The principle of basing all government on the consent of the governed is undenied and undeniable.  Moreover, the method of modern democracy has placed within reach of the modern state larger reserves of efficiency, ability, and even genius than the ancient or mediaeval state dreamed of.  That this great work of the past can be carried further among all races and nations no one can reasonably doubt.

Great as are our human differences and capabilities there is not the slightest scientific reason for assuming that a given human being of any race or sex cannot reach normal, human development if he is granted a reasonable chance.  This is, of course, denied.  It is denied so volubly and so frequently and with such positive conviction that the majority of unthinking people seem to assume that most human beings are not human and have no right to human treatment or human opportunity.  All this goes to prove that human beings are, and must be, woefully ignorant of each other.  It always startles us to find folks thinking like ourselves.  We do not really associate with each other, we associate with our ideas of each other, and few people have either the ability or courage to question their own ideas.  None have more persistently and dogmatically insisted upon the inherent inferiority of women than the men with whom they come in closest contact.  It is the husbands, brothers, and sons of women whom it has been most difficult to induce to consider women seriously or to acknowledge that women have rights which men are bound to respect.  So, too, it is those people who live in closest contact with black folk who have most unhesitatingly asserted the utter impossibility of living beside Negroes who are not industrial or political slaves or social pariahs.  All this proves that none are so blind as those nearest the thing seen, while, on the other hand, the history of the world is the history of the discovery of the common humanity of human beings among steadily-increasing circles of men.

If the foundations of democracy are thus seen to be sound, how are we going to make democracy effective where it now fails to function—­particularly in industry?  The Marxists assert that industrial democracy will automatically follow public ownership of machines and materials.  Their opponents object that nationalization of machines and materials would not suffice because the mass of people do not understand the industrial process.  They do not know: 

What to do
How to do it
Who could do it best
or
How to apportion the resulting goods.

There can be no doubt but that monopoly of machines and materials is a chief source of the power of industrial tyrants over the common worker and that monopoly today is due as much to chance and cheating as to thrift and intelligence.  So far as it is due to chance and cheating, the argument for public ownership of capital is incontrovertible even though it involves some interference with long vested rights and inheritance.  This is being widely recognized in the whole civilized world.  But how about the accumulation of goods due to thrift and intelligence—­would democracy in industry interfere here to such an extent as to discourage enterprise and make impossible the intelligent direction of the mighty and intricate industrial process of modern times?