In recent years our periodical literature has devoted much space to
discussions of problems of efficiency. We have heard repeatedly of the
demand, not for two-thousand-dollar men, but for ten, twenty, and fifty
thousand dollar men, in the great industries. The efficiency engineer
has sprung into being; in my own city several hundred employees of an
automobile company are organized into a class, of which a professor of
psychology is the leader, the purpose being the promotion of individual
and corporate efficiency. The first-rate man is in demand as a buyer,
a salesman, a foreman, a manager. One of the largest corporations in
America pays its employees bonuses apportioned on a basis of their
value as demonstrated by actual performances from month to month. The
minutest economies are a matter of daily study in every manufacturing
and commercial house; the hunt for the first-rate man is unceasing.
Executive ability, a special genius for buying and selling, need never
go unrecognized. Recently a New York bank spent months searching for
a bond-seller and finally chose an obscure young man from a Western
town who fell by chance under the eye of a “scout” sent out to look
for talent. But this eager search for the first-rate man, so marked in
commerce and industry, only rarely touches our politics. It is only
in politics that the second-rate man finds the broadest field for the
exercise of his talents.
A President is beset by many embarrassments in the exercise of
the appointing power. Our feudal system, by which senators and
representatives are the custodians of post-office, district
attorneyships, marshalships, and countless other positions, does not
make for the recognition of the fit. While the power to appoint is
vested in the executive, his choice must be approved by the senators or
representatives. As the system operates, it is not really the President
who appoints but the senators or representatives, and the President is
expected to meet their wishes. To question their recommendations is to
arouse animosity, and where the fate of important legislation hangs
in the balance a President is under strong temptation to accept the
recommendation of second-rate men in order to keep the members of the
law-making bodies in good humor.
In the professions and industries, in commercial houses, even on the
farm, the second-rate man is not wanted; but political jobs, high and
low, are everywhere open to him. Everything but the public service
is standardized; politics alone puts a premium upon inferiority. The
greatest emphasis is laid upon the word service in every field but
government. The average American “wants what he wants when he wants
it,” and is proud of his ability to get it. “If it isn’t right, we
make it right,” is a popular business slogan. Hotels whose indifferent
service wins the displeasure of the travelling public are execrated
and blacklisted. On the other hand, I have listened for hours to the
laudation of good hotels, of the efficiency of railroads, of automobile
manufacturers who “give good service.” We have a pride in these things;
we like to relate incidents of our successful “kick” when the berth
that we had reserved by telegraph wasn’t forthcoming and how we “took
it up” with the railroad authorities, and how quickly our wounded
feelings were poulticed. “I guess that won’t happen again on _that_
road!” we chortle. Conversely we make our errands to a city hall or
court-house as few as possible, knowing that the “service,” offered
at the people’s expense is of a different order, and public officials
may not be approached in that confident spirit with which we carry our
needs or complaints to the heads of a private business.
Or, if some favor is to be asked, we brag that we have seen “Jim”
or “Bob” and that he “fixed” it for us. It happens not infrequently
that we want something “fixed” from purely selfish motives--something
that should not be “fixed”--and it gives us a pleasurable sense of our
“influence” to know that, as we have always treated “Jim” or “Bob”
all right, “Jim” or “Bob” cheerfully assists us. We chuckle over the
ease with which he accomplished the fixing where it would have been
impossible for us to effect it through a direct legitimate appeal. Thus
in hundreds of ways a boss, great or small, is able to grant favors
that cost him nothing, thereby blurring the vision of those he places
under obligations to the means by which he gains his power.
In municipal government the second and the third rate man, on down to
a point where differentiations fade to the vanishing point, finds his
greatest hope and security. As first-rate men are not available for the
offices, they fall naturally to the inferior, the incompetent, or the
corrupt. In few cities of a hundred thousand population is a man of
trained ability and recognized fitness ever seriously considered for
the mayoralty. Modern city government, with the broad powers conferred
upon mayors, requires intelligence of the highest order. Usually
without experience in large affairs, and crippled by a well-established
tradition that he must reward party workers and personal friends, the
incumbent surrounds himself with second and third rate men, for whose
blunders the taxpayer meekly pays the bills.
The mayor’s office is hardly second to the presidency in the variety
of its perplexities. A man of the best intentions will fail to satisfy
a whole community. There is in every city a group of reformers who
believe that a mayor should be able to effect the moral regeneration
of the human race in one term of office. The first-rate man is aware
of this, and the knowledge diminishes his anxiety to seek the place.
A common indictment against the capable man who volunteers for
municipal service is that his ignorance of political methods would
make him “impractical” if he were elected. This sentiment is expressed
frequently--often by large taxpayers. The insinuation is that a man of
character and ideals would be unable to deal with the powers that prey
by indirection. This is quite true: the fit man, the first-rate man,
who would undertake the office untrammelled by political obligations,
would not know the “good fellows” who must be dealt with in a spirit of
leniency. This delicate duty is more safely intrusted to one who brings
a certain sympathy to bear upon the task.
Whatever may be the merits of party government in its national
application, there is no sound argument for its continuance in
municipal affairs. Its effect is to discourage utterly, in most
communities, any effort the first-rate man may be absurd enough to make
to win enough of the franchises of his fellow citizens to land him in
the mayoralty. On one occasion a Republican United States senator,
speaking for his party’s candidate for the mayoralty at the last rally
of a campaign in my own city, declared that his party must win, as
defeat would have a discouraging effect on Republicans elsewhere.
A few years ago both parties chose, in the Indianapolis primaries,
mayoralty candidates of conspicuous unfitness. The Republican candidate
was an auctioneer, whose ready tongue and drolleries on the stump
made him the central figure in a highly picturesque campaign. He was
elected and the affairs of a city of a quarter of a million people
were cheerfully turned over to him. Ignorant of the very terminology
in which municipal affairs are discussed, he avoided embarrassment by
remaining away from his office as much as possible. In the last year
of his administration--if so dignified a term may be applied to his
incumbency--he resigned, to avoid the responsibility of dealing with
disorders consequent upon a serious strike, and took refuge on the
vaudeville stage. He was no more unfit on the day he resigned than on
the day of his nomination or election--a fact of which the electorate
had ample knowledge. He was chosen merely because he was a vote-getter.
Republicans voted for him to preserve their regularity.[A]
I am prolonging these comments on municipal government for the reason
that the city as a political factor is of so great influence in the
State and nation, and because the domination of the unfit in the
smaller unit offers more tangible instances for study. The impediments
encountered by the fit who offer themselves for public service are
many, and often ludicrous. Twice, in Indianapolis, men of the best
standing have yielded under pressure to a demand that they offer
themselves for the Republican mayoralty nomination. Neither had the
slightest intention of using the mayoralty as a stepping-stone to
higher office; the motives animating both were the highest. One of
them was quickly disposed of by the report sent “down the line” that
he had not been as regular as he might be, and by this token was an
undesirable candidate. The other was subjected to a crushing defeat in
the primary. There was nothing against him except that he was unknown
to the “boys in the trenches.”
From the window by which I write I can see the chimneys of the
flourishing industry conducted by the first of these gentlemen. He has
constantly shown his public spirit in the most generous fashion; he
is an admirable citizen. I dare say there is not an incompetent man
or woman on his pay-roll. If he were out of employment and penniless
to-morrow, scores of responsible positions would be open to him. But
the public would not employ him; his own party would not even permit
its membership to express its opinion of him; and had he gone before
the electorate he would in all likelihood have been defeated by an
invincible combination of every element of incompetence and venality in
the city.
The other gentleman, who began life as a bank clerk, made a success
of a commercial business, and is now president of one of the largest
banks in the State. Such men are ineligible for municipal office; they
are first-rate men; the very fact that they are men of character and
ability who could be trusted to manage public affairs as they conduct
their private business, removes them at once from consideration.
Such experiences as these are not calculated to encourage the capable
man, the first-rate man, to attempt to gain a public position. In fact,
it is the business of political organizations to make the defeat of
such men as humiliating as possible. They must be got rid of; they must
be taught better manners!
The good nature with which we accept the second-rate man in municipal
office is one of the most bewildering of all our political phenomena.
“Well, things have always been this way, and I guess they always will
be,” expresses the average citizen’s feeling about the matter. As he
cannot, without much personal discomfort, change the existing order, he
finds solace in the reflection that he couldn’t do anything about it if
he tried. The more intolerant he is of second-rate employees in his own
business, the more supinely he views the transfer of public business
from one set of incompetents to another.
To lift municipal government out of politics in States where the party
organizations never shut up shop but are ceaselessly plotting and
planning to perfect their lines, is manifestly no easy task, but it may
be accomplished by effective leadership where the people are sincerely
interested. And it is significant that the present movement for an
abandonment of the old pernicious, costly system took rise from the
dire calamities that befell two cities--Galveston and Dayton--which
were suddenly confronted with problems that it would have been madness
to intrust to incompetents. This illustrates a point overlooked by that
large body of Americans who refuse to bring to their politics the test
of fitness that they enforce in private business. The second-rate man
may successfully hide his errors in normal conditions, but his faults
and weaknesses become glaringly apparent when any severe demands are
made upon him.
I can suggest no permanent solution of the problem of municipal
government that does not embrace the training of men for its particular
duties. A development of the city-manager plan, of nation-wide scope,
fortified by special courses of training in schools able to give
the dignity of a stable profession to municipal administration may
ultimately be the remedy.