INTELLIGENCE WORK
1
THE practice of democracy has been ahead of its theory. For the theory holds that the adult electors taken together make decisions out of a will that is in them. But just as there grew up governing hierarchies which were invisible in theory, so there has been a large amount of constructive adaptation, also unaccounted for in the image of democracy. Ways have been found to represent many interests and functions that are normally out of sight.
We are most conscious of this in our theory of the courts, when we explain their legislative powers and their vetoes on the theory that there are interests to be guarded which might be forgotten by the elected officials. But the Census Bureau, when it counts, classifies, and correlates people, things, and changes, is also speaking for unseen factors in the environment. The Geological Survey makes mineral resources evident, the Department of Agriculture represents in the councils of the nation factors of which each farmer sees only an infinitesimal part. School authorities, the Tariff Commission, the consular service, the Bureau of Internal Revenue give representation to persons, ideas, and objects which would never automatically find themselves represented in this perspective by an election. The Children's Bureau is the spokesman of a whole complex of interests and functions not ordinarily visible to the voter, and, therefore, incapable of becoming spontaneously a part of his public opinions. Thus the printing of comparative statistics of infant mortality is often followed by a reduction of the death rate of babies. Municipal officials and voters did not have, before publication, a place in