carried on honestly. Under the old Tammany rule the cheating was
gross and flagrant, and the police were often deliberately used to
facilitate fraudulent practices at the polls. This came about in part
from the very low character of the men put in as election officers.
By conducting a written examination of the latter, and supplementing
this by a careful inquiry into their character, in which we invited any
decent outsiders to assist, we very distinctly raised their calibre.
To show how necessary our examinations were, I may mention that before
each election held under us we were obliged to reject, for moral or
mental shortcomings, over a thousand of the men whom the regular party
organizations, exercising their legal rights, proposed as election
officers. We then merely had to make the police thoroughly understand
that their sole duty was to guarantee an honest election, and that they
would be punished with the utmost rigor if they interfered with honest
citizens on the one hand, or failed to prevent fraud and violence on
the other. The result was that the elections of 1895 and 1896 were by
far the most honest and orderly ever held in New York City.
There were a number of other ways in which we sought to reform the
police force, less important, and nevertheless very important. We
paid particular heed to putting a premium on specially meritorious
conduct, by awarding certificates of honorable mention, and medals,
where we were unable to promote. We introduced a system of pistol
practice by which, for the first time, the policemen were brought to
a reasonable standard of efficiency in handling their revolvers. The
Bertillion system for the identification of criminals was introduced.
A bicycle squad was organized with remarkable results, this squad
speedily becoming a kind of _corps d’elite_, whose individual members
distinguished themselves not only by their devotion to duty, but by
repeated exhibitions of remarkable daring and skill. One important
bit of reform was abolishing the tramp lodging-houses, which had
originally been started in the police stations, in a spirit of
unwise philanthropy. These tramp lodging-houses, not being properly
supervised, were mere nurseries for pauperism and crime, tramps and
loafers of every shade thronging to the city every winter to enjoy
their benefits. We abolished them, a municipal lodging-house being
substituted. Here all homeless wanderers were received, forced to
bathe, given night-clothes before going to bed, and made to work next
morning, and in addition they were so closely supervised that habitual
tramps and vagrants were speedily detected and apprehended.
There was a striking increase in the honesty of the force, and there
was a like increase in its efficiency. When we took office it is not
too much to say that the great majority of the citizens of New York
were firmly convinced that no police force could be both honest and
efficient. They felt it to be part of the necessary order of things
that a policeman should be corrupt, and they were convinced that the
most efficient way of warring against certain forms of crime--notably
crimes against person and property--was by enlisting the service of
other criminals, and of purveyors of vice generally, giving them
immunity in return for their aid. Before we took power the ordinary
purveyor of vice was allowed to ply his or her trade unmolested,
partly in consideration of paying blackmail to the police, partly in
consideration of giving information about any criminal who belonged
to the unprotected classes. We at once broke up this whole business
of blackmail and protection, and made war upon all criminals alike,
instead of getting the assistance of half in warring on the other
half. Nevertheless, so great was the improvement in the spirit of the
force, that, although deprived of their former vicious allies, they
actually did better work than ever before against those criminals who
threatened life and property. Relatively to the population, fewer
crimes of violence occurred during our administration of the Board than
in any previous two years of the city’s history in recent times; and
the total number of arrests of criminals increased, while the number of
cases in which no arrest followed the commission of crime decreased.
The detective bureau nearly doubled the number of arrests made
compared with the year before we took office; obtaining, moreover, 365
convictions of felons and 215 convictions for misdemeanors, as against
269 and 105 respectively for the previous year. At the same time every
attempt at riot or disorder was summarily checked, and all gangs of
violent criminals brought into immediate subjection; while on the other
hand the immense mass meetings and political parades were handled with
such care that not a single case of clubbing of any innocent citizen
was reported.
The result of our labors was of value to the city, for we gave the
citizens better protection than they had ever before received, and
at the same time cut out the corruption which was eating away civic
morality. We showed conclusively that it was possible to combine both
honesty and efficiency in handling the police. We were attacked with
the most bitter animosity by every sensational newspaper and every
politician of the baser sort, not because of our shortcomings, but
because of what we did that was good. We enforced the laws as they were
on the statute books, we broke up blackmail, we kept down the spirit of
disorder, and repressed rascality, and we administered the force with
an eye single to the welfare of the city. In doing this we encountered,
as we had expected, the venemous opposition of all men whose interest
it was that corruption should continue, or who were of such dull
morality that they were not willing to see honesty triumph at the cost
of strife.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[14] _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1897.
[15] My predecessor in the Presidency of the Police Board.
[16] The italics are my own.
[Illustration]
IX
THE VICE-PRESIDENCY AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896[17]
The Vice-President is an officer unique in his character and functions,
or to speak more properly, in his want of functions while he remains
Vice-President, and in his possibility of at any moment ceasing to be a
functionless official and becoming the head of the whole nation. There
is no corresponding position in any constitutional government. Perhaps
the nearest analogue is the heir apparent in a monarchy. Neither the
French President nor the British Prime Minister has a substitute, ready
at any moment to take his place, but exercising scarcely any authority
until his place is taken. The history of such an office is interesting,
and the personality of the incumbent for the time being may at any
moment become of vast importance.
The founders of our government--the men who did far more than draw
up the Declaration of Independence, for they put forth the National
Constitution--in many respects builded very wisely of set purpose. In
some cases they built wiser than they knew. In yet other instances
they failed entirely to achieve objects for which they had endeavored
to provide by a most elaborate and ingenious governmental arrangement.
They distrusted what would now be called pure Democracy, and they
dreaded what we would now call party government.
Their distrust of Democracy induced them to construct the electoral
college for the choice of a President, the original idea being that
the people should elect their best and wisest men who in turn should,
untrammeled by outside pressure, elect a President. As a matter of fact
the functions of the electorate have now by time and custom become of
little more importance than those of so many letter-carriers. They
deliver the electoral votes of their states just as a letter-carrier
delivers his mail. But in the presidential contest this year it may be
we shall see a partial return to the ideals of the men of 1789; for
some of the electors on the Bryan-Sewall-Watson ticket may exercise a
choice between the vice-presidential candidates.
The distrust felt by the founders of the constitution for party
government took shape in the scheme to provide that the majority party
should have the foremost place, and the minority party the second
place, in the national executive. The man who received the greatest
number of electoral votes was made President, and the man who received
the second greatest number was made Vice-President, on a theory
somewhat akin to that by which certain reformers hope to revolutionize
our system of voting at the present day. In the early days under the
present constitution this system resulted in the choice of Adams
for President and of his anti-type Jefferson as Vice-President, the
combination being about as incongruous as if we should now see McKinley
President and either Bryan or Watson Vice-President. Even in theory
such an arrangement is very bad, because under it the Vice-President
might readily be, and as a matter of fact was, a man utterly opposed
to all the principles to which the President was devoted, so that
the arrangement provided in the event of the death of the President,
not for a succession, but for a revolution. The system was very
soon dropped, and each party nominated its own candidates for both
positions. But it was many years before all the members of the
electoral college of one party felt obliged to cast the same votes for
both President and Vice-President, and consequently there was a good
deal of scrambling and shifting in taking the vote. When, however,
the parties had crystallized into Democratic and Whig, a score of
years after the disappearance of the Federalists, the system of party
voting also crystallized. Each party then as a rule nominated one
man for President and one for Vice-President, these being voted for
throughout the nation. This system in turn speedily produced strange
results, some of which remain to this day. There are and must be in
every party factions. The victorious faction may crush out and destroy
the others, or it may try to propitiate at least its most formidable
rival. In consequence, the custom grew of offering the vice-presidency
as a consolation prize, to be given in many cases to the very men
who were most bitterly opposed to the nomination of the successful
candidate for President. Sometimes this consolation prize was awarded
for geographical reasons, sometimes to bring into the party men who on
points of principle might split away because of the principles of the
presidential candidate himself, and at other times it was awarded for
merely factional reasons to some faction which did not differ in the
least from the dominant faction in matters of principles, but had very
decided views on the question of offices.
The presidency being all important, and the vice-presidency of
comparatively little note, the entire strength of the contending
factions is spent in the conflict over the first, and very often a man
who is most anxious to take the first place will not take the second,
preferring some other political position. It has thus frequently
happened that the two candidates have been totally dissimilar in
character and even in party principle, though both running on the same
ticket. Very odd results have followed in more than one instance.
A striking illustration of the evils sometimes springing from this
system is afforded by what befell the Whigs after the election and
death of the elder Harrison. Translated into the terms of the politics
of continental Europe of to-day, Harrison’s adherents represented
a union between the right and the extreme left against the centre.
That is, the regular Whigs who formed the bulk of his supporters were
supplemented by a small body of extremists who in their political
principles were even more alien to the Whigs than were the bulk of the
regular Democrats, but who themselves hated these regular Democrats
with the peculiar ferocity so often felt by the extremist for the man
who goes far, but not quite far enough. In consequence, the President
represented Whig principles, the Vice-President represented a rather
extreme form of the very principles to which the Whigs were most
opposed. The result was that when Harrison died the presidency fell
into the hands of a man who had but a corporal’s guard of supporters in
the nation, and who proceeded to oppose all the measures of the immense
majority of those who elected him.
A somewhat similar instance was afforded in the case of Lincoln and
Johnson. Johnson was put on the ticket largely for geographical
reasons, and on the death of Lincoln he tried to reverse the policy
of the party which had put him in office. An instance of an entirely
different kind is afforded by Garfield and Arthur. The differences
between these two party leaders were mainly merely factional. Each
stood squarely on the platform of the party, and all the principles
advocated by one were advocated by the other; yet the death of Garfield
meant a complete overturn in the _personnel_ of the upper Republican
officials, because Arthur had been nominated expressly to placate the
group of party leaders who most objected to the nomination of Garfield.
Arthur made a very good President, but the bitterness caused by his
succession to power nearly tore the party in twain. It will be noted
that most of these evils arose from the fact that the Vice-President
under ordinary circumstances possesses so little real power. He
presides over the Senate and he has in Washington a position of marked
social importance, but his political weight as Vice-President is almost
_nil_. There is always a chance that he may become President. As this
is only a chance it seems quite impossible to persuade politicians
to give it proper weight. This certainly does not seem right. The
Vice-President should, so far as possible, represent the same views
and principles which have secured the nomination and election of the
President, and he should be a man standing well in the councils of the
party, trusted by his fellow party leaders, and able in the event of
any accident to his chief to take up the work of the latter just where
it was left. The Republican party has this year nominated such a man
in the person of Mr. Hobart. But nominations of this kind have by no
means always been the rule of recent years. No change of parties, for
instance, could well produce a greater revolution in policy than would
have been produced at almost any time during the last three years if
Mr. Cleveland had died and Mr. Stevenson had succeeded him.
One sure way to secure this desired result would undoubtedly be to
increase the power of the Vice-President. He should always be a man
who would be consulted by the President on every great party question.
It would be very well if he were given a seat in the Cabinet. It might
be well if, in addition to his vote in the Senate in the event of a
tie, he should be given a vote, on ordinary occasions, and perchance on
occasions a voice in the debates. A man of the character of Mr. Hobart
is sure to make his weight felt in an administration, but the power of
thus exercising influence should be made official rather than personal.
The present contest offers a striking illustration of the way in which
the Vice-President ought and ought not to be nominated, and to study
this it is necessary to study not only the way in which the different
candidates were nominated, but at least in outline the characters of
the candidates themselves.
For the first time in many years, indeed for the first time since
parties have fairly crystallized along their present lines, there are
three parties running, two of which support the same presidential
candidate but different candidates for the vice-presidency. Each one of
these parties has carried several states during the last three or four
years. Each party has a right to count upon a number of electoral votes
as its own. Closely though the Democratic and Populistic parties have
now approximated in their principles as enunciated in the platforms
of Chicago and St. Louis, they yet do differ on certain points, and
neither would have any chance of beating the Republicans without the
help of the other. The result has been a coalition, yet each party to
the coalition has retained enough of its jealous individuality to make
it refuse to accept the candidate of the other for the second position
on the ticket.
The Republican party stands on a normal and healthy party footing. It
has enunciated a definite set of principles entirely in accord with
its past actions. It has nominated on this platform a President and
Vice-President, both of whom are thorough-going believers in all the
party principles set forth in the platform upon which they stand. Mr.
McKinley believes in sound finance,--that is, in a currency based upon
gold and as good as gold. So does Mr. Hobart. Mr. McKinley believes in
a protective tariff. So does Mr. Hobart. Mr. McKinley believes in the
only method of preserving orderly liberty,--that is, in seeing that the
laws are enforced at whatever cost. So does Mr. Hobart. In short, Mr.
Hobart stands for precisely the same principles that are represented
by Mr. McKinley. He is a man of weight in the community, who has had
wide experience both in business and in politics. He is taking an
active part in the campaign, and he will be a power if elected to
the vice-presidency. All the elements which have rallied behind Mr.
McKinley are just as heartily behind Mr. Hobart. The two represent the
same forces, and they stand for a party with a coherent organization
and a definite purpose, to the carrying out of which they are equally
pledged.
It will be a matter of much importance to the nation that the next
Vice-President should stand for some settled policy. It is an
unhealthy thing to have the Vice-President and President represented
by principles so far apart that the succession of one to the place of
the other means a change as radical as any possible party overturn. The
straining and dislocation of our governmental institutions was very
great when Tyler succeeded Harrison and Johnson succeeded Lincoln.
In each case the majority of the party that had won the victory felt
that it had been treated with scandalous treachery, for Tyler grew
to be as repulsive to the Whigs as Polk himself, and the Republicans
could scarcely have hated Seymour more than they hated Johnson. The
Vice-President has a three-fold relation. First to the administration;
next as presiding officer in the Senate, where he should be a man of
dignity and force; and third in his social position, for socially he
ranks second to the President alone. Mr. Morton was in every way an
admirable Vice-President under General Harrison, and had he succeeded
to the presidential chair there would have been no break in the great
policies which were being pushed forward by the administration. But
during Mr. Cleveland’s two incumbencies Messrs. Hendricks and Stevenson
have represented, not merely hostile factions, but principles and
interests from which he was sundered by a gulf quite as great as that
which divided him from his normal party foes. Mr. Sewall would make a
colorless Vice-President, and were he at any time to succeed Mr. Bryan
in the White House would travel Mr. Bryan’s path only with extreme
reluctance and under duress. Mr. Watson would be a more startling, more
attractive, and more dangerous figure, for if he got the chance he
would lash the nation with a whip of scorpions, while Mr. Bryan would
be content with the torture of ordinary thongs.
Finally, Mr. Hobart would typify as strongly as Mr. McKinley himself
what was best in the Republican party and in the nation, and would
stand as one of the known champions of his party on the very questions
at issue in the present election. He is a man whose advice would be
sought by all who are prominent in the administration. In short, he
would be the kind of man whom the electors are certain to choose as
Vice-President if they exercise their choice rationally.
The men who left the Republican party because of the nomination
of McKinley would have left it just as quickly if Hobart had been
nominated. They do not believe in sound finance, and though many of
the bolters object to anarchy and favor protection, they feel that in
this crisis their personal desires must be repressed and that they are
conscientiously bound to support the depreciated dollar even at the
cost of incidentally supporting the principles of a low tariff and
the doctrine that a mob should be allowed to do what it likes with
immunity. There are many advocates of clipped or depreciated money
who are rather sorry to see the demand for such currency coupled with
a demand for more lawlessness and an abandonment by the government
of the police functions which are the essential attributes of
civilization; but they have overcome their reluctance, feeling that on
the whole it is more important that the money of the nation should be
unsound than that its laws should be obeyed. People who feel this way
are just as much opposed to Mr. Hobart as to Mr. McKinley. They object
to the platform upon which the two men stand, and they object as much
to the character of one man as to the character of the other. They are
repelled by McKinley’s allegiance to the cause of sound money, and find
nothing to propitiate them in Hobart’s uncompromisingly honest attitude
on the same question. There is no reason whatever why any voter who
would wish to vote against the one should favor the other, or _vice
versa_.
When we cross the political line all this is changed. On the leading
issue of the campaign the entire triangle of candidates are a unit.
Mr. Bryan, the nominee for the presidency, and Messrs. Sewall and
Watson, the nominees for the vice-presidency, are almost equally
devoted adherents of the light-weight dollar and of a currency which
shall not force a man to repay what he has borrowed, and shall punish
the wrong-headed laborer, who expects to be paid his wages in money
worth something, as heavily as the business man or farmer who is so
immoral as to wish to pay his debts. All three are believers in that
old-world school of finance which appears under such protean changes
of policy, always desiring the increase of the circulating medium, but
differing as to the means, which in one age takes the form of putting
base metal in with the good, or of clipping the good, and in another
assumes the guise of fiat money, or the free coinage of silver. On
this currency question they are substantially alike, agreeing (as one
of their adherents picturesquely put it, in arguing in favor of that
form of abundant currency which has as its highest exponent the money
of the late Confederacy) that “the money which was good enough for the
soldiers of Washington is good enough for us.” As a matter of fact the
soldiers of Washington were not at all grateful for the money which the
loud-mouthed predecessors of Mr. Bryan and his kind then thought “good
enough” for them. The money with which the veterans of Washington were
paid was worth two cents on the dollar, and as yet neither Mr. Bryan,
Mr. Sewall, nor Mr. Watson has advocated a two-cent copper dollar.
Still, they are striving toward this ideal, and in their advocacy of
the fifty cent dollar they are one.