Illinois—1901. Investigation disclosed that $65,000 a year was being collected by politicians from the salaries of those employed at the State Insane Hospital and other State Institutions.
Minnesota—1903. Minneapolis City scandals. Conviction of Chief of Police and an ex-Mayor on charges of blackmailing gamblers, etc.; attempted bribery of County Commissioners.
Land and Post-Office.In 1903 politicians and others were indicted in Nebraska for corrupt land and post-office transactions.
Other similar post-office irregularities in McKinley’s administration, implicating high officials; many indictments; gross department incompetence and carelessness revealed (1903).
New York, 1904. Fire Department scandals, fraudulent hose purchases of $23,410.
Kansas, 1905. Government land frauds implicating a state senator and other officials.
New York, 1905. “The notorious ‘Ten’ carried through a scheme in the New York Senate, by which the Chicago and Eastern Illinois Railway bonds were to be included in the savings bank bill as proper securities for investment. The ‘Black Horse Cavalry’ had succeeded in a similar deal formerly and members had made a large profit on the consequent appreciation of the bonds in question.” (Reinsch, p. 248.)
New York—1906. Ahearn scandals; padded payrolls, illegal purchases, etc., amounting to millions, involving office of Borough President.
New York—1914. Hunts Point Bathing Place; value $4300, sold to the City of New York in 1914 for $247,000.
Indiana—1908. Conspiracy to defraud the State; former legislative speaker indicted.
New Jersey—1913. One Kuehnle, political boss of Atlantic City, sentenced to prison for voting as a water commissioner to award a contract to a company of which he was a stockholder.
In 1899 a book of about eight hundred pages, entitledThirty Years of New York Politics, was published by Breen who had been for a generation active in New York politics and had held office as member of the state legislature and as local magistrate. It presents a vivid picture of the corruption, rascality and incapacity that characterized the politicians of New York City and State from about 1860 to 1890. He tells of forgeries of items in legislative tax bills, the true bills immediately after passage by the legislature being altered by additions of items and the forged tax bills placed before the governor and signed by him. Some of Breen’s tales are even amusing, showing the open way in which the business of official bribery has been carried on and the fun there was supposed to be in the business. In one instance there was a gas bill before the New York legislature opposed by the company interested. A lobbyist was in charge whose original orders to pass the bill were revoked and he was directed to kill it. In order to make his services appear more valuable to the company the lobbyist had the bill reported favorably. Subsequently he had it defeated and the members waited upon him for their cash at the Kenmore House, Albany, N. Y., the fee of each being $250. Meantime another bill had been introduced regulating the price of gas and the members were told that they would get nothing until they also killed the second bill. This was very annoying as it required them to do two jobs for one fee; but it had to be done. Then the lobbyist began paying off some of the members at the Kenmore House, Albany, while to avoid suspicions which might be aroused by the presence of too many members in one place his assistant undertook to pay off the others at the Delavan House. By mistake eight of the members got money at each hotel. When a return was demanded they, partly in joke and to worry the lobbyist, refused, claiming that as they had done two jobs theywere entitled to two fees; but finally the duplicate money was returned to the alarmed lobbyist. The reader will thus see that there is sometimes entertainment as well as profit in the vote traffic, when well understood by the participants and spiritedly conducted. One veteran member used to say that he considered it injurious to the health to have anything to do with a “contingent bill,” that is to say where the bribe depended upon the result. “I never can sleep at all when I have a contingent bill on my mind; it undermines my health and my life is valuable to the state. Spot cash is my gait; it saves all bother.” Another interesting incident told by Senator Breen is that of one Hackley, a contractor, who put in a bid for a street-cleaning contract in New York. The aldermen delayed voting the contract. Hackley received a letter unsigned requesting him to leave $40,000 in a package on a table in the City Hall. He left the money in $500 bills on the aldermanic table in a package without any address. As he entered to do so he saw four of the aldermen casually conversing by the door; when he came out they were still standing there. Nothing was said. The next day he got the contract. The courts were for some years occupied with some questions of legality regarding this contract and incidentally this little episode came to light.
If the reader has been at all interested, or edified by the display already made in this book of the product and operations of the manhood suffrage governments, perhaps he would like a glimpse of the methods by which these worshipful bodies are from time to time originally created. Here is a specimen account of a recent event, taken from theNew Republicof September 29, 1917. There was a contest for the Republican leadership of the Fifth Ward, Philadelphia, in which ward, as it happens, Independence Hall is situated. The police were under the control of a local boss named Deutsch who was himself subject to the Vere Brothers. The opposition boss was named Carey. Ten days before election thirty patrolmen were transferred to otherdistricts and their places taken by men who could be relied on to work for Deutsch. There were nightly fights and arrests; even reporters were arrested on false charges of disorderly conduct. On the eve of election the followers of Deutsch attacked a Carey meeting while a number of police stood quietly by. The following morning a detective was murdered and a district attorney slugged. The mayor himself was accused and was subsequently arrested on a charge of conspiracy in connection with the affair.
Another sample of manhood suffrage in operation was exhibited at the primary elections at St. Louis in 1904 when Folk was nominated for governor of Missouri. A magazine writer describing what took place says that the ring opposed to the nomination of Folk “stationed thugs outside the polling places with orders to slug, kick, beat, and if necessary kill,—anything to defeat Folk,” and that scores of men, some of them prominent, were knocked down in broad daylight, kicked and beaten, etc., while the police stood idly by. Also that “there have been instances where for weeks before an election members of the police department have gone about locating vacant houses and assisting in registering fictitious names from such houses” and he gives instances of houses where many more names were registered than it was possible there could be residents at the house. The result was that of the population of 600,000 people, not one delegate favorable to Folk was elected. “Former Lieutenant Governor of Missouri, Norman J. Coleman, and Secretary of Agriculture under President Cleveland, stood long in line to vote, without making any progress. He stepped out to make an investigation and found that men were being admitted into the polling place by a rear door and that there was no chance for him. Finally a politician whom he knew came up to him and said: ‘I will get one of the men out of the line up here and give you his place.’ As he was about to give Mr. Coleman the place he asked him for whom he was going to vote. ‘For Folk, of course,’ was the answer. ‘Then I can’t do anything for you.’”
The intelligent reader needs no argument to convince him that under a rule of substantial property qualification none of the above described ruffianism would find a place in politics. Under such a rule none of these precious gangs would appear at the polls or primaries; their leaders would be without political influence; a mayor or governor supported by such blackguards would never be chosen and would not even be a candidate.
In 1891, Roosevelt, as Civil Service Commissioner, went to Baltimore to examine the primaries and made a report from which Ostrogorski prints an extract. He there saw a fight for the offices between two factions of the Republican party. There was fraud and violence. Democratic repeaters were voted; accusations of ballot box stuffing freely made; a number of fights took place; many arrests, including some of the election inspectors; bribery was charged; cheating was talked of as a matter of course; men openly justified cheating as fair, provided you were not caught. Usually, however, primaries and elections are comparatively quiet; the previous manipulation of the controllable vote has been so perfectly done, the managers are in such complete accord, and opposition is so hopeless, that even the most violent and headstrong of the defeated party are subdued into silence, often no doubt quelled by envious admiration for the victorious scoundrels. Such must for instance have been the case at the elections in Colorado in 1904, when women voted and they as well as men took part in wholesale frauds. In eight precincts a thousand fraudulent votes were cast. Each candidate for governor charged gigantic frauds against the other. Investigation showed that both charges were true. In one county nine thousand fraudulent votes were cast. A number of election judges and others were convicted of ballot box stuffing, repeating, etc.
In 1908 Helen Sumner made a prolonged investigation of political conditions in Colorado, and thus describes the failure of universal suffrage in that new and prosperous state.
“Both sexes stay away from caucus and convention becausethey know they are helpless and that they can succeed only by debasing themselves to the level of hired political workers. The caucus and convention are arranged long in advance. Corporations, the saloon element, and special interests that seek control can afford to furnish the bosses abundant funds to hire these professional workers, and both men and women who value their honor and patriotism will not descend to these mercenary methods.” (Equal Suffrage, p. 94.)
It is useless to multiply instances of fraud and humbug at popular elections; the whole business is one gigantic piece of fraud and humbug. Its extent may most easily be described by the amount of money it costs. Ostrogorski says that: “It is considered that in 1896 the Republican National chairman disposed of a campaign fund of seven million dollars. In 1900 of three millions and a half, and in 1904 of three millions.” This national campaign fund of $3,000,000 to $7,000,000 is only a small portion of the total amount collected and disbursed for the purpose of misleading, defrauding, deluding, and humbugging the nation into giving a preference to one of two organized gangs over the other for two or four years more. Probably from $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 in all is expended in this way in a Presidential election. The latter figure is the estimate of the historian Sloane. And then we are told with well-simulated indignation of the expenditure of $2,000,000 a year for the support of the British Royal family. If only our millions were spent as innocently as in maintaining royal dignity or dignity of any sort! But our cash goes for the purpose of creating and maintaining indignities rather than dignities; to pay for the assertion and publication of lies and slanders; to stir up strife at home and abroad; to forward the interests of political managers and those behind them and to hire cheating and fraud at elections. The latter crimes are still being perpetrated. Wholesale election frauds were committed in New York City at a recent mayoralty election and many election officials were convicted. As late as November, 1919, there were widely distributed the circulars of the “HonestBallot Association,” whose officers included New York men and women of considerable prominence and political experience. Its object was stated to be “To insure clean elections in New York City, and to prevent honest votes from being offset by trickery and fraud.” It states in its circular that “through its efforts the fraudulent vote of the city, which before its organization was a public scandal, has been materially reduced. Much remains to be done to prevent recurrence of like frauds.” In other words, the public authorities of New York City cannot be trusted to supervise and procure a fair election, and it is generally believed that in that respect New York is better off than some other large cities.
Nine States of the Union, namely, Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, have been driven by misgovernment in one form or other under the régime of manhood suffrage to repudiate their solemn financial obligations.
Alabama.In 1819 the State of Alabama began to establish state banks, all of which became insolvent in 1842. To the debt of about $3,500,000 incident to this business, represented by bonds held by innocent holders in London and New York, was added obligations amounting to $21,000,000 incurred in the negro suffrage reconstruction period, elsewhere described. In 1876 the State scaled down the whole debt to $12,574,379, a repudiation, including interest, of about $15,000,000 State debt.
Arkansas.In 1837 and 1838 Arkansas issued about $3,000,000 of bonds in aid of two state banks. Part of this debt was subsequently repudiated. During the reconstruction period about $8,000,000 of state bonds were issued under legislative authority for railroad and levee construction and all were repudiated in 1880, thus reducing the state debt from $17,000,000 principal and interest to about $5,000,000.
Florida.In 1833 the Territory of Florida issued $3,000,000 bonds to the Union Bank, and in 1831 and 1835 $900,000 more to other banks. These obligations were definitely repudiatedwhen Florida entered the Union in 1845. Under an Act passed in 1855, the state issued $4,000,000 bonds in aid of railroad construction; and these also have been repudiated, on the claim that the legislature lacked authority to authorize them.
Georgia.From 1868 to 1871 the State of Georgia issued about $8,000,000 of bonds in aid of railroad construction. In the years 1875, 1876 and 1877 all these bonds were repudiated by state legislation.
Louisiana.The debt of Louisiana at the outbreak of the Civil War was about $10,000,000. The Civil War debt was ignored. Reconstruction legislation brought up the state debt to about $50,000,000. This was scaled down by legislative enactment to $12,000,000 and the rest repudiated.
Mississippi.In June 1838 the State of Mississippi issued $5,000,000 of state bonds in payment of five thousand shares of stock in the Union Bank of Mississippi. Four years later these bonds, then held by innocent third parties, were repudiated by the state, although the highest court in Mississippi had declared that they were legally issued. A similar issue of $2,000,000 of state bonds issued to the Planters Bank was repudiated in 1852. The State of Mississippi has never redeemed its honor or paid the bonds.
North Carolina.In 1879 North Carolina passed a funding bill by which in settlement of a long controversy with its bond-holders it repudiated about $15,000,000 of State indebtedness. Bonds issued before the Civil War were redeemed at fifty cents on the dollar; bonds issued after the war to secure pre-war debts at twenty-five cents; and reconstruction bonds at fifteen cents on the dollar.
South Carolina.South Carolina was in debt about $3,800,000 at the time the Civil War began in 1861. The war debt was repudiated. The reconstruction debt amounted to nobody knows how much, say $20,000,000 and upwards. Nearly all of the state debt was practically repudiated in 1879 and prior thereto.
Tennessee.In 1852 the State of Tennessee authorized the issuance of state bonds in aid of turnpike and railroad companies. There were also state debts incurred in aid of state banks, for the building of the state capitol and other purposes; in all $21,000,000. About $14,000,000 more bonds were issued after the war in aid of railroads. In 1883 the state repudiated about one-half of this debt.
The various acts of repudiation took different shapes in different states, but in every instance the state government was a manhood suffrage institution; none of them have had any other system. It is perfectly fair to charge every dollar of these stolen and wasted millions and every repudiation spot and stain on the fame and record of these nine states to manhood suffrage. In fact the candid historian cannot, if he would, escape the damning record and the inevitable conclusion. Manhood suffrage has shamefully bankrupted and dishonored nine American states.
Oh, that some one with ability, money and patience would get together materials for a complete “History of Manhood Suffrage,” and with clear and burning pen, would give to the world the story of its iniquitous century career. Even if he omitted its record of blood and corruption in France, and confined himself to this country, the work might easily swell to many volumes. He could spend twenty busy years visiting one village, town and city after another, gathering up the facts and figures of the briberies, corruptions, frauds, cheatings, embezzlements, defalcations and thefts; the public riots, the drunkenness, the civil and criminal court proceedings, directly produced by manhood suffrage; the story of the rogues and incompetents whom it has put in public offices high and low, their follies and villainies. Its grotesque legislation, its wretched administration, its wastes, extravagances, blunders stupidities and misgovernments would fill an encyclopedia of human unwisdom. But no such work has ever been undertaken, and this volume only presents a hint of the direfultotality. After all it is enough. The category of official crime in this one chapter contained is sufficiently convincing.
These fifty cases are not like fifty instances of peculation discovered by expert eyes under a watchful system, leaving it pretty certain that there was no more behind. Fifty individual thefts in eighty years would not make a shocking story as the world goes. But this collection is merely illustrative of an immense mass of similar material which cannot be produced to the home reader any more than an ore bed could; though the existence thereof any one may verify by proper investigation. The opportunities of public men for improper acquisition are limitless; there is no one over them to prevent them: they are themselves the watchmen; and if they work with outside rogues detection is ordinarily impossible. The discovery of each of these fifty instances was the result of a blunder on the part of these very careful and intelligent thieves; of a quarrel amongst themselves, a mere chance of some sort, and by the law of chances may be taken to represent fifty thousand similar undetected frauds. Consider too the character of many of these items; some represent a foul episode in the history of a state; others in that of a great city; in one case the fact that the politics of a rich commonwealth have been corrupt for half a century is compressed into a statement of a few lines which is capable of being expanded to a volume of separate accusations. Fifty years of spoliation of a great state: eighteen thousand days; say one hundred separate acts a day: one million eight hundred thousand large and petty frauds, thefts and peculations are crowded into this single chapter. Each of the fifty foregoing items affords a glimpse at rivers, seas, regions of official rascality. In one case it is a state legislature which goes wrong. This means that back of each of its tainted members there is a whole history of putridity, a rotten county, a score of rotten townships, years of local crookedness, trickery, intrigue, falsehood, bribery and corruption. The district and county which sells or traffics its honors; which sends an unworthy man to represent it in the councils of the nation, must itself first have undergone a process of degeneration the details whereof would alone require a volume. The instances in the foregoing list do not represent individual or sporadic cases of disease; they indicate a moral pestilence, the result of widespread filth and unsanitary conditions of long standing and the existence whereof is proven by the additional testimony of the array of intelligent, unbiased and high-minded men and women, statesmen, students, publicists, lawyers and teachers, already quoted. Taking the whole evidence together, the record and the witnesses, it amounts to a mass of absolutely convincing and even overwhelming proof of the thoroughly evil and corrupt character of this government which for the past eighty years has been imposed upon the American people by the political oligarchy directing the controllable vote.
THE FOUR YEARS CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES IS DIRECTLY CHARGEABLE TO MANHOOD SUFFRAGE
THE FOUR YEARS CIVIL WAR IN THE UNITED STATES IS DIRECTLY CHARGEABLE TO MANHOOD SUFFRAGE
TheAmerican Civil War, which lasted four years, was both morally and politically absolutely unnecessary and therefore absolutely unjustifiable. It is difficult for an American to discuss the subject coolly even at this distance, when he realizes that this, the greatest calamity which ever befell the country, was perfectly avoidable and was due entirely to stupidity and mismanagement. It is time that the truth was told; the Civil War was caused, not by the difficulty of the questions to be dealt with but by a lack of statesmanship, by the dull selfishness and asininity of the politicians of the day and by the system of low politics which had long before been established among us. To say that the question between the free and the slave states was of a nature which required a settlement by the sword is absurd. In 1860 there were fifteen slave and eighteen free states. The constitutional right of the former to the ownership of their slaves could not be denied; and the vast majority of the people in the free states so believed and asserted. The question on which the country was divided was whether slavery could or should be established in the Territories and in the new states to be erected from the Territories. To assert that that question could not be settled peaceably is to assert either that the American people were fools and brutes, which is not true, or that their representatives having the matter in hand were incapables or worse, which is true. The war was entirely due to the conduct and misconduct of the politicians in power and they were placed there by manhood suffrage.
The American people North and South at that time were as harmless and peaceable a people as ever existed on the face of the earth. They did not want any war, least of all a civil war. Tens of thousands of inhabitants in each of the two sections had dear friends and relatives in the other section. Most people refused even to believe it possible until hostilities actually began that a civil war could possibly be forced upon the country. Neither side was in any way prepared either in men, officers, equipment, ships or money for even a small war. There was no desire for a conflict on either side, and no need of it; and yet it came; because the country was in the hands not of patriotic statesmen, but of a manhood suffrage politician President, and a manhood suffrage politician Congress, infused with a small, mean, manhood suffrage spirit, the spirit of humbug, of selfishness, of insincerity, and of moral cowardice. It came because for his own petty temporary purposes, each of the politicians, too dull and short sighted to see the danger of his own acts, had been for years nagging the people of his own district into dislikes, suspicions and hates towards the people of other districts and portions of the country.
We may concede the difficulties of the situation. The slavery question had been so mismanaged that as far back as 1844 it had become a delicate one needing to be handled with patriotic and enlightened statesmanship; but the men in public life qualified to so handle it were after 1828 becoming fewer and fewer. Of courageous and patriotic statesmen there was after 1852 scarcely one in public life, and it was finally left to the newspapers and the populace, who undertook to deal with it themselves in their own characteristic way. This of course was to hold public meetings, at which were made inflammatory and abusive speeches; to publish and circulate these speeches with furious newspaper comments; and to issue books and pamphlets denunciatory of everybody in public life. How does the ordinary manhood suffrage politician, the mediocrity who after obeyingorders of vulgar bosses for years finds himself rewarded with a nomination for Congress; how does he deal with a question where both money and feeling are involved? He “side-steps”; he pussy-foots; he twists and dodges and sneaks in and out till one side or the other shows a decided preponderance of votes, and then he mounts the platform and rants defiance and insults at the minority. Such is his idea of statesmanship; and though it makes the judicious grieve it tickles the ears of the groundlings who are the majority of the organization followers. The newspaper files inform us and the reader can readily imagine how for years Northern and Southern orators hurled defiance at safe distances; how the holders of perfectly honest opinions on both sides were publicly insulted every day in the week as slave drivers; nigger lovers, dough-faces, etc. When the legal question of the rights of slavery in the territories came up, there was no one to decide it; it was a difference demanding for its settlement a courage which mere politicians never have; and requiring as well a statesmanship and tact which are qualities of trained thinkers; of men of wide vision; of experience in public affairs, and gifted with self-control; qualities in short which especially belong to the well-educated classes. It should have been dealt with by picked men; men of high prestige; uncontrolled by passion, and above a desire for the plaudits of the mob. Such men were not to be found in public life; and so it was left to the decision of what was called public opinion; which means in effect that it fell into the hands of demagogues, platform orators, second-rate politicians, extremists, visionaries and newspaper writers. Thousands of individuals honest and dishonest; fanatics, abolitionists and demagogues on the Northern side, and cranks, general humbugs and notoriety seekers on the Southern side, began to write and talk on the subject; and when they had succeeded in irritating everybody, and when a certain emotional and hysterical class was thoroughly inflamed, the manhood suffrage machine was put in operation and an election for president was had. Thevoters split into four parties; certainly not according to reason, which had long before been flung to the winds by most of them; but rather according to temperament; the more excitable and intolerant taking an extreme position; the others offering the customary political platitudes. The electoral college plan for the election of the president, which had been prescribed by the Constitution to obviate just such a catastrophe, had been long since foolishly discarded by the people in favor of a direct election by manhood suffrage. Lincoln, a then comparatively unknown man, who had been nominated in a roaring political convention, was elected President of the United States by a minority of the total vote. A few of the Southern states whose politicians were dissatisfied with the election promptly proposed to secede from the Union. They were permitted to do so and set up independent governments; the administration at Washington being as usual in the hands of men who had neither sufficient diplomacy, firmness, decision nor patriotism to deal with the situation, or with any other requiring the employment of honesty and courage.
The politicians in power at Washington, as they were incapable of properly dealing with slavery, so they were incapable of properly dealing with secession. As nothing timely was done to coerce the first seceding states they were in time joined by others; the demagogic rant and newspaper clamor and abuse continued unabated on both sides, but nothing practical was done to save the situation or to preserve the Union; the seceding states were allowed four months to consummate their plans; and were permitted without molestation or hindrance to seize one fort and arsenal after another, until the enterprise of rebellion, which, originating in a few hot heads could have been summarily suppressed in December 1860 had in April 1861 resulted in the establishment of a southern armed confederacy of eleven states. Meantime the Northern Democracy looked on complacently and did nothing till the South made the dramatic blunder of firing on Fort Sumter. Sluggishness andindifference in the North were now succeeded by indignation and fury; hostilities began and lasted four years; hundreds of thousands of lives and thousands of millions of property were uselessly sacrificed, and all because among the governing politicians of the United States there had not been enough patriotic statesmanship to undertake the task of devising and enforcing a peaceable arrangement. That there was no inherent difficulty in the case, insurmountable by diplomacy, is perfectly apparent to any intelligent mind; and is almost conclusively demonstrated by the conceded fact that even after four years’ bloody strife no hopeless division between North and South existed; that the defeated Southern rank and file and their leaders, officers and generals admitted that they had even then no insufferable grievance; that they really preferred the Union, even without slavery, to disunion; and that the Southerners immediately came back into their places as citizens of the Union and have ever since been and still are as true and loyal to the flag as the northern population. They never really disliked the Federal Union; they had in fact always loved it; but they had been crazed year after year in the course of one political campaign after another by the assaults and insults of Northern platform press and pulpit ranters, and had been deceived, misled and egged on to violence by their own demagogues. It was a case of the cumulative effect of years of repeated word provocations and word retorts on both sides; all delivered either to promote the sale of wicked and sensational newspapers or for electioneering purposes, or to capture the votes of a senseless rabble. The effect of this long-continued agitation was to derange the shallow judgment of the irresponsibles, a class which includes hot-headed youths, lovers of turmoil, improvident men with more sail than ballast; those who lack prudence both in politics and in business; who show the same poor judgment in giving a vote as in making a bargain; who are as willing to rush into a foolish war as into a foolish business enterprise; who are reckless because, never having much, they can neverlose much; in short, that class who, though absolutely unable to manage their own affairs, are by our laws considered quite capable of attending to those of the community, and who whenever a storm arises lose their heads and do their best to wreck the ship. In a word, the course of conduct adopted by the politicians of the country which resulted in the war was intended to win the applause and the votes of a set of men most of whom should not have been allowed to vote at all. Had the business men and the propertied classes alone been consulted the civil war would never have broken out.
And it is to-day just as it was then. When any question capable of being made the subject of political discussion, and having an emotional or sympathetic aspect, is brought before the public, it is sure to be seized upon by fanatics and time servers who make it the subject of clamor and vociferation. These are in time joined by a lot of honest but inexperienced youth; emotional enthusiasts; sympathetic women more or less hysterical; people with grudges to pay off; political adventurers; platform ranters eager for an audience; demagogues out of a job and vain fools anxious for the lime light; empty heads who find society and excitement in political organizations and meetings. These classes of agitators and the followers of agitators exist and have always existed here as well as in Russia and elsewhere; and they are put in the front when they ought to be suppressed and sent to the rear or out of sight. They are apt to be abnormal in vanity, and stop at nothing to obtain notoriety. Those of them who are soft and emotional become crazed with mental dwelling on one subject, with the excitement of political speaking and the applause and criticism they receive; those of them who are cold of heart and head keep up the din to attract attention to themselves and to further their political fortunes; with them the end justifies the means; exaggerations, dishonest equivocations, lies and even slanders are to their small minds justified by the object to be attained. We have, for instance, recently seen some of the women suffragists both in England, and to a lessextent here, in what they call their militant campaigns act on the principle that there are no morals in politics. In England they resorted to open and violent misconduct and even to crime to keep up the agitation. Their avowed purpose in doing this was to keep their cause before the public, and as to some of them incidentally to earn the salaries paid by their associations for this vile work. They believed, and with good reason, that under a system of manhood suffrage mere arguments are insufficient; the unthinking rabble had to be won over; and their foolish ears must be filled with noise in order to gain and keep their attention.
A similar process was used by the politicians and agitator’s on both sides of the negro slavery question. There was the unreasoning vote to be captured. Each candidate for Congress, instead of desiring the matter amicably settled, wished rather to use the dispute as a means for his own election. Now, it is a fact well known to politicians that it is impossible to get all the voters to the polls at any election. Besides securing the floaters by means of agents with cash and shrewdness, the best way to induce the remaining nondescripts and light weights to take the trouble to vote, is to create artificial excitement by means of meetings, processions, bands of music and inflammatory oratory. The opposite side and their leaders must be denounced as fools, humbugs, liars, scamps, thieves and traitors. The wisest are repelled by this course, but they are a minority in every community. Besides, some of the men who know better than to believe an unscrupulous demagogue, will vote for him, partly out of gratitude because he has amused them by his attacks on his opponents, partly because he is the party candidate, and partly as the result of a sort of mental contagion. Now, it was this campaign of inflammatory denunciation; this output of lies, slanders and vilification indulged in by the platform talkers on all sides in the political campaigns of 1856, 1858 and 1860 that brought on the Civil War. This is well known; but what is not known and never will be known is just how much of thisrascally oratory was hired and paid for in cold cash contributed by that class of people who always contribute to election funds. And this brutal and stupid process is the natural and inevitable result of an attempt to decide important political questions by manhood suffrage, that is by a public agitation undertaken to obtain the votes of the most thoughtless, careless, dull and unreasonable men of the country.
But, some may ask, how could the slavery question have been amicably settled? Was not the Civil War inevitable? By no means. Great Britain, Spain, Brazil, Portugal, Holland and other countries each had the same problem. Russia had a similar one in the case of her serfs. Slavery in the British West Indies was abolished in 1838 at a cost of $100,000,000 cash compensation paid to the masters, and other European nations having colonial slaves had followed England’s example. Brazil and Cuba were both large slave-owning countries; in Cuba one-third of the population was at one time in slavery; a much larger proportion than in the United States, and yet in both countries emancipation was gradually and peaceably accomplished by legal methods. In Russia the serfs were freed without bloodshed. Nowhere except in the United States was it found necessary to make the country a shambles to accomplish such an inevitable reform. To say that the American people are so inferior in political capacity to the British, Russians, Spaniards and Brazilians as this miserable emancipative Civil War of ours would indicate is preposterous.
That the Civil War was a politicians’ and not a people’s war was perfectly apparent at the time to all steady-minded folk. During its progress nothing was more frequent than to hear such people say that the politicians were responsible for it all. And this was true. Had the settlement of the matter been left to a committee of statesmen or business men the result would have been that under some system of gradual emancipation and payment to the owners the thing would have been quietly done, and with a great saving of money.The war cost at the lowest possible estimate twenty thousand millions of dollars. There were in this country say three millions of slaves which at the high figure of $500 each would have cost not more than fifteen hundred millions of dollars or less than a twelfth of the cost of the war in money, to say nothing of human lives. Even this cost would have been nominal, since the outlay would have been divided up amongst our own people and left the nation not a cent the poorer. But this plain and sensible course could not be adopted because under our mobocratic system the question was made one of politics rather than of statesmanship. And when the struggle was over were the politicians blamed or called to account; or was the system condemned which produced them and really brought about the American Civil War? Not at all. The same humbugs and schemers continued in control; once more they were seen on political platforms, greedy and brassy as ever, bellowing hypocritical praise of the victims of the fight and demanding and obtaining continued offices and salaries and perquisites for themselves; and so their course of public plundering was vigorously continued and their rule was strengthened year by year. With one hand deep in the public chest, they waved the banner with the other, and the years immediately succeeding the Civil War were perhaps richer in patriotic platform oratory and in political corruption than any the country has ever seen.
FAILURE AND CONDEMNATION OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE AFTER A TEN YEARS’ EXPERIMENT IN THE SOUTHERN STATES
FAILURE AND CONDEMNATION OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE AFTER A TEN YEARS’ EXPERIMENT IN THE SOUTHERN STATES
Perhapsthe most noted instance of a complete test of the principles upon which manhood suffrage claims to be founded was that made in the Southern States during the so-called reconstruction period from 1866 to 1876, when the establishment by the Federal Government of unrestricted suffrage in a dozen states where a considerable part of the population was composed of negroes resulted in a complete and even scandalous failure. It not only failed in the opinion of the world at large, but even in that of most if not all its supporters, and finally had to be abandoned; so that in all those dozen states where most of the laborers and many of the farmers to the number of about two millions of voters are negroes, they have been for the last forty years and upwards excluded from the polls.
For the ten years, however, from 1866 to 1876, which was the period of the manhood suffrage experiment, they were permitted and urged to vote, under the protection of the Federal Government. At the close of the Civil War in 1865, when the conquered Southern States had undertaken to establish state governments on the basis of white suffrage, Congress and the Federal Government had interposed the strong arm and required negroes to be included in the electorate; thus making pure manhood suffrage the foundation of the new state governments. In so doing the Federal Government was logically right, upon any and all of the manhood suffrage theories. On none of them can the negro vote be properly rejected. The southern negroes were natives of the soil, free,self-supporting, and intensely loyal to the government. Whether you adopt the theory of a natural right to vote, or that the ballot is a weapon of defence for the poor, or that it is an educative force, or that the desires of all classes should be represented in the vote, the negroes’ claim to the franchise was and is well made out.
The trial of manhood suffrage that was actually made in the instance referred to was in all respects a fair and good test of its qualities. It was of course a severe one, because the negroes were very numerous and mostly very ignorant; but for that very reason the test was valuable. To ascertain the real effects of ignorance and incapacity as of other elements, they must be tried out as far as possible without dilution or mixture. In this instance the amount of both that was injected into the body politic was greater than the dose which the Northern electorate has received, but the effectpro tantowas the same. The test was unusually good for another reason, namely, because it was suddenly applied and as suddenly ended, and therefore the period of its operation is distinctly separated from the time before and after, so that the comparison between the negro suffrage epoch and that of the before and after period is clear and easily made. Again, the trial was good because it was applied to large regions of country, all parts of which were inhabited by great numbers of the newly made voters, amounting to hundreds of thousands in all; so that merely local causes could not be said to affect the result. And further, the negroes were, generally speaking, illiterate and propertyless; and this circumstance also helped to make the test more clear and certain; for the claim of the extreme manhood suffragists everywhere is and has been that the poor and lowly are above all entitled to the vote.
So here we have had a trial in our own country of manhood suffrage plain and simple; of the much vaunted system applied to a class of people who most needed the so-called uplifting power or influence of the ballot. Here were the negroes,simple, poor, unsophisticated, unspoiled by the possession of wealth, the ideal people of the radical orator and philosopher. They were docile and religious, being nearly all evangelical Christians; very much under the influence of their clergymen; intensely patriotic and devoted to the government and the flag. In short the southern negroes at the close of the war, as was then pointed out by their friends, had every quality to entitle them to vote except book learning, business experience and property, neither of which in the eyes of the champions of manhood suffrage is essential to the voter. Other conditions there were favorable to the success of the experiment. The new voters did not have to construct a state, a social polity, or a code of laws, or to establish public order. The framework of a well-developed republican government was already erected; the statute books contained the political wisdom of a highly civilized and free people; they had the United States government to guide and encourage them; there was perfect order everywhere, and a friendly and well-disciplined army was quartered among them to maintain it and to protect them in the exercise of their rights. They had therefore that guidance, precedent and protection, the lack of which has been said to have caused the failure of similar attempts by peoples unpractised in self-government. Besides all this, they had abundance of moral support and enthusiastic sympathy. At that time the Republican party organs claimed a monopoly of patriotic enlightenment, and throughout the great North and West a large portion of the most intelligent and vociferous American press, including nearly all the Republican newspapers, also two thirds of the protestant clergy, besides moral and political orators by the thousand, justified and applauded the proposal to give the vote to the late slaves then and at once without delay or qualification, and poured out the slush and uttered the gush appropriate to such agitations. The project was enthusiastically heralded as a “Reform,” as a “Liberal Measure,” as an inevitable step in advance; as a carrying out and logical application of democratic doctrines; it was proudlypointed to as an evidence of our superiority in wisdom over our ancestors. The cry was that the ballot is a natural right; that the republican legend is not that some men, white men, educated men, or propertied men may vote; but that all men have an absolute right to the suffrage; a right inherent in man as man: and was not the freedman a man and a native of the soil? The ballot, said they, is a weapon of defense, needed more by poor peasants and laborers be they white, black or brown than by any other class. What if the negroes were ignorant and easily led; give them the vote and they would swiftly acquire learning and strength of character. People talked as if the ballot box was a cure-all; as if there was a sort of magic in it; as if merely to handle it was salvation; without it, said they, man is still a slave and can never be expected to improve; nor can the community rise while he is “disfranchised” as they expressed it; but with the ballot in hand he will at once mount to meet his opportunities. This arrant nonsense has been recently made familiar to us by the woman suffragists and need not be further recapitulated.
The negroes were thereupon invited to go through all the performances in which the white masses had long been accustomed to display themselves; and, as a Chinaman once said, to exercise their ignorance. They, and especially the fools and idlers among them, responded with alacrity. They talked politics at great length; those who could read fed their minds with newspaper rubbish; they attended political meetings addressed by frothy orators and office seekers just as many white people do, and like them they fell under the leadership of designing demagogues some of whom speedily learned to be competent rivals in rascality to many white politicians. Of course the colored peoples’ political orators were of a new crop; the old-fashioned pretentious white humbugs who had deceived and tongue lashed the southern people into a heartless and hopeless insurrection were out of the running, or, driven to the side of the dismayed and discouraged conservatives, stood hungrily envying the luck of their late servants. In vain the better class of the whites protested against the prospect of being squeezed by this new and ignorant democracy out of whatever the war had left them; their protests were received with derision by the radical and enlightened North. They and their minority of conservative northern sympathizers were stigmatized as would-be autocrats, aristocrats, oppressors of the poor; old time Bourbons unable to grasp new ideas; this and that piece of wisdom had not “dawned” on them; with their antiquated brains they could not realize the beauty and power of true democracy carried to the limit, etc. The controversy between the southern whites and the new colored democracy was given great prominence in excited political discussions all over the country; in most states the general elections were made to turn upon this question; all the sentimental “highbrows” and the same class of emotionalists and enthusiasts who are now advocating woman suffrage were then supporting negro suffrage; to oppose it was to be ignorant or antiquated. The friends of unlimited suffrage carried state after state in the North and West by majorities far exceeding those since recorded in favor of woman suffrage, and the negro was by Federal authority given the vote in every southern state.
The first elections, of course, went off successfully; nothing is easier or requires less intelligence than to cast a ballot; a child of ten years can be taught the trick in an hour. The negroes voted in great numbers; and the cry went up from pulpits and other mouthpieces of American super-intelligence, from newspaper offices and political platforms, “Behold one more triumph for universal suffrage!” That is what they called it, for at that time the notion of giving the vote to negresses had not become popular. That is a later fad reserved for our day; the great American people usually amuses itself with but one political folly at a time. The negro had shown himself to be a qualified voter according to the only recognized test, namely, ability to talk and to vote in droves under leadership.As for office-holding capacity it is and always has been a fact that uncultivated men, white or black, usually apply and can apply but one test to a political candidate; that of eloquence. If he has but a winning tongue most of them consider him competent for any office no matter how difficult its duties. The colored people produced men of their race who readily reached the standard of glibness and who made political speeches which charmed and convinced even white audiences of a certain shallow and emotional type. Just as women have been found who can compare favorably with men in platform ranting, so were negro politicians found who, gifted with fluency, filled with vanity and stimulated by applause showed themselves equal or nearly equal to white demagogues in that fascinating art. And thus the champions of universal suffrage were able in 1868 to point triumphantly to successful southern political campaigns conducted to a considerable extent by colored men who passed all the tests nowadays applied by a white democracy in a similar case; the leaders talked and orated fluently and the masses voted for them in droves as slavish and unquestioning as the best trained white voters. And so the black leaders got into office and at once began the customary idle and dishonest career of the professional place hunter.
The result is told in one of the darkest chapters in American history. Many white friends and champions of the colored race went south to aid them in their political life, but the case was hopeless from the start. The negro level of intelligence and honesty was so low, and the business experience of the voters so small, that even their very ablest representatives would have been sadly deficient in the primary qualities necessary for legislation and administration; but as is inevitable under the system of universal suffrage, the worst were often chosen at the polls. The men elected to the state legislatures in the South under this régime were often ignorant, drunken, debauched and dishonest. Many of them were without means, had never paid taxes and were incapable of measuring thevalue of money, or of understanding financial dealings. All the Southern States had suffered severely during the Civil War; most of them were so financially exhausted as to be deserving of real sympathy, but the new gang of black and white scallawags was pitiless. Waste, peculation, folly and every form of misgovernment followed; public credit was destroyed, property values fell; there were ten wretched years of violence, scandals and shame, at the end of which negro suffrage had disappeared, abandoned even by its strongest supporters. As soon as it was gone a sound reaction began, public credit was restored, values increased, public waste and robbery diminished, political scandals became fewer and less flagrant, and the South entered at once upon a career of comparative prosperity in which it has continued to this day. Such misgovernment as still continues in the South is mild compared with the experience of those ten dreadful years of negro domination.
Let us for a moment refer to the recorded testimony concerning this remarkable episode in the history of manhood suffrage in this country. The historian Lecky says: