Beyond dispute then, the great mass of wealth held by corporations is almost wholly under the control of their managers, and not the mass of the owners.  Mr. Hill has recently testified that he never knew a stockholder to attend a meeting except to make trouble; by which he perhaps meant that when a single stockholder appeared, it was to get paid for not making trouble.

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It need hardly be said that no such thing as legitimate representation of corporate wealth is known in our politics, and the representation of individual wealth is very limited.  The theory of government by manhood suffrage, so far as there is any theory, is now entirely personal.  In early times the freemen of the town, or little commune, met and legislated according to their needs.  To be a freeman one had to own property; to “have a stake in the country.”  Nowadays nearly all the men who have no property can vote, and some that have property cannot.  In England, they are doing away with “plural voters.”  Heretofore it was thought just, when a man owned land in more than one place, that he should have his say in the government of all; but this is now forbidden.  The right was never recognized in this country, partly because formerly men seldom owned property in two places, but as transportation improved the conditions changed.  The “commuters” are legion.  Their business and their capital are under one jurisdiction and their dwellings and families under another; but they can vote in only one.  Many thousands of men own houses in both city and country.  They could help in the government of both, but are disfranchised in one or the other.  Under our complicated systems of registration, they are often disfranchised at both.

Of course when population increases, the town meeting becomes a physical impossibility.  There is no more direct legislation; it has to be delegated.  The power is transferred to the city councils, and to the state and national legislatures.  In other words, the interests of the owners of wealth are put in charge of trustees.  According to Hamilton, the theory of our government is that the people will “naturally” choose the wisest of their number to represent them.  There is not much basis for this assumption.  Rousseau scouted it.  According to him, the volonte generale could be ascertained only in the town meeting, and he seriously maintained that the ideal government for the Roman empire was by the gangs of rioters that the politicians marshalled in the Forum at Rome under the name of comitia.  All that the theory of our government requires, is that our rulers shall be such men as are designated by the majority of the voters.  That they should be wise and good men may accord with the theory of aristocracy; it is no part of the theory of democracy, and is certainly a very small part of the practice.