If we put the total number of voters in the country at 15,000,000, we can see how significant is the fact that more than a million, black and white, have already been directly disfranchised in the South alone.
In view of these numerous methods of thwarting democracy in this country (and there are others) there is no reason why the capitalists should not permit political leaders after a time to accept a number of radical and even revolutionary reforms in political methods.

The direct election of senators, though it was bitterly opposed a few years ago, is already widely accepted; the direct nomination of the President has become the law in several States; Mr.Roosevelt threatens that the "entire system" may have to be changed, that constitutions may be "thrown out of the window," and the power of judges over legislation abolished, which, as he notes, has already been advocated by the Socialist member of Congress[40]; the Wisconsin legislature formally calls for a national constitutional convention and proposes to make the constitution amendable henceforth by the "initiative"; Governor Woodrow Wilson suggests that _many_ of our existing evils may be remedied by national constitutional amendments[41], and two such amendments are now nearing adoption after forty years, during which it was thought that all amendment had ceased indefinitely.
Whether it will be decided to take away the power of the Supreme Court over legislation and make it directly responsible to Congress or the people, or to call a constitutional convention, is doubtful.

A convention, as Senator Heyburn recently pointed out in the Senate, is "bigger than the Constitution" and might conceivably amend what is declared in that instrument not to be amendable, by providing that the States should be represented in the Senate in proportion to population.
Even then the existing partial disfranchisement of the electors would prevent a new constitution from going "too far" in a democratic direction.

It is also true, as the same senator said, that the habit of amending the Constitution is a dangerous one (to capitalism), and that it might some day put the capitalistic government's life at stake[42].
But this after all amounts only to saying that political evolution, like all other kinds, is cumulative, and that its tempo is in the long run constantly accelerated.

Certainly each change leads to more change.