“Does it require argument to prove to thoughtful people that wise choice is not likely to be made in the midst of the revel of hysteria, sham, demagogy, falsehood and ignorance, which we call a direct popular election of administrative officers? Is choice likely to be wise when nine out of ten of those who make it know nothing of the candidates they support or oppose, and are equally ignorant of the work the candidates ask the privilege of doing?”
“Does it require argument to prove to thoughtful people that wise choice is not likely to be made in the midst of the revel of hysteria, sham, demagogy, falsehood and ignorance, which we call a direct popular election of administrative officers? Is choice likely to be wise when nine out of ten of those who make it know nothing of the candidates they support or oppose, and are equally ignorant of the work the candidates ask the privilege of doing?”
Thus arises a question difficult to decide, between appointments by a machine, and those of a machine-directed populace.
The immense importance of scientific management of cities is so obvious as not to need discussion. It is set forth in detail in a book published in 1918 by M. L. Cooke, Director of Public Works in Philadelphia, to which the reader is referred. The author states that “Governmental work, Federal, State and Municipal, is still almost exclusively in the unsystematized stage.”
Here is an extract from a competent writer, a man of actual experience in city matters:
“When the Public Builds Buildings.Twenty-seven million dollars for a City Hall that was to have cost $7,000,000; no water on the second floor of a public bath because the water mains were made too small; an emergency order, without competitive bids, for repairing a police precinct, given to a contractor sixteen miles away; $20,000 for cleaning a City Hall that could be kept clean for $2,000; fifteen employees dead from tuberculosis in one germ-infested, dark, unclean room. What’s the use of multiplying examples?” (Woman’s Part in Government, by W. H. p. 330.)
“When the Public Builds Buildings.Twenty-seven million dollars for a City Hall that was to have cost $7,000,000; no water on the second floor of a public bath because the water mains were made too small; an emergency order, without competitive bids, for repairing a police precinct, given to a contractor sixteen miles away; $20,000 for cleaning a City Hall that could be kept clean for $2,000; fifteen employees dead from tuberculosis in one germ-infested, dark, unclean room. What’s the use of multiplying examples?” (Woman’s Part in Government, by W. H. p. 330.)
The lack of efficiency in Federal administration which has been notorious for ninety years is due to the malign influence of manhood suffrage which renders it impossible to enforce standards of capacity. What Faguet calls “the religion of incompetency” is displayed even in the presidential appointments where men are moved about from office to office like checkers on a board, and put in places for which they have had no previous training whatever. This method of appointmentis in itself convincing proof, not merely of the unfitness of the appointments, but of the vice of the whole system of selection. A jack of all trades is master of none. What would be said of the fitness of a man to superintend a watch-making establishment who had never worked at the trade or business of maker or of dealer in watches, and whose entire experience had consisted of one or two years in each of the employments of carpenter, dentist, cook and piano tuner? Yet the practice of politics sanctions just such appointments as that would be. Even for great offices requiring the highest skill, preparatory training or experience is rarely required. Looking back from 1918; out of forty-four United States Secretaries of State from the beginning of our history, thirty-three were lawyers; only three or four had any previous diplomatic experience; out of the sixteen last Secretaries of the Treasury, twelve were lawyers and only four bankers; out of the last thirteen Postmasters General, only one had ever before been in the Post Office Department; of forty-nine Secretaries of War in our history thirty-five were lawyers; the others were editors, bankers, etc., and only three or four had any previous military experience; out of thirty-eight Secretaries of the Navy twenty-seven were lawyers, three authors, and seven were business men. Not one of them all had any naval experience prior to taking control of the United States Navy. A former Secretary of the Navy gave the writer to understand that he had been appointed principally to distribute the patronage and to hold the state politically in line. Now, while it is quite true that a knowledge of the law and a training in the art of reading and understanding law is extremely important to any cabinet official, yet surely a lawyer cannot be expected to build ships, conduct a post-office business, direct the diplomacy of a great nation or carry on war properly without any appropriate previous training whatever. Yet under a system of government by manhood or universal suffrage untrained men are sure to get these high appointments because they are vote-getters and can obtain the support of the controllable class for the party in power; in short because theyare machine men and the needs of the machine are first and imperative.
The extent to which some of these cabinet officers have been shifted about is astonishing. Mr. Cortelyou for instance had been stenographer and private secretary to President McKinley; and in a few years thereafter filled the offices of Secretary of Commerce and Labor, Postmaster General and Secretary of the Treasury. Mr. Meyer was Postmaster General under Roosevelt and Secretary of the Navy under Taft, the next President. Moody from the place of Secretary of the Navy under Roosevelt was suddenly jumped onto the bench and made Justice of the Supreme Court. Charles Bonaparte was Attorney General when he was shifted into the place of Secretary of the Navy. Now it is a sufficient tax on human credulity to ask one to believe that the original appointments of these men were made entirely because of fitness; but it exceeds the limit when we are required to suppose that while in the office of Postmaster General Mr. Cortelyou was really learning finance and becoming fitted for Secretary of the Treasury, while Mr. Meyer in the same Postmaster General’s office was becoming a great naval expert, a real seadog justified to be “Ruler of Uncle Sam’s Navee.”
It is notorious that all state appointments by the governor are made not for merit, but as a reward for political service, and invariably from the members of the political oligarchy who procured the governor’s election, or under their direction to members of their family or backers. The results are often grotesque. Look for a moment at a batch of state appointments; take the very first that happens to come to hand from New York. State Tax Commissioner W. was formerly State Comptroller and before that Postmaster. Election Superintendent R., formerly Assistant District Attorney in New York City, was before that in the Attorney General’s office in Albany and Superintendent of State Prisons. R. 2 was recently Collector of the Port of Rochester; he now holds a state office. Another couple:—V. has been successively Commissioner ofExcise, Commissioner of Police, Commissioner of Docks, Police Justice, Commissioner of Elections; Superintendent of Public Buildings; Superintendent of Elections. H. has held the offices of Deputy Collector of Internal Revenue; member of Board of Alderman; Grain Superintendent; Sealer of Weights and Measures; Superintendent of Streets and Clerk of the Court. The practice is the same in all states and cities, and these five instances could be easily increased to five thousand and with time and research to five hundred thousand. In fact it is rare to find a man of over thirty-five years of age in public office who has not filled several entirely different political employments. It is said that one of the members of the New York Constitutional Convention of 1846 proposed that public officials should be selected by lot; and it is doubtful whether in some cases the result would not be an improvement on the present system. Is it any wonder that government administration is a joke, an object of scorn to business men? Efficiency cannot be expected in any department of government or business whose chief is ignorant of the details of its operations. And yet so demoralizing has been the effect of the manhood suffrage political tradition, so accustomed are not merely the politicians but the public to the vicious practice of distributing these most important offices as rewards for political work, that the proposal to require them to be filled by men of experience and training in the work of their respective offices would probably be met with derisive laughter in every governmental department.
Let us not flatter ourselves, therefore, that under a manhood suffrage government any real improvement can be obtained by the mere expedient so often urged of filling the offices by appointment instead of by election. Experience teaches the contrary. At present the appointments to office, whether made by the president, governor or other officer are of the same general character as those made by popular election; that is, they are nearly all bad; the spirit of Jackson still controls most of them; the spirit of politics, of deference to the will ofthe machine, of compliance with the theory on which universal suffrage stands; the theory that participation in the activities, honors and emoluments of government is a sort of perquisite of citizenship or privilege in which each citizen is entitled to share. This pernicious theory must be forever cast out of our political system and replaced by the true one; namely, that both the vote and office are to be entrusted only to the qualified, before we can expect permanent improvement in the administration of public affairs. In vain we may continue the long struggle to abolish the spoils system as long as every candidate from the president down to constable has to face the demands of the insatiable regular army of the politicians. Not only every legislative candidate, but every aspirant for a judicial or administrative office, has now in one way or another to satisfy these disciplined gangs of political marauders, their bosses and their machines. These hireling bands must be disfranchised and disbanded and the institution of manhood suffrage overthrown before efficiency will become an established feature of our governmental system.
Of the fact that a pure and efficient administration of public affairs is possible there cannot be the slightest doubt. The result was actually achieved in this country in federal administration by President Washington, and continued in the forty years that intervened till Jackson’s time. It has also been accomplished by ourselves in the Philippines, by the French and Dutch in some of their colonies, and notably by Great Britain in all parts of the world. Read for instance the report from which the following is an extract, made by Alleyne Ireland, a specialist in Colonial affairs, appointed Colonial Commissioner in the Far East, by the University of Chicago. (North American Review, May, 1918.)
“Administration as a non-political function of government is a conception unfamiliar to the American mind; and I propose to describe in outline how administrative problems appear to the eye of a man who has spent twenty years in studying those forms of government in which administration is conducted on a non-politicalbasis. I have observed in actual operation ten distinct forms of government which conform to this condition. They are the Crown Colony System in various British Colonies; the Central Government of India; the Indian Provincial System in Burma; the system of Protected Native States in the Malay Peninsula; the Government of a Commercial Company in Borneo; the Rule of an Independent White Raja in Sarawak; the early American Government in Mindanao; limited Parliamentary Government in British Guiana and Barbados; the French Colonial System in Indo-China; and the Dutch Colonial System in Java. In the countries I have named there are administered the public affairs of more than 300,000,000 people. Although these governments have been constantly attacked on the ground of their lack of a popular political element it is the general verdict of those who have observed them in action that, leaving political participation aside, they furnish this vast population with a larger measure of the tangible fruits of good government than is enjoyed by any people under the more ‘liberal’ constitutions of Europe and America.... The influence exerted upon policy by the one and by the other of these two modes of procedure differs profoundly. In the United States the matter is decided, initially, by some hundreds of men, and many having strong political motives for taking a particular view; in India the matter is decided, initially, by six men, each of whom is a trained and experienced administrator, and none of whom has any electorate to please, any powerful business interest to placate, or any political party to support. In the former instance the veto rests with one man who may have no more than an amateur’s acquaintance with the question involved; in the latter the veto also rests with one man, but this man is, in practice, guided by the advice of the India Council, a body of from ten to fourteen men, sitting in London, composed as to the majority, of ex-Indian officials of long service and varied administrative experience.”
“Administration as a non-political function of government is a conception unfamiliar to the American mind; and I propose to describe in outline how administrative problems appear to the eye of a man who has spent twenty years in studying those forms of government in which administration is conducted on a non-politicalbasis. I have observed in actual operation ten distinct forms of government which conform to this condition. They are the Crown Colony System in various British Colonies; the Central Government of India; the Indian Provincial System in Burma; the system of Protected Native States in the Malay Peninsula; the Government of a Commercial Company in Borneo; the Rule of an Independent White Raja in Sarawak; the early American Government in Mindanao; limited Parliamentary Government in British Guiana and Barbados; the French Colonial System in Indo-China; and the Dutch Colonial System in Java. In the countries I have named there are administered the public affairs of more than 300,000,000 people. Although these governments have been constantly attacked on the ground of their lack of a popular political element it is the general verdict of those who have observed them in action that, leaving political participation aside, they furnish this vast population with a larger measure of the tangible fruits of good government than is enjoyed by any people under the more ‘liberal’ constitutions of Europe and America.... The influence exerted upon policy by the one and by the other of these two modes of procedure differs profoundly. In the United States the matter is decided, initially, by some hundreds of men, and many having strong political motives for taking a particular view; in India the matter is decided, initially, by six men, each of whom is a trained and experienced administrator, and none of whom has any electorate to please, any powerful business interest to placate, or any political party to support. In the former instance the veto rests with one man who may have no more than an amateur’s acquaintance with the question involved; in the latter the veto also rests with one man, but this man is, in practice, guided by the advice of the India Council, a body of from ten to fourteen men, sitting in London, composed as to the majority, of ex-Indian officials of long service and varied administrative experience.”
We are not lacking in material in America; we have the best in the world; energetic, honest, upright, clear-headed, healthy, vigorous, disinterested, patriotic, well-educated men; noble fellows, plenty of them; eager for work; but they are not in politics and never will be there under the present vile régime. It is just because they prize honor and reputationthat they stay out of politics. Bryce truly says that “the American system does not succeed in bringing the best men to the top. Yet in Democracy more perhaps than in other governments, seeing it is the most delicate and difficult of governments, it is essential that the best men should come to the top.” What prevents our best men from coming to the top? What prevents our having in this country the purity and efficiency witnessed by Mr. Ireland in ten different jurisdictions? Principally, our political spoils system, whose source and support are manhood suffrage and the controllable vote. Secondarily, our failure to recognize formally and actually the principle of efficiency as the prime essential in government. Such recognition will neither be genuine nor effective unless it begins with requiring an efficient electorate. After that what remains to be done will be comparatively easy and natural. Without it, the cause of substantial reform is practically hopeless.
WEAKNESS AND INEFFICIENCY OF OUR MANHOOD SUFFRAGE GOVERNMENT IN ITS FOREIGN RELATIONS
WEAKNESS AND INEFFICIENCY OF OUR MANHOOD SUFFRAGE GOVERNMENT IN ITS FOREIGN RELATIONS
Thequalities which render a government popular or successful at home do not always work for efficiency in foreign relations. In home matters the nation discusses, divides, and experiments; in its foreign relations it must act as one man and present to the other nations the same single attitude as would be offered by a dictatorship. Therefore it has been often said that a democracy is apt to be weak in its foreign policy, because it has to reconcile so many opinions before it can effectually act. But this weakness is not inherent in every conceivable democracy; it is possible for a democratic electorate if sufficiently intelligent to select one man or a small group of men to represent it in foreign affairs with firmness and ability. This, however, cannot be expected from an unintelligent constituency such as manhood suffrage provides, much less from an organization for spoils such as it has developed and placed in power in the United States.
The manhood suffrage politicians who have had the popular ear for the past century have not understood the necessities or proprieties of our foreign relations, and have misinformed the people on the subject. They have adopted the cheap newspaper attitude of sneering at skill, tact and secrecy and applauding truculence and bluff in foreign diplomacy. They have never realized the value of trained and cultivated statesmanship. Its importance is however transcendent. As long as the world continues to be composed of many different nations each including large populations, differing more or less in race, religion, habits and prejudices from each of the others,there will be new and delicate situations constantly arising, requiring the practice of tact, statesmanship, diplomacy, and a historical as well as a present day practical knowledge of foreign countries. But under the system of universal suffrage the populace is king, the machine is his chief minister, the cheap daily press is his mouthpiece, and statesmen and diplomats are not valued by either. The inferior newspapers want men in office who depend not on merit but on advertisement; who rely for promotion on journalistic control of a public which gets all its information from the daily press. They prefer politicians who toady to them to statesmen who despise their ignorance, their lies and their vulgarities. It is the custom of both politicians and newspapers to belittle statesmanship, because the politicians have no knowledge of its history and capacities, and because real statesmen are indisposed to tolerate the pretensions and the interference of either newspapers or politicians. All three, populace, press and political machine, would like to see the general policy of the nation, including its foreign affairs, confided to such politicians as would seek guidance rather in the opinions of the mob and the columns of the newspapers than in studies of the history of foreign politics, of economics, of institutions and of the dynamic forces of the time.
There can be no successful diplomatic or even business negotiation without a decent amount of secrecy. The cheap newspapers dislike this precaution. They pretend to see no need for secret diplomacy; they insist that all negotiations between nations should be public. They are not prone to understand pride or delicacy in any quarter, and would like to see made public the private transactions not only of nations but of individuals, so that they might thus satisfy the cheap curiosity of their readers; for this reason they are opposed to the law of libel and to every protection to human privacy. They tell us in their flippant and cock-sure way that diplomacy and secrecy are not necessary parts of the policy or of the procedure of a free nation; that all treaty negotiations should be open; and they are fond of denouncing with a great show of moral indignation the secret diplomacy of the so-called autocracies of the world. But common sense teaches us that as long as national pride continues, and treaties are to be made and war and peace decided upon by governments, that is to say, as long as opposing and warlike nations exist, secrecy will be necessary in the discussion of treaties and in all important international negotiations; and that the government which neglects to use the precaution and to give the guaranty of secrecy will be sometimes left in the lurch.
We hear a lot about a League of Nations in these days. The greatest and most successful league of sovereign powers ever established was this Union of States by and under a Constitution which was forged and created at Philadelphia in 1787 by some forty educated and propertied gentlemen working in absolute secrecy. Neither the newspapers nor the populace was allowed to be present or to be represented at their deliberations, nor to know what was going on, nor to read or otherwise learn of their debates or processes, therefore the delegates were able to work untrammelled and to produce good results. Absolute secrecy in its construction made our American Constitution possible.
Besides secrecy, great skill is required in the making of treaties and constitutions. The nations whose rulers and diplomatic agents are chosen under a system of universal suffrage, of government by demagogues and platform ranters who are allowed and expected to distribute diplomatic posts among their supporters; such nations will suffer in competition with those whose polity brings to the front and puts in command a set of trained educated statesmen and diplomats. The two greatest triumphs of the United States in its entire history were diplomatic achievements; and both were accomplished by statesmen trained under the old property qualification suffrage system, before manhood suffrage had cheapened our institutions. It was diplomacy, and secret diplomacy at that, which under the astute management of Franklin obtained forthe American States the aid of France and made successful the American Revolution. It was diplomacy, secret and highly skilled diplomacy, which procured in 1803 the cession to the United States by France of Louisiana, from which territory nine great states and the greater part of four others were created and which made the United States a real power in the world. The story of that acquisition as described by Fiske is that of one of the greatest diplomatic achievements in history; and, after making all allowances for good luck in the affair, we find there pictured a statesmanship and a patriotism calculated to thrill the heart of every American. The men who were most conspicuous on the American side from first to last in that transaction, were not of the class of politicians who are to-day being chosen for high office by the popular vote; they were Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Robert R. Livingston; all of them men of position, property, good family, descent and education. All but Washington were college graduates. All were brought to the front by a system established upon the votes of a propertied electorate.
As government by the propertied class was successful in diplomacy in those old days, so that of manhood suffrage has been a diplomatic failure in our own time. The most recent and terrible instance of the direful results of lack of governmental efficiency has been that of the episode of the German War just concluded. Democracy was not only unprepared in 1914 for the struggle with Germany, but it completely failed to foresee or even to suspect its approach. The crisis of 1914 found the four great democratic nations of the world deficient in military organization, in preparation for defense, and in international vision and information. Granted the existence of a Germany, armed to the teeth, and sharpening her sword for mischief, Democracy should have had in charge of its foreign affairs men with vision sufficient to enable them to foresee or at least to conjecture her designs. Of these designs her democratic neighbors had no conception, and the United States was as unsuspecting as a child. No effort had beenmade to study the situation. Our rulers were mere vote-getters, local politicians, with a ridiculously small knowledge of foreign affairs, and of the dreadful impending future no vision whatever. We had then and we have now no adequate foreign affairs organization at Washington or abroad; and no sufficient popular conception of the need of one. It was part of the business of an efficient national government in 1914 to understand thoroughly our foreign relations; and therefore to keep competent representatives in all foreign countries; to measurably understand the policy of Germany and every other first class power and its true significance; the extent of Germany’s military and naval preparations and their object, and the issues involved in the war; it was its business to realize our true interests therein; to keep informed of every phase of the struggle as it proceeded; to lead and advise the press and the representatives of the people on all these matters; to cause due preparation to be made for all eventualities, and to prescribe a consistent and dignified policy for the nation. No one can possibly deny that the Washington administration failed in all and every one of these respects. It did none of these things; and let us haste to say that it is not to be supposed that the opposite party could have done any better. In these important matters Washington could not help but fail, because our political system created by universal suffrage and guided by its paltry spirit makes no provision for statesmanship or diplomacy; for forethought, sagacity and profound policy in foreign affairs; nor for preparation for great wars. Nor were the other great democracies, Great Britain, France, or Italy, much better off, as is shown by the miserable Russian fiasco, when they and ourselves, with an incredible fatuous folly permitted and even aided or encouraged the Bolsheviki and their German assistants to destroy the Russian alliance, by deposing the friendly Czar who was maintaining a government which had fought nobly and effectively for the common cause, and which was the only civilized government possible in Russia. It was then in the power of the Allies backing the Czar tohave stamped out Bolshevism. They allowed him to be deposed by a gang of adventurers, while we stupidly applauded and raised the silly cry that Russia was now a democracy; a free country forsooth. Misled by our ignorant and worthless Foreign Office the masses who foolishly believe that freedom consists in merely voting at elections were delighted; our politicians and newspapers really or affectedly joined in this senseless joy; and the few among us who understood what was really being done were unable to get a hearing. Civilization in Russia and the cause of the Allies was betrayed by the ignorance of the politicians who controlled the Allied policies, and the result has been the loss of tens of thousands of American lives and billions of American dollars.
A corresponding inefficiency was displayed elsewhere by the great allied democracies. From the moment of the first blare of the German war trumpet in 1914 we saw them piteously struggling to free themselves from the burden of the political ineptitude which this pernicious system of universal suffrage and vote-getting politics had fastened upon each of them; striving to oust the democracy of ignorance and weakness, and to give the aristocracy of merit the place it must have before the fierce contest could be won. Some of the incompetents chosen for office by the much vaunted elective system were pushed to the rear out of sight; some were otherwise got rid of or superseded; and some were slowly trained up to the efficiency they should have already possessed before being put in places of trust and power. In the meantime, there was over there failure and again failure; failure in Serbia; failure in Greece; failure in Rumania; failure in Ireland; failure in Russia. And here in our own country as the war proceeded, want of foresight, want of preparation, inefficiency and waste; and though democracy conquered at last it was by sheer weight of numbers and resources, while its slowness to understand, to decide and to act brought us to the very verge of disaster and cost untold lives and money, which efficiency would have saved.
For the benefit of short memories, the writer presents here a few extracts from publications pointing out our criminal want of preparation for defense at all times prior to 1918. For this situation, each political party blames the other; the fact being, that the fault is chargeable, not to any party, group or individual, but to our political system and cheap traditions.
“And we are unprepared. We have neither gates nor bars. We are careless of the future, and the machinations of wicked men and the ambitions of royalty. We sit in fancied security, trusting to the potency of our riches and the divinations of our stargazers. We are fat, otiose, spineless, insolent and rich. Could the devil himself add anything to this catalogue to make us riper for plucking?” (Henry D. Estabrook—“Bewaredness,” the American Academy of Political and Social Science.The Annals, July, 1916.)“The term, a ‘fool’s paradise,’ describes to perfection the dreamland in which Americans have slumbered for years in their complacent indifference to national defence.” (Huidenkoper’sMilitary Preparedness, p. 252.)“We never want to face another (war) in such ridiculous helplessness as has crippled us in facing this one.” (New York Mail, Ed. July 26th, 1917.)“More than thirty months after the outbreak of the European War, with all its terrible lessons, we have still to lay the statutory foundations of a proper system of land-defense.” (H. L. Stimson,Scribners’, April, 1917.)“The United States of America is prepared for war neither commercially nor physically.... We have neither a merchant fleet to carry our commerce nor any army and navy to protect it.” (Chicago Evening Post, Feb. 14, 1917.)“The crisis finds us unprepared.” (Chicago Tribune, Feb. 15th, 1917.)
“And we are unprepared. We have neither gates nor bars. We are careless of the future, and the machinations of wicked men and the ambitions of royalty. We sit in fancied security, trusting to the potency of our riches and the divinations of our stargazers. We are fat, otiose, spineless, insolent and rich. Could the devil himself add anything to this catalogue to make us riper for plucking?” (Henry D. Estabrook—“Bewaredness,” the American Academy of Political and Social Science.The Annals, July, 1916.)
“The term, a ‘fool’s paradise,’ describes to perfection the dreamland in which Americans have slumbered for years in their complacent indifference to national defence.” (Huidenkoper’sMilitary Preparedness, p. 252.)
“We never want to face another (war) in such ridiculous helplessness as has crippled us in facing this one.” (New York Mail, Ed. July 26th, 1917.)
“More than thirty months after the outbreak of the European War, with all its terrible lessons, we have still to lay the statutory foundations of a proper system of land-defense.” (H. L. Stimson,Scribners’, April, 1917.)
“The United States of America is prepared for war neither commercially nor physically.... We have neither a merchant fleet to carry our commerce nor any army and navy to protect it.” (Chicago Evening Post, Feb. 14, 1917.)
“The crisis finds us unprepared.” (Chicago Tribune, Feb. 15th, 1917.)
A well-known authority on naval and military affairs, writing in theOutlookof April 11th, 1917, says, p. 651:
“The greatest fault in democracy is the lack of imagination of its administrators. Our press are held in the hollow of the hands ofpolitical men whose knowledge of the art of war is only of the primary school standard.”“The European War has demonstrated to our people, among many other things, that this country is as unprepared on land to defend herself in case of an attack as was Belgium.” (Adj. Gen, Charles H. Cole, of the Mass. National Guard,Worcester Magazine.)“The close of 1915 found the United States Government involved in most serious diplomatic differences with Germany and Austria.... The Navy, which in 1904 stood second in strength, is now third in material strength and fourth or fifth in the strength of personnel.... As showing the farcical weakness of our mobile land forces, it is sufficient to say that we have in the continental United States to-day only 30,000 effective militia, but, in the event of a surprise invasion, it would take thirty days to concentrate these 90,000 regulars and militia against the enemy.” (Scientific American, Jan. 1st, 1916.)“At a moment when by the sheer force of perfect preparedness Germany is winning victories all along the line against the greater part of Europe allied against her, we permit our army to sink close to the point of inefficiency.” (New York American, Oct. 31, 1914.)“America is wasteful, chiefly through lack of efficient organization. We are now spending, under recent military legislation, enormous sums for a totally obsolete kind of regular army.... We have voted to build a large navy, and are taxing the people to pay immense bills, but have not enough collective efficiency to spend the money and get prompt results.” (Review of Reviews, Feb., 1917.)“Secretary Garrison has shown us that the entire army of the United States available for movement to a point of danger is less than three times the number of New York’s policemen.” (Review of Reviews, Feb., 1916.)
“The greatest fault in democracy is the lack of imagination of its administrators. Our press are held in the hollow of the hands ofpolitical men whose knowledge of the art of war is only of the primary school standard.”
“The European War has demonstrated to our people, among many other things, that this country is as unprepared on land to defend herself in case of an attack as was Belgium.” (Adj. Gen, Charles H. Cole, of the Mass. National Guard,Worcester Magazine.)
“The close of 1915 found the United States Government involved in most serious diplomatic differences with Germany and Austria.... The Navy, which in 1904 stood second in strength, is now third in material strength and fourth or fifth in the strength of personnel.... As showing the farcical weakness of our mobile land forces, it is sufficient to say that we have in the continental United States to-day only 30,000 effective militia, but, in the event of a surprise invasion, it would take thirty days to concentrate these 90,000 regulars and militia against the enemy.” (Scientific American, Jan. 1st, 1916.)
“At a moment when by the sheer force of perfect preparedness Germany is winning victories all along the line against the greater part of Europe allied against her, we permit our army to sink close to the point of inefficiency.” (New York American, Oct. 31, 1914.)
“America is wasteful, chiefly through lack of efficient organization. We are now spending, under recent military legislation, enormous sums for a totally obsolete kind of regular army.... We have voted to build a large navy, and are taxing the people to pay immense bills, but have not enough collective efficiency to spend the money and get prompt results.” (Review of Reviews, Feb., 1917.)
“Secretary Garrison has shown us that the entire army of the United States available for movement to a point of danger is less than three times the number of New York’s policemen.” (Review of Reviews, Feb., 1916.)
Here is the case of England, another democracy, presented in an extract from an article in theNorth American Reviewfor July, 1918, by A. Maurice Low:
“When England entered the war against Germany it was not exactly with a light heart, but it was only with a faint conception of the magnitude of the task she faced and the strain it would impose upon her. Instead of immediately adopting conscription, shedallied with it, talked about it, made it a political question, and then accepted a compromise, which is the usual English fashion, and only when much valuable time had been lost and the emergency was so great that further delay was impossible, universal service was enforced. It was the same with many other things. The blockade of Germany was lax because of the timidity of the Foreign Office. Business as usual was our boast, and we went about our several ways spending money foolishly and refusing to be put on rations or voluntarily reducing our consumption of luxuries.... Time, of course, taught us wisdom. We bought our experience and a pretty price it cost us.”
“When England entered the war against Germany it was not exactly with a light heart, but it was only with a faint conception of the magnitude of the task she faced and the strain it would impose upon her. Instead of immediately adopting conscription, shedallied with it, talked about it, made it a political question, and then accepted a compromise, which is the usual English fashion, and only when much valuable time had been lost and the emergency was so great that further delay was impossible, universal service was enforced. It was the same with many other things. The blockade of Germany was lax because of the timidity of the Foreign Office. Business as usual was our boast, and we went about our several ways spending money foolishly and refusing to be put on rations or voluntarily reducing our consumption of luxuries.... Time, of course, taught us wisdom. We bought our experience and a pretty price it cost us.”
Not only were the American people unprepared for physical action of any kind at the outbreak of the war of 1914, but the Congress then sitting in Washington was mentally unprepared and unequipped for dealing with that or any similar situation. It needed first rate men; and manhood suffrage furnished and is still furnishing the Capitol with a supply of third and fourth raters. It is not merely that they were wrong on the European situation; the fact is that they were nowhere; that a large proportion of them had no opinions whatever on the questions involved in the conflict, and were incapable of forming any; they were absolutely ignorant of European politics; were unable to read a French newspaper or to understand the political discussions of an English one; a few or none of them had ever made an adequate preparation for a congressional career; they were mere vote-getters, representatives of the political machines of their respective districts; they waited for the newspapers to tell them what was the popular thing and for the bosses to inform them as to the strength of the German vote. At every step in the nation’s progress from August 1914 to the declaration of the state of war in February 1917 the country and the President showed plainly that they did not trust Congress; and Congress showed plainly that it did not deserve to be trusted in such an emergency. Neither the manhood suffrage Congress nor the manhood suffrage administration nor its political opponents in Congress took the lead atany time during this fateful period in forming, enlightening, instructing or fixing public opinion; they lacked courage and statesmanship to do it, and the nation finally got into the war by the process of drifting stern foremost. Once in, and blood drawn, real work began with the officers of the army and navy acting and compelling action; and after all when it comes to waving the banner and making appropriations our congressmen are seldom derelict.
The popular belief in the inefficiency of the Federal government, and the mischievous operation of the rabble vote, are manifested by the unwarranted meddling of individuals and groups of individuals with the administration of our foreign affairs. Any one looking into theNew York Timeson a certain day in July in the year of grace 1919 might have there read of the activities of the “National Association for the Protection of American Rights in Mexico,” whose principal offices are in New York City and which seems to be a regularly organized and possibly incorporated body with directors and other officers. The intentions of the members of this association may be innocent enough, yet the fact is undeniable that the United States is and ought to be the true and only “National Association for the Protection of American Rights” not only in Mexico but everywhere; and it is difficult to imagine just what this Society can perform in pursuance of its avowed purpose without undue interference with the sovereignty and proper functions of the United States Government, and without endangering the peace of the two countries mainly affected. And although the whole community ought to have been shocked at an organized movement founded on a contempt for the Federal government and a belief in its incompetence or worse, it seemed to excite no comment, and there was probably little notice taken of this particular half column of the newspaper except by those directly interested in Mexican affairs. In the same and other newspapers of the same week were items of news concerning an agitation openly being carried on in New York, Boston, and other large American cities to forcibly overthrow the government of Great Britain, as it actually exists in Ireland, and to establish in its place not merely another government, but another form of government. At the very time this scandalous agitation was being promoted by solicitations, subscriptions and collections of money, and the usual acessories of dinners, receptions and bunkum speeches by politicians, the United States was just finishing a great war in practical alliance with Great Britain; the moral ties which bound the two nations were of the strongest; each owed its very existence at that moment to the other; and the two had just signed a compact binding them to unite in defense of France. The proposals of the agitators, if they meant anything practicable, were therefore in every way improper and seditious; they included a breach of faith toward Great Britain, a betrayal of France and a disregard of the best interests of the United States. It is true that few take these agitators seriously or believe that they will attempt a revolution in Ireland or that if they should they could possibly succeed; it is doubtful if all the world combined would be able to wrest Ireland from England by force; it is true also that the majority of the American people probably believe that the so called Irish grievances have no substantial existence, and really mean no more that the exclusion from power of a set of political adventurers. But the agitators count on the well-known weaknesses of the British and American governments, both chosen by universal suffrage, and the equally well-known fact that a minority if sufficiently well-organized and impudent can bully and humbug its way along far enough to be certain to get money and place for its chiefs and always with a chance of some substantial concessions to its desires. Already the money is coming in, and the leaders are living in luxury, at the expense not merely of their dupes but of the friendly relations of the United States with Great Britain and Canada and of its reputation for good faith in its foreign relations.
The nation is in constant danger of being pushed into serious difficulties by the interested meddling with its foreignaffairs of political adventurers and fanatics who would never think of daring to thus insult and interfere with a government founded upon an electorate composed of the propertied and intelligent classes, nor to bully a Congress representing them. For it is reasonable to suppose that the immediate effect of excluding the irresponsible voters from the congressional elections would be to smash the machines, and to clear the way for such an improved representation in Congress, as would certainly be demanded by a constituency of men of substance and education. To sit in Congress might become once more a distinction worthy of the ambition of proud, honorable and able men; the standard of its membership would be sensibly elevated; the administration backed or criticised as the case might be by a really able and high-minded Congress would at once be stimulated and encouraged to energetic action on the highest attainable level, and America would present as she ought a firm and thoroughly intelligent attitude towards the rest of the world.
ROTATION IN OFFICE; A MISCHIEVOUS BY-PRODUCT OF THE MANHOOD SUFFRAGE DOCTRINE AND ANOTHER FACTOR IN POPULAR MISGOVERNMENT; AND HEREIN OF CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE REFORM.
ROTATION IN OFFICE; A MISCHIEVOUS BY-PRODUCT OF THE MANHOOD SUFFRAGE DOCTRINE AND ANOTHER FACTOR IN POPULAR MISGOVERNMENT; AND HEREIN OF CIRCUMLOCUTION OFFICE REFORM.
Oneof the incidents of manhood suffrage is the practice of rotation in office, which may be called a by-product of manhood suffrage and represents a doctrine which is only applicable to machine politics. It is sometimes supposed to mean that a public office is a desirable job at which every man should have his turn; but this arrangement is impossible, since there are not nearly offices enough for that purpose even with replacements once a year, which is the limit of frequency thus far proposed for office shifts; and although the politicians are assiduous in making new laws and creating new officials to enforce these laws; who are to be found registering, recording, inspecting and reporting in every possible direction; though they discourage diligence in office and encourage short hours and idleness in office holders, so as to still leave a show of employment for others; yet with all they can do, there will still be one hundred candidates for each place, and ninety-nine of them disappointed. In practice therefore the bestowal of good offices under the rotation system is necessarily limited; its benefits are usually confined to the machine politicians and to a certain number of favored candidates for machine favor; and the vision of a future turn at the public provender is for most party followers altogether illusory.
The doctrine of rotation in office has acquired a certain favor in political circles, because it serves as an excuse for replacing competent and experienced officials by new and incompetent ones, for enforcing the “spoils” system, and aids in keeping in hand the controllable vote.
It is born of the same civic immorality as the manhood suffrage doctrine, and is an incident or offshoot of the vicious theory that the vote is a natural right or privilege of the citizen. The manhood suffrage claim is that the vote is for the benefit of the voter; the rotation doctrine is that the office exists for the advantage of the office holder. The two claims are related. On the one hand if the vote be regarded as a function to be exercised only by the capable, then it is easy and natural to insist upon proper qualifications for public office holders and for permanency in office for the qualified; on the other hand, if the citizen, as such, has an absolute right to vote, why not to hold office? The analogy between a voter and an office holder is not perfect, but it has often been found in practice sufficient to satisfy the popular mind, unaccustomed to disinterested reflections. You may say that the fact that a man is allowed to vote is no reason why he should be permitted to hold office, and business men or men of property will agree with you, for they are not easily tempted to seek public employment. Not so, however, your voter who has neither property nor settled income, nor business capacity sufficient to acquire either. His education often early tends towards office seeking; he is strongly advised by the newspapers and by twaddlers generally, to take part in the primaries, to become active in politics; and if he does so, he soon learns just how the thing is done. Why may not he then have a turn at the trough as well as another? The politicians encourage this attitude. They are of course strongly in favor of rotation in office as a system which is in every way capable of use to the advantage of machine politics. It accomplishes two things for them; it creates office vacancies, and it dispenses with merit in filling them, leaving them absolutely at the disposition of the machine to reward party services. The politicians therefore are able and willing to persuade the uneducated voters of the virtue of office rotation. Nor couldthey well openly condemn it. You cannot admit the shiftless and ignorant into the electorate, and then systematically spurn the ideas and claims which are natural and appropriate to them as a class. One of these ideas is, that one who has held any office a couple of years has had a fair share, and ought to be satisfied to give way to someone else; and that if he insists on coming up for re-election no matter how competent he may be, he should be “knifed” as they say. And so we have in this country to a mischievous extent the doctrine and system of rotation in office as one of the troublesome and vicious incidents and results of manhood suffrage.
It is interesting to note the dealings of the political managers with this rotation doctrine, which as already stated is impossible of practical enforcement except in a very limited way. They have no idea of permitting this or any other theory to operate to their personal disadvantage. The leaders must in any case be constantly fed at the public crib; they must in any event be well provided for or the whole system would collapse. In order therefore to keep up the illusion of rotation for all, and a show of fairness, the managers are constantly shifted about from one office to another. In this way there is in fact a continuing series of changes among the office holders; and as a rule no sooner does an incumbent become familiar with his duties than he is displaced; but if he be a faithful party man he is at once put on the list for something else. In fact, all of the class of regular politicians are practically in office for life; the only effect of our frequent elections being that they are constantly shifted from one office to another. If any one will take the trouble to compare the list of office-holders from year to year, he will see that most of the names appear in successive administrations; but that they are moved from place to place with the change in the political fortunes of the different parties. When a candidate is defeated at an election, he is usually, if a good politician, soon afterwards appointed to another office; if necessary, a new office is created for him. If defeated at a city election, hemay be appointed to a federal office; if his party loses the federal election, he soon turns up in a state or city office, and so on; and so we have in the career of a politician a sort of ambulatory office incumbency. He may be in turn tax collector, district attorney, secretary or commissioner of this or that, judge or justice, state senator, county clerk, foreign consul and so on. If high up in the party, he will appear in the president’s cabinet, or as a foreign minister or as member of some high salaried commission. Being a politician he is supposed to be eligible for anything and everything, and when at last he dies endowed with honors and with usually a fair amount of cash after a life which has certainly been spent in the service of his country, his newspaper obituary will point out to an edified world how men of humble origin prosper in this free land.
This system has the effect of strengthening party discipline; under it every office holder is much more obligated to the party boss than to the public. True, he apparently owes his election to the people; but usually only apparently; since most of the votes he receives are strictly party votes, representing merely the will and the direction of the boss and the machine. But to the latter the candidate’s obligation is clear, direct and personal; to them he owes his nomination, or at least the suggestion of his name to the primaries which makes his election possible; and if defeated at the polls, his future is still in their friendly hands. The party leaders and managers being thus cared for, and their faithful service forever secured by the distribution among them of all the best public employments, guaranteed by the rotation system developed into a “steady job insurance” scheme, there remain the inferior county, city, town and village offices for apportionment among the smaller fry, and to these minor places a real rotation system is applied to a greater or less extent. It is often understood that a sheriff, alderman, tax collector, police magistrate, town solicitor or attorney, county clerk, town or village official, etc., must be satisfied with one or two terms and then giveplace to some other more hungry politician. This is the rotation system in practice.
The demoralizing results of such a custom are easy to be seen among us and still more easily imagined. Many public office holders in view of the probable brevity of their tenure, try to hold on at the same time to both private business and public office, with the natural result that both are neglected. Elections are expensive. An official owing last election’s bills finds the next one approaching with marvellous rapidity. From rigid enforcement of laws enemies might result, from whom next year’s candidate need expect neither money nor support, but rather opposition; and after all, one year in office is a paltry reward for a faithful party man after many years of fruitless canvassing. And so comes lax administration, blinking of the eyes and scandal more or less smothered. And in this and other ways the character of the office holder is impaired. The lure of this kind of politics is as demoralizing as that of gambling. Thousands of individuals who uncorrupted by political life might have remained honest and industrious citizens, are spoiled for real steady work by their experience of easy living at the public cost, and become half knavish and altogether poor business men, and sometimes even debauched and intemperate. And if the office holder does his very best it usually happens that just when he has learned his duties and begins to perform them well, his term approaches its finish and a greedy greenhorn takes his place.
Everybody knows this and that it is all wrong. No one would think of proposing such a vicious system for any private business; everyone is aware that employés become more valuable with experience and training, and that the success of a business establishment depends largely upon keeping its old force in service year after year. Indeed, if justice requires rotation in the well-salaried offices, the system should be greatly extended, for after all, these political offices are not the real prize employments; they are found in the high places in banks, banking houses and great industrial and mercantile establishments. But no one suggests than in a democracy there should be rotation of private employment, that a bank cashier has had enough after two years of $20,000 a year and that a mill superintendent should retire after three years at $6,000 and be both replaced, one by a patriotic bank porter and the other by a radical travelling salesman. The service of the people is the only one that professional patriots insist upon breaking down by frequent changes in the working force; by constant disorganization.
The reason for this hard treatment of the public service seems to be that it sounds democratic and alluring to say that public office is a prize open to all. It is remarkable how willing people are to be gulled by catch phrases and sayings, like this of “rotation in office,” “government by the people,” and the like. The first Napoleon caught a lot of gudgeons by the saying that every private soldier carried a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. American youths are gravely told that each of them has a chance to become president of the United States; another humbug, since about only one man out of every million can possibly reach that office, no matter what the merits or deeds of the others may be. Suppose some one opens Carnegie Hall, New York, free to all comers to hear Caruso sing at a certain day and hour; no one could say that he was excluded by the terms of the invitation; and yet the manager would know perfectly well that only three thousand could possibly be admitted, and that all who came after the first three thousand would better have stayed at home. It would sound to the thoughtless like a more generous and democratic act than the distribution of three thousand free tickets, and yet it would in reality be less so; it would indeed have somewhat the effect of a fraud on all except the first three thousand. Now something like this invitation is what is offered the American people when they are each invited, as they constantly are invited, by the politicians in their universal suffrage constitutions to come in and take a part as public officials in the government of the nation. It is in every way impossible for all of us, orfor more than a very few of us to do so; and all they really can and do offer us is just what we would have under a restricted suffrage, namely leave to fight or wheedle our own way to public employment or to political influence in the face of all who are determined to forestall us, the number whereof is by these very constitutions made as numerous as possible. And the so-called democratic invention of rotation in office is just another worthless and fraudulent gift, of leave to each of us, to struggle for a paltry office in competition with every political adventurer in the community; when by the very terms of the gift, the office itself is stripped of all honor and dignity, and has attached to it the certainty that the winner is almost certain to be deprived of the employment as soon as he shall have learned to fill it with ability and credit to himself. Truly Barnum was right when he undertook to build his fortune on the theory that most people love to be humbugged.
Such are the ideals and practical workings of the democratic principle of rotation in office, first put in practice by President Jackson and his party managers, animated by the inspiring slogan “to the victors belong the spoils.” It is difficult to imagine any system more calculated than this to establish and encourage inefficiency in public and private life. And though in consequence of the endless changes of officials in the public service, the state and community are always poorly served, the inferior party workers seldom get a turn at the good places; they are just fooled by the higher politicians who, while pretending frequently to surrender the offices, merely exchange them among themselves. Thus the masses are made to suffer all the evils of poor and dishonest public service, without even the small compensation of a fair turn at the spoils.
Vigorous efforts have been made in the past thirty years to obviate some of the mischiefs of the spoils system; especially by the application of the system of civil service examinations to nominations to public office. Under this system which is only applied to certain classified offices, the appointment is supposed to be given to the candidate who passes best in anexamination prepared beforehand by a civil service board and open to all applicants. There is neither space nor fitness here for an extended discussion of the merits and weaknesses of this Civil Service Reform plan as it is called. Its one pretended merit is that it takes the appointments “out of politics” as they say, that is out of the control of the political heads of the departments. No more crushing condemnation of our political system could be imagined than is contained in these federal and state statutes which deprive our high officials of the power and privilege of the selection of many of their own subordinates, the most important function of the head of a department. That these chiefs should be furnished with advice and assistance in making appointments where numerous, would be reasonable enough; but that it should be found necessary as by this so-called remedial system is actually done, to deprive them of all choice, direct or indirect, in the selection of their subordinates indicates a shocking condition of things. It means just this that the men whom manhood suffrage puts in command are declared by statute to be unfit to be trusted.
The defects of the Civil Service Reform plan are obvious, and have been repeatedly pointed out. There are two principal ones; defects in material and weakness in organization. All experience shows that mere ability to answer questions is but slim proof of actual fitness for most employments. The minds of the successful candidates are apt to be storehouses of memory rather than factories of living ideas. The tendency of the examination system must be to emasculate the public service, to furnish it with half-hearted hirelings, destitute of initiative; routinists, who secure in their places and deprived of incentive to new achievement, gradually become mere wooden cogs in a lifeless machine. The head of such a force cannot be expected to accomplish much with men not chosen by him nor subject to his censure or removal. Such a civil service will be weak in time of prosperity, and may become intolerable in time of trouble and danger; an institution similar to the bureaucracies of continental Europe or to Charles Dickens’ “CircumlocutionOffice.” The late Andrew Carnegie, the great iron master, ascribed his success entirely to his tuck and wisdom in choosing his deputies. A political department is really a business organization, and to be efficient, it should have a competent head supported by a force of vigorous men of his own selection; chosen not by book examinations, but for practical capacity, all constantly guided and controlled by him, and inspired with the feeling of mutual responsibility for results. The vice of the Civil Service Reform system is that it entirely lacks the vigor and efficiency thus to be obtained.
No better proof of the hopeless desperation of the American political reformers can be offered than their willingness even to consider the establishment of this bureaucratic system among us. Bryce approves it with the approval of despair: