions that in its capacity as a substitute it can at lease be considered an example of successful destructive legislation. Finally, the Alaskan Railway Bill and the other measures for making the natural resources in the public domain available for development were drawn in the interest of genuine conservation. Such a uniformly good record must have been the result of an honest, intelligent, and insistent endeavor to legislate in the public interest.

Yet while the Democrats have remained ascendant, their ascendancy has become much more precarious and exacting. They have become more than ever a governing minority. Their very success in reconciling progressivism with Democracy has been slowly tending to consolidate the opposition. The influence of the progressive element within their own ranks will be weakened just in so far as the Progressive party falls to pieces and its members revert to Republicanism. Public opinion is acquiescent, but dangerously apathetic. The administration has enlisted a sufficient measure of popular respect, but it has not kindled popular enthusiasm or touched the popular imagination. The association of progressivism with partisan Democracy has made it more efficient for certain limited purposes, but less interesting and significant. The progressive movement has lost thereby singleness of purpose, alertness of intelligence, intensity of conviction, and a seductive vista of future achievement.

The work of a sincerely progressive democracy has only begun. The legislation passed by the Democratic party has not made any impression upon the more serious and difficult social and industrial problems of contemporary America. The consumer's need for a lower cost of living has been left unsatisfied; the business organization of the country continues to be wasteful and inefficient; the financial system of the Federal Government remains no less extravagant and irresponsible; nothing has been done to diminish unemployment, to improve the general standard of living, to remove the causes of increasing unrest among wage-earners. The President has sometimes talked as if his program of tariff revision, banking reorganization and anti-trust legislation contained a complete and final solution of the problems of modern American democracy. These measures are to provide for a new constitution of freedom, which is also a constitution of peace. If the President and his party are actually deceived by such phrases, they will pay dearly for their unintelligence. Noting of any importance has as yet been accomplished to bestow freedom and peace on the American nation. The new Democratic Congress will be confronted with legislative responsibilities even graver than those which have already been met, and these new responsibilities will put their combination of partisanship with progressivism to a still severer test. The combination may survive, but if so, the Democracy will have to pay for the privilege of keeping such good company by abandoning many of their traditional shibboleths and by seeking an access of inward light and grace.