the justice of their acts.

Even here, however, the temptation is to ask only for the wisdom of
citizens of a certain grade or those of recognized worth. Continually
some classes are tacitly or expressly excluded. Thus women have been
excluded from modern democracy because of the persistent theory of
female subjection and because it was argued that their husbands or other
male folks would look to their interests. Now, manifestly, most
husbands, fathers, and brothers will, so far as they know how or as they
realize women's needs, look after them. But remember the foundation of
the argument,--that in the last analysis only the sufferer knows his
sufferings and that no state can be strong which excludes from its
expressed wisdom the knowledge possessed by mothers, wives, and
daughters. We have but to view the unsatisfactory relations of the sexes
the world over and the problem of children to realize how desperately we
need this excluded wisdom.

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.

F