A democratic political organization has no
immunity from grievances. They are a necessary result of a complicated
and changing industrial and social organism. What is good for one
generation will often be followed by consequences that spell deprivation
for the next. What is good for one man or one class of men will bring
ills to other men or classes of men. What is good for the community as a
whole may mean temporary loss and a sense of injustice to a minority.
All grievances from any cause should receive full expression in a
democracy, but, inasmuch as the righteously discontented must be always
with us, the fundamental democratic principle should, above all, counsel
mutual forbearance and loyalty. The principle of equal rights encourages
mutual suspicion and disloyalty. It tends to attribute individual and
social ills, for which general moral, economic, and social causes are
usually in large measure responsible, to individual wrong-doing; and in
this way it arouses and intensifies that personal and class hatred,
which never in any society lies far below the surface.
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