financial and industrial system; elsewhere those same forces, working
in slightly different ways, created London, Rome, Paris, Berlin,
Vienna, Petrograd, and Moscow. What happened in the industrial towns
of America was that the increments derived from land, capital, and
association went, not to the enrichment of the local community, but to
those who had a legal title to the land and the productive machinery.
In other words, the gains that were made in Pittsburgh, Springfield,
Dayton, and a score of other towns that became important in the
industrial era were realized largely in New York, whose position
had been established, before the turn of the century, as the locus
of trade and finance. (New York passed the 500,000 mark in the 1850
census.) This is why, perhaps, during the ’seventies and ’eighties,
decades of miserable depression throughout the industrial centres,
there were signs of hope and promise in New York: the Museums of Art
and Natural History were built: _Life_ and _Puck_ and a batch of
newspapers were founded: the Metropolitan Opera House and Carnegie Hall
were established: and a dozen other evidences of a vigorous civic life
appeared. In a short time New York became the glass of fashion and
the mould of form, and through the standardization, specialization,
and centralization which accompany the machine process the Metropolis
became at length the centre of advertising, the lender of farm
mortgages, the distributor of boiler-plate news, the headquarters of
the popular magazine, the publishing centre, and finally the chief
disseminator of plays and motion pictures in America. The educational
foundations which the exploiter of the Kodak has established at
Rochester were not characteristic of the early part of the industrial
period--otherwise New York’s eminence might have been briskly
challenged before it had become, after its fashion, unchallengeable.
The increment from Mr. Carnegie’s steel works built a hall of music for
New York long before it created the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh.
In other words, the widespread effort of the American provincial to
leave his industrial city for New York comes to something like an
attempt to get back from New York what had been previously filched from
the industrial city.
The future of our cities depends upon how permanent are the forces
which drain money, energy, and brains from the various regions in
America into the twelve great cities that now dominate the countryside,
and in turn drain the best that is in these sub-metropolises to New
York. To-day our cities are at a crossing of the ways. Since the 1910
census a new tendency has begun to manifest itself, and the cities
that have grown the fastest are those of a population from 25,000 to
100,000. Quantitatively, that is perhaps a good sign. It may indicate
the drift to Suburbia is on the wane. One finds it much harder,
however, to gauge the qualitative capacities of the new régime; much
more difficult to estimate the likelihood of building up, within the
next generation or two, genuine regional cultures to take the place
of pseudo-national culture which now mechanically emanates from New
York. So far our provincial culture has been inbred and sterile:
our provincial cities have substituted boosting for achievement,
fanciful speculation for intelligent planning, and a zaniacal optimism
for constructive thought. These habits have made them an easy prey
to the metropolis, for at its lowest ebb there has always been a
certain amount of organized intelligence and cultivated imagination
in New York--if only because it is the chief point of contact between
Europe and America. Gopher Prairie has yet to take to heart the fable
about the frog that tried to inflate himself to the size of a bull.
When Gopher Prairie learns its lessons from Bergen and Augsburg and
Montpellier and Grenoble, the question of “metropolitanism versus
regionalism” may become as active in America as it is now in Europe.
Those of us who are metropolitans may be tempted to think that the
hope for civilization in America is bound up with the continuance
of metropolitanism. That is essentially a cockney view of culture
and society, however, and our survey of the development of the city
in America should have done something to weaken its self-confident
complacence. Our metropolitan civilization is not a success. It is a
different kind of wilderness from that which we have deflowered--but
the feral rather than the humane quality is dominant: it is still a
wilderness. The cities of America must learn to remould our mechanical
and financial régime, for if metropolitanism continues they are
probably destined to fall by its weight.
LEWIS MUMFORD
POLITICS
No person shall be a Representative who ... shall not, when
elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he shall be
chosen.... No person shall be a Senator who ... shall not, when
elected, be an inhabitant of that State for which he shall be
chosen.
Specialists in political archæology will recognize these sentences:
they are from Article I, Sections 2 and 3, of the constitution of the
United States. I have heard and forgotten how they got there; no doubt
the cause lay in the fierce jealousy of the States. But whatever the
fact, I have a notion that there are few provisions of the constitution
that have had a more profound effect upon the character of practical
politics in the Republic, or, indirectly, upon the general colour of
American thinking in the political department. They have made steadily
for parochialism in legislation, for the security and prosperity of
petty local bosses and machines, for the multiplication of pocket and
rotten boroughs of the worst sort, and, above all, for the progressive
degeneration of the honesty and honour of representatives. They have
greased the ways for the trashy and ignoble fellow who aspires to
get into Congress, and they have blocked them for the man of sense,
dignity, and self-respect. More, perhaps, than any other single
influence they have been responsible for the present debauched and
degraded condition of the two houses, and particularly of the lower
one. Find me the worst ass in Congress, and I’ll show you a man they
have helped to get there and to stay there. Find me the most shameless
scoundrel, and I’ll show you another.
No such centripedal mandate, as far as I have been able to discover,
is in the fundamental law of any other country practising the
representative system. An Englishman, if ambition heads him toward
St. Stephen’s, may go hunting for a willing constituency wherever the
hunting looks best, and if he fails in the Midlands he may try again
in the South, or in the North, or in Scotland or Wales. A Frenchman of
like dreams has the same privilege; the only condition, added after
nineteen years of the Third Republic, is that he may not be a candidate
in two or more _arrondissements_ at once. And so with a German, an
Italian, or a Spaniard. But not so with an American. He must be an
actual inhabitant of the State he aspires to represent at Washington.
More, he must be, in all save extraordinary cases, an actual inhabitant
of the congressional district--for here, by a characteristic American
process, the fundamental law is sharpened by custom. True enough,
this last requirement is not laid down by the constitution. It would
be perfectly legal for the thirty-fifth New York district, centring
at Syracuse, to seek its congressman in Manhattan, or even at Sing
Sing. In various iconoclastic States, in fact, the thing has been
occasionally done. But not often; not often enough to produce any
appreciable effect. The typical congressman remains a purely local
magnifico, the gaudy cock of some small and usually far from appetizing
barnyard. His rank and dignity as a man are measured by provincial
standards of the most puerile sort, and his capacity to discharge the
various and onerous duties of his office is reckoned almost exclusively
in terms of his ability to hold his grip upon the local party machine.
If he has genuine ability, it is a sort of accident. If he is
thoroughly honest, it is next door to a miracle. Of the 430-odd
representatives who carry on so diligently and obscenely at Washington,
making laws and determining policies for the largest free nation ever
seen in the world, there are not two dozen whose views upon any subject
under the sun carry any weight whatsoever outside their own bailiwicks,
and there are not a dozen who rise to anything approaching unmistakable
force and originality. They are, in the overwhelming main, shallow
fellows, ignorant of the grave matters they deal with and too stupid
to learn. If, as is often proposed, the United States should adopt
the plan of parliamentary responsibility and the ministry should be
recruited from the lower house, then it would be difficult, without a
radical change in election methods, to fetch up even such pale talents
and modest decencies as were assembled for their cabinets by Messrs.
Wilson and Harding. The better sort of congressmen, to be sure, acquire
after long service a good deal of technical proficiency. They know the
traditions and precedents of the two houses; they can find their way in
and out of every rathole in the Capitol; they may be trusted to carry
on the legislative routine in a more or less shipshape manner. Of such
sort are the specialists paraded in the newspapers--on the tariff, on
military affairs, on foreign relations, and so on. They come to know,
in time, almost as much as a Washington correspondent, or one of their
own committee clerks. But the average congressman lifts himself to
no such heights of sagacity. He is content to be led by the fugelmen
and bellwethers. Examine him at leisure, and you will find that he is
incompetent and imbecile, and not only incompetent and imbecile, but
also incurably dishonest. The first principles of civilized law-making
are quite beyond him; he ends, as he began, a local politician,
interested only in jobs. His knowledge is that of a third-rate country
lawyer--which he often is in fact. His intelligence is that of a
country newspaper editor, or evangelical divine. His standards of
honour are those of a country banker--which he also often is. To demand
sense of such a man, or wide and accurate information, or a delicate
feeling for the public and private proprieties, is to strain his parts
beyond endurance.
The constitution, of course, stops with Congress, but its influence
is naturally powerful within the States, and one finds proofs of the
fact on all sides. It is taking an herculean effort everywhere to break
down even the worst effects of this influence; the prevailing tendency
is still to discover a mysterious virtue in the office-holder who was
born and raised in the State, or county, or city, or ward. The judge
must come from the bar of the court he is to adorn; the mayor must be
part and parcel of the local machine; even technical officers, such
as engineers and health commissioners, lie under the constitutional
blight. The thing began as a belief in local self-government, the
oldest of all the sure cures for despotism. But it has gradually taken
on the character of government by local politicians, which is to say,
by persons quite unable to comprehend the most elemental problems of
State and nation, and unfitted by nature to deal with them honestly
and patriotically, even if they could comprehend them. Just as
prohibition was forced upon the civilized minorities collected in the
great cities against their most vigorous and persistent opposition,
so the same minorities, when it comes to intra-state affairs, are
constantly at the mercy of predatory bands of rural politicians. If
there is any large American city whose peculiar problems are dealt
with competently and justly by its State legislature, then I must
confess that twenty years in journalism have left me ignorant of it. An
unending struggle for fairer dealing goes on in every State that has
large cities, and every concession to their welfare is won only at the
cost of gigantic effort. The State legislature is never intelligent;
it represents only the average mind of the county bosses, whose sole
concern is with jobs. The machines that they represent are wholly
political, but they have no political principles in any rational sense.
Their one purpose and function is to maintain their adherents in the
public offices, or to obtain for them in some other way a share of
the State funds. They are quite willing to embrace any new doctrine,
however fantastic, or to abandon any old one, however long supported,
if only the business will promote their trade and so secure their power.
This concentration of the ultimate governmental authority in the hands
of small groups of narrow, ignorant, and unconscionable manipulators
tends inevitably to degrade the actual office-holder, or, what is
the same thing, to make office-holding prohibitive to all men not
already degraded. It is almost impossible to imagine a man of genuine
self-respect and dignity offering himself as a candidate for the lower
house--or, since the direct primary and direct elections brought it
down to the common level, for the upper house--in the average American
constituency. His necessary dealings with the electors themselves,
and with the idiots who try more or less honestly to lead them, would
be revolting enough, but even worse would be his need of making terms
with the professional politicians of his party--the bosses of the local
machine. These bosses naturally make the most of the constitutional
limitation; it works powerfully in their favour. A local notable, in
open revolt against them, may occasionally beat them by appealing
directly to the voters, but nine times out of ten, when there is any
sign of such a catastrophe, they are prompt to perfume the ticket by
bringing forth another local notable who is safe and sane, which is
to say, subservient and reliable. The thing is done constantly; it
is a matter of routine; it accounts for most of the country bankers,
newspaper owners, railroad lawyers, proprietors of cement works, and
other such village bigwigs in the lower house. Here everything runs
to the advantage of the bosses. It is not often that the notable in
rebellion is gaudy enough to blind the plain people to the high merits
of his more docile opponent. They see him too closely and know him too
well. He shows none of that exotic charm which accounts, on a different
plane, for exogamy. There is no strangeness, no mysteriousness, above
all, no novelty about him.
It is my contention that this strangle-hold of the local machines
would be vastly less firm if it could be challenged, not only by
rebels within the constituency, but also by salient men from outside.
The presidential campaigns, indeed, offer plenty of direct proof of
it. In these campaigns it is a commonplace for strange doctrines and
strange men to force themselves upon the practical politicians in
whole sections of the country, despite their constant effort to keep
their followers faithful to the known. All changes, of whatever sort,
whether in leaders or in ideas, are opposed by such politicians at
the start, but time after time they are compelled to acquiesce and to
hurrah. Bryan, as every one knows, forced himself upon the Democratic
party by appealing directly to the people; the politicians, in the
main, were bitterly against him until further resistance was seen to
be useless, and they attacked him again the moment he began to weaken,
and finally disposed of him. So with Wilson. It would be absurd to say
that the politicians of his party--and especially the bosses of the
old machines in the congressional districts--were in favour of him in
1912. They were actually against him almost unanimously. He got past
their guard and broke down their resolution to nominate some more
trustworthy candidate by operating directly upon the emotions of the
voters. For some reason never sufficiently explained he became the heir
of the spirit of rebellion raised by Bryan sixteen years before, and
was given direct and very effective aid by Bryan himself. Roosevelt
saddled himself upon the Republican party in exactly the same way. The
bosses made heroic efforts to sidetrack him, to shelve him, to get rid
of him by any means short of homicide, but his bold enterprises and
picturesque personality enchanted the people, and if it had not been
for the extravagant liberties that he took with his popularity in later
years he might have retained it until his death.
The same possibility of unhorsing the machine politicians, I believe,
exists in even the smallest electoral unit. All that is needed is
the chance to bring in the man. Podunk cannot produce him herself,
save by a sort of miracle. If she has actually hatched him, he is far
away by the time he has come to his full stature and glitter--in the
nearest big city, in Chicago or New York. Podunk is proud of him, and
many other Podunks, perhaps, are stirred by his ideas, his attitudes,
his fine phrases--but he lives, say, in some Manhattan congressional
district which has the Hon. Patrick Googan as its representative by
divine right, and so there is no way to get him into the halls of
Congress. In his place goes the Hon. John P. Balderdash, State’s
attorney for five years, State senator for two terms, and county judge
for a brief space--and always a snide and petty fellow, always on the
best of terms with the local bosses, always eager for a job on any
terms they lay down. The yokels vote for the Hon. Mr. Balderdash, not
because they admire him, but because their only choice is between
him and the Hon. James Bosh. If anything even remotely resembling a
first-rate man could come into the contest, if it were lawful for them
to rid themselves of their recurrent dilemma by soliciting the interest
of such a man, then they would often enough rise in their might and
compel their parish overlords, as the English put it, to adopt him.
But the constitution protects these overlords in their business, and
in the long run the voters resign all thought of deliverance. Thus the
combat remains one between small men, and interest in it dies out. Most
of the men who go to the lower house are third-raters, even in their
own narrow bailiwicks. In my own congressional district, part of a
large city, there has never been a candidate of any party, during the
twenty years that I have voted, who was above the intellectual level
of a corner grocer. No successful candidate of that district has ever
made a speech in Congress (or out of it) worth hearing, or contributed
a single sound idea otherwise to the solution of any public problem.
One and all, they have confined themselves exclusively to the trade in
jobs. One and all, they have been ciphers in the house and before the
country.
Well, perhaps I labour my point too much. It is, after all, not
important. The main thing is the simple fact that the average
representative from my district is typical of Congress--that, if
anything, he is superior to the normal congressman of these, our days.
That normal congressman, as year chases year, tends to descend to
such depths of puerility, to such abysses of petty shysterism, that
he becomes offensive alike to the intelligence and to the nose. His
outlook, when it is honest, is commonly childish--and it is very seldom
honest. The product of a political system which puts all stress upon
the rewards of public office, he is willing to make any sacrifice, of
dignity, of principle, of honour, to hold and have those rewards. He
has no courage, no intellectual _amour propre_, no ardent belief in
anything save his job, and the jobs of his friends. It was easy for
Wilson to beat him into line on the war issue; it was easy for the
prohibitionists to intimidate and stampede him; it is easy for any
resolute man or group of men to do likewise. I read the _Congressional
Record_ faithfully, and have done so for years. In the Senate debates,
amid oceans of tosh, I occasionally encounter a flash of wit or a gleam
of sense; direct elections have not yet done their work. But in the
lower house there is seldom anything save a garrulous and intolerable
imbecility. The discussion of measures of the utmost importance--bills
upon which the security and prosperity of the whole nation depend--is
carried on in the manner of the Chautauqua and the rural stump. Entire
days go by without a single congressman saying anything as intelligent,
say, as the gleams that one sometimes finds in the New York _Herald_,
or even in the New York _Times_. The newspapers, unfortunately, give no
adequate picture of the business. No American journal reports the daily
debates comprehensively, as the debates in the House of Commons are
reported by the London _Times_, _Daily Telegraph_, and _Morning Post_.
All one hears of, as a rule, is the action taken, and only too often
the action taken, even when it is reported fairly, is unintelligible
without the antecedent discussion. If any one who reads this wants to
know what such a discussion is like, then I counsel him to go to the
nearest public library, ask for the _Record_ for 1918, and read the
debate in the lower house on the Volstead Act. It was, I believe, an
average debate, and on a subject of capital importance. It was, from
first to last, almost fabulous in its evasion of the plain issue,
its incredible timorousness and stupidity, its gross mountebankery
and dishonesty. Not twenty men spoke in it as men of honour and
self-respect. Not ten brought any idea into it that was not a silly
idea and a stale one.
That debate deserves a great deal more study than it will ever get
from the historians of American politics, nearly all of whom, whether
they lean to the right or to the left, are bedazzled by the economic
interpretation of history, and so seek to account for all political
phenomena in terms of crop movements, wage scales, and panics in Wall
Street. It seems to me that that obsession blinds them to a fact of
the first importance, to wit, the fact that political ideas, under a
democracy as under a monarchy, originate above quite as often as they
originate below, and that their popularity depends quite as much upon
the special class interests of professional politicians as it depends
upon the underlying economic interests of the actual voters. It is,
of course, true, as I have argued, that the people can force ideas
upon the politicians, given powerful leaders of a non-political (or,
at all events, non-machine) sort, but it is equally true that there
are serious impediments to the process, and that it is not successful
very often. As a matter of everyday practice the rise and fall of
political notions is determined by the self-interest of the practical
politicians of the country, and though they naturally try to bring the
business into harmony with any great popular movements that may be in
progress spontaneously, they by no means wait and beg for mandates when
none are vociferously forthcoming, but go ahead bravely on their own
account, hoping to drag public opinion with them and so safeguard their
jobs. Such is the origin of many affecting issues, later held dear by
millions of the plain people. Such was the process whereby prohibition
was foisted upon the nation by constitutional amendment, to the dismay
of the solid majority opposed to it and to the surprise of the minority
in favour of it.