should remember is that he must act, and not merely criticise the
actions of others. It is not the man who sits by his fireside reading
his evening paper, and saying how bad our politics and politicians
are, who will ever do anything to save us; it is the man who goes
out into the rough hurly-burly of the caucus, the primary, and the
political meeting, and there faces his fellows on equal terms. The
real service is rendered, not by the critic who stands aloof from the
contest, but by the man who enters into it and bears his part as a man
should, undeterred by the blood and the sweat. It is a pleasant but a
dangerous thing to associate merely with cultivated, refined men of
high ideals and sincere purpose to do right, and to think that one has
done all one’s duty by discussing politics with such associates. It
is a good thing to meet men of this stamp; indeed it is a necessary
thing, for we thereby brighten our ideals, and keep in touch with the
people who are unselfish in their purposes; but if we associate with
such men exclusively we can accomplish nothing. The actual battle must
be fought out on other and less pleasant fields. The actual advance
must be made in the field of practical politics among the men who
represent or guide or control the mass of the voters, the men who are
sometimes rough and coarse, who sometimes have lower ideals than they
should, but who are capable, masterful, and efficient. It is only by
mingling on equal terms with such men, by showing them that one is
able to give and to receive heavy punishment without flinching, and
that one can master the details of political management as well as
they can, that it is possible for a man to establish a standing that
will be useful to him in fighting for a great reform. Every man who
wishes well to his country is in honor bound to take an active part
in political life. If he does his duty and takes that active part
he will be sure occasionally to commit mistakes and to be guilty of
shortcomings. For these mistakes and shortcomings he will receive the
unmeasured denunciation of the critics who commit neither because
they never do anything but criticise. Nevertheless he will have the
satisfaction of knowing that the salvation of the country ultimately
lies, not in the hands of his critics, but in the hands of those who,
however imperfectly, actually do the work of the nation. I would not
for one moment be understood as objecting to criticism or failing to
appreciate its importance. We need fearless criticism of our public men
and public parties; we need unsparing condemnation of all persons and
all principles that count for evil in our public life: but it behooves
every man to remember that the work of the critic, important though
it is, is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end,
progress is accomplished by the man who does the things, and not by the
man who talks about how they ought or ought not to be done.
Therefore the man who wishes to do good in his community must go into
active political life. If he is a Republican, let him join his local
Republican association; if a Democrat, the Democratic association; if
an Independent, then let him put himself in touch with those who think
as he does. In any event let him make himself an active force and make
his influence felt. Whether he works within or without party lines he
can surely find plenty of men who are desirous of good government,
and who, if they act together, become at once a power on the side
of righteousness. Of course, in a government like ours, a man can
accomplish anything only by acting in combination with others, and
equally, of course, a number of people can act together only by each
sacrificing certain of his beliefs or prejudices. That man is indeed
unfortunate who cannot in any given district find some people with
whom he can conscientiously act. He may find that he can do best by
acting within a party organization; he may find that he can do best by
acting, at least for certain purposes, or at certain times, outside of
party organizations, in an independent body of some kind; but with some
association he must act if he wishes to exert any real influence.
One thing to be always remembered is that neither independence on the
one hand nor party fealty on the other can ever be accepted as an
excuse for failure to do active work in politics. The party man who
offers his allegiance to party as an excuse for blindly following his
party, right or wrong, and who fails to try to make that party in any
way better, commits a crime against the country; and a crime quite as
serious is committed by the independent who makes his independence an
excuse for easy self-indulgence, and who thinks that when he says he
belongs to neither party he is excused from the duty of taking part in
the practical work of party organizations. The party man is bound to do
his full share in party management. He is bound to attend the caucuses
and the primaries, to see that only good men are put up, and to exert
his influence as strenuously against the foes of good government within
his party, as, through his party machinery, he does against those who
are without the party. In the same way the independent, if he cannot
take part in the regular organizations, is bound to do just as much
active constructive work (not merely the work of criticism) outside;
he is bound to try to get up an organization of his own and to try to
make that organization felt in some effective manner. Whatever course
the man who wishes to do his duty by his country takes in reference
to parties or to independence of parties, he is bound to try to put
himself in touch with men who think as he does, and to help make their
joint influence felt in behalf of the powers that go for decency and
good government. He must try to accomplish things; he must not vote in
the air unless it is really necessary. Occasionally a man must cast a
“conscience vote,” when there is no possibility of carrying to victory
his principles or his nominees; at times, indeed, this may be his
highest duty; but ordinarily this is not the case. As a general rule a
man ought to work and vote for something which there is at least a a
fair chance of putting into effect.
Yet another thing to be remembered by the man who wishes to make his
influence felt for good in our politics is that he must act purely as
an American. If he is not deeply imbued with the American spirit he
cannot succeed. Any organization which tries to work along the line of
caste or creed, which fails to treat all American citizens on their
merits as men, will fail, and will deserve to fail. Where our political
life is healthy, there is and can be no room for any movement organized
to help or to antagonize men because they do or do not profess a
certain religion, or because they were or were not born here or abroad.
We have a right to ask that those with whom we associate, and those for
whom we vote, shall be themselves good Americans in heart and spirit,
unhampered by adherence to foreign ideals, and acting without regard
to the national and religious prejudices of European countries; but if
they really are good Americans in spirit and thought and purpose, that
is all that we have any right to consider in regard to them. In the
same way there must be no discrimination for or against any man because
of his social standing. On the one side, there is nothing to be made
out of a political organization which draws an exclusive social line,
and on the other it must be remembered that it is just as un-American
to vote against a man because he is rich as to vote against him because
he is poor. The one man has just as much right as the other to claim
to be treated purely on his merits as a man. In short, to do good work
in politics, the men who organize must organize wholly without regard
to whether their associates were born here or abroad, whether they are
Protestants or Catholics, Jews or Gentiles, whether they are bankers
or butchers, professors or day-laborers. All that can rightly be asked
of one’s political associates is that they shall be honest men, good
Americans, and substantially in accord as regards their political ideas.
Another thing that must not be forgotten by the man desirous of doing
good political work is the need of the rougher, manlier virtues,
and above all the virtue of personal courage, physical as well
as moral. If we wish to do good work for our country we must be
unselfish, disinterested, sincerely desirous of the well-being of the
commonwealth, and capable of devoted adherence to a lofty ideal; but
in addition we must be vigorous in mind and body, able to hold our own
in rough conflict with our fellows, able to suffer punishment without
flinching, and, at need, to repay it in kind with full interest. A
peaceful and commercial civilization is always in danger of suffering
the loss of the virile fighting qualities without which no nation,
however cultured, however refined, however thrifty and prosperous, can
ever amount to anything. Every citizen should be taught, both in public
and in private life, that while he must avoid brawling and quarrelling,
it is his duty to stand up for his rights. He must realize that the
only man who is more contemptible than the blusterer and bully is the
coward. No man is worth much to the commonwealth if he is not capable
of feeling righteous wrath and just indignation, if he is not stirred
to hot anger by misdoing, and is not impelled to see justice meted
out to the wrong-doers. No man is worth much anywhere if he does not
possess both moral and physical courage. A politician who really serves
his country well, and deserves his country’s gratitude, must usually
possess some of the hardy virtues which we admire in the soldier who
serves his country well in the field.
An ardent young reformer is very apt to try to begin by reforming too
much. He needs always to keep in mind that he has got to serve as a
sergeant before he assumes the duties of commander-in-chief. It is
right for him from the beginning to take a great interest in National,
State, and Municipal affairs, and to try to make himself felt in them
if the occasion arises; but the best work must be done by the citizen
working in his own ward or district. Let him associate himself with
the men who think as he does, and who, like him, are sincerely devoted
to the public good. Then let them try to make themselves felt in the
choice of alderman, of council-man, of assemblyman. The politicians
will be prompt to recognize their power, and the people will recognize
it too, after a while. Let them organize and work, undaunted by any
temporary defeat. If they fail at first, and if they fail again, let
them merely make up their minds to redouble their efforts, and perhaps
alter their methods; but let them keep on working.
It is sheer unmanliness and cowardice to shrink from the contest
because at first there is failure, or because the work is difficult
or repulsive. No man who is worth his salt has any right to abandon
the effort to better our politics merely because he does not find it
pleasant, merely because it entails associations which to him happen
to be disagreeable. Let him keep right on, taking the buffets he gets
good-humoredly, and repaying them with heartiness when the chance
arises. Let him make up his mind that he will have to face the violent
opposition of the spoils politician, and also, too often, the unfair
and ungenerous criticism of those who ought to know better. Let him
be careful not to show himself so thin-skinned as to mind either; let
him fight his way forward, paying only so much regard to both as is
necessary to enable him to win in spite of them. He may not, and indeed
probably will not, accomplish nearly as much as he would like to, or as
he thinks he ought to: but he will certainly accomplish something; and
if he can feel that he has helped to elevate the type of representative
sent to the municipal, the State, or the national legislature from his
district, or to elevate the standard of duty among the public officials
in his own ward, he has a right to be profoundly satisfied with what he
has accomplished.
Finally, there is one other matter which the man who tries to wake his
fellows to higher political action would do well to ponder. It is a
good thing to appeal to citizens to work for good government because
it will better their estate materially, but it is a far better thing
to appeal to them to work for good government because it is right in
itself to do so. Doubtless, if we can have clean honest politics, we
shall be better off in material matters. A thoroughly pure, upright,
and capable administration of the affairs of New York city results
in a very appreciable increase of comfort to each citizen. We should
have better systems of transportation; we should have cleaner streets,
better sewers, and the like. But it is sometimes difficult to show
the individual citizen that he will be individually better off in his
business and in his home affairs for taking part in politics. I do not
think it is always worth while to show that this will always be the
case. The citizen should be appealed to primarily on the ground that
it is his plain duty, if he wishes to deserve the name of freeman, to
do his full share in the hard and difficult work of self-government.
He must do his share unless he is willing to prove himself unfit for
free institutions, fit only to live under a government where he will be
plundered and bullied because he deserves to be plundered and bullied
on account of his selfish timidity and short-sightedness. A clean
and decent government is sure in the end to benefit our citizens in
the material circumstances of their lives; but each citizen should be
appealed to, to take part in bettering our politics, not for the sake
of any possible improvement it may bring to his affairs, but on the
ground that it is his plain duty to do so, and that this is a duty
which it is cowardly and dishonorable in him to shirk.
To sum up, then, the men who wish to work for decent politics must work
practically, and yet must not swerve from their devotion to a high
ideal. They must actually do things, and not merely confine themselves
to criticising those who do them. They must work disinterestedly, and
appeal to the disinterested element in others, although they must also
do work which will result in the material betterment of the community.
They must act as Americans through and through, in spirit and hope and
purpose, and, while being disinterested, unselfish, and generous in
their dealings with others, they must also show that they possess the
essential manly virtues of energy, of resolution, and of indomitable
personal courage.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[4] _The Forum_, July, 1894.
[Illustration]
IV
THE COLLEGE GRADUATE AND PUBLIC LIFE[5]
There are always, in our national life, certain tendencies that give
us ground for alarm, and certain others that give us ground for hope.
Among the latter we must put the fact that there has undoubtedly been a
growing feeling among educated men that they are in honor bound to do
their full share of the work of American public life.
We have in this country an equality of rights. It is the plain duty of
every man to see that his rights are respected. That weak good-nature
which acquiesces in wrong-doing, whether from laziness, timidity,
or indifference, is a very unwholesome quality. It should be second
nature with every man to insist that he be given full justice. But
if there is an equality of rights, there is an inequality of duties.
It is proper to demand more from the man with exceptional advantages
than from the man without them. A heavy moral obligation rests upon
the man of means and upon the man of education to do their full duty
by their country. On no class does this obligation rest more heavily
than upon the men with a collegiate education, the men who are
graduates of our universities. Their education gives them no right
to feel the least superiority over any of their fellow-citizens; but
it certainly ought to make them feel that they should stand foremost
in the honorable effort to serve the whole public by doing their
duty as Americans in the body politic. This obligation very possibly
rests even more heavily upon the men of means; but of this it is not
necessary now to speak. The men of mere wealth never can have and never
should have the capacity for doing good work that is possessed by the
men of exceptional mental training; but that they may become both a
laughing-stock and a menace to the community is made unpleasantly
apparent by that portion of the New York business and social world
which is most in evidence in the newspapers.
To the great body of men who have had exceptional advantages in the
way of educational facilities we have a right, then, to look for good
service to the state. The service may be rendered in many different
ways. In a reasonable number of cases, the man may himself rise to high
political position. That men actually do so rise is shown by the number
of graduates of Harvard, Yale, and our other universities who are now
taking a prominent part in public life. These cases must necessarily,
however, form but a small part of the whole. The enormous majority of
our educated men have to make their own living, and are obliged to
take up careers in which they must work heart and soul to succeed.
Nevertheless, the man of business and the man of science, the doctor of
divinity and the doctor of law, the architect, the engineer, and the
writer, all alike owe a positive duty to the community, the neglect of
which they cannot excuse on any plea of their private affairs. They
are bound to follow understandingly the course of public events; they
are bound to try to estimate and form judgment upon public men; and
they are bound to act intelligently and effectively in support of the
principles which they deem to be right and for the best interests of
the country.
The most important thing for this class of educated men to realize is
that they do not really form a class at all. I have used the word in
default of another, but I have merely used it roughly to group together
people who have had unusual opportunities of a certain kind. A large
number of the people to whom these opportunities are offered fail to
take advantage of them, and a very much larger number of those to whom
they have not been offered succeed none the less in making them for
themselves. An educated man must not go into politics as such; he must
go in simply as an American; and when he is once in, he will speedily
realize that he must work very hard indeed, or he will be upset by
some other American, with no education at all, but with much natural
capacity. His education ought to make him feel particularly ashamed of
himself if he acts meanly or dishonorably, or in any way falls short
of the ideal of good citizenship, and it ought to make him feel that
he must show that he has profited by it; but it should certainly give
him no feeling of superiority until by actual work he has shown that
superiority. In other words, the educated man must realize that he is
living in a democracy and under democratic conditions, and that he is
entitled to no more respect and consideration than he can win by actual
performance.
This must be steadily kept in mind not only by educated men themselves,
but particularly by the men who give the tone to our great educational
institutions. These educational institutions, if they are to do their
best work, must strain every effort to keep their life in touch with
the life of the nation at the present day. This is necessary for
the country, but it is very much more necessary for the educated
men themselves. It is a misfortune for any land if its people of
cultivation take little part in shaping its destiny; but the misfortune
is far greater for the people of cultivation. The country has a right
to demand the honest and efficient service of every man in it, but
especially of every man who has had the advantage of rigid mental
and moral training; the country is so much the poorer when any class
of honest men fail to do their duty by it; but the loss to the class
itself is immeasurable. If our educated men as a whole become incapable
of playing their full part in our life, if they cease doing their
share of the rough, hard work which must be done, and grow to take
a position of mere dilettanteism in our public affairs, they will
speedily sink in relation to their fellows who really do the work of
governing, until they stand toward them as a cultivated, ineffective
man with a taste for bric-a-brac stands toward a great artist. When
once a body of citizens becomes thoroughly out of touch and out of
temper with the national life, its usefulness is gone, and its power of
leaving its mark on the times is gone also.
The first great lesson which the college graduate should learn is the
lesson of work rather than of criticism. Criticism is necessary and
useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of
action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere
critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who
actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on
and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the
stress and the danger.
There is, however, a need for proper critical work. Wrongs should be
strenuously and fearlessly denounced; evil principles and evil men
should be condemned. The politician who cheats or swindles, or the
newspaper man who lies in any form, should be made to feel that he is
an object of scorn for all honest men. We need fearless criticism; but
we need that it should also be intelligent. At present, the man who is
most apt to regard himself as an intelligent critic of our political
affairs is often the man who knows nothing whatever about them.
Criticism which is ignorant or prejudiced is a source of great harm to
the nation; and where ignorant or prejudiced critics are themselves
educated men, their attitude does real harm also to the class to which
they belong.
The tone of a portion of the press of the country toward public men,
and especially toward political opponents, is degrading, all forms of
coarse and noisy slander being apparently considered legitimate weapons
to employ against men of the opposite party or faction. Unfortunately,
not a few of the journals that pride themselves upon being independent
in politics, and the organs of cultivated men, betray the same
characteristics in a less coarse but quite as noxious form. All these
journals do great harm by accustoming good citizens to see their public
men, good and bad, assailed indiscriminately as scoundrels. The effect
is twofold: the citizen learning, on the one hand, to disbelieve
any statement he sees in any newspaper, so that the attacks on evil
lose their edge; and on the other, gradually acquiring a deep-rooted
belief that all public men are more or less bad. In consequence, his
political instinct becomes hopelessly blurred, and he grows unable to
tell the good representative from the bad. The worst offence that can
be committed against the Republic is the offence of the public man who
betrays his trust; but second only to it comes the offence of the man
who tries to persuade others that an honest and efficient public man
is dishonest or unworthy. This is a wrong that can be committed in a
great many different ways. Downright foul abuse may be, after all, less
dangerous than incessant misstatements, sneers, and those half-truths
that are the meanest lies.
For educated men of weak fibre, there lies a real danger in that
species of literary work which appeals to their cultivated senses
because of its scholarly and pleasant tone, but which enjoins as the
proper attitude to assume in public life one of mere criticism and
negation; which teaches the adoption toward public men and public
affairs of that sneering tone which so surely denotes a mean and
small mind. If a man does not have belief and enthusiasm, the chances
are small indeed that he will ever do a man’s work in the world;
and the paper or the college which, by its general course, tends to
eradicate this power of belief and enthusiasm, this desire for work,
has rendered to the young men under its influence the worst service it
could possibly render. Good can often be done by criticising sharply
and severely the wrong; but excessive indulgence in criticism is never
anything but bad, and no amount of criticism can in any way take the
place of active and zealous warfare for the right.
Again, there is a certain tendency in college life, a tendency
encouraged by some of the very papers referred to, to make educated
men shrink from contact with the rough people who do the world’s work,
and associate only with one another and with those who think as they
do. This is a most dangerous tendency. It is very agreeable to deceive
one’s self into the belief that one is performing the whole duty of
man by sitting at home in ease, doing nothing wrong, and confining
one’s participation in politics to conversations and meetings with men
who have had the same training and look at things in the same way. It
is always a temptation to do this, because those who do nothing else
often speak as if in some way they deserved credit for their attitude,
and as if they stood above their brethren who plough the rough fields.
Moreover, many people whose political work is done more or less
after this fashion are very noble and very sincere in their aims and
aspirations, and are striving for what is best and most decent in
public life.