The same arguments apply to other excluded groups:  if a race, like the Negro race, is excluded, then so far as that race is a part of the economic and social organization of the land, the feeling and the experience of that race are absolutely necessary to the realization of the broadest justice for all citizens.  Or if the “submerged tenth” be excluded, then again, there is lost from the world an experience of untold value, and they must be raised rapidly to a place where they can speak for themselves.  In the same way and for the same reason children must be educated, insanity prevented, and only those put under the guardianship of others who can in no way be trained to speak for themselves.

The real argument for democracy is, then, that in the people we have the source of that endless life and unbounded wisdom which the rulers of men must have.  A given people today may not be intelligent, but through a democratic government that recognizes, not only the worth of the individual to himself, but the worth of his feelings and experiences to all, they can educate, not only the individual unit, but generation after generation, until they accumulate vast stores of wisdom.  Democracy alone is the method of showing the whole experience of the race for the benefit of the future and if democracy tries to exclude women or Negroes or the poor or any class because of innate characteristics which do not interfere with intelligence, then that democracy cripples itself and belies its name.

From this point of view we can easily see the weakness and strength of current criticism of extension of the ballot.  It is the business of a modern government to see to it, first, that the number of ignorant within its bounds is reduced to the very smallest number.  Again, it is the duty of every such government to extend as quickly as possible the number of persons of mature age who can vote.  Such possible voters must be regarded, not as sharers of a limited treasure, but as sources of new national wisdom and strength.

The addition of the new wisdom, the new points of view, and the new interests must, of course, be from time to time bewildering and confusing.  Today those who have a voice in the body politic have expressed their wishes and sufferings.  The result has been a smaller or greater balancing of their conflicting interests.  The appearance of new interests and complaints means disarrangement and confusion to the older equilibrium.  It is, of course, the inevitable preliminary step to that larger equilibrium in which the interests of no human soul will be neglected.  These interests will not, surely, be all fully realized, but they will be recognized and given as full weight as the conflicting interests will allow.  The problem of government thereafter would be to reduce the necessary conflict of human interests to the minimum.