with arguments. Indeed, it is easier to start a reform and carry it
through, than it is to explain either why or how it is done. You can
only understand this after you have been three times ridiculed as a
reformer; and then you will begin to see that throughout the community,
running through every one, there are currents of beneficent power that
accomplish changes, sometimes visible, sometimes hard to see; that this
power is in its nature quite as strong, quite as real and reliable,
as that Wall Street current,--terrible forces both of them, forever
operative and struggling and contending together as they surge and
swell through the people. It is the sight of that power for good that
you need. I cannot give it to you. You must sink your own shaft for
it. It is this beneficent current passing from man to man that makes
the unity of all efforts for public betterment. You have a movement
and an excitement over bad water, and it leaves you with kindergartens
in your schools. It is this current that turns your remark at the club
(which every one repeated in order to injure you) into a piece of
encouragement to the banker’s clerk, who could not have made it himself
except at the cost of his livelihood. It is this current--not only the
fear of it, but the presence of it--in the heart of your merchants that
leaves them at your mercy. Cast anything into this current and it goes
everywhere, like aniline dye put into a reservoir; it tinges the whole
local life in twenty-four hours. It is to this current that all appeals
are made. All party platforms, all resolutions, all lies are dedicated
to it; all literature lives by it. The head of power is near and easy
if you strike directly for it.
There is an opinion abroad that good politics requires that every
man should give his whole time to politics. This is another of the
superstitions disseminated by the politicians who want us to go to
their primaries, and accepted by people so ignorant of life that they
believe that the temperature depends upon the thermometer.
Why, you are running those primaries now. If you were different, they
would become different. You need never go near them. Go into that camp
where your instinct leads you. The improvement in politics will not
be marked by any cyclonic overturn. There will always be two parties
competing for your vote. It takes no more time to vote for a good man
than for a bad man. There will be no more men in public life then
than now. There will be no overt change in conditions. A few leaders
will stand for the new forces. It is true that it requires a general
increase of interest on the part of every one, in order that these men
shall be found. Your personal duty is to support them in private and
public. That is all. The extent to which you yourself become involved
in public affairs depends upon chances with which you need not concern
yourself. Only try to understand what is happening under your eyes.
Every time you see a group of men advancing some cause that seems
sensible, and being denounced on all hands as “self-appointed,” see if
it was not something in yourself, after all, that appointed those men.
As we grow old, what have we to rely on as a touchstone for the times?
You once had your own causes and enthusiasms, but you cannot understand
these new ones. You had your certificate from the Almighty, but these
fellows are “self-appointed.” What you wanted was clear, but these men
want something unattainable, something that society, as you know it,
cannot supply. Calm yourself, my friend; perhaps they bring it.
Has the great Philosophy of Evolution done nothing for the mind of man,
that new developments, as they arrive, are received with the same stony
solemnity, are greeted with the same phrases as ever? How can you have
the ingenuousness to argue soberly against me, supplying me, by every
word you say, with new illustrations, new hope, new fuel? Until I heard
you repeat word by word the prayer-book of crumbling conservatism, I
was not sure I was right. You have placed the great seal of the world
upon new truth. Thus should it be received.
The radicals are really always saying the same thing. They do not
change; everybody else changes. They are accused of the most
incompatible crimes, of egoism and a mania for power, indifference to
the fate of their own cause, fanaticism, triviality, want of humor,
buffoonery and irreverence. But they sound a certain note. Hence the
great practical power of consistent radicals. To all appearance nobody
follows them, yet every one believes them. They hold a tuning-fork and
sound A, and everybody knows it really is A, though the time-honored
pitch is G flat. The community cannot get that A out of its head.
Nothing can prevent an upward tendency in the popular tone so long as
the real A is kept sounding. Every now and then the whole town strikes
it for a week, and all the bells ring, and then all sinks to suppressed
discord and denial.
The reason why we have not, of late years, had strong consistent
centres of influence, focuses of steady political power, has been that
the community has not developed men who could hold the note. It was
only when the note made a temporary concord with some heavy political
scheme that the reform leaders could hear it themselves. For the rest
of the time it threw the whole civilization out of tune. The terrible
clash of interests drowned it. The reformers themselves lost it, and
wandered up and down, guessing.
It is imagined that nature goes by jumps, and that a whole community
can suddenly sing in tune, after it has been caterwauling and murdering
the scale for twenty years. The truth is, we ought to thank God
when any man or body of men make the discovery that there is such a
thing as absolute pitch, or absolute honesty, or absolute personal
and intellectual integrity. A few years of this spirit will identify
certain men with the fundamental idea that truth is stronger than
consequences, and these men will become the most serious force and
the only truly political force in their community. Their ambition is
illimitable, for you cannot set bounds to personal influence. But it is
an ambition that cannot be abused. A departure from their own course
will ruin any one of them in a night, and undo twenty years of service.
It would be natural that such sets of men should arise all over
the country, men who “wanted” nothing, and should reveal the
inverse position of the Boss System; a set of moral bosses with no
organizations, no politics; men thrown into prominence by the operation
of all the forces of human nature now suppressed, and the suppression
of those now operative. It is obvious that one such man will suffice
for a town. In the competition of character, one man will be naturally
fixed upon, whom his competitors will be the first to honor; and
upon him will be condensed the public feeling, the confidence of the
community. If the extreme case do not arise, nevertheless it is certain
that the tendencies toward a destruction of the present system, will
reveal themselves as a tendency making for the weight of personal
character in practical politics.
Reform politics is, after all, a simple thing. It demands no great
attainments. You can play the game in the dark. A child can understand
it. There are no subtleties nor obscurities, no higher analysis or
mystery of any sort. If you want a compass at any moment in the midst
of some difficult situation, you have only to say to yourself, “Life
is larger than this little imbroglio. I shall follow my instinct.” As
you say this, your compass swings true. You may be surprised to find
what course it points to. But what it tells you to do will be practical
agitation.
III
THE MASSES
Let us examine current beliefs on popular education, and then
thereafter let us look very closely at the work done among the poor,
and see upon what lines it has been found possible to establish
influence.
Why is it that if you go down to the Bowery and set up a kindergarten
or give a course of lectures on the Duties of Citizenship, every one
commends you; whereas if you go into some abandoned district where a
Tammany thug is running for the State Assembly against a Republican
heeler, and if you put an honest man in the field against them both,
your friends call you a fool, and say that your reform consists of mere
negation?
Who asks to see the results upon the public welfare of a night school
in astronomy? Yet, if you get ten mechanics to labor for six months
with the fire of enthusiasm in them, building up a radical club, and as
a result, one hundred and fifty men cast for the first time in their
lives a vote that represents the heart and conscience of each, your
intelligent friends ask, “What have you done? You are howling against
the moon.”
Why is it that if you are a grocer and refuse to sand your sugar, you
are called honest? Yet, if a young politician takes this course, it is
supposed that life is not long enough for the world to discover his
value; he is a visionary. In the sugar trade, the man insisted upon
dealing with the community as a whole. He was not trying to sell sugar
to a club, or to benefit some district. He dealt with the public. Now,
if a politician deals directly with the public, we condemn him because
we cannot see the empire of confidence he is building up. The reason we
do not see it is entirely due to historical causes. We have had little
experience recently in the utility of large appeals. We forget their
power. Yet we are not without examples. Grover Cleveland dealt directly
with the people on a great scale. He established a personal relation
that was stronger than party bonds. This made him President, preserved
his character and gave reality to politics. It was a bit of education
to every man in the United States to see what riff-raff our political
arks were made of: a man laid his hand on the end of one of them and
tore off the roof.
We are rather more familiar with the power of public confidence as
seen in times of revolution. In the year of the Lexow investigation
the people of New York City believed that Dr. Parkhurst and John Goff
were in earnest. There was a period of a few weeks when Goff exercised
the powers of a dictator. The Police Commissioners had threatened to
discipline a subordinate who had testified before Goff’s committee.
He subpoenaed them all the next morning, and he browbeat them like
school-boys. They went back humbled. The revelations of the summer
had awakened the spirit of revolt in the masses of the people, and it
expressed itself directly as power. The machinery of government was
not in abeyance, but it was seen to be a mere vehicle. It could be
made to work justice. Here were two men, Goff and Parkhurst, rendered
all-powerful by the existence of popular confidence. The state of mind
of the community was unusual, and the indignation soon subsided; but it
subsided to a new level, and the abuses and inhumanity of Boss tyranny
have never since been so severe in New York.
Our people have seen several volcanic eruptions of this sort, and
therefore they believe in them. They believe in the moral power of the
community, but are afraid it can only act by convulsion. They think
that some new principle comes into play at such times, something which
is not a constant factor in daily government. On the other hand, we
have all been trained to respect plodding methods in common education,
and we know that much can be done by kindergartens, boys’ clubs, and
propaganda to change the standards of the community and make men trust
virtue. We believe in the boys’ club, and we believe in the earthquake;
we forget that the same principle underlies them both. When some one
applies this principle to the field of political education that lies
between them, we are cynical because we have no experience.
Apart from the lack of experience that prevents people from seeing the
use of this practical activity, there are two distressing elements that
make men not want to see it. In the first place, even if you work in
the Bowery and a friend votes in Harlem, you are apt to be hitting his
interests and prejudices. And in the second place your conduct is a
horrid appeal. If this work is useful, he ought to be doing it. He had
hoped that nothing could be done.
The real distinction between this particular sort of work and other
philanthropy is, that other philanthropy is preparatory drill; this
is war. The other is feeding, training, and preaching; this is
practice. Now, you may have your license to preach all you please in
the vineyard, but if you touch the soil with the spade, you find the
ground is pre-empted; you are fighting a railroad. And this condition
is openly recognized in cities where the evil forces are completely
dominant.
In lecturing before the University Extension in Pennsylvania, you
are not allowed to talk politics. It is against the policy of the
philanthropists who run the institution, and who are run by the
railroad. The situation in Philadelphia is merely illustrative of
the distinction between philanthropy and political reform, which is
always ready to become apparent. Of course, so long as the railroad
distributes the philanthropy, there will result nothing but tyranny.
The Roman Emperors gave shows to amuse the people, and we give them
talks on Botticelli and magic-lantern pictures of the Nile. There are,
then, real reasons why our people are slow to acknowledge the utility
of militant political reform, and why they clutch at any handle against
it.
But we have much more to learn from the philanthropists by a study of
what they have done than by dwelling on their shortcomings. They have
labored while the political reformers have slept; and after many trials
and many failures they have found certain working principles.
It was they who discovered that we cannot, as human nature is
constituted, give strength to any one except by helping the whole man
to develop at once. We must give him a chance to grow. The workers
among the poor have long ago seen the futility of any effort except
that of raising the general standards of living. They have established
Settlements, where the relation between the settlers and the
surrounding population is as natural as family life and as perennial
as Tammany Hall. After ten years of experiment this has been done in
many places. If you will go to one of these places and study exactly
what has happened in the line of benefit to the people, you will see
that it has resulted _wholly_ from personal influence,--that is
to say, from the effect of character upon character. “Two years ago we
established a boys’ club, and soon afterwards a kindergarten. The boys
returned one day, and out of jealousy smashed everything belonging to
the kindergarten, and piled the rubbish in the middle of the room.
Last week a barrel of fruit was sent here for the sick and weakly, and
we left the barrel open with a card on the outside to that effect. You
could not get the boys to touch the fruit. Now, if you ask me what
system or what part of the system has caused the change in these boys,
I don’t know.”
This is reform politics, but unless you and I go there and make a place
for these boys in practical politics, they will find waiting for them
nothing but the caucus and the job. They will relapse and forget. It is
throwing effort into the sea to train the young if you stop there. The
test comes when the scaffoldings of early life are taken down. Each man
meets the world alone. The tragedies of character occur at this period.
We must make a camp and standing ground for grown men. So far as the
hope of political purity goes, there are acres of this city that are in
a worse condition than health was in before the era of hospitals. Fly
over them as the crow flies, and you cannot find a centre of downright
antagonism to evil. The population does not know that such a thing
exists; and yet, if you propose to go there and set up a fight against
both parties,--that is to say, a fight against wickedness,--you are
told by patriots and doctors of divinity, “Don’t do it unless you can
win. You will disgust people with reform.”
It is awful and at the same time ludicrous to hear an educated person
maintain this doctrine and in the same breath mourn over the corruption
of the masses. The man throws his own dark shadow over them and bewails
their want of light. He doubts the power of personal influence; and yet
there is absolutely no other force for good in the world, and never has
been. Let us stick to facts. Take individual cases of improvement and
see what power has been at work. You will find that you disclose behind
any personal improvement, not a ballot law or an organization, but a
human being.
The movement for political reform goes into the Bowery in the wake of
the philanthropists. We go there knowing something about practical
politics. We know, for instance, that the Bowery is the geographical
name for a district which is really governed by the same forces as
Fifth Avenue. To think that the politics of the Bowery are controlled
by the Bowery is about as sensible as to believe that the politics of
Irkutsk are controlled at Irkutsk. We have got, first, to disclose the
machinery of evil and then to fight it wherever we find it, even though
it lead us into churches. Nothing is needed in any Tammany club on the
Bowery that is not needed ten times as much in the Union League Club on
Fifth Avenue--personal self-sacrifice for principle in a cause which is
apparently hopeless. Unless you go there displaying that, you are not
needed.
Our intercourse with the laboring man is a great teacher to ourselves.
That is its main use. It brings out, as nothing else can, the magnitude
and perfection of the system, whose visible top and little flag we
can always see, but whose dimensions and ramifications nothing but
experiment can reveal; philosophy could not guess it.
Here is a laborer on the street railroad. In order to get work he must
show a ticket from the party boss. It is his passport from the Czar,
countersigned by the proper official; otherwise he gets no job. Here
is a young notary whom you employ to carry about the certificate that
puts an independent candidate in nomination. You try to get him to sign
the thing himself and join your club. It is no use asking. His brother
did it once and lost his place; so close is the scrutiny, so rapid
the punishment. Examine the retail grocer, or the tobacconist, or
the cobbler; go into particulars with him, and you will find that his
unwillingness to join your movement does not spring so directly from
his inability to see the point of it, as from fear of the direct and
immediate consequences to himself.
We wanted to elevate the masses, but it turns out, as the
philanthropists discerned long ago, that there are no masses in
America, there are no masses in New York City. We can discover only
individuals, who are each controlled by individual interests, by
various and subtle considerations. These men are in chains to other
men, who often live in other parts of the city.
The attorneys and merchants, the business world in fact, is found to
be in league with abuse. The man who signs the laborer’s license to
work reports twice a day to a big contractor who is director in a bank
whose president owns the opera house and endowed the sailors’ home.
He built the yacht club, is vestryman in the biggest church, and is
revered by all men. The title-deeds and registry books of all visible
wealth, show the names of his intimate friends. All we can do in the
way of weakening the chains is to expose them; this cruelty is largely
ignorance. The beneficiaries must be made to see the sources of their
wealth. It is pre-occupation with business, not coldness of heart, that
conceals the conditions. The American business man is a warm-hearted
being. He does not even care for money, but for the game of business.
As matters now stand in America, we see this condition,--that it
is for the immediate interest of the dominant class, namely, the
politico-financial class, to keep the people as selfish as possible. We
have examined the subtle strains of influence and prejudice by which
this commercial interest has been extended, until, as a practical
matter, it is almost impossible for a man to get word to the laboring
classes that there exists such a thing as political morality. Some
professional philanthropist always stands ready to prevent the signal
of honesty from being raised; some set of Sunday citizens interposes to
stop the unwise, inexpedient, foolhardy attempt to be independent of
rascality.
And when you do succeed in reaching the mechanic, what can you do for
him? Tell him to be a man, and strike off the shackles that bind him.
Here we are, as helpless before the poor as before the rich, facing
both of them with the same query, “Can you not see that your own
concession, call it poverty, or call it poverty of will, is one element
of this oppression?”
The difference between the poor and the financial classes is one of
spiritual complexity. The promoters are well-to-do because their minds
have been able to grasp and utilize the complex forces made up of the
minds of their simpler fellow-beings. And this astuteness leaves them
less open to unselfish emotions than the laboring man. His nature is
more intact. He is a more emotional and instinctive being. It is for
this reason that moral reforms have come from the lower strata of
society. The people have as much to lose as the bankers, but they are
more ready to lose it.
The head of moral feeling in the community has got to grow strong
enough to force the financier to take his clutch off the laboring
man, before you can reach the laboring man. And yet labor itself will
contribute more than its share towards this head of moral feeling;
and therefore you must go among the laboring classes with your ideas
and your propaganda. But beware lest you give him a stone for bread.
You can do no more for a man because you call yourself a “politician”
than if you were a mere philanthropist. A man’s standards of political
thought are but a small fraction of his general standards, and unless
your sense of truth is as sharp as a sword you had better not come near
the laboring man.
The point here made is--and it is of great importance--that we candidly
acknowledge at every instant the nature of our undertaking and the
nature of our power, for in so far as we mistake them we weaken our
practical utility.
It is not as the agent of any institution that you are here, but as
the agent of conscience at the dictation of personal feeling. Do you
need proof that you yourself draw all your power from sheer moral
influence? Note what you do when you start your club. You go to the
nearest well-to-do person and ask for money for rent. He gives it to
you out of his fund of general benevolence. To whom do you really
want to distribute this benevolence? To every one. You feel that by
passing it on through a group and series of boys and young men you can
benefit the whole country. You use them as a mere vehicle. You know
that you can only help them by getting them to help others. Your appeal
for clients then goes out to the whole district. Your club puts you
in communication with every man in it. In teaching your club or in
exhorting any mortal to good behavior, what method, what stimulus, do
you use? Whether you know it or not, you are really drawing support
from every one who is following the same principle, all over the city,
all over the country, all over the world. Do you not ceaselessly appeal
to the examples of Washington and Lincoln, to the books and conduct of
men whose aims were your aims? Or take your own case. Why do you occupy
yourself with this thing? This activity satisfies your demands upon
life; nothing else does. You are the creature of a thousand influences,
and if you begin to trace them you find that you are fulfilling the
will of Toynbee, of John Stuart Mill, of Kant. You are a disciple of
Tolstoi. You were inspired by William Lloyd Garrison. It is they, as
much as you, who are doing this work. It is they who formulated the
ideas and impressed them upon you. Your great friends are the founders
of religions. Examine the actual persons who give you practical help.
You will find Moses, you will find Christ behind them. What you are
using is the world’s fund of unselfishness. It is necessary to employ
the whole of it in order to accomplish anything, however small. As a
practical matter, every one does employ the whole of it every time he
even thinks of reform.
Now, just as we can trace the sources of our power in the great
currents of human feeling that flow down to us out of the past; so we
can foresee the accomplishments of that power in enlarging the lives
of men who come after us. We are sinking the foundations of a new
politics. You cannot always see every stone, but it has gone to its
place. It is impossible to take a stand for what you think is a true
theory without thereby becoming an integral factor for good in every
man who hears of it. It is impossible to be that factor without taking
that stand.