A democracy can be such in fact only if there is some rough
approximation in similarity in stature among the men composing it. One
of us can deal in our private lives with the grocer or the butcher
or the carpenter or the chicken raiser, or if we are the grocer or
carpenter or butcher or farmer, we can deal with our customers, because
_we are all of about the same size_. Therefore a simple and poor society
can exist as a democracy on a basis of sheer individualism. But a rich
and complex industrial society cannot so exist; for some individuals,
and especially those artificial individuals called corporations, become
so very big that the ordinary individual is utterly dwarfed beside them,
and cannot deal with them on terms of equality. It therefore becomes
necessary for these ordinary individuals to combine in their turn, first
in order to act in their collective capacity through that biggest of all
combinations called the Government, and second, to act, also in their
own self-defense, through private combinations, such as farmers'
associations and trade unions.
This the great coal operators did not see. They did not see that their
property rights, which they so stoutly defended, were of the same
texture as were the human rights, which they so blindly and hotly
denied.
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