Let’s Have A (Populist) Party!

September 23, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

I stopped to ask him what the machine was and what it did. He told me it was a manure spreader – a ‘sh*tslinger’, he said.
Oh! It’s a big ol’ thing, isn’t it? I asked.
Well, he explained, it takes a LOT of sh*t to make stuff grow.
Isn’t THAT the truth, I thought. Always.

Farmers in the late 19th century were frustrated.

To be fair, some of their struggles were not entirely unexpected. As the west ‘filled up’ with white homesteaders, choice farmland was increasingly rare. The U.S. Government had run out of peoples to remove, and even at their most Manifestly Destined could find no justification for another war with Mexico.

The 1890 Census would soon declare the frontier ‘closed’, to the chagrin of men like Frederick Jackson Turner who believed the westward struggle against nature and deprivation both defined and strengthened American character. Things were so desperate that white guys began looking lustfully at Oklahoma as their last best hope – the same ‘Indian Territory’ (I.T.) to whom the bulk of surviving Amerindians had been forcibly removed.

I.T. had been chosen both for its distance from existing ‘civilization’ and the tacit assumption it represented the most god-forsaken plot of unloveable soil on the continent. Now it was being eyed with a desire born of desperation and a few hopeful shots of delusion. By 1889, the first sections were being opened to white settlement via land run, and eventually Oklahoma would become the 46th State of the Union.

But not yet.

As the century approached another turn, farmers across the Great Plains – even those in slightly more cooperative climes than Oklahoma’s – were enduring hard times. This was not unprecedented, but it did seem to be persisting – and advances in both literacy and communication facilitated an awareness that not everyone seemed to be sharing similar struggles.

It wasn’t always a lack of production. Many farmers across the Plains were quite successful – at least in the traditional sense. They were growing and raising more good stuff than ever before! Wheat! Corn! Cotton! Moo-cows! Chickens! Tomatoes! Quiche!

But thanks to the laws of supply and demand, the more they raised, the lower the selling price. That’s great for those purchasing, but suck city for those producing. Throw in improved agriculture in Europe, and the American farmer was in a world of hurt.

As individualists, they reacted in an individually sensible, hard-working way – they looked to produce MORE.

Farmers already worked 365 days a year, sun-up to sun-down. They worked on Sundays, birthdays, Christmas, and when they were sick. They labored in the earth and cared for any animals they held, enduring drought and deluge, heat waves and freezes, in hopes of coaxing forth from the earth sustenance for themselves and the world.

They grew and raised stuff you could eat, or wear, or – back in the day – smoke. They were useful. Heck – they were essential!

But this was a time of the ‘newer and better’ – machinery, fertilizers, and other technological wonders (“just look at this scientifically shaped point on this metal – that’s right, folks… REAL METAL – shovel!”) With ‘newer and better’, they could bring even more land into production! Purchase more acres, more machinery, more seed, more productivity – PROGRESS!

But… this meant they’d need money. Borrowed money.

Looking east they saw a world of bankers and businessmen, of numbers and percentages, stock markets and manipulation. Men in suits, working what had already become known as “bankers’ hours” – 5 days a week minus holidays, done by mid-afternoon, and inside by the stove when it was cold or near an open window when it was hot.

They didn’t actually grow anything, or produce anything your kids could eat, or wear, or even that you could smoke, drink, or otherwise enjoy.

Instead, they scribbled in little books, mysterious ciphers covered in obscure terms, and this somehow meant they got to keep part of your money. You couldn’t for the life of your loved ones tell exactly WHAT they were doing, but you knew you needed them – they held access to loans, to financing, to equipment, seed, and survival during patient years. How did THIS make sense, they wondered?

There’s a reason Dickens only a generation before had written Ebenezer Scrooge as a money lender (albeit a British one) – what could be more cold-hearted and useless in this life?**

It wasn’t JUST the banks, of course – farmers felt taken advantage of by railroads, the operators of grain elevators and silos, and pretty much anyone with money or influence in a system they instinctively believed warped in favor of the Ebenezers, but lacked the time or worldviews to master themselves.

So the banks loaned money to the farmers, and the farmers purchased land and equipment. And it worked, in a sense – they became even harder-working, even more productive. They raised even MORE stuff you could eat, smoke, and wear!

Which meant, of course, that prices went even LOWER. In some cases, less than was necessary to break even. Some couldn’t pay back their loans. So, they renegotiated, perhaps borrowed more, bought more, raised more…

See a pattern?

For the first time in American history, it seemed, a large demographic was doing everything right – they were honest, hard-working, productive, and responsible – and they were failing.

Individuals had of course failed before, despite their best efforts, but individual failure can always be blamed on fate, or sin, or some personal shortcoming perhaps hidden in the mix. When the most idealized segment of American Dreamers – those whom Jefferson declared “the chosen people of God” – were facing bankruptcy and starvation, however…

Either malicious players were subverting the system, or the system was broken. They weren’t quite ready to go full Tom Joad (“Damn right, I’m bolshevisky!”), but they were – for the first time en masse – willing to call on the one earthbound entity big enough to tackle perceived corruption and necessary correction on such a grand scale. Those who most clearly defined ‘individualism’ in the American psyche began talking, and joining together, to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

The Populist Party was born.

They wanted what in their minds would be a return to a level (or fertile?) field. Government regulation or control of railroads, grain storage, even telegraphs – not to make things ‘easier’, but to make things ‘fair’. (The railroads and other owners likely quibbled over the precise definition of that term in such circumstances.)

They also wanted to turn bi. Not just themselves, but the entire country.

That’s probably best covered next time.

RELATED POST: Singing Bi, Bi For Our Money Supply…

RELATED POST: Follow The Yellow Brick Road

RELATED POST: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part One

RELATED POST: Sam Patch (Part One)

**I should, um… clarify for any of my creditors who might be reading this that these are not MY sentiments, of course. These are the approximated impressions of a thousand long-dead homesteaders. I love everyone the same and value our varied contributions to the Great American Melting Pot of Commerce.

Also, I’m expecting a check and should be caught up by Monday.

Handlebars

August 8, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

Recognize this? It’s almost a bicycle. No pedals, though – just a wooden frame and wheels. The ‘velocipede’ had to be customized to the height of the rider, and could only be ridden without losing your ability to reproduce by sticking to well-maintained garden paths or other flat, soft-but-not-too-soft ground. The kind not found most places.

It was also pretty tricky to turn. You had to lean, firmly but subtly. Crashing not only hurt, but dramatically reduced whatever level of ‘suave’ you’d managed to retain while straddle-running on the damned things.

The natural limitations on who could thus enjoy such a contraption led to the derogatory nickname “dandy-horse” – although if you spent your days frolicking on one of these, you probably didn’t care what the proletariat called you.

Sometime in the mid-19th century, pedals were added. There were no chains or gears; they were connected directly to the center of the front wheel. Variations added a third or even a fourth wheel for balance, but doing so increased the amount of work necessary to propel the beast any direction but straight downhill.

In keeping with their love of all things dainty, the French introduced the metal frame, lighter and sturdier. Unfortunately, the large wooden wheels and lack of any sort of shock-absorbing mechanism led to another unflattering moniker: the “bone-shaker” – less foppish than ‘dandy-horse,’ but still unlikely to facilitate worldwide acceptance and marketability.

Then someone tried rubber tires. Once successful, they seemed so obvious it was hard to imagine why they’d not been used before. It had only taken a few centuries, but mankind was finally producing a bicycle that didn’t painfully rearrange your bowels every time you rode it.

It was almost… comfortable.

This allowed riders to finally begin complaining about something new – the speed. Sure, pedals were exciting for a generation or so, but now that the frame and tires could handle – without causing permanent physical injury – velocities greater than grandma hustling to the loo, there stirred a need… for speed.

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Add some #STEM, and the solution once again seemed retrospectively self-evident:

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The ‘Ordinary’, later known as the ‘Penny-Farthing’ (due to the disparity in wheel-size, not the cost), altered the elitism of the ride. They were difficult to mount, required great athleticism to balance and propel with any authority, and even minor ruts or obstacles could stop the giant front wheel instantaneously – while the rider and the rest of the machine kept going forward over the now-motionless ginormous front wheel.

Riders were expected to practice ‘taking a header’ in the same way other athletes practice falling correctly or reality stars practice shame and regret. Those less-interested in pain and bone-breaking could still find recourse in tricycles or quadracycles, but the cool factor was completely absent. It may have been in the negatives.

In 1885, an Englishman by the name of John Kemp Starley transformed the centuries of absurdity and (literal) butt-hurt into a proper bicycle. He made the wheels the same size – keeping those nice rubber tubes – and based propulsion around a chain drive attaching the pedaled gears to the back wheel, leaving steering to the front wheel.

The ‘Safety Bicycle’ allowed an even greater top speed than the ‘Ordinary’. More importantly, it suddenly made the bicycle easy to ride, fairly safe to steer, easier to control, lighter, and – as production increased to accommodate the wider customer base – less expensive than anything comparable prior.

By the 1890’s, bicycles were a thing. It’s hard to imagine today, when most everyone seems to have one hanging in their garage or collecting dust in the barn. But the craze was real. It was a big – and sometimes strange – deal. We’re talking MySpace levels, or Sigue Sigue Sputnik, even. Social media when any of the half-dozen variations of The Bachelor are on – THAT level of madness.

Because now EVERYONE could ride – yet it was still cool. The feeling of movement, and speed, was unlike anything most had ever experienced – and without the need to purchase a ticket or build a barn. The ‘Safety’ was so accessible even WOMEN could ride – and ride they did.

It really kinda got outta control.

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Forsaking long, bulky skirts for practical attire – in some cases even PANTS – women discovered a sense of freedom beyond what they’d believed possible. In addition to fueling a push for better roads, feeding economic growth, promoting health and the outdoors, and simultaneously increasing a sense of community and mobility without apparent irony, the insane popularity of the bicycle also propelled the women’s movement in a way nothing intentional could have.

Suffrage was likely inevitable, but that chain drive and those symmetrical tires shaved the wait by a generation or two.

There are bicycles to suit pretty much any type of rider today – any gender, race, nationality, or income level – but by and large they’re all traceable back to that first ‘Safety’. I suppose we should pay appropriate homage to its ancestors as well – but many are rather awkward to consider.

How could it have taken THAT long to come up with… the bicycle? It doesn’t seem so complex… two wheels, a seat, and a pedal with a few gears? Oh – and that chain. The parts matter little if we lack the proper connections between them – if we can’t transfer our energy and effort into productive motion in our chosen direction.

Education in the modern use of the term can be traced back to a wide variety of sources, depending on how you figure it. It’s safe to say, however, that most iterations – while presumably the best anyone could come up with at the time – seem rather awkward in retrospect. Most look rather painful, actually.

The incarnations with the most potential – and thus those whose popularity lasted the longest – served only those most able to afford the ideal conditions necessary to enjoy them: the right socio-economic status, a proper upbringing and mindset, and, well… being a smarmy white guy.

The vehicle changed, but each revolution solved one problem by creating another… until J.K. Starley.

In a way, he created an entirely new machine. At the same time, it was undeniably based on all that rolled by before.

Suddenly something of great potential but limited use, realistic only for a few, became accessible. The experience reached for by a select minority in prior generations was suddenly not only possible, but intoxicating. It was fun. It was freeing. And it was so good for you – body, mind, and soul.

It’s an analogy, you see – bicycles and education. (I point that out because not all of you have had the same bicycle.)

No one had to be required to ride, and certainly no one was denied the opportunity – the seats adjusted easily and variations abounded for whatever your personal styles or needs. You still had to work to make it go; the more you pedal, the further you get. But with a few gears, anyone can get anywhere with a little effort and patience – even if it takes some a bit longer than others.

The modern bicycle changed something for almost everyone, and everything for some. It offered unlimited opportunity for anyone willing to pedal – and for a while, EVERYONE wanted to pedal.

Well?

Sam Patch (Part Two)

July 29, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

When Andrew Jackson was elected President in 1828, it was an unabashed victory for ‘the common man’.

After six presidencies of consciously ‘elite gentlemen’ – rich, white, educated males – Jackson was a game changer. Sure, he was a white guy – but he grew up all kinda poor, and lacked a formal education until early adulthood.

The expansion of voting rights and other civic validity which allowed such a thing, and which continued to expand during and after his presidency, is even named after him: “Jacksonian Democracy.” It’s a trend of which we’re generally proud two centuries later. Maybe the “all men” created equal in 1776 were a fairly limited bunch, but over time we’ve stretched that to cover quite a variety of colors and socio-economic statuses. Heck, we even let girls vote now – that’s getting serious.

To celebrate this ‘victory of the common man’, Jackson broke with the restrictive traditions of his predecessors and threw open his inaugural celebration at the White House to all comers. It wasn’t HIS victory, after all – it was THEIR victory. Why not let THEM celebrate it as fully as anyone?

In return, the ‘common man’ trashed the place.

Celebrants stood on and broke furniture, wandered into the private, personal rooms and made souvenirs of the bathroom fixtures and any nice undergarments they discovered in the bedrooms. When the front entrances grew congested, they tromped through the muddy gardens and came in the windows, further destroying the rugs and furniture and generally wreaking havoc.

Jackson bailed almost immediately. The help finally had to lure out the unwashed masses with bowls of alcoholic beverages and trays of deserts, which were hurriedly filled and rushed to the peripheries of the grounds in an effort to Pied Piper the common man the hell out of the White House.

Jackson’s entire Presidency was spotted with such tensions. In his determination to defend and assist the ‘common man’, he pushed through legislation that crippled the economy. In order to open up homesteads for the ‘little people’, he oversaw Indian Removal. His fervent defense of his not-quite-divorced-from-her-first-husband wife led to innumerable conflicts before he took office, and his transferred outrage in defense of similarly soiled Peggy Eaton a few years later crippled his cabinet throughout his time in power.

That’s the difficulty in defending the ‘common man’. They’re dirty, and they do stupid things. One might argue that’s why they’re ‘common’.

It’s not merely an income issue; economic equity is no easy task, but it’s at least tangible. Social capital is more difficult. In a pinch, I can give you money – but I can’t give you decorum. I can buy you a house – but I can’t stop you from leaving trash in the yard or easily explain how to use the space properly.

The sociology of it all is rather tangled and unsatisfying.

Sam Patch jumped off of cliffs near waterfalls, off of the topmost masts of ships, and from other daunting heights – often into the narrowest of survivable apertures, disciplining body and breathing precisely to allow him to emerge unharmed.

It was noble, in a way. Kinda cool, and so counter to the carefully crafted ‘nature experiences’ built by the well-to-do. Each leap was intensely primitive compared to precisely arranged visitations of the finest majestic sights available only to the elite. Even the rhetoric – “Some things can be done as well as others,” or “There’s no mistake in Sam Patch” – was marvelously stark compared to the noble blithering which filled the finest bourgeois journals.

Patch was a bacon cheeseburger to the artisanal foraged essence of kimchi of his day. But he was a bacon cheeseburger with a tall draft beer. Or seven. And greasy. Dripping on the shirt. And falling apart halfway through. And leaving the wrapper in your yard.

It’s easy two centuries later to belittle Timothy Crane and his precious little recreation area with its froo-froo bridge. He charged for… nature! If he really cared about art, if he really valued beauty, he’d make it available to all – without cost or restriction!

Others did just that. Idealists in some parts of the north opened their parks and benches, their landscaped gardens and artistic efforts to all, just as Nature and Nature’s God had done before them. In return, the common man trashed the place, vandalizing, urinating, and harassing the better elements until they no longer frequented such places.

What gives a man value? Is it his ability to earn a certain income? Behave a certain way? Contribute something useful? How far beyond the Golden Rule can or should society go in its expectations of all peoples, whatever their status or background?

How do we draw a clear distinction between the sort of ‘behaving decently’ we might reasonably ask of all well-intentioned people, and the limiting mores of middle or upper class privilege, with its own rules and codes – many designed over the decades for the sole purpose of separating the cream from the whey?

When we speak of universal rights, and of the value of people, it shouldn’t be so difficult to untether those rights and that underlying value from expected levels of education or behavior. When we move past the fundamentals, though, and drift into questions of equity, opportunity, social standing, lifestyles, and a wider range of values, it’s much murkier. What do people deserve? And from whom?

I may dig the Ramones, but I’d never invite them to dinner among proper company. I love the reckless abandon of some of my students, but I’m not sure I’d risk putting them in charge of anything potentially life-altering for myself or those around them.

I admire Sam Patch and his giant wet middle finger to the system, but I recognize even while singing his praises that he wasn’t merely rejecting a loftier lifestyle – he was completely unqualified and incapable of living out one had it been handed to him. There’s too much correlation between his rejection of the system and his inability to function within it. Jackson gloried in the baseness of the common man – he seemed to equate it with a sort of primitive purity, which strikes me as… intentionally naive.

Or maybe Jackson’s exaggerated faith in the little guy was merely something with which he fed his own power struggle, and maintained his own outrage. Maybe it just got him from where he was to where he was determined to go. When Philadelphia gave him a beautiful white horse in 1833, Jackson named it ‘Sam Patch’.

I appreciate the sentiment, but should I pass, and you get a gerbil or something, please don’t honor me in this specific way.

I don’t have a satisfying conclusion or moral to the tale. Patch resonates with me, but I’m still not sure I’ve managed to explain to myself just why. I suspect it’s that, while I find his dysfunction offensive and his self-destruction unnecessary, it’s still much easier to cheer for him than for the manufactured pretense and gilded desperation of men like Crane. Maybe it’s as simple as that.

RELATED POST: Sam Patch (Part One)

Sam Patch (Part One)

July 23, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

“Some things can be done as well as others.”

It’s not much of a catch phrase two hundred years later, but at the time, this line of Sam Patch’s was golden. It probably helped that he’d say it right before jumping off a waterfall. That would add a little drama, I’d think.

He’d stand near the crest – or, years later, on platforms or ladders built high above even that – and jump. Body position and breathing were critical from such heights. Knowing where you could and couldn’t safely enter the water at such speeds was pretty important, too. It also helped if you could swim.

Patch was fond of staying underwater after a leap for longer than seemed possible, creating tension and sparking nervous chatter among the crowd. On at least one less-public occasion he swam underwater to a sheltered cave area in order to hide out and panic his friends.

The problem with this is that if you’ve actually died this time, everyone thinks you’re just screwing with them. They figure you’re with Elvis somewhere, laughing at their gullibility.

Sam Patch grew up in early 19th century America, a transitional era during which Jefferson’s agricultural ideal was giving way to a more modern, urban, industrial society, albeit inconsistently, in scattered areas throughout the north. Patch grew up in a mill town, located along the Blackstone River near Providence, Rhode Island. Nature was harnessed and partially consumed, but still managed to assert itself beautifully and violently through displays like Pawtucket Falls.

However stunning the surroundings, these were necessarily utilitarian times. You didn’t come to Pawtucket if things in your life had gone according to plan; the remnants who found work in the mills were either without a male head of house, or stuck with one of little use. You came because you needed work, and Pawtucket was happy to oblige.

These were days when owning land – even a little bit of land – was key to everything else: economic opportunity, social status, political participation. Almost as crucial were one’s extended family – social connections as well as surname. Neither were guarantees of anything, but both were essential to real opportunity in the realities of the times.

Patch had neither. He was, depending on your point of view, either a dirty, uneducated, ne’er-do-well, or the ideal candidate for a great American success story. Paging Horatio Alger… please meet your party at the waterfall…

You know all those nostalgic looks back to less safety-fied and sanitized times, when kids could play outside and get dirty or hurt and the species survived just fine? Patch’s adolescence was the epitome of this. Boys would jump from the main bridge above the river into ‘the pot’, a drop of about 50 feet into an opening carved by centuries of erosion. When that ceased to be terrifying, they’d jump from a nearby building instead, making a leap of around 80 feet straight down with a rather narrow margin of error.

A mistake of a few horizontal feet meant serious injury. If you were fortunate, you’d die suddenly and violently; if not, you’d experience untold broken bones and damn near drown before being hauled to shore and carried back to town to linger a day or two before an intensely painful death. With an audience.

So why do such a thing? Because they were boys, full of testosterone and competition and the rough sort of democracy available to the un-landed, the un-connected. Of course you could get hurt – that was the whole point. But if you had nerve, and skill, and didn’t…

There’s something insanely equitable and meritocratic about such behavior. Too innocent to be Social Darwinism, it nevertheless recognizes that there’s no ‘winning’ without a very real chance of ‘losing’. Without risk, there can be no glory – individually or nationally. Sam Patch and his ilk were in their own rough ways an idyllic, Tom Sawyer-ish, rough-edged version of the American dream – or at least its opening chapters.

Which isn’t the same as being part of the American reality, by the way. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Sam’s first public jump came in defiance of a man named Timothy Crane. Crane was probably not a bad man (in the dinner theater sense of the word), but he did reek of calculated sophistication, and that was bad enough. He’d purchased, ‘improved’, and privatized a public park-ish area near the mills, after which he began charging a small fee to enter.

Besides offsetting his costs, the fee was designed to screen out ne’er-do-wells. The park was designed for the ‘right’ kind of people, who were far more likely to both appreciate and take care of the area. Free admission, he feared, would allow the dregs and drunkards to spoil the space. Their inability to pay was indicative of far more than income level – it was a tag of behavior and education.

You don’t really think those high dollar condos near the mall are that much nicer than the mid-range apartments ten minutes away, do you? Sure, you’re closer to the trendy restaurants – but mostly you’re paying too much for a condo in order to be surrounded by other people who can afford to pay too much for a condo.

It’s the same reason ‘golf’ somehow grew to be thought of as a real sport – the need to justify some basic elitism. Come on, you really thought it was THAT expensive to mow some grass and let people knock a tiny ball into a few holes in the ground? Please.

Crane’s crowing accomplishment was to be a rather ornate bridge which he had built and promised to have maneuvered across the chasm in front of Pawtucket Falls on September 30, 1827, for all to see. You have to keep in mind this is pre-Netflix, pre-Xbox, and even pre-television. Any potential entertainment was a big freaking deal, and this was no exception.

Schools and factories closed, and everyone came out to watch this engineering marvel finalize the glories of man-shaped nature, of improving and standardizing the bucolic. There are few things more American than making nature your bi-atch.

The mechanics of the process took much of the afternoon. At one point there was a small slip and one of the rolling logs being used to help guide and ‘roll’ the bridge across fell into the waters far below. The engineers recovered, but in the short time it took for them to readjust their contraptions, Sam Patch appeared on a rock at the edge of the cliff by the waterfall. He told the few people near him that Mr. Crane had done a great thing, and that he – Patch – meant to do another.

And he jumped.

Nothing in this prevented Crane from finishing his bridge, but for the crowd gathered that day the defiant message was clear. Patch, in channeling this brand of skill and moxy into such a primal act, was providing a sort of artistic and social contrast to the contrived high class aspirations of men like Crane. He was striking a blow for the common man.

Patch built on this theme several times in subsequent years, and eventually became something of a celebrity. Unfortunately, once you’re a celebrity – even in the 19th century equivalent of having a reality show – you’re not the common man anymore. The glories of having come from a dysfunctional family with no resources are all very well – but you’ve still come from a dysfunctional family with no resources. In other words, add a little notoriety, the stresses of minor success, and the chances you’ll become a complete wreck are pretty high.

In a few short years, Patch had a reputation as a drunk – usually the fun kind, but sometimes just the drunk kind. He somehow found himself bestowed with a pet bear, who he began taking with him and apparently lived with as a pet of sorts. And yes – the bear jumped off the same cliffs, bridges, and falls as Patch.

Well, if by ‘jumped’ you mean ‘was pushed or thrown’. Yeah, I know – but they were different times. And the bear seemed to be fine, so… go figure.

How many of YOUR friends can throw a bear off a cliff repeatedly and it’s still their friend?

On November 13, 1829, Sam made his last jump. Something went horribly wrong. It may have been the drinking or a related difficulty, but descriptions from those witnessing the event suggest he died in mid-air from something internal. His body positioning gave way and he fell limply for at least half of the 125 feet he spent in the air, striking the water with an impact which would have been fatal had he still been alive.

Less than a year before, Andrew Jackson had been elected President of the United States. I’m going to argue the two events are related.

RELATED POST: Sam Patch (Part Two)

40 Credits & A Mule, Part I: This Land

December 31, 2014June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

Land was a big deal when our little experiment in democracy began. Why?

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed… (Declaration of Independence, 1776)

Consent of the governed? As in, the people being ruled make the rules, and all that? Huh – big responsibility. Harder than it sounds.

Given the number of reality shows based on the challenges of a dozen people living together (in a free house with unlimited alcohol and no jobs), running an entire country based on mandates from the masses seems… problematic.

If it were probable that every man would give his vote freely, and without influence of any kind, then, upon the true theory and genuine principles of liberty, every member of the community, however poor, should have a vote…

You gotta pay close attention when any argument begins with “in theory…”

But since that can hardly be expected, in persons of indigent fortunes, or such as are under the immediate dominion of others, all popular states have been obliged to establish certain qualifications, whereby, some who are suspected to have no will of their own, are excluded from voting; in order to set other individuals, whose wills may be supposed independent, more thoroughly upon a level with each other.” (Alexander Hamilton, Quoting Blackstone’s Commentaries on The Laws of England, 1775)

So, in order to assure that everyone’s political voice is more or less equal, we’re going to have to deny a political voice to some – to those without the ability to provide for themselves. Otherwise, the entire representative system may be undermined through the ability of the wealthy to manipulate the indigent.

Ironic, huh?

Then again, Hamilton was kinda Machiavellian about such things. Maybe someone less… cynical?

Viewing the subject in its merits alone…

That sounds a whole lot like “in theory” again…

…the freeholders [landowners] of the country would be the safest depositories of republican liberty. In future times the great majority of the people will not only be without landed, but any other sort of property. These will either combine under the influence of their common situation, in which case the rights of property and the public liberty will not be secure in their hands; or, which is more probable, they will become the tools of opulence and ambition, in which case there will be equal danger on another side. (James Madison, Speech in the Constitutional Convention, August 1787)

No help here from the ‘Father of the Constitution’. Apparently handing power over to men without land leads to either a tyranny of the masses (mob democracy) or a system in which the ignorant are led about by the manipulations of the wealthy and power-hungry.

My god, we wouldn’t want that. Can you imagine?

It appears that while our new nation was taking the concept of self-rule well beyond anything previously attempted, there were still substantial concerns over appropriate limits. (It’s one thing to talk about student-directed learning, but quite another to hand them chalk and the wifi password and tell them you’ll check back in May.)

Hey… maybe Jefferson! You can find quotes from Jefferson to prove just about anything. Let’s see…

My observations do not enable me to say I think integrity the characteristic of wealth. In general I believe the decisions of the people, in a body, will be more honest & more disinterested than those of wealthy men…

You see? That’s what I’m talking –

…and I can never doubt an attachment to his country in any man who has his family & peculium in it… (Letter to Edmund Pendleton, August 1776)

I had to look up ‘peculium’. It means ‘stuff’ – including family, income, etc. Not quite the same as land, but still property – still evidence of competence via one’s successful estate. In other words, no help from T.J.

Landowners were reliable, and self-sufficient. Their voice was their own. Those without? Not so much.

Keep in mind this was a new country – a baby nation. The Declaration was as much a Birth Certificate as a break-up letter, and our forebears were trying something entirely new. They were idealists, sure – but they were also educated, and realists, and had some idea how people tend to people-ize.

If this ‘self-government’ thing didn’t work, America would fail. If America failed, then democracy had failed. And if democracy failed here, it effectively failed everywhere – in most cases it would never even begin.

The Dark Ages return – tyranny and ignorance. Monsters rule the earth.

It was John Adams (of all people) who best explained how the young nation could be both a land of opportunity and pragmatically defend itself against fools and freeloaders.

It is certain in Theory, that the only moral Foundation of Government is the Consent of the People.

There’s that “in theory” again – but I guess he’d met the others…

But to what an Extent Shall We carry this Principle? Shall We Say, that every Individual of the Community, old and young, male and female, as well as rich and poor, must consent, expressly to every Act of Legislation? No, you will Say. This is impossible…

Adams probably talked too much, but I do love how he steps his audience through his reasoning. It’s very Socrates, very Holmes, very Bill Nye the Government Guy. Franklin may have been the poster child of the Enlightenment in the New World, but Adams was its lesson planner and edu-blogger.

But why exclude Women? You will Say, because their Delicacy renders them unfit for Practice and Experience, in the great Business of Life, and the hardy Enterprizes of War, as well as the arduous Cares of State. Besides, their attention is So much engaged with the necessary Nurture of their Children, that Nature has made them fittest for domestic Cares. And Children have not Judgment or Will of their own…

How did Abigail not kill him regularly?

I know a number of impressive women both professionally and personally. They are varied and wonderful creatures, but very few qualify for the epithet ‘delicate’. Clearly John was not in the room during childbirth.

But will not these Reasons apply to others? Is it not equally true, that Men in general in every Society, who are wholly destitute of Property, are also too little acquainted with public Affairs to form a Right Judgment, and too dependent upon other Men to have a Will of their own? … Such is the Frailty of the human Heart, that very few Men, who have no Property, have any Judgment of their own…

There it is – the same basic argument which was made time and again by our Framers. You gotta pass the 8th grade reading test to take Driver’s Ed, you gotta keep a ‘C’ average or better to play football, and you gotta have your own land to vote. It’s nothing personal. It’s simply an imperfect indication of minimal competence.

Doctors gotta have degrees to doctor on you. Drivers have to have a license. Barbers have to have special certificates confirming they can snip your hair off with scissors. None of these hold the power over the vast numbers of people a voter does. None could do the damage possible at the hands of the unqualified citizen.

Or so they reasoned. Personally, I think they were overreacting. I mean, pretty much everyone can vote today, right?

But Adams doesn’t leave it at that. He elaborates on a solution, a counterbalance. He looks at the long game.

Power always follows Property. This I believe to be as infallible a Maxim, in Politicks, as, that Action and Re-action are equal, is in Mechanicks. Nay I believe We may advance one Step farther and affirm that the Ballance of Power in a Society, accompanies the Ballance of Property in Land.
The only possible Way then of preserving the Ballance of Power on the side of equal Liberty and public Virtue, is to make the Acquisition of Land easy to every Member of Society: to make a Division of the Land into Small Quantities, So that the Multitude may be possessed of landed Estates.
If the Multitude is possessed of the Ballance of real Estate, the Multitude will have the Ballance of Power, and in that Case the Multitude will take Care of the Liberty, Virtue, and Interest of the Multitude in all Acts of Government. (Letter to James Sullivan, May 1776)

The first century of American history was largely shaped by this need for land. Some of this was primal and selfish. At times, shiny rocks were in the ground or particularly nice lumber stuck up out of it. But those were the temporal motivators. Behind them was a political, almost spiritual, paradigm – a distinction not always clear in that era.

To be a City on a Hill, one must have a hill. To be a republic – a government of-the-by-the-for-the – one must have qualified voters. The most universal way to demonstrate basic responsibility, competence, and character, was land ownership.

What neither Adams nor his contemporaries anticipated was just how quickly this baby nation would begin filling up – the locals spawning and immigrants flowing in as fast as boats could carry them. We were going to need more land, or this wasn’t going to work.

Without widespread, relatively easy access to land, democracy wasn’t possible, and this grand experiment would fail. If democracy failed here, it effectively failed everywhere – it would, in fact, never even begin elsewhere.

Dark Ages. Tyranny and ignorance. Monsters rule the earth.

We have some bad news for the Natives and Mexico.

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