The conditions surrounding the adoption of the Nineteenth Amendment were altogether different.  Few people take seriously the alleged analogy between the women and the slaves.  The constitutional method—­action through the separate states—­was being pursued with signal success.  The states were rapidly falling in line.  Most of them had already granted woman suffrage or were ready to grant it.  There was no overmastering need for coercing the states that were not yet ready.  An impartial student of the period will be apt to conclude that the Nineteenth Amendment was the product of impatience rather than necessity.

Someone may ask, “What effect will the granting of votes to women have on the problem of preserving the constitutional equilibrium?” The ultimate power lies with the voters, and the women with votes now equal or outnumber the men.  What is the reaction of women voters likely to be toward questions of political theory?

Ours is a governmental scheme of extreme complexity.  As with animal organisms so with political systems, the higher they rise in the scale of development the more complicated they tend to become.  An absolute monarchy is simplicity itself compared with our dual system.  To maintain the proper adjustment of such a machine requires intelligence of a high order.  The machine will not run itself and male tinkers have abundantly demonstrated that it is not fool-proof.  But something more is required than mere intelligence.  There must be, at least among the leaders, an instinct for governmental problems as distinguished from those of a merely social or personal character; an ability to recognize and a willingness to conform to underlying principles.

How will the women voters meet this test?  Granting (what few will dispute) that their intelligence at least equals that of the men, will they be as likely as men to look beyond the immediate social welfare problem to the governmental principle at stake?  Will an abstract proposition hold its own in their minds against a concrete appeal?

We do not attempt to answer these questions, but they contain food for thought.

VI

CONGRESS versus THE SUPREME COURT—­THE CHILD LABOR LAWS

The present Federal Revenue Act is noteworthy in more aspects than its complexity and the disproportionate burden cast on possessors of great wealth.  To students of our form of government it is particularly interesting because of provisions[1] purporting to impose a tax on employers of child labor, for these represent an attempt by Congress to nullify a decision of the Supreme Court and grasp a power belonging to the states.  The story of these provisions throws a flood of light on a method by which our Constitution is being changed.

[Footnote 1:  Revenue Act of 1921, Title XII.]