.

The one section of the Constitution that is not subject to amendment is
the allotment of two senators to each of the States. And even if public
opinion should decide that this feature must be made changeable by
ordinary amendment like the rest, it might require 90 or even 95 per
cent of the people to pass such an amendment or to call a constitutional
convention for the purpose. For Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont,
Delaware, are not only governed by antiquated and undemocratic
constitutions, but are so small that wholesale bribery or a system of
public doles is easily possible. The constitutions of the mountain
States are more modern, but Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, and New Mexico, and
others of these States are so little populated as make them very easy
for capitalist manipulation, as present political conditions show. Now
if we add to these States the whole South, where the upper third or at
most the upper half of the population is in firm control, through the
disfranchisement of the majority of the non-capitalistic classes (white
and colored), we see that, even if the country were swept by a tide of
democratic opinion, it is most unlikely that it will ever control the
Senate. Moreover, if the capitalists (large and small) are ever in
danger of losing the Senate, they have only to annex Mexico to add half
a dozen or a dozen new States with limited franchises and undemocratic
constitutions.

Either the President, or the Senate, or the Supreme Court might prove
quite sufficient to prevent the execution of the will of the people, in
any important crisis--they would be especially effective when
revolutionary changes in property, and rapid shifting of economic and
political power into the hands of the people, are at stake, as
Socialists believe they will be. But to resist such a movement, still
another political weapon is available,--even if President, Senate, and
Supreme Court fell into the hands of the people (and it is highly
probable that the small capitalists, who themselves suffer under the
above-mentioned constitutional limitations, will force the larger
capitalists to fall back on this other weapon in the end),--namely, a
limitation of the suffrage.

The property and educational qualifications for voting which are
directed against the colored people in the Southern States are being
used to a considerable degree, both North and South, against the poorer
whites. While there is no likelihood that this process will