LET THERE BE LIGHT

The concern of patriotic men is to put our government again on its right
basis, by substituting the popular will for the rule of guardians, the
processes of common counsel for those of private arrangement. In order to do
this, a first necessity is to open the doors and let in the light on all
affairs which the people have a right to know about.

In the first place, it is necessary to open up all the processes of our
politics. They have been too secret, too complicated, too roundabout; they
have consisted too much of private conferences and secret understandings, of
the control of legislation by men who were not legislators, but who stood
outside and dictated, controlling oftentimes by very questionable means,
which they would not have dreamed of allowing to become public. The whole
process must be altered. We must take the selection of candidates for office,
for example, out of the hands of small groups of men, of little coteries, out
of the hands of machines working behind closed doors, and put it into the
hands of the people themselves again by means of direct primaries and
elections to which candidates of every sort and degree may have free access.
We must substitute public for private machinery.

It is necessary, in the second place, to give society command of its own
economic life again by denying to those who conduct the great modern
operations of business the privacy that used to belong properly enough to men
who used only their own capital and their individual energy in business. The
processes of capital must be as open as the processes of politics. Those who
make use of the great modern accumulations of wealth, gathered together by
the dragnet process of the sale of stocks and bonds, and piling up of
reserves, must be treated as under a public obligation; they must be made
responsible for their business methods to the great communities which are in
fact their working partners, so that the hand which makes correction shall
easily reach them and a new principle of responsibility be felt throughout
their structure and operation.

What are the right methods of politics? Why, the right methods are those of
public discussion: the methods of leadership open and above board, not
closeted with "boards of guardians" or anybody else, but brought out under
the sky, where honest eyes can look upon them and honest eyes can judge of
them.

If there is nothing to conceal, then why conceal it? If it is a public game,
why play it in private? If it is a public game, then why not come out into
the open and play it in public? You have got to cure diseased politics as we
nowadays cure tuberculosis, by making all the people who suffer from it live
out of doors; not only spend their days out of doors and walk around, but
sleep out of doors; always remain in the open, where they will be accessible
to fresh, nourishing, and revivifying influences.