With quite sufficient reason, the public mind has long been disturbed by
our political tendencies. This dissatisfaction does not arise from the
fact that in matters of principle and public policy, intelligent people
think we are on dangerous roads. In what are called questions, such as
those of banks, tariffs, coinage of silver, payment of the national debt,
etc., etc., it may be that the majority would prefer changes of policy;
but there is a conviction abroad that we are as a people free to change
in these matters if we really and earnestly desire new policies which
we are able to define. Our feeling of apprehension springs from the
knowledge that our political methods are bad, undemocratic and dangerous,
and from a fear that the fountains of public life are being defiled by
the wicked spirit of “practical politics.” It is not easy to corrupt the
moral sense of such a people as ours. The level of intelligence is high,
and patriotic impulses are strong in us. And yet we have gone down some
steps. At the end of the war, men physically wrecked refused to take
pensions; they would not take pay for a religious self-sacrifice. Now,
men who came out of the army without a scratch and are still sound in
health swear falsely to obtain pensions. These greedy seekers of pensions
did not dream fifteen years ago that they could sink so low. Any one of
them would then have said: “What, is thy servant a dog, that he should
do this thing?” Their fall is directly traceable to the corruption of
the civil service, to the fact that in the theory of our public life,
bounties should be given to men who handle political organizations
successfully. Salaries for civil service are bounties to be had by
scrambling for them, or by earning them in the service of Party.
The theory of “practical politics” converts the salaries paid for
public service into a pool which parties are organized to secure for
distribution among the sergeants, corporals, lieutenants, captains,
colonels and generals of the order. “What are we here for,” cried a
delegate in the Republican National Convention of 1880, “if we are not
after the offices?” That indignant question expressed the very heart
of the practical politicians. A party, in his view, is an organization
to get offices. And as much of its work is, in the same view, secret,
dirty and wicked work, he believes that the party should be under the
strict control of “bosses.” Each town should have its leader, all the
town leaders should be under the control of the county leader, and county
leaders should obey the state “boss”—and the edifice should be crowned
with a national committee of “bosses.” This committee the politicians
struggled to create by the famous theory of “the courtesy of the Senate.”
That theory made the President the clerk of the party’s Senators in each
state. It gave Senator Conkling the vast Federal “patronage” of New York
to distribute at his will. The edifice was not crowned; the Senatorial
“boss” system went down in the terrible struggle of the spring of 1881.
Our readers know that history. We do not recall it to reproach anybody.
Senator Conkling was the victim of a theory that he ought, under the rule
of “the courtesy of the Senate,” to be President within the state of New
York. The theory is silent now; it will rise again if the people do not
disestablish political machines in towns, cities, counties and states.
Turning to a more gloomy side of the subject, we observe that there has
been a vast increase in the amount of money spent in politics. Thousands
of persons are, while we pen these lines, living on the patrons who hire
them and send them forth to “mould public opinion”—or in the choicer
phrase of the men themselves, “to set things up.” It is the business
of this perambulating political machine to invent and distribute lies,
to purchase useful sub-agents, to promise funds for the election day
bribery. The floating vote increases each year, and four-fifths of this
vote is a corrupt vote—the voters stand about the market place waiting
until some man shall hire them. We tolerate and smile at all this
business—except the concealed bribery—and this tolerance of ours is the
sign that the malarious atmosphere of “practical politics” is beginning
to weaken our moral sense. If we are still in full vigor, this year will
probably afford us a large number of opportunities to wreck the local
political machine—without distinction of party. Reform will have to begin
by disestablishing local machines and bruising with conscience votes the
men who corrupt the popular verdict with money.