XXXIX
The disadvantages of being classed as a reformer are not, I am sure, sufficiently appreciated; if they were the peace of the world would not be troubled as constantly as it is by those who would make mankind over on a model of which they present themselves as the unattractive example. One of those advantages is that each reformer thinks that all the other reformers are in honor committed to his reform; he writes them letters asking for expressions of sympathy and support, and, generally, when he finds that each of the others has some darling reform of his own which he is determined to try on an unwilling public, he is at once denounced as a traitor to the whole scheme of reform in the universe. Another disadvantage is that reformers never are reëlected, and I might set forth others, were it my intention to embark on that interesting subject.
I am moved to these observations, however, by the recollection of an experience, exasperating at thetime, though now of no moment, since it has cured itself as will most exasperations if left long enough to themselves. Its importance, if it have any importance at all, may be ascribed to its effect of having saved me from any such fatal classification, unless I were far enough away from home, where almost anyone may be regarded as a reformer. To be sure, as I was just saying, in the days immediately following my first election, I was regarded by many of the sacred and illuminated host of reformers in the land as one of them, since I was asked to join in all sorts of movements for all sorts of prohibitions,—of the use of intoxicating liquors and tobacco and cigarettes, and I know not what other vices abhorred by those who are not addicted to them,—but it was my good luck, as it seems now to have been, to be saved from that fate by as good and faithful an enemy as ever helped a politician along. The Democrats had been placed in power that year in Ohio, and with Tom Johnson, many of us felt that it was an opportunity to secure certain changes in the laws of Ohio relating to the government of cities, that is, we felt it was time to secure our own reforms; everyone else, of course, felt the same way about his reforms. We had organized late in the previous year an association of the mayors of the cities in the state for the purpose of making changes in the municipal code that would give the cities a more mobile form of government and greater powers, in other words, it was the first definite movement in favor of home rule for cities, a liberation for which we struggled for almosta decade before we achieved any measure of success. We had drafted a new municipal code and had met at Columbus early in that January in which I took my office, to put the finishing touches to our code before presenting it to the legislature, and one morning I strolled into the hall of the House of Representatives before the daily session had been convened.
There was in the House at that time a newly elected member whom Johnson had supported for election and no sooner was he in his seat than he opposed every measure Johnson espoused, and, under the warming applause his disloyalty won from Johnson’s enemies, he became an opponent of the mayor more vociferous than effective. He was exactly, I think, of that type described by Emerson, who in the course of saying everything worth saying, or that will be worth saying for the next two hundred years, said: “Republics abound in young civilians who believe that the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce, education and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure, though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that the state must follow and not lead the character and progress of the citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only who build on Ideas build for eternity; and that the form of government which prevails is the expressionof what cultivation exists in the population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum. We are superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat; so much life as it has in the character of living men is its force.”
I knew this young civilian then only as one of the Johnson group and as that was sufficient introduction, in thecamaraderiethat existed between those of us who were devoted to the same cause, I stopped, at his salutation, and chatted with him for a moment. He had asked my opinion on a bill he had introduced, a measure to prohibit or regulate public dances in cities, or some such thing, and when I failed to evince the due degree of interest in the young man’s measure, he was at once displeased and tried to heat me to the proper degree of warmth in the holy cause of reform. He began, of course, by an indignant demand to know if I was in favor of the evils that were connected with public dances, and when I tried to show him that my inability to recognize his measure as the only adequate method of dealing with those evils did not necessarily indicate approval of them, he struck the prescribed attitude, held up his right hand and said something in the melodramatic style, about the oath of office I had taken not many days before. I saw at once then that I was dealing with a member in high standing of the order of the indurated sectarian mind, whose fanaticism makes them the most impossible persons in the world, and having never been certain which of the advice in the Proverbs should be accepted, I yielded to a fatal habit of joking—thehistory of the Republic is strewn with the wrecks of careers that were broken by a jest—and told him that I had taken my oath of office before a notary public, and that perhaps it had not been of full efficacy on that account.
And then I went away, and forgot the incident. It was revived in my memory, however, and intensified in its interest for me the next morning, when on getting back home, I saw in the newspapers a despatch from Columbus, under the most ominous of black headlines, stating that I had told the distinguished representative, on the very floor of the House, under the aegis, one almost might say, of the state, that I had no reverence for my oath of office, and did not intend to respect it. Here was anarchy for you, indeed, from the old pupil of Altgeld!
It was, of course, useless to explain, since any statement I might make would be but one more welcome knot to the tangle of misrepresentation in which the unhappy incident was being so gladly snarled, and I tried to forget it, though that was impossible, since it provided the text for many a sanctimonious editorial in the land, in each one of which some addition was made to the original report. Herbert Spencer says somewhere that for every story told in the world there is some basis of truth, and I suppose he is right, but I have always felt that he did not, at least in my reading of him, sufficiently characterize that worst vice of the human mind, intellectual dishonesty. Perhaps if he had associated less with scientists and more with professionalreformers of the morals of other persons he would not have omitted this curious specimen from his philosophic analysis, if he did omit it; and if that experience of the young civilian at Columbus had not been sufficient, I could have supplied him with another out of an episode in which I had borne a part some years before, one which should have been sufficient to warn me against the type for the rest of my life.
It concerns another young civilian, though this one was so old that he should have known better, and relates to a time years before when I happened to be running for the state senate. I say happened, for it was precisely of that fortuitous nature, since I had not been concerned in the circumstances which nominated me, so entirely negative in their character that I might as well have been said not to be running at all. I was a young lawyer, just beginning to practice, and in my wide leisure was out of town that summer, economically spending a holiday at my father’s house, and, since the Democrats had no hope in this world of carrying the district, and could get no one who was on the ground to defend himself to accept their nomination, they had nominated me. It was an honor, perhaps, but so empty and futile that when I came home again it seemed useless even to decline it, and best to forget it, and so I tried to do that, and made no campaign at all. But one afternoon I had a caller, a tall, dark visaged man, in black clerical garb, who came softly into my office, carefully closed the door, and, fixing his strange, intense eyes on me, said that he came totalk politics. He represented a reform league and he came, he said, to discuss my candidature for the state senate, and to offer me the support of his organization. “Of course,” he went on to explain, “we should impose certain conditions.” He fixed on me again and very intently, those strange, fanatic eyes.
I knew very well what the conditions were; it was hardly necessary for him to explain that I should be expected to sign a pledge to support the bills proposed by his organization, some of which, no doubt, were excellent measures.
I explained to him that I was under no illusions as to the campaign, that there was no possible chance of my election that year, that if there had been I never would have been nominated, and nothing short of a miracle could elect me. “But,” I added, “even if that miracle happens, though it will not, and I should be elected, I should go down to Columbus and to the Senate able to say that I had made no promises whatever.”
He looked at me a moment, with those strange, cold eyes peering narrowly out of his somber visage, and as he gazed they seemed to contract, and with the faint shadow of a smile that was wholly without humor, he said:
“Well, you can say that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The smile raised the man’s cheeks a little higher until they enclosed the little eyes in minute wrinkles, and invested them with an expression of the deepest cunning.
“Why, since you are opposed to signing ourpledge, we will waive that in your case, and you and I can have a little private understanding—no one need ever know, and you can say——” he was gently tapping the ends of his fingers together, and the last terms of his proposal seemed to be absorbed by an expression of vulpine significance so eloquent and plain in its meaning that mere words were superfluous.
I sat there and looked at him; I had known of him, he spoke nearly every Sunday in some church, and took up collections for the reform to which, quite sincerely, I believe, he was devoting his life. Then I said:
“But that isn’t my idea even of politics, to say nothing of ethics.”
I believe now that he had no conception of the moral significance of his suggestion that we have an implied understanding which I was to be at liberty to deny if the exigencies of politics suggested it. He was a reformer, belonging to the order of the indurated mind. He was possessed by a theory, which held his mind in the relentless mould of its absolutism, and there his mind had hardened, and, alas, his heart, too, no doubt—so that its original impressions were all fixed and immutable, and not subject to change; they could not be erased nor could any new impressions be superimposed. He was convinced that his particular theory was correct, and that if only it could be imposed on mankind, the world would be infinitely better off; and that hence any means, no matter what, were permissible in effecting this imposition, because of the good thatwould follow. It is an old mental attitude in this world, well treated of in books, and understood and recognized by everyone except those who adopt it, and in its spirit every new reform is promulgated by its avatar. But the reformer never thinks of himself in any such light, of course, he does not understand it any more than he understands mankind’s distrust of him. It is the instinctive fear of the theorist that has been felt for every one of them from Robespierre, the archtype, and impossibilist par excellence, down to the latest man haranguing his little idle crowd on the street corner.