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352 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
in the hope of communism, are classed together in the
popular mind. The man who in this day deifies the individual
or the sect, and would make the rights of the
individual or the sect override the rights of the many,
is battling vainly against the supreme current of the
age.
Democracy may be a myth. Yet of all the faiths of
our time none is more firmly grounded, none more
warmly cherished. If any man refuses to abide by the
decisions of democracy and takes his case out of that
court, he ranges against himself practically the entire
populace. On the other hand, the man who takes his
case to that court is often forced to suffer for a long
time humiliating defeats. If the case be a new one but
little understood, there is no place where a hearing seems
so hard to win as in exactly that court.
Universal suffrage,
by which such cases are decided, appears to the
man with a new idea as an obstacle almost overwhelming.
He must set out on a long and dreary road of education
and of organization he must take his
;
case before a
jury made up of untold millions; he must wait maybe
for centuries to obtain a majority. To go into this great
open court and plead an entirely new cause requires a
courage that is sublime and convictions that have the
intensity of a religion. One who possesses any doubt
cannot begin a task so gigantic, and certainly one who,
for any reason, distrusts the people cannot, of course, put
his case in that court. It was with full realization of
the difficulties,
of the certainty of repeated defeats, and
of the overwhelming power against them that the socialists
entered this great arena to fight their battle. Universal
suffrage is a merciless thing. How often has it served
the purpose of stripping the socialist naked and exposing
him to a terrible humiliation! Again and again, in the