But there is a great deal more to be said in favor of a property qualification for voters than that it will be a wall against Bolshevism. It will act on our political internal system as a tonic and a purifier. It sometimes occurs in politics and statesmanship that two mischiefs are so bound together that they can be destroyed at one blow. Such was the case in 1861-1865, when the causes of the perpetuation of the Federal Union and the emancipation of the black race became by the logic of events so involved as to be practically united, and when by the triumph of the northern armies the mischiefs of chattel slavery and disunion politics were made to perish together. And in like manner we now find not only that unqualified or manhood suffrage is the chief source of our weakness in dealing with Bolshevism, but that it has been in the past and still is the principal cause of our political corruption and governmental inefficiency. And therefore it has come about that the cause of private property and property rights is so bound up with the cause of administrative purity and efficiency in our government that by the one measure of the establishment of a property qualification for voters the perils of the menace of Bolshevism and the mischiefs of political corruption and inefficiency may be dispatched together. It is in fact principally to the corruption and inefficiency of manhood suffrage government that we owe the popular dissatisfaction out of which the hopes of American Bolshevism are bred and nourished. The failure of democratic institutions in this country must be admitted and it is almost entirely due to the operation of manhood suffrage. We have aimed at theoretical perfection, the natural conditions have been most favorable; we have loudly called the world to witness the experiment, and the world has condemned it as a political failure. This statement will hardly be challenged, but it is well supported by available proof, and need not rest merely on the assertion or opinion of the writer. And right here the reader may as well be informed that it is the author’s intention to support his material assertions with such evidence as the nature of the subject permits. Such readers as are tolerably familiar with American political history will recognize the truth of most of the statements of fact contained in these pages; but the reasonable doubts of the politically uninstructed will be removed as far as conveniently possible by reference to records and to the testimony of reliable witnesses. Here therefore we quote on this branch of the subject from an address of _Henry Jones Ford_, President of The American Political Science Association, delivered at the Annual Meeting at Cleveland, December 29, 1919.