physicians and nurses who have been trained in great institutions established and sustained by organized civilized society through the medium of property accumulated by the men of years and generations past; and from his birth on, the child, whatever be his station, is clothed, fed, sheltered and nourished in sickness and in health; trained, educated, watched over and preserved as long as he lives, by the aid of institutions which were created and are maintained by Society through the accumulation, the use and the application of property. The poorest individual is more indebted to property accumulations and is more dependent upon them in time of need than the richest, because it is only from them that charities and benevolences of all kinds, outdoor relief, free hospitals, dispensaries, schools, colleges and churches can be maintained. Even Robinson Crusoe on his island would have perished had it not been for the use of such products of high civilization as he was able to save from the wreck. Following the argument founded on the justice of the case comes that based upon the superior fitness of members of the propertied class for the function of voters. This fitness is derived from the training which is incidental to the acquisition and care of property in the struggle for life. The property qualification for voters is in effect an educational test, and far more effective than that of mere book learning, which so often turns out to be quite insufficient as a preparation for the conduct of human affairs, and is equally insufficient for the understanding of politics. There is an education in life as well as in books and the education in life is the more valuable of the two. To have acquired and preserved property implies not only ordinary school or theoretical education, but business training as well, and as government is mostly a business affair a property qualification presupposes a special preparatory course of training of the kind which is the best of all for the voter, and in addition such civic and political virtues as are necessary to success in business. “In politics, as elsewhere, only that which costs is valued. The industrial virtues imply self-denial, which prepares their possessors to wield political power; but pauperism raises a presumption of unfitness to share in political power. The person who cannot support himself has no moral claim to rule one who can.” (Lalor’s _Cyclopedia_; _Suffrage_.) It is the actual contact with, and the masterful control of the things of life that fits a man to give judgment on their force and value; and his success therein is the test of his own capacity. In a very able and instructive article on “The Basic Problem of Democracy” in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for November, 1919, written by Walter Lipman, he dwells upon the proposition heretofore generally overlooked that what is most needed in our political system is some means of giving the electorate true information as to facts. He says: