are those belonging to the two great recognized parties, or to their
factional subdivisions; and the reason why the word machine has come to
be used, to a certain extent, as a term of opprobrium is to be found
in the fact that these organizations are now run by the leaders very
largely as business concerns to benefit themselves and their followers,
with little regard to the community at large. This is natural enough.
The men having control and doing all the work have gradually come to
have the same feeling about politics that other men have about the
business of a merchant or manufacturer; it was too much to expect that
if left entirely to themselves they would continue disinterestedly to
work for the benefit of others. Many a machine politician who is to-day
a most unwholesome influence in our politics is in private life quite
as respectable as anyone else; only he has forgotten that his business
affects the state at large, and, regarding it as merely his own private
concern, he has carried into it the same selfish spirit that actuates
in business matters the majority of the average mercantile community.
A merchant or manufacturer works his business, as a rule, purely for
his own benefit, without any regard whatever for the community at
large. The merchant uses all his influence for a low tariff, and the
manufacturer is even more strenuously in favor of protection, not at
all from any theory of abstract right, but because of self-interest.
Each views such a political question as the tariff, not from the
standpoint of how it will affect the nation as a whole, but merely
from that of how it will affect him personally. If a community were in
favor of protection, but nevertheless permitted all the governmental
machinery to fall into the hands of importing merchants, it would
be small cause for wonder if the latter shaped the laws to suit
themselves, and the chief blame, after all, would rest with the supine
and lethargic majority which failed to have enough energy to take
charge of their own affairs. Our machine politicians, in actual life
act in just this same way; their actions are very often dictated by
selfish motives, with but little regard for the people at large though,
like the merchants, they often hold a very high standard of honor on
certain points; they therefore need continually to be watched and
opposed by those who wish to see good government. But, after all, it is
hardly to be wondered at that they abuse power which is allowed to fall
into their hands owing to the ignorance or timid indifference of those
who by rights should themselves keep it.
In a society properly constituted for true democratic government--in
a society such as that seen in many of our country towns, for
example--machine rule is impossible. But in New York, as well as
in most of our other great cities, the conditions favor the growth
of ring or boss rule. The chief causes thus operating against good
government are the moral and mental attitudes towards politics assumed
by different sections of the voters. A large number of these are
simply densely ignorant, and, of course, such are apt to fall under
the influence of cunning leaders, and even if they do right, it is
by hazard merely. The criminal class in a great city is always of
some size, while what may be called the potentially criminal class is
still larger. Then there is a great class of laboring men, mostly
of foreign birth or parentage, who at present both expect too much
from legislation and yet at the same time realize too little how
powerfully though indirectly they are affected by a bad or corrupt
government. In many wards the overwhelming majority of the voters do
not realize that heavy taxes fall ultimately upon them, and actually
view with perfect complacency burdens laid by their representatives
upon the tax-payers, and, if anything, approve of a hostile attitude
towards the latter--having a vague feeling of animosity towards them
as possessing more than their proper proportion of the world’s good
things, and sharing with most other human beings the capacity to bear
with philosophic equanimity ills merely affecting one’s neighbors. When
powerfully roused on some financial, but still more on some sentimental
question, this same laboring class will throw its enormous and usually
decisive weight into the scale which it believes inclines to the right;
but its members are often curiously and cynically indifferent to
charges of corruption against favorite heroes or demagogues, so long
as these charges do not imply betrayal of their own real or fancied
interests. Thus an alderman or assemblyman representing certain wards
may make as much money as he pleases out of corporations without
seriously jeopardizing his standing with his constituents; but if he
once, whether from honest or dishonest motives, stands by a corporation
when the interests of the latter are supposed to conflict with those
of “the people,” it is all up with him. These voters are, moreover,
very emotional; they value in a public man what we are accustomed
to consider virtues only to be taken into account when estimating
private character. Thus, if a man is open-handed and warm-hearted,
they consider it as a fair offset to his being a little bit shaky
when it comes to applying the eighth commandment to affairs of state.
I have more than once heard the statement, “He is very liberal to
the poor,” advanced as a perfectly satisfactory answer to the charge
that a certain public man was corrupt. Moreover, working men, whose
lives are passed in one unceasing round of narrow and monotonous
toil, are not unnaturally inclined to pay heed to the demagogues and
professional labor advocates who promise if elected to try to pass
laws to better their condition; they are hardly prepared to understand
or approve the American doctrine of government, which is that the
state cannot ordinarily attempt to better the condition of a man or a
set of men, but can merely see that no wrong is done him or them by
anyone else, and that all alike have a fair chance in the struggle
for life--a struggle wherein, it may as well at once be freely though
sadly acknowledged, very many are bound to fail, no matter how ideally
perfect any given system of government may be.
Of course it must be remembered that all these general statements are
subject to an immense number of individual exceptions; there are tens
of thousands of men who work with their hands for their daily bread
and yet put into actual practice that sublime virtue of disinterested
adherence to the right, even when it seems likely merely to benefit
others, and those others better off than they themselves are; for they
vote for honesty and cleanliness, in spite of great temptation to
do the opposite, and in spite of their not seeing how any immediate
benefit will result to themselves.
REASONS FOR THE NEGLECT OF PUBLIC DUTIES BY RESPECTABLE MEN IN EASY
CIRCUMSTANCES.
This class is composed of the great bulk of the men who range from
well-to-do up to very rich; and of these the former generally and the
latter almost universally neglect their political duties, for the most
part rather pluming themselves upon their good conduct if they so
much as vote on election day. This largely comes from the tremendous
wear and tension of life in our great cities. Moreover, the men of
small means with us are usually men of domestic habits; and this very
devotion to home, which is one of their chief virtues, leads them to
neglect their public duties. They work hard, as clerks, mechanics,
small tradesmen, etc., all day long, and when they get home in the
evening they dislike to go out. If they do go to a ward meeting, they
find themselves isolated, and strangers both to the men whom they meet
and to the matter on which they have to act; for in the city a man is
quite as sure to know next to nothing about his neighbors as in the
country he is to be intimately acquainted with them. In the country
the people of a neighborhood, when they assemble in one of their
local conventions, are already well acquainted, and therefore able to
act together with effect; whereas in the city, even if the ordinary
citizens do come out, they are totally unacquainted with one another,
and are as helplessly unable to oppose the disciplined ranks of the
professional politicians as is the case with a mob of freshmen in
one of our colleges when in danger of being hazed by the sophomores.
Moreover, the pressure of competition in city life is so keen that men
often have as much as they can do to attend to their own affairs, and
really hardly have the leisure to look after those of the public. The
general tendency everywhere is toward the specialization of functions,
and this holds good as well in politics as elsewhere.
The reputable private citizens of small means thus often neglect to
attend to their public duties because to do so would perhaps interfere
with their private business. This is bad enough, but the case is
worse with the really wealthy, who still more generally neglect
these same duties, partly because not to do so would interfere with
their pleasure, and partly from a combination of other motives, all
of them natural but none of them creditable. A successful merchant,
well dressed, pompous, self-important, unused to any life outside of
the counting-room, and accustomed because of his very success to be
treated with deferential regard, as one who stands above the common run
of humanity, naturally finds it very unpleasant to go to a caucus or
primary where he has to stand on an equal footing with his groom and
day-laborers, and indeed may discover that the latter, thanks to their
faculty for combination, are rated higher in the scale of political
importance than he is himself. In all the large cities of the North the
wealthier, or, as they would prefer to style themselves, the “upper”
classes, tend distinctly towards the bourgeois type; and an individual
in the bourgeois stage of development, while honest, industrious, and
virtuous, is also not unapt to be a miracle of timid and short-sighted
selfishness. The commercial classes are only too likely to regard
everything merely from the standpoint of “Does it pay?” and many a
merchant does not take any part in politics because he is short-sighted
enough to think that it will pay him better to attend purely to making
money, and too selfish to be willing to undergo any trouble for the
sake of abstract duty; while the younger men of this type are too much
engrossed in their various social pleasures to be willing to give
their time to anything else. It is also unfortunately true, especially
throughout New England and the Middle States, that the general tendency
among people of culture and high education has been to neglect and even
to look down upon the rougher and manlier virtues, so that an advanced
state of intellectual development is too often associated with a
certain effeminacy of character. Our more intellectual men often shrink
from the raw coarseness and the eager struggle of political life as if
they were women. Now, however refined and virtuous a man may be, he is
yet entirely out of place in the American body-politic unless he is
himself of sufficiently coarse fibre and virile character to be more
angered than hurt by an insult or injury; the timid good form a most
useless as well as a most despicable portion of the community. Again,
when a man is heard objecting to taking part in politics because it is
“low,” he may be set down as either a fool or a coward: it would be
quite as sensible for a militiaman to advance the same statement as an
excuse for refusing to assist in quelling a riot. Many cultured men
neglect their political duties simply because they are too delicate to
have the element of “strike back” in their natures, and because they
have an unmanly fear of being forced to stand up for their own rights
when threatened with abuse or insult. Such are the conditions which
give the machine men their chance; and they have been able to make the
most possible out of this chance,--first, because of the perfection to
which they have brought their machinery, and, second, because of the
social character of their political organizations.
ORGANIZATION AND WORK OF THE MACHINES.
The machinery of any one of our political bodies is always rather
complicated; and its politicians invariably endeavor to keep it so,
because, their time being wholly given to it, they are able to become
perfectly familiar with all its workings, while the average outsider
becomes more and more helpless in proportion as the organization is
less and less simple. Besides some others of minor importance, there
are at present in New York three great political organizations, _viz._,
those of the regular Republicans, of the County Democracy,[10] and of
Tammany Hall, that of the last being perhaps the most perfect, viewed
from a machine standpoint. Although with wide differences in detail,
all these bodies are organized upon much the same general plan; and
one description may be taken in the rough, as applying to all. There
is a large central committee, composed of numerous delegates from the
different assembly districts, which decides upon the various questions
affecting the party as a whole in the county and city; and then there
are the various organizations in the assembly districts themselves,
which are the real sources of strength, and with which alone it is
necessary to deal. There are different rules for the admission to the
various district primaries and caucuses of the voters belonging to the
respective parties; but in almost every case the real work is done and
the real power held by a small knot of men, who in turn pay a greater
or less degree of fealty to a single boss.
The mere work to be done on election day and in preparing for it
forms no slight task. There is an association in each assembly or
election district, with its president, secretary, treasurer, executive
committee, etc.; these call the primaries and caucuses, arrange the
lists of the delegates to the various nominating conventions, raise
funds for campaign purposes, and hold themselves in communication
with their central party organizations. At the primaries in each
assembly district a full set of delegates is chosen to nominate
assemblymen and aldermen, while others are chosen to go to the
State, county, and congressional conventions. Before election day
many thousands of complete sets of the party ticket are printed,
folded, and put together, or, as it is called, “bunched.” A single
bundle of these ballots is then sent to every voter in the district,
while thousands are reserved for distribution at the polls. In every
election precinct--there are probably twenty or thirty in each
assembly district--a captain and from two to a dozen subordinates
are appointed.[11] These have charge of the actual giving out of the
ballots at the polls. On election day they are at their places long
before the hour set for voting; each party has a wooden booth, looking
a good deal like a sentry-box, covered over with flaming posters
containing the names of their nominees, and the “workers” cluster
around these as centres. Every voter as he approaches is certain to be
offered a set of tickets; usually these sets are “straight,” that is,
contain all the nominees of one party, but frequently crooked work will
be done, and some one candidate will get his own ballots bunched with
the rest of those of the opposite party. Each captain of a district
is generally paid a certain sum of money, greater or less according to
his ability as a politician or according to his power of serving the
boss or machine. Nominally this money goes in paying the subordinates
and in what are vaguely termed “campaign expenses,” but as a matter of
fact it is in many instances simply pocketed by the recipient; indeed,
very little of the large sums of money annually spent by candidates to
bribe voters actually reaches the voters supposed to be bribed. The
money thus furnished is procured either by subscriptions from rich
outsiders, or by assessments upon the candidates themselves; formerly
much was also obtained from office-holders, but this is now prohibited
by law. A great deal of money is also spent in advertising, placarding
posters, paying for public meetings, and organizing and uniforming
members to take part in some huge torchlight procession--this last
particular form of spectacular enjoyment being one peculiarly dear to
the average American political mind. Candidates for very lucrative
positions are often assessed really huge sums, in order to pay for
the extravagant methods by which our canvasses are conducted. Before
a legislative committee of which I was a member, the Register of New
York County blandly testified under oath that he had forgotten whether
his expenses during his canvass had been over or under fifty thousand
dollars. It must be remembered that even now--and until recently
the evil was very much greater--the rewards paid to certain public
officials are out of all proportion to the services rendered; and in
such cases the active managing politicians feel that they have a right
to exact the heaviest possible toll from the candidate, to help pay
the army of hungry heelers who do their bidding. Thus, before the same
committee the County Clerk testified that his income was very nearly
eighty thousand a year, but with refreshing frankness admitted that his
own position was practically merely that of a figure-head, and that all
the work was done by his deputy, on a small fixed salary. As the County
Clerk’s term is three years, he should nominally have received nearly
a quarter of a million dollars; but as a matter of fact two thirds of
the money probably went to the political organizations with which he
was connected. The enormous emoluments of such officers are, of course,
most effective in debauching politics. They bear no relation whatever
to the trifling quantity of work done, and the chosen candidate readily
recognizes what is the exact truth,--namely, that the benefit of his
service is expected to enure to his party allies, and not to the
citizens at large. Thus, one of the county officers who came before
the above-mentioned committee, testified with a naïve openness which
was appalling, in answer to what was believed to be a purely formal
question as to whether he performed his public duties faithfully,
that he did so perform them whenever they did not conflict with his
political duties!--meaning thereby, as he explained, attending to his
local organizations, seeing politicians, fixing primaries, bailing
out those of his friends (apparently by no means few in number) who
got hauled up before a justice of the peace, etc., etc. This man’s
statements were valuable because, being a truthful person and of such
dense ignorance that he was at first wholly unaware his testimony was
in any way remarkable, he really tried to tell things as they were;
and it had evidently never occurred to him that he was not expected by
everyone to do just as he had been doing,--that is, to draw a large
salary for himself, to turn over a still larger fund to his party
allies, and conscientiously to endeavor, as far as he could, by the
free use of his time and influence, to satisfy the innumerable demands
made upon him by the various small-fry politicians.[12]
“HEELERS.”
The “heelers,” or “workers,” who stand at the polls, and are paid
in the way above described, form a large part of the rank and file
composing each organization. There are, of course, scores of them in
each assembly district association, and, together with the almost
equally numerous class of federal, State, or local paid office-holders
(except in so far as these last have been cut out by the operations
of the civil-service reform laws), they form the bulk of the men by
whom the machine is run, the bosses of great and small degree chiefly
merely oversee the work and supervise the deeds of their henchmen.
The organization of a party in our city is really much like that of
an army. There is one great central boss, assisted by some trusted
and able lieutenants; these communicate with the different district
bosses, whom they alternately bully and assist. The district boss in
turn has a number of half-subordinates, half-allies, under him; these
latter choose the captains of the election districts, etc., and come
into contact with the common heelers. The more stupid and ignorant
the common heelers are, and the more implicitly they obey orders, the
greater becomes the effectiveness of the machine. An ideal machine has
for its officers men of marked force, cunning and unscrupulous, and
for its common soldiers men who may be either corrupt or moderately
honest, but who must be of low intelligence. This is the reason why
such a large proportion of the members of every political machine
are recruited from the lower grades of the foreign population. These
henchmen obey unhesitatingly the orders of their chiefs, both at the
primary or caucus and on election day, receiving regular rewards for
so doing, either in employment procured for them or else in money
outright. Of course it is by no means true that these men are all
actuated merely by mercenary motives. The great majority entertain also
a real feeling of allegiance towards the party to which they belong,
or towards the political chief whose fortunes they follow; and many
work entirely without pay and purely for what they believe to be right.
Indeed, an experienced politician always greatly prefers to have under
him men whose hearts are in their work and upon whose unbribed devotion
he can rely; but unfortunately he finds in most cases that their
exertions have to be seconded by others which are prompted by motives
far more mixed.
All of these men, whether paid or not, make a business of political
life and are thoroughly at home among the obscure intrigues that go to
make up so much of it; and consequently they have quite as much the
advantage when pitted against amateurs as regular soldiers have when
matched against militiamen. But their numbers, though absolutely large,
are, relatively to the entire community, so small that some other cause
must be taken into consideration in order to account for the commanding
position occupied by the machine and the machine politicians in public
life. This other determining cause is to be found in the fact that all
these machine associations have a social as well as a political side,
and that a large part of the political life of every leader or boss is
also identical with his social life.
THE SOCIAL SIDE OF MACHINE POLITICS.