It will be said that where the elective franchise has once been conceded it can not be recalled. I recognize the difficulties of the situation, but I do not admit that they are insurmountable.
Instances are numerous where guards, limitations, and restrictions have been imposed upon the elective franchise by legislative authority, and it is but taking another step in this direction to establish the principle which I have been advocating.
No one will dispute that it is entirely competent for the Legislature, when organizing municipal corporations, to prescribe the conditions under which the elective franchise shall be exercised. If, then, the legislators should come to approve this method, it could readily be applied in erecting future municipalities.
In the case of cities like Boston, St.Louis, Cincinnati, etc., where there are two legislative bodies in the city government, we might, perhaps, make one of them elective by the popular vote, and the other by a vote of the tax-payers only. It might be required that appropriation bills and bills for raising the revenue should receive the approval of both bodies. Then, by-and by, when the people shall have come to the conclusion that only one legislative body is needful, they might decide to retain the one elected by the tax-payers and abolish the other.
Or, without in any way interfering with the right of suffrage in the case of any one who is now a voter, it might be determined as to any one who is not now a voter, that he shall not hereafter be entitled to the municipal franchise unless he be a tax-payer.
If the principle be correct, as I believe it to be, and if it be accepted by thoughtful men as one of the conditions of honest government, the method by which it may be incorporated into the municipal system will be devised. The method which has just been adopted by Chicago for securing fair elections will doubtless help to correct many of the evils which arise from what I have characterized as an unrestricted suffrage. The operations of this new election machinery will be watched with great interest by all who take an interest in municipal affairs, and it may be that from this source our deliverance is to come.
I notice one other particular in which reform in municipal governments is imperatively demanded: that is, the consideration which is given to the needs of the proletariat. The truth of the aphorism, "No man liveth to himself," more and more imposes itself on the attention of thoughtful men. It is a truth which neither individuals nor aggregations of individuals can afford to ignore.
The first problem in social science ever submitted for consideration was, "Am I my brother's keeper?" It would seem as if ever since that time the world had been endeavoring to find a negative answer to the question. No such answer has been found. No such answer can ever be found, because the law of reciprocal obligation is always
