Democracy may be a myth. Yet of all the faiths of our time none is more firmly grounded, none more warmly cherished. If any man refuses to abide by the decisions of democracy and takes his case out of that court, he ranges against himself practically the entire populace. On the other hand, the man who takes his case to that court is often forced to suffer for a long time humiliating defeats. If the case be a new one but little understood, there is no place where a hearing seems so hard to win as in exactly that court. Universal suffrage, by which such cases are decided, appears to the man with a new idea as an obstacle almost overwhelming. He must set out on a long and dreary road of education and of organization; he must take his case before a jury made up of untold millions; he must wait maybe for centuries to obtain a majority. To go into this great open court and plead an entirely new cause requires a courage that is sublime and convictions that have the intensity of a religion. One who possesses any doubt cannot begin a task so gigantic, and certainly one who, for any reason, distrusts the people cannot, of course, put his case in that court. It was with full realization of the difficulties, of the certainty of repeated defeats, and of the overwhelming power against them that the socialists entered this great arena to fight their battle. Universal suffrage is a merciless thing. How often has it served the purpose of stripping the socialist naked and exposing him to a terrible humiliation! Again and again, in the history of the last fifty years, have the socialists, after tremendous agitation, gigantic mass meetings, and widespread social unrest, marched their followers to the polls with results positively pitiful. A dozen votes out of thousands have in more cases than one marked their relative power. There is no other example in the world of such faith, courage, and persistence in politics as that of the socialists, who, despite defeat after defeat, humiliation after humiliation, have never lost hope, but on every occasion, in every part of the modern world, have gone up again and again to be knocked down by that jury.