deal of genuine enjoyment out of our experience at Albany. We liked
the excitement and perpetual conflict, the necessity for putting forth
all our powers to reach our ends, and the feeling that we were really
being of some use in the world; and if we were often both saddened and
angered by the viciousness and ignorance of some of our colleagues,
yet, in return, the latter many times unwittingly furnished us a good
deal of amusement by their preposterous actions and speeches. Some
of these are worth repeating, though they can never, in repetition,
seem what they were when they occurred. The names and circumstances,
of course, have been so changed as to prevent the possibility of the
real heroes of them being recognized. It must be understood that
they stand for the exceptional and not the ordinary workings of the
average legislative intellect. I have heard more sound sense than
foolishness talked in Albany, but to record the former would only bore
the reader. And we must bear in mind that while the ignorance of some
of our representatives warrants our saying that they should not be in
the Legislature, it does not at all warrant our condemning the system
of government which permits them to be sent there. There is no system
so good that it has not some disadvantages. The only way to teach our
foreign-born fellow-citizens how to govern themselves, is to give each
the full rights possessed by other American citizens; and it is not
to be wondered at if they at first show themselves unskilful in the
exercise of these rights. It has been my experience moreover in the
Legislature that when Hans or Paddy does turn out really well, there
are very few native Americans indeed who do better. A very large number
of the ablest and most disinterested and public-spirited citizens in
New York are by birth Germans; and their names are towers of strength
in the community. When I had to name a committee which was to do the
most difficult, dangerous, and important work that came before the
Legislature at all during my presence in it, I chose three of my four
colleagues from among those of my fellow-legislators who were Irish
either by birth or descent. One of the warmest and most disinterested
friends I have ever had or hope to have in New York politics, is by
birth an Irishman, and is also as genuine and good an American citizen
as is to be found within the United States.
A good many of the Yankees in the house would blunder time and again;
but their blunders were generally merely stupid and not at all amusing,
while, on the contrary, the errors of those who were of Milesian
extraction always possessed a most refreshing originality.
INCIDENTS OF LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCE.
In 1882 the Democrats in the house had a clear majority, but were for
a long time unable to effect an organization, owing to a faction-fight
in their own ranks between the Tammany and anti-Tammany members,
each side claiming the lion’s share of the spoils. After a good
deal of bickering, the anti-Tammany men drew up a paper containing
a series of propositions, and submitted it to their opponents, with
the prefatory remark, in writing, that it was an _ultimatum_. The
Tammany members were at once summoned to an indignation meeting, their
feelings closely resembling those of the famous fish-wife who was
called a parallelopipedon. None of them had any very accurate idea
as to what the word _ultimatum_ meant; but that it was intensively
offensive, not to say abusive, in its nature, they did not question
for a moment. It was felt that some equivalent and equally strong term
by which to call Tammany’s proposed counter-address must be found
immediately; but, as the Latin vocabulary of the members was limited,
it was some time before a suitable term was forthcoming. Finally, by
a happy inspiration, some gentlemen of classical education remembered
the phrase _ipse dixit_; it was at once felt to be the very phrase
required by the peculiar exigencies of the case, and next day the reply
appeared, setting forth with well-satisfied gravity that, in response
to the County Democracy’s “_ultimatum_,” Tammany herewith produced her
“_ipse dixit_.”
Public servants of higher grade than aldermen or assemblymen sometimes
give words a wider meaning than would be found in the dictionary.
In many parts of the United States, owing to a curious series of
historical associations (which, by the way, it would be interesting
to trace), anything foreign and un-English is called “Dutch,” and it
was in this sense that a member of a recent Congress used the term
when, in speaking in favor of a tariff on works of art, he told of the
reluctance with which he saw the productions of native artists exposed
to competition “with Dutch daubs from Italy”; a sentence pleasing
alike from its alliteration and from its bold disregard of geographic
trivialties.
Often an orator of this sort will have his attention attracted by
some high-sounding word, which he has not before seen, and which he
treasures up to use in his next rhetorical flight, without regard to
the exact meaning. There was a laboring man’s advocate in the last
Legislature, one of whose efforts attracted a good deal of attention
from his magnificent heedlessness of technical accuracy in the use of
similes. He was speaking against the convict contract-labor system,
and wound up an already sufficiently remarkable oration with the
still more startling ending that the system “was a vital cobra which
was swamping the lives of the laboring men.” Now, he had evidently
carefully put together the sentence beforehand, and the process of
mental synthesis by which he built it up must have been curious.
“Vital” was, of course, used merely as an adjective of intensity; he
was a little uncertain in his ideas as to what a “cobra” was, but took
it for granted that it was some terrible manifestation of nature,
possibly hostile to man, like a volcano, or a cyclone, or Niagara,
for instance; then “swamping” was chosen as describing an operation
very likely to be performed by Niagara, or a cyclone, or a cobra; and
behold, the sentence was complete.
Sometimes a common phrase will be given a new meaning. Thus, the mass
of legislation is strictly local in its character. Over a thousand
bills come up for consideration in the course of a session, but a very
few of which affect the interests of the State at large. The latter
and the more important private bills are, or ought to be, carefully
studied by each member; but it is a physical impossibility for any
one man to examine the countless local bills of small importance. For
these we have to trust to the member for the district affected, and
when one comes up the response to any inquiry about it is usually, “Oh,
it’s a local bill, affecting so-and-so’s district; he is responsible
for it.” By degrees, some of the members get to use “local” in the
sense of unimportant, and a few of the assemblymen of doubtful honesty
gradually come to regard it as meaning a bill of no pecuniary interest
to themselves. There was a smug little rascal in one of the last
legislatures, who might have come out of one of Lever’s novels. He
was undoubtedly a bad case, but had a genuine sense of humor, and his
“bulls” made him the delight of the house. One day I came in late,
just as a bill was being voted on, and meeting my friend, hailed him,
“Hello, Pat, what’s up? what’s this they’re voting on?” to which Pat
replied, with contemptuous indifference to the subject, but with a sly
twinkle in his eye, “Oh, some unimportant measure, sorr; some local
bill or other--_a constitutional amendment_!”
The old Dublin Parliament never listened to a better specimen of a bull
than was contained in the speech of a very genial and pleasant friend
of mine, a really finished orator, who, in the excitement attendant
upon receiving Governor Cleveland’s message vetoing the five-cent-fare
bill, uttered the following sentence: “Mr. Speaker, I recognize the
hand that crops out in that veto; _I have heard it before_!”
One member rather astonished us one day by his use of the word
“shibboleth.” He had evidently concluded that this was merely a more
elegant synonym of the good old word shillalah, and in reproving a
colleague for opposing a bill to increase the salaries of public
laborers, he said, very impressively, “The throuble wid the young man
is, that he uses the wurrd economy as a shibboleth, wherewith to strike
the working man.” Afterwards he changed the metaphor, and spoke of a
number of us as using the word “reform” as a shibboleth, behind which
to cloak our evil intentions.
A mixture of classical and constitutional misinformation was displayed
a few sessions past in the State Assembly when I was a member of the
Legislature. It was on the occasion of that annual nuisance, the debate
upon the Catholic Protectory item of the Supply Bill. Every year
some one who is desirous of bidding for the Catholic vote introduces
this bill, which appropriates a sum of varying dimensions for the
support of the Catholic Protectory, an excellent institution, but one
which has no right whatever to come to the State for support; each
year the insertion of the item is opposed by a small number of men,
including the more liberal Catholics themselves, on proper grounds,
and by a larger number from simple bigotry--a fact which was shown
two years ago, when many of the most bitter opponents of this measure
cheerfully supported a similar and equally objectionable one in aid of
a Protestant institution. On the occasion referred to there were two
assemblymen, both Celtic gentlemen, who were rivals for the leadership
of the minority; one of them a stout, red-faced man, who may go by the
name of the “Colonel,” owing to his having seen service in the army;
while the other was a dapper, voluble fellow, who had at one time been
a civil justice and was called the “Judge.” Somebody was opposing the
insertion of the item on the ground (perfectly just, by the way)
that it was unconstitutional, and he dwelt upon this objection at
some length. The Judge, who knew nothing of the constitution, except
that it was continually being quoted against all of his favorite
projects, fidgeted about for some time, and at last jumped up to know
if he might ask the gentleman a question. The latter said, “Yes,”
and the Judge went on, “I’d like to know if the gintleman has ever
personally seen the Catholic Protectoree?” “No, I haven’t,” said his
astonished opponent. “Then, phwat do you mane by talking about its
being unconstitootional? It’s no more unconstitootional than you are!”
Then, turning to the house, with slow and withering sarcasm, he added,
“The throuble wid the gintleman is that he okkipies what lawyers would
call a kind of a quasi-position upon this bill,” and sat down amid the
applause of his followers.
His rival, the Colonel, felt he had gained altogether too much glory
from the encounter, and after the nonplussed countryman had taken
his seat, he stalked solemnly over to the desk of the elated Judge,
looked at him majestically for a moment, and said, “You’ll excuse
my mentioning, sorr, that the gintleman who has just sat down knows
more law in a wake than you do in a month; and more than that, Mike
Shaunnessy, phwat do you mane by quotin’ Latin on the flure of this
House, _when you don’t know the alpha and omayga of the language_!” and
back he walked, leaving the Judge in humiliated submission behind him.
The Judge was always falling foul of the Constitution. Once, when
defending one of his bills which made a small but wholly indefensible
appropriation of State money for a private purpose, he asserted “that
the Constitution didn’t touch little things like that”; and on another
occasion he remarked to me that he “never allowed the Constitution to
come between friends.”
The Colonel was at that time chairman of a committee, before
which there sometimes came questions affecting the interests or
supposed interests of labor. The committee was hopelessly bad in
its composition, most of the members being either very corrupt or
exceedingly inefficient. The Colonel generally kept order with a good
deal of dignity; indeed, when, as not infrequently happened, he had
looked upon the rye that was flavored with lemon-peel, his sense of
personal dignity grew till it became fairly majestic, and he ruled the
committee with a rod of iron. At one time a bill had been introduced
(one of the several score of preposterous measures that annually make
their appearance purely for purposes of buncombe), by whose terms all
laborers in the public works of great cities were to receive three
dollars a day--double the market price of labor. To this bill, by
the way, an amendment was afterwards offered in the house by some
gentleman with a sense of humor, which was to make it read that all
the inhabitants of great cities were to receive three dollars a day,
and the privilege of laboring on the public works if they chose; the
original author of the bill questioning doubtfully if the amendment
“didn’t make the measure too sweeping.” The measure was, of course,
of no consequence whatever to the genuine laboring men, but was of
interest to the professional labor agitators; and a body of the latter
requested leave to appear before the committee. This was granted, but
on the appointed day the chairman turned up in a condition of such
portentous dignity as to make it evident that he had been on a spree
of protracted duration. Down he sat at the head of the table, and
glared at the committeemen, while the latter, whose faces would not
have looked amiss in a rogues’ gallery, cowered before him. The first
speaker was a typical professional laboring man; a sleek, oily little
fellow, with a black mustache, who had never done a stroke of work
in his life. He felt confident that the Colonel would favor him,--a
confidence soon to be rudely shaken,--and began with a deprecatory
smile:
“Humble though I am----”
Rap, rap, went the chairman’s gavel, and the following dialogue
occurred:
_Chairman_ (with dignity). “What’s that you said you were, sir?”
_Professional Workingman_ (decidedly taken aback). “I--I said I was
humble, sir?”
_Chairman_ (reproachfully). “Are you an American citizen, sir?”
_P. W._ “Yes, sir.”
_Chairman_ (with emphasis). “Then you’re the equal of any man in this
State! Then you’re the equal of any man on this committee! _Don’t let
me hear you call yourself humble again! Go on sir!_”
After this warning the advocate managed to keep clear of the rocks
until, having worked himself up to quite a pitch of excitement, he
incautiously exclaimed, “But the poor man has no friends!” which
brought the Colonel down on him at once. Rap, rap, went his gavel,
and he scowled grimly at the offender while he asked with deadly
deliberation:
“What did you say that time, sir?”
_P. W._ (hopelessly). “I said the poor man had no friends, sir.”
_Chairman_ (with sudden fire). “Then you lied, sir! I am the poor man’s
friend! so are my colleagues, sir!” (Here the rogues’ gallery tried to
look benevolent.) “Speak the truth, sir!” (with sudden change from the
manner admonitory to the manner mandatory). “Now, you sit down quick,
or get out of this somehow!”
This put an end to the sleek gentleman, and his place was taken by a
fellow-professional of another type--a great, burly man, who would talk
to you on private matters in a perfectly natural tone of voice, but
who, the minute he began to speak of the Wrongs (with a capital W) of
Labor (with a capital L), bellowed as if he had been a bull of Bashan.
The Colonel, by this time pretty far gone, eyed him malevolently,
swaying to and fro in his chair. However, the first effect of the
fellow’s oratory was soothing rather than otherwise, and produced the
unexpected result of sending the chairman fast asleep sitting bolt
upright. But in a minute or two, as the man warmed up to his work, he
gave a peculiarly resonant howl which waked the Colonel up. The latter
came to himself with a jerk, looked fixedly at the audience, caught
sight of the speaker, remembered having seen him before, forgot that he
had been asleep, and concluded that it must have been on some previous
day. Hammer, hammer, went the gavel, and--
“I’ve seen you before, sir!”
“You have not,” said the man.
“Don’t tell me I lie, sir!” responded the Colonel, with sudden
ferocity. “You’ve addressed this committee on a previous day!”
“I’ve never--” began the man; but the Colonel broke in again:
“Sit down, sir! The dignity of the chair must be preserved! No man
shall speak to this committee twice. The committee stands adjourned.”
And with that he stalked majestically out of the room, leaving the
committee and the delegation to gaze sheepishly into each other’s faces.
OUTSIDERS.
After all, outsiders furnish quite as much fun as the legislators
themselves. The number of men who persist in writing one letters of
praise, abuse, and advice on every conceivable subject is appalling;
and the writers are of every grade, from the lunatic and the criminal
up. The most difficult to deal with are the men with hobbies. There is
the Protestant fool, who thinks that our liberties are menaced by the
machinations of the Church of Rome; and his companion idiot, who wants
legislation against all secret societies, especially the Masons. Then
there are the believers in “isms,” of whom the women-suffragists stand
in the first rank. Now I have always been a believer in woman’s rights,
but I must confess I have never seen such a hopelessly impracticable
set of persons as the woman-suffragists who came up to Albany to get
legislation. They simply would not draw up their measures in proper
form; when I pointed out to one of them that their proposed bill
was drawn up in direct defiance of certain of the sections of the
Constitution of the State he blandly replied that he did not care at
all for that, because the measure had been drawn up so as to be in
accord with the Constitution of Heaven. There was no answer to this
beyond the very obvious one that Albany was in no way akin to Heaven.
The ultra-temperance people--not the moderate and sensible ones--are
quite as impervious to common sense.
A member’s correspondence is sometimes amusing. A member receives
shoals of letters of advice, congratulation, entreaty, and abuse, half
of them anonymous. Most of these are stupid; but some are at least out
of the common.
I had some constant correspondents. One lady in the western part
of the State wrote me a weekly disquisition on woman’s rights. A
Buffalo clergyman spent two years on a one-sided correspondence about
prohibition. A gentleman of Syracuse wrote me such a stream of essays
and requests about the charter of that city that I feared he would
drive me into a lunatic asylum; but he anticipated matters by going
into one himself. A New Yorker at regular intervals sent up a request
that I would “reintroduce” the Dongan charter, which had lapsed two
centuries before. A gentleman interested in a proposed law to protect
primaries took to telegraphing daily questions as to its progress--a
habit of which I broke him by sending in response telegrams of several
hundred words each, which I was careful not to prepay.
There are certain legislative actions which must be taken in a purely
Pickwickian sense. Notable among these are the resolutions of sympathy
for the alleged oppressed patriots and peoples of Europe. These are
generally directed against England, as there exists in the lower
strata of political life an Anglophobia quite as objectionable as the
Anglomania of the higher social circles.
As a rule, these resolutions are to be classed as simply
_bouffe_ affairs; they are commonly introduced by some ambitious
legislator--often, I regret to say, a native American--who has a
large foreign vote in his district. During my term of service in
the Legislature, resolutions were introduced demanding the recall
of Minister Lowell, assailing the Czar for his conduct towards the
Russian Jews, sympathizing with the Land League and the Dutch Boers,
etc., etc.; the passage of each of which we strenuously and usually
successfully opposed, on the ground that while we would warmly
welcome any foreigner who came here, and in good faith assumed the
duties of American citizenship, we had a right to demand in return
that he should not bring any of his race or national antipathies into
American political life. Resolutions of this character are sometimes
undoubtedly proper; but in nine cases out of ten they are wholly
unjustifiable. An instance of this sort of thing which took place not
at Albany may be cited. Recently the Board of Aldermen of one of our
great cities received a stinging rebuke, which it is to be feared the
aldermanic intellect was too dense fully to appreciate. The aldermen
passed a resolution “condemning” the Czar of Russia for his conduct
towards his fellow-citizens of Hebrew faith, and “demanding” that he
should forthwith treat them better; this was forwarded to the Russian
Minister, with a request that it be sent to the Czar. It came back
forty-eight hours afterwards, with a note on the back by one of the
under-secretaries of the legation, to the effect that as he was not
aware that Russia had any diplomatic relations with this particular
Board of Aldermen, and as, indeed, Russia was not officially cognizant
of their existence, and, moreover, was wholly indifferent to their
opinions on any conceivable subject, he herewith returned them their
kind communication.[7]
In concluding I would say, that while there is so much evil at Albany,
and so much reason for our exerting ourselves to bring about a better
state of things, yet there is no cause for being disheartened or for
thinking that it is hopeless to expect improvement. On the contrary,
the standard of legislative morals is certainly higher than it was
fifteen years ago or twenty-five years ago. In the future it may
either improve or retrograde, by fits and starts, for it will keep
pace exactly with the awakening of the popular mind to the necessity
of having honest and intelligent representatives in the State
Legislature.[8]
I have had opportunity of knowing something about the workings of but a
few of our other State legislatures: from what I have seen and heard,
I should say that we stand about on a par with those of Pennsylvania,
Maryland, and Illinois, above that of Louisiana, and below those of
Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Wyoming, as well as below
the national legislature at Washington. But the moral status of a
legislative body, especially in the West, often varies widely from year
to year.
FOOTNOTES:
[6] The _Century_, January, 1885.
[7] A few years later a member of the Italian Legation “scored” heavily
on one of our least pleasant national peculiarities. An Italian had
just been lynched in Colorado, and an Italian paper in New York
bitterly denounced the Italian Minister for his supposed apathy in
the matter. The member of the Legation in question answered that the
accusations were most unjust, for the Minister had worked zealously
until he found that the deceased “had taken out his naturalization
papers, and was entitled to all the privileges of American citizenship.”
[8] At present, twelve years later, I should say that there was rather
less personal corruption in the Legislature; but also less independence
and greater subservience to the machine, which is even less responsive
to honest and enlightened public opinion.
[Illustration]
VI
MACHINE POLITICS IN NEW YORK CITY[9]
In New York city, as in most of our other great municipalities, the
direction of political affairs has been for many years mainly in the
hands of a class of men who make politics their regular business
and means of livelihood. These men are able to keep their grip only
by means of the singularly perfect way in which they have succeeded
in organizing their respective parties and factions; and it is in
consequence of the clock-work regularity and efficiency with which
these several organizations play their parts, alike for good and for
evil, that they have been nicknamed by outsiders “machines,” while the
men who take part in and control, or, as they would themselves say,
“run” them, now form a well-recognized and fairly well-defined class
in the community, and are familiarly known as machine politicians. It
may be of interest to sketch in outline some of the characteristics of
these men and of their machines, the methods by which and the objects
for which they work, and the reasons for their success in the political
field.
The terms machine and machine politician are now undoubtedly used
ordinarily in a reproachful sense; but it does not at all follow that
this sense is always the right one. On the contrary, the machine is
often a very powerful instrument for good; and a machine politician
really desirous of doing honest work on behalf of the community,
is fifty times as useful an ally as is the average philanthropic
outsider. Indeed, it is of course true, that any political organization
(and absolutely no good work can be done in politics without an
organization) is a machine; and any man who perfects and uses this
organization is himself, to a certain extent, a machine politician.
In the rough, however, the feeling against machine politics and
politicians is tolerably well justified by the facts, although this
statement really reflects most severely upon the educated and honest
people who largely hold themselves aloof from public life, and show a
curious incapacity for fulfilling their public duties.