I know a woman of small school education, but large native intelligence, who spends her time between her family and the daily laundry work she does to support that family, who, when she goes to her Mothers’ Club at the “School Centre” penetrates all the superficialities she may find there, and makes every other woman go home with higher standards for her home, her children and herself. The education of children, the opportunities of employment for girls and boys, sanitation, housing, and all the many questions which touch one’s everyday life are considered in a homely way on those Thursday afternoons. Sometime these women will vote on these questions, but a true intermingling of majority and minority will have taken place before election day. Moreover, while representation of the minority, as proportional representation,[66] is always an interesting experiment, just because it is a method of representation and not a mode of association the party can circumvent it. We are told that minority representation tried in the lower house of the Illinois legislature has been completely subverted to their own ends by the politicians. And also that in Belgium, where proportional representation has been introduced, this system has become a tool in the hands of the dominant party. No electoral or merely representative method can save us. Representation is not the main fact of political life; the main concern of politics is _modes of association_. We do not want the rule of the many or the few; we must find that method of political procedure by which majority and minority ideas may be so closely interwoven that we are truly ruled by the will of the whole. We shall have democracy only when we learn to produce this will through group organization—when young men are no longer lectured to on democracy, but when they are made into the stuff of democracy. ----- Footnote 65: This view of democracy was well satirized by some one, I think Lord Morley, who said, “I do not care who does the voting as long as I do the counting.” Footnote 66: Proportional representation is interesting to the view put forward in this book because it is a method to bring out all the differences. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ XVIII DEMOCRACY NOT THE CROWD: OUR POPULAR DELUSION --------------