The Project Gutenberg eBook ofPopular misgovernment in the United States

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofPopular misgovernment in the United StatesThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Popular misgovernment in the United StatesAuthor: Alfred Byron CruikshankRelease date: September 7, 2018 [eBook #57862]Most recently updated: January 24, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Bryan Ness, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POPULAR MISGOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES ***

This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Popular misgovernment in the United StatesAuthor: Alfred Byron CruikshankRelease date: September 7, 2018 [eBook #57862]Most recently updated: January 24, 2021Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Bryan Ness, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

Title: Popular misgovernment in the United States

Author: Alfred Byron Cruikshank

Release date: September 7, 2018 [eBook #57862]Most recently updated: January 24, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Bryan Ness, Chuck Greif and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (Thisfile was produced from images generously made availableby The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POPULAR MISGOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES ***

POPULAR MISGOVERNMENT IN THEUNITED STATES

BYALFRED B. CRUIKSHANK1920MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANYNEW YORKCOPYRIGHT, 1920, BYMOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY

PAST FAILURE AND FUTURE DANGERS OF UNLIMITED SUFFRAGE

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and the honest can repair; the event is in the hand of God.—Washington

Greatnumbers of discerning Americans must by this time have been brought to realize that something practical must shortly be done in this country by the believers in private property and private property rights to safeguard the nation from its threatened invasion by Bolshevism, Socialism and other various forms of anti-individualism, or else we are in for a hard and possibly a bloody struggle to maintain the very fundamentals of our social and political systems. From time to time in this country as in every other there occur periods of extraordinary danger to the political structure. In the past we have had several such episodes, the most noted being that of the secession movement culminating in 1860 and 1861. The seriousness of the present menace of communism in its various forms is due not so much to the strength of the communist faction, considerable though it be, as to the weakness of our civic structure consequent upon the long continued and increasing general distrust and suspicion of our actual political agencies and the confirmed popular dissatisfaction with their operations. Meantime, nothing adequately effective either in the way of strengthening our institutions or of disarming opposition thereto is being done or has even been proposed. A lot of vigorous denunciation has been directed against nativeand foreign Bolshevism, all thoroughly deserved and not without effect on the public mind, but falling far short of positive acts of defense or protection. Bolshevism is in the field not merely as an abstract doctrine, to be answered with words, but as an active and aggressive force which must be met by measures of active resistance. Such measures to be effective must take the shape of the creation of practical means and methods of offense and defense. The case is not one which admits of trifling; the attack is fundamental, the danger is vital, and cannot be effectually met by superficial expedients.

Now there is happily one available measure of protection and defense against Bolshevism and all its assaults, one which is manifestly appropriate and will be absolutely efficacious. It is one which has long been highly desirable for other reasons hereinafter set forth, but which in view of the menace of radicalism is now imperatively demanded. It consists in such a reform of the electorate itself as will make it impassible and impervious to every influence subversive of our basic institutions. An electorate of male private property owners of twenty-five years of age and upwards would constitute an absolute barrier against all attacks on private property from any quarter; its establishment would summarily and forever terminate all hopes of Bolshevistic revolution in this country and ensure the American people freedom to enjoy the noble future which Providence has made possible to them.

The cause of private property rights is in the truest sense the American cause and that to which all other national causes political and social are subordinate. Those rights involve almost everything which is dear to the American heart. Even our governmental institutions are of secondary importance, they are the instruments merely; the means whereby we seek to obtain among other aids and aims the protection of private property, the absolute assurance to each American of the use and enjoyment of the fruits of his toil, of his self denial and of his foresight. This view is not novel in our politics. It was thoroughly familiar to our Eighteenth Century statesmen, itwas part of the political faith of some of the most prominent among them, including a majority of the political leaders of the Revolutionary epoch. They endeavored to secure these ends and to ensure the future of the new nation by requiring wherever possible a property qualification for voters. Had this practise and its underlying principle been adhered to and (with proper modifications for changed conditions as they might occur) had the government been continued on the basis on which the wise and prudent men of that time endeavored to establish it, it would at this moment represent a satisfactory approximation of a true and scientific democracy able to hold in safe derision its critics and enemies. But the principle of a properly qualified electorate, so vitally essential to an efficient democracy has been repudiated and abandoned; the practise of unlimited white suffrage has been general amongst us for about ninety years, and today there can be no doubt that there is a prospect of danger to our country, not because of lack of courage and loyalty in her sons, but because of the unhealthy organism of our body politic, whose modern basic principle, unlimited suffrage, ignores property rights, and looks to control by the representatives of the inefficient and the proletariat whenever they can secure a numerical majority at the polls, thus incidentally accomplishing what Bolshevism directly aims at.

And now that private property rights heretofore considered as unquestionable are openly attacked, we must prepare for their defense, for the defense of the family, of the American social system and the free individual life, all three of which depend on private property for their existence. The time has come when the institution of private property must be formally recognized and defended as fundamental to our existence as a nation, and such recognition requires and involves the allotment to that institution of a place and influence in our electoral system. Private property cannot safely rely for its defense upon officials who are dependent upon the votes of the non-property holding populace. There is no way offinal avoidance of the issue, or even of long postponing it. This nation must either declare itself definitely as adhering to the principle of private property rights or it must expect disaster. And first, the cause of private property rights needs organization and self consciousness. Property holders cannot properly defend a cause which has never declared itself and which has neither standard nor leaders, while its enemies have both, and are not only proclaiming their convictions with courage, but have enacted them into living statutes wherever they have power. If the institution of private property is to endure in this country it must be formally recognized as representing a sacred cause, to be carefully committed into the hands of its friends; the electorate must be made over into a property qualified body, and all temptation to Bolshevism must be removed from the American politician. Let this be done, let the constitution of every State be amended so that our voting mass shall be virile and substantial, and freed from the element of effeminacy and inefficiency now so controlling; give the conservative good sense of the nation a rallying point, an official standard, an authoritative creed, and it will speedily make short work of the enemies of social order and of sound political institutions.

But there is a great deal more to be said in favor of a property qualification for voters than that it will be a wall against Bolshevism. It will act on our political internal system as a tonic and a purifier. It sometimes occurs in politics and statesmanship that two mischiefs are so bound together that they can be destroyed at one blow. Such was the case in 1861-1865, when the causes of the perpetuation of the Federal Union and the emancipation of the black race became by the logic of events so involved as to be practically united, and when by the triumph of the northern armies the mischiefs of chattel slavery and disunion politics were made to perish together. And in like manner we now find not only that unqualified or manhood suffrage is the chief source of our weakness in dealing with Bolshevism, but that it has been in the past andstill is the principal cause of our political corruption and governmental inefficiency. And therefore it has come about that the cause of private property and property rights is so bound up with the cause of administrative purity and efficiency in our government that by the one measure of the establishment of a property qualification for voters the perils of the menace of Bolshevism and the mischiefs of political corruption and inefficiency may be dispatched together.

It is in fact principally to the corruption and inefficiency of manhood suffrage government that we owe the popular dissatisfaction out of which the hopes of American Bolshevism are bred and nourished. The failure of democratic institutions in this country must be admitted and it is almost entirely due to the operation of manhood suffrage. We have aimed at theoretical perfection, the natural conditions have been most favorable; we have loudly called the world to witness the experiment, and the world has condemned it as a political failure. This statement will hardly be challenged, but it is well supported by available proof, and need not rest merely on the assertion or opinion of the writer. And right here the reader may as well be informed that it is the author’s intention to support his material assertions with such evidence as the nature of the subject permits. Such readers as are tolerably familiar with American political history will recognize the truth of most of the statements of fact contained in these pages; but the reasonable doubts of the politically uninstructed will be removed as far as conveniently possible by reference to records and to the testimony of reliable witnesses. Here therefore we quote on this branch of the subject from an address ofHenry Jones Ford, President of The American Political Science Association, delivered at the Annual Meeting at Cleveland, December 29, 1919.

“There was at one period an enthusiastic belief that in the Constitution of the United States reflection and choice had at last superseded accident and force, and that a model of free government was now provided by which all countries and peoples might benefit.The effect upon governmental arrangements was once very marked, but complete examination of the documents shows that this influence soon spent itself, and a decided change of disposition took place. If, for instance, one shall attentively consider the constitutional documents of all the Americas, one will observe, that although in their early forms the Constitution of the United States was the model, this is no longer the case. The Constitution of the French republic now excels it in influence. The United States has lost its lead, despite the fact that never has our country bulked larger in the world than now. The present situation is indeed a striking confirmation of Hamilton’s opinion that error in our republic becomes the general misfortune of mankind, for it is a fact well known to every student of politics that a belief that our system of government is a failure on the essential point of justice is now a potent influence on the side of social revolution throughout the world....Students of political science will generally agree that the three greatest works of this class, all displaying wide knowledge and deep thought, are De Tocqueville’sDemocracy in America, first published in 1885; Bryce’sAmerican Commonwealth, 1888; and Ostrogorski’sDemocracy and the Organization of Political Parties, 1902. These works form a crescendo of censure upon American government, each re-examination of the subject confirming previous disapproval and adding to it.”

Students of political science will generally agree that the three greatest works of this class, all displaying wide knowledge and deep thought, are De Tocqueville’sDemocracy in America, first published in 1885; Bryce’sAmerican Commonwealth, 1888; and Ostrogorski’sDemocracy and the Organization of Political Parties, 1902. These works form a crescendo of censure upon American government, each re-examination of the subject confirming previous disapproval and adding to it.”

Needless to say that the writers referred to by Ford and others hereinafter referred to fully sustain his statements above quoted. Our government has not only been a failure on the essential point of justice as President Ford points out, but a still greater failure on the equally essential points of purity and efficiency. The democratic system in actual operation among us has been productive of corruption and mismanagement to such an extent as to cause and justify the almost universal verdict that popular misgovernment rather than popular government has been the outcome. Hence general dissatisfaction and unrest; hence the danger of revolutionary movements, with which we are openly threatened.

It is often said that governments reflect the character of the people. If that were so in this country, as our people are conceded to be one of the most intelligent in the world, we would have one of its best working governments; instead of which we have one of the most wasteful, corrupt and inefficient. Our inferiority in this respect has been universally recognized both in this country and abroad for the last fifty years or more; it is a common-place of conversation; and has caused numberless Americans to feel rage and indignation at home and to suffer shame and humiliation abroad. It has been the subject of innumerable books, pamphlets, sermons and lectures; it has inspired denunciation, satire and invective in pulpit, and on platform; the press has reeked with the disgusting details of the corruption, ignorance and incompetence of our office holders. Everywhere in the United States is to be found great popular dissatisfaction with the operations of our government, profound distrust of its methods and spirit, and conviction that there has been a failure to reach the standards and to realize the hopes of the Fathers of the Republic. This dissatisfaction and distrust, this conviction of failure is not confined to any class; it pervades all classes; it is widespread; it is to be heard freely expressed day by day and hour by hour alike in the business office and in the bar-room, in the private dwelling and on the street; by the mechanic, banker, tradesman, laborer and lawyer. In short it is a matter of common knowledge that for about eighty years past the United States and each of them has been in many important respects badly, corruptly and inefficiently governed. Read for instance this statement recently published by an able American student and writer, and say whether it does not indicate a state of things fruitful with danger to the Republic, in two principal ways; one, that of its decay by corruption, the other by furnishing material for scandal and propaganda to its enemies.

“The present situation has been described over and over again. Briefly, it is constant encroachments by the legislature upon the executive; legislation under irresponsible ‘bosses’ for personal ends, blackmailing of corporations by politicians, and of society by corporations to recoup the plunder of the politician, or to accumulateill-gotten gain, both of them very good imitations of the Spanish policy in the colonies which is terminating in the ruin of an empire; favours shown to special forms of business and industry; unjust taxation; the irresponsible conduct of our legislatures whose deliberations are the signal for alarm and confusion in the commercial world; and mass-meetings every week to frighten politicians into submission, libel, bribery, and lying in campaign work, government by perjurers, pugilists and pimps, and political leadership by men who know no arts but those of Alcibiades and Catiline—all these and a hundred other facts like them create a profound and justifiable suspicion of institutions that confer the supreme power upon those who are equally unfit to govern themselves and others.”Democracy, Hyslop, p. 294.

Now, let us more carefully examine and consider the essential character of the political system which has produced these unsatisfactory results. Its basis is unlimited or unqualified suffrage, until recently appearing and manifested as “manhood suffrage,” but now, since the so-called “enfranchisement” of women more nearly fitting the name “universal suffrage.” In any case in theory at least it is government by numbers, in contradistinction to government by intelligence, birth, wealth, experience, talent or by any combination of these or other qualities or achievements. This doctrine of unlimited or unqualified suffrage is now and has long been recognized as an established principle of government in this country by most of us; indeed we may say by all Americans with the exception of the natives or inhabitants of the Southern or former slave States. By these latter pure manhood suffrage has been tried and condemned and has been replaced by white manhood suffrage by means of certain well known and successful political devices amounting practically to a strict race qualification; though the important and suggestive fact that thereby the basic principle of manhood suffrage was expressly repudiated by the entire South has been carefully blinked by Americans generally.

In a general way we may say then that manhood suffrageis everywhere in the United States the legally recognized method of choosing all our lawmakers and many of our administrative officials; that white manhood suffrage actually obtains in the Southern States; and that in the other States constituting about three fourths of the whole, every resident male citizen, native or naturalized, and in some of them residents not naturalized, may vote. In sixteen of the forty-eight States the suffrage has within recent years been extended to women. So that at present the basis of government in the United States is manhood or male suffrage in all the States with the addition in some of them of female suffrage; or in other words, ignoring the negro situation, we have manhood suffrage in thirty-two and universal suffrage in sixteen States. In all of these States elections are frequent, in most annual, in others biennial, in a few quadrennial.

The controlling political importance of these elections is evident when we consider that thereby are chosen all the members of both houses of the various State Legislatures, of both houses of Congress, the governors of the states and the President and Vice-President of the United States, that is to say the entire body of lawmakers of the country. Also in many of the States are thus selected the Judges of the Courts higher and lower, and numerous administrative state officials, such as State Attorneys, Auditors, State Engineers, Financial Officers, etc. Besides these there are elections of almost equal practical importance of minor or local officers, such as Sheriffs, County Attorneys and Supervisors, Mayors and Aldermen of Cities, and miscellaneous officials. Beyond all this, the electorate is required from time to time, and in some States at nearly every election, to pass upon constitutions, or amendments or provisions of constitutions, state and federal, referenda and propositions of various kinds involving sometimes vast expenditures. For none of these elections is any voting qualification practically required of the resident citizen, except that of color, and that only in the South.

It is interesting and curious to note how under our systemof popular elections, government as legally constituted is merely a product of a process of aggregation of numbers. In practise, this numerical system is modified by the low despotism of Boss rule, but in theory it rests on an arithmetical count of heads, many of them cracked, others of various degrees of emptiness, without taking note of merit, capacity or fitness. And right here in order to fully realize the force and sweep of the numerical system of government we should remember that the effect of the vote of the electorate is not confined to the directly elective offices; it extends to the appointive offices as well; for the appointing power, whether President, Governor, Senate or Legislature being chosen by election, is under the necessity of selecting his or its appointees from those of its supporters who control the most votes. It is not therefore surprising that the politician whom the votes of the populace have made President or Governor sometimes appoints a knave or demagogue to public office. Such appointment, however offensive to some of us, may have been in strict accordance with our political system. Under that system the ultimate appeal is never to experience, ability, capacity or character, but always to numbers; and therefore the official indebted to the power of numbers for his own high office may possibly be quite justified in continuing the process, and in bestowing his appointments on the representative or controller of numbers, no matter what his quality or theirs. To use the language of practical politics “the man with a following is entitled to recognition” be he demagogue, rogue or humbug; and the President, Governor or Boss who fails to give it to him is false to the modern American principle of “numbers win”; in a word he is un-American; and is likely to suffer politically in consequence. In fact we may say generally that government in this country is authorized by numbers, rests on numbers, and is backed and sanctified by numbers and naught else; while our governing class count numbers, live by numbers and need respect nothing but numbers if of numbers they can obtain sufficient support. The President is selected and appointed as the result of a numericalreckoning; and so with all other officials and the men who choose the officials; the laws are made either by men chosen by the addition of figures, or more directly by a similar count of voters; nearly all of whom are absolutely ignorant of the merits and scope of the projected legislation and each of them lacking other qualification than that he exists and can be counted. The candidate with the largest total gets the office; the project approved by the greatest number becomes law.

Our government is not one of talent, nor cunning, nor of money, nor birth, nor military force, but of numeral computation; our rulers are not hereditary nor called to rule for their merits nor by the grace of God; they are counted in; it is a government by calculation, an arithmetical government. Our ruling classes are not aristocrats, nor militarists, nor statesmen, nor capitalists, nor landowners; they are handshakers, mixers, they have “followings,” and their political weight in council does not depend on their wisdom, but on the numbers of the mob running at their heels. We are taught politically to think in numbers, to believe in numbers; in fact, politically we believe in nothing else.

Now it is clear that the effect of this régime is to disregard much that statesmanship should take into account in framing a nation’s polity. There are many other considerations besides mere numbers which affect men politically; other forces which far more than mere numbers operate towards the development of mankind, the shaping of human destiny, the establishment and fall of political institutions; all of which forces are by our political system completely ignored. In a free play of political life we would expect for instance to reckon with intellect, capacity, energy, industry, wisdom, knowledge, judgment, prudence, physical strength, wealth, experience, training, efficiency, and perhaps other qualities, but in our political scheme none of them is considered; everything is ascertained and decided upon and all doubts resolved by an arithmetical process; you take a count and the thing is done. Be the question, for instance, who is the properest man to fill an administrative office of trust and importance; on the one hand is A who has a good physique, is of a fine family, habits good, long training and experience, excellent education, bright past record for efficiency and honor; and on the other B who has none of these valuable qualities, is a little shady in fact; but a glib platform speaker. The number of votes is counted and B has the more and is thus positively ascertained to be the man for the place. Is not this wonderful? Tried by any other test he would have been declared unfit for the position; but the numeral system conclusively demonstrated his fitness. And indeed the writer is compelled to admit that the number system is deservedly popular with those able to profit by it, and has given promotion to thousands of nonentities who would otherwise have remained in obscurity. So of a project of law involving difficult questions of justice and expediency; students of civics and even great statesmen may be in doubt as to whether it ought not to be amended or modified; but with our system in operation there is no need for study or hesitation; you just invite every one to say “Yes” or “No.” Possibly the majority will not understand the project at all or will misunderstand it, but that makes no difference: understanding is not necessary to voting; it is numbers that count, not understanding. Possibly a conscientious or indolent third of the voters will decline to vote; that makes no difference either; possibly every one of the few who realty understand the proposition is opposed to it, but that is of little practical consequence as the knowledge or ignorance of the voters is immaterial and is never made the subject of inquiry; possibly the scheme is imperfect and to the knowledge of the well informed plainly needs amendment; it matters not, there is no provision for amendment of details in the numerical system; possibly the project has never been properly presented to the electorate and most of the votes pro or con are the result of ignorance, whim or prejudice; but this fact will not be considered in the result, for an ignorant or prejudiced vote is just as valid as a just and wise one. The system is unfailing; it will solve every difficulty; the doubts of able statesmen are answered in a moment by the vote of the female mill hands of Factoryville. You are sure to get some decision, and any decision will serve; for no matter how foolish or unreasonable it may be, no one is responsible; there is no appeal and practically no redress.

This electoral scheme would seem to imply a general belief in the capacity of the electorate. It would at first blush appear to be founded upon a theory of the superior wisdom and almost superhuman knowledge and virtue of the masses, whereby every voter is presumed to know who are best fitted to fill the offices of Mayor, Alderman, Sheriff, County and State Attorney, Judge of Courts small or large, State Assemblyman, State Senator, Congressman, State Engineer and Surveyor, Governor of the State, and President of the United States; and it would seem, besides, that every voter, male or female, is presumed to cast his or her vote with the good of the community and nation at heart. The verdict so taken would thus have something of the effect of an infallible decree; and indeed we note that people and newspapers often speak of the results of an election with a species of awe; and that in the somewhat too common event of a doubtful character or even of a noted scamp being elected to a public office the result is often spoken of as his “vindication.” These “vindications” in fact are frequently needed and demanded by political gentlemen under a cloud, and have been accorded by the electorate in a surprisingly large number of cases. Nor does the mere capacity to select the best officials measure the full quota of the wisdom and accuracy apparently required by the populace under our political system. They, every man jack, and in the “advanced” States, every woman jenny of them all is from time to time required to vote upon questions which presuppose them to be perfectly familiar with the Constitution of the United States and of his and her own State; to understand all its provisions and to be able to determine the meaning and effect of any and all amendments thereto, which are or may possibly be proposed.

Now, all this is of course absurd; no such belief in the wisdom of the electorate is entertained by the masses or by anybody, for no one in the world is such a fool as not to be aware that at every election large numbers of the voters are absolutely incapable of passing upon the merits of candidates far above them in education, station in life, and capacity to fill offices whose high duties they could not be made to understand by any amount of explanation. Few even of the most ignorant are unaware that only trained minds are capable of construing and understanding constitutional provisions and forecasting their probable effects. There must therefore exist within the manhood suffrage scheme, some principle or theory more sane than a belief in the omniscience of the rabble of ignorance, stupidity and indifference which it proudly marshals to the polls; and though this principle or theory has never been precisely or authoritatively defined, yet on examining the numerous written or spoken expressions in support of universal suffrage found in books, speeches and newspaper articles, we discover that the postulate at the bottom of the manhood suffrage proposition is this: not that the mass of voters are competent judges of conditions or policies, but that they are the natural, necessary and proper arbiters thereof; not that ignorance, stupidity and vice do not go to the polls, but that in the nature of the case they are there and have a right to be there; that it is intended and expected that they shall be actually represented and expressed in the vote; that in politics all have equal right to be heard; that government and law should be an expression of the will of all the people or at least of all of the men of this country; not merely of those having patriotism, experience, virtue, judgment, and wisdom, or any one of these qualities; but of the whole populace; including the ignorant, stupid, worthless and depraved; and that each of these latter should have an equal voice with the wise and worthy. Such is and must be the underlying theory of manhood suffrage; and as women are notoriously still more ignorant of political affairs than men, theadoption of woman suffrage is evidently a mere extension of this same theory of equality of political value to the female sex; so that under a system of universal suffrage the law and the government include the expression of the ignorance, stupidity and depravity of both sexes of the community, state or nation as well as of its education, wisdom and goodness. And this principle is in effect generally carried out at our elections; so that practically the only disfranchised classes are those of the publicly supported paupers and the negroes in the South, and the whole immense national mass of ignorance, incapacity and hostility to social wellbeing is included in our voting lists and finds expression at the polls.

From an electorate so constituted, from a system of government founded on such a perverse theory no good results are or ever were to be expected. Accordingly, we are not surprised to note that the first plain signs of a general political deterioration in American politics were about coincident with the establishment of manhood suffrage in the early part of the nineteenth century. For the first forty years of the republic politics were comparatively pure; the United States was a model among nations; then we note a fatal declension, a swift lowering of standards; we observe the close connection between the establishment of manhood suffrage and the entrance into high places of low politicians; how upon the widening of the franchise the management and control of politics in the United States began gradually to pass from the hands of the principal men of the country, the ablest, the most wealthy, the best educated, the most influential, the members of the oldest and best families, and to fall under the control of the professional politicians. This latter class originating at about that period developed into well organized bands who under the leadership of chiefs, since known as bosses, have seized, occupied and still hold and occupy the offices, the machinery of public elections, appointments, and almost the entire control of public affairs. Their management and control have been selfish, corrupt and inefficient. Their legislation has been excessive and poor inquality; their administration of governmental affairs ignorant, weak, capricious, oppressive, wasteful, careless and dishonest. During all this time the system of manhood suffrage has remained unassailed and unquestioned, and the people have listened more or less complacently to fulsome praises of their government system by a venal and superficial press and by ignorant and insincere political platform orators. These, in their speeches and platforms have been easily able to escape imputation of the mischiefs of manhood suffrage and of their own class by charging them upon the opposite party, or upon such of their political opponents as happened for the time being to hold public office. And so elections have come and gone, parties have risen and fallen, officials have been selected as popular one year and thrown aside as unsatisfactory the next, but through it all corruption and inefficiency remain constant and acknowledged features of American political life.

The time has come when a remedy for this state of things can no longer be safely postponed; the situation is serious; the democratic system is being attacked, and will continue to be attacked here and elsewhere by great numbers of the very class who have heretofore been supposed to constitute its defenders and champions. Be they Bolsheviki, Anarchists, Socialists or what you will, these assailants of our institutions are nearly all of the common people, of the very working class whom it has been and ought to be the pride and mission of America to shelter and satisfy. Many of them were brought to this attitude of revolt by evil conditions in Europe and are continuing here their hostile attitude to organized society and spreading the spirit of mischief among us because they are justly disappointed by our political conditions; finding here in a country supposed to be democratic, the rule of a corrupt oligarchy of politicians thoroughly established and apparently acquiesced in by the people at large. The seeds of discontent which they are assiduously sowing are likely to take root in the breasts of our own people, disgruntled as they are with thepast and present corruption of our politics and the inefficiency of our government.

This corruption, this inefficiency, long a scandal among us, is the real cause of that popular “unrest,” that dissatisfaction the subject of so much comment, which for more than a generation just prior to the German war had been steadily increasing in this country. It was started by the degradation of politics which ensued immediately upon the establishment of manhood suffrage and the inauguration of Jackson and the Spoils Policy in 1829. It was already well under way in 1840; but was subsequently held in check by the Anti-Slavery agitation, by the Civil War and the Southern Reconstruction troubles, which ended in 1876 with the inauguration of Hayes. From that time this popular protest against our political unrighteousness has been steadily on the increase, gaining in power and bitterness with the added instances of official unfitness and maladministration of public affairs. With the disappearance of the older generations reared in a religious belief in our republican institutions and filled with memories of the honest days before Jackson, appeared the spirit of contemptuous disbelief in official capacity and honesty which has taken possession of their descendants. The vision of a government administered by statesmen and patriots of the type of Washington and the Adamses has given place in the mind of America to a picture of a sordid gang of corrupt and incapable politicians in power, and it is therefore to the credit of our people that there has been protest, dissatisfaction and “unrest.” The popular demand that this state of things be remedied is at the bottom of the so-called “unrest,” and it is not an unreasonable demand. Never in the world’s history was there a people so religious, so patriotic, so disinterested, so idealistic, so appreciative, so tolerant of mere mistakes, so easy to govern justly as the American people; but the best of them are determined that their republican government shall be the ultimate success their fathers promised to make it. They care much less about “world democracy”; they are far from being such consummatefools as to believe that our political system is fit for other and inferior races or to want to meddle with the affairs of other nations; but they want Americanism to continuehere; they want honest and efficient government established in this country; and they fear the breakdown of those republican institutions to which they feel a passionate devotion.

There have indeed been no lack of efforts at reform. All sorts of expedients have been proposed and every remedy possible has been adopted and tried except the only one which could possibly be efficacious, namely, the limitation and elevation of the electorate. This and the other new idea or so-called political reform has been tried and discarded, or proved of little value; hundreds of penal statutes have been enacted, hundreds of boards, commissions and officials of various sorts have been created; there have been innumerable grand jury inquests and committees of investigations; there have been created new ballot systems, new primary laws; initiatives and referendums, besides thousands of tax-payers’ suits, injunctions, newspaper campaigns, new reform parties and fusions of old parties, not with the slightest hope of reaching perfection, but in desperate efforts on behalf of common decency. All have failed. Countless political movements have been started and political campaigns fought in the effort to cure the delinquency, to cleanse the corruption of our local and general governments, with varying temporary success, but without permanent benefit. Men have spent their lives and fortunes in the effort; each new generation hopefully undertaking the task of cleaning the stable only to abandon it in its turn; and nothing permanent or even enduring has been accomplished. Here and there, an individual or a group of political malefactors has been punished; here and there schemes for public plunder have been exposed and defeated; the particular system or legislation which permitted these specific instances has been changed or reformed; this or that particular abuse suppressed, and in the aggregate a great deal of mischief has thus been done away with or prevented. But no one pretends thatthe root of the evil has been removed or that the grasp of the professional politician class upon the throat of the nation has been loosened. The elections from which so much was expected, the men and movements from which so much was hoped, have come and gone without substantial results. The same class of politicians, the same methods, the same political games, the same corruption, the same boss rule, the same old rings, the same fraud, cheating, waste and general inefficiency remain the most striking features of our American public life. The same men, though not always holding the same places, remain in office year after year, and the rule of the oligarchy of professional politicians established eighty years ago goes on forever. When one of its members is turned out of one political job by a spurt of indignation of a gullible and innocent public, he quickly appears in another one just as comfortable and lucrative, and sometimes with a capacity for mischief and blundering rather increased than diminished by the change.

Seeing this, the reformers naturally ask each other in wonder and disgust what is the matter with the people? What is the cause of their failure to rid themselves of these political gangs? What is the remedy and where is it to be found? To ascertain the cause, to correctly diagnose the disease is of course the first and the main problem. Afterwards the remedy. The fact that it persists and has so long persisted in operation affords evidence that it is not superficial but represents an organic defect in our governmental system. Many political students have puzzled over it, many have given the inquiry up as hopeless. In an article in theAtlantic Monthlyfor July, 1896, the writer, referring to our legislative bodies, notes

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