Is there not ample room for non-partisan comment on partisan struggles?
We are in the midst of a political conflict which inevitably takes
up a large part of the general attention; surely there must be some
suggestions which a non-partisan can profitably make. For example, look
at the fact, new in important points, that personal scandal affecting
candidates occupies a conspicuous place in the contest. We have been in
the habit of reasoning that such an element must be demoralizing. Is it
such in the present instance? We think not. We further think that some
very good results may follow such a political campaign. The prominence
given to questions of personal purity, in public life and in private
life, is itself a good sign. It means that the people are keenly alive to
moral issues, that these issues cannot be evaded, that the public demand
for purity has risen without the special notice of the quick-witted
managers of politics. Nor are the discussions having any unfavorable
effect on sound morals. The people insist upon the moral element, and by
so doing prove that they are sounder, truer, more religiously patriotic
than they were supposed to be. We see also the better uses of the press
in more favorable lights. When a scandal is not merely mud, but involves
plain matters of fact in the life of a candidate, the press is put on
its good behavior to tell the story with decorum, and prove it with
good evidence. We never have seen a cleaner campaign, though we never
saw one with such conspicuous challenging of private character. A wise
man said long ago that the American people are always grave in grave
circumstances. The present occasion proves the rule. The solemnity of the
challenge of character has given an air of sobriety to the campaign which
is as satisfactory as it was unexpected.
Another thing which seems to us quite in our way to say is that the
political contest has an uncommonly large humanitarian element in
the center of the field. We probably have readers who believe that
the interests of the American workmen are not specially concerned in
the result. It is not that question of fact which we now raise, but
the fact of the _solicitude_ for the workmen which is conspicuous.
We are witnessing, at this point, not so much a discussion about the
tariff—for so far there has not been much of that—as a discussion over
the permanent welfare of a large and growing section of our population.
This discussion is not carried on by them so much as on behalf of them.
Granted that a great party sees in their welfare an opportunity; what
is it that makes the opportunity? It is surely not any incidents of the
last Congress, or any opinions of candidates. These would be insufficient
to create the discussion in its serious form. Is it not true that the
philanthropy which freed the slave is thinking and feeling for the men
in mills, and their wives and little ones? It would be easy to show
that the politicians would have passed this matter by if they could.
But we have become a manufacturing country. The laborer has become a
great fact. He is a citizen, a social element, a man with a soul, and
the head of a family. The social instinct in us took alarm some years
ago. Outside of parties it has worked out into humanitarian feeling,
and is ripening into purpose. The workman is likely for some decades
to fashion for us the spirit of our politics and the ends sought by our
statesmanship. No matter how much or little it may influence the results
of this struggle for the control of the government, the question of the
workman’s well-being has come among us to stay. It touches our life at
all points. It challenges our institutions. It says to us: “Solve me or I
will dissolve you.” Are we to have a distinctly depressed class doing our
work? Is the “white slave” to live, suffer and die under our feet? There
are persons who say, “it is inevitable. Older societies have sifted down
to the bottom these forlorn and hopeless elements by force of a natural
necessity, by a law of human society.” No good and strenuous American
believes such a doctrine. The country we live in exists in our thought,
to make life fairer, sweeter, more equally gracious for all the members
of the national household. Our ideal is challenged by the specter of a
degraded mass of laborers. We can not see this ghost of the old world
without a shiver of apprehension. It may be that tariff questions do not
touch the main question; that is for others to consider. What we note is
that the whole of this labor question, with its complicated relations to
all other questions, looms large on the horizon.
A third suggestion is that the only practicable mode of dealing
successfully with issues which concern morals, philanthropy and sobriety,
is to get them a place in the one general contest which is waged for the
control of the government. Two parties, one contest—that is the system
of the Republic. All others than the two parties are participants in
the one battle, and on one side or the other. A man in society has to
accept the sun and rain, the social order, the general constitutional
order. His third, fourth, fifth parties are related by the usages of the
country to the real contest between the two parties. He must and really
does choose which of the two he prefers for the victor. He might as well
reject the showers of summer and say he will have none of them as to say
he will have neither party. He must have one or the other; he will have
one or the other; he will contribute to the victory of one or the other.
It is possibly hard to choose; but when it is easy to do so, and one
really wishes to defeat his own party, it is best to deal it a blow in
front with both fists. Providence has arranged a system of mathematics
which counts the men in the Cave of Adullam on one side or the other in
the engagement of the battle-field. It is a good thing to put 200,000
temperance men in line in a state; but a little column of 5,000 or 20,000
of the same army demonstrating by itself really weakens the cause,
because it is so small a part of the army. Workingmen’s parties are no
better. They are made up of men whose interests are in the hands of the
great parties, one or the other of which must take the administration of
affairs. The rule is that this truth of social mathematics grows clear
to most men as the campaign proceeds; and in the end the great body of
voters vote directly for the side they prefer. The stubborn fact is that
only one man can be president at a time, and that the people must choose
one of two men for the office. That is the law of American politics which
no one of us can change. There is not even any relief from it afforded
by dispersing the electoral votes among several men and leaving the
House of Representatives to choose. That body is in existence with a
distinct political complexion—to give the election to it is to choose
one of the two candidates. That is not a chance fact of to-day; it is
a rule of our political system. The political preference of the House
of Representatives is always known when the presidential vote is cast.
We are simply shut up, all of us, to promoting, directly or indirectly,
the election of one of two men to the office of President of the United
States.