A militant suffragist friend of mine, whose passion for universal suffrage in America is so great that it leads her to join in all sorts of demonstrations protesting against the failure of the United States Senate to pass the Susan B. Anthony amendment—­even leading her to join in the public burning of President Wilson’s speeches, a queer emulation of the ancient ecclesiastical bigotry of burning heretical books!—­manages to unite to her passion for equal and unrestricted suffrage an equally passionate admiration for the Bolsheviki, arch-enemies of equal and unrestricted suffrage.  Her case is not exceptional:  it is rather typical of the Bolshevik following in England and in America.  Such minds are not governed and directed by rational processes, but by emotional impulses, generally of pathological origin.

What the Bolshevik constitution would mean if practically applied to American life to-day can be briefly indicated.  The following classes would certainly be entitled to vote and to be elected to office: 

1.  All wage-earners engaged in the production of goods and utilities regarded by some designated authority as “productive and useful to society.”

2.  Teachers and educators engaged in the public service.

3.  All farmers owning and working their own farms without hired help of any kind.

4.  All wage-earners engaged in the public service as employees of the state, subdivisions of the state, or public service corporations-such as postal clerks, street-railway workers, electricians, and so on.

5.  Wives and others engaged in keeping the homes of the foregoing, so as to enable them to work.

6.  The “soldiers of the army and navy”—­whether all officers are included is not clear from the text.

Now let us see what classes would be as certainly excluded from the right to vote and to be voted for.

1.  Every merchant from the keeper of a corner grocery store to the owner of a great mercantile establishment.

2.  Every banker, every commission agent, every broker, every insurance agent, every real-estate dealer.

3.  Every farmer who hires help of any kind—­even a single “hand.”

4.  Every petty contractor, garage-keeper, or other person employing any hired help whatever, including the professional writer who hires a stenographer, the doctor who hires a chauffeur, and the dentist who hires a mechanic assistant.

5.  Every clergyman and minister of the Gospel.

6.  Every person whose income is derived from inherited wealth or from invested earnings, including all who live upon annuities provided by gift or bequest.

7.  Every person engaged in housekeeping for persons included in any of the foregoing six categories—­including the wives of such disqualified persons.

There are many occupational groups whose civic status is not so easily defined.  The worker engaged in making articles of luxury, enjoyed only by the privileged few, could hardly have a better claim to a vote than the housekeeper of a man whose income was derived from foreign investments, or than the chauffeur of a man whose income was derived from government bonds.  All three represent, presumably, types of that parasitic labor which subjects those engaged in it to disfranchisement.  Apparently, though not certainly, then, the following would also be disfranchised: