460 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
the material condition of working people. As a whole they still expect legal enactment to satisfy the desire, not only for social order, but for social righteousness, and they are only slowly losing their habit of turning to the law for moral support. They are still endeavoring to secure each advance in ethics by a step taken in politics, and this endeavor is the one safeguard of democracy.
The well-to-do portions of the community are prone to think of politics as something off by itself. They may conscientiously recognize a political duty as part of good citizenship, but polit- ical effort is not the natural expression of their moral striving. A contempt for law is almost certain to follow, when we lose our habit of turning toward it for moral support. There is little doubt that appeals through corporation attorneys are often made to legislative bodies solely with the view of protecting vested interests and property rights. In their preoccupation there is no time to consider morals or the rights of the community as a whole. This non-moral attitude, as well as the immoral one of open corruption of legislators, does much toward destroying the foundations of democratic government.
The body of trades-unionists in America are becoming dis- couraged from the fact that moral appeal and open agitation do not have fair play, because the "interests of capital" are not confined to these, but have methods of securing legisla- tion which are perforce denied to the workingmen. Such scenes as were enacted in the Illinois house and senate in the winter of 1897 ^'^ much toward loosening faith in legisla- tures and turning into cynics men who before believed in legislation. The confidence of workingmen in the courts has been shaken by the fact that the judges have so often been trained as corporation attorneys, and it is a common assertion which may often be heard in workingmen's meetings that the militia and United States troops are almost invariably used to protect the interests of the employer in times of strike. How deep-seated this conviction has become, and how rapidly it has grown, may be illustrated by a little history from the International Cigarmakers' Union, one of the most peaceful and highly organ-
