CHAPTER VI

I

REFORM AND THE REFORMERS

Sensible and patriotic Americans have not, of course, tamely and ignobly

submitted to the obvious evils of their political and economic

condition. There was, indeed, a season when the average good American

refused to take these evils seriously. He was possessed by the idea that

American life was a stream, which purified itself in the running, and

that reformers and critics were merely men who prevented the stream from

running free. He looked upon the first spasmodic and ineffective

protests with something like contempt. Reformers he appraised as

busybodies, who were protesting against the conditions of success in

business and politics. He nicknamed them "mugwumps" and continued to

vote the regular tickets of his party. There succeeded to this phase of

contemptuous dislike a few years, in which he was somewhat bewildered by

the increasing evidences of corruption in American politics and

lawlessness in American business methods, and during which he

occasionally supported some favorite among the several reforming

movements. Then a habit of criticism and reform increased with the sense

that the evils were both more flagrant and more stubborn than he

imagined, until at the present time average well-intentioned Americans

are likely to be reformers of one kind or another, while the more

intelligent and disinterested of them are pretty sure to vote a "reform"

ticket. To stand for a programme of reform has become one of the

recognized roads to popularity. The political leaders with the largest

personal followings are some kind of reformers. They sit in presidential

chairs; they occupy executive mansions; they extort legislation from

unwilling politicians; they regulate and abuse the erring corporations;

they are coming to control the press; and they are the most aggressive

force in American public opinion. The supporters and beneficiaries of

existing abuses still control much of the official and practically all

the unofficial political and business machinery; but they are less

domineering and self-confident than they were. The reformers have both

scared and bewildered them. They begin to realize that reform has come

to stay, and perhaps even to conquer, while reform itself is beginning

to pay the penalty of success by being threatened with deterioration. It

has had not only its hero in Theodore Roosevelt, but its specter in

William R. Hearst.

In studying the course of the reforming movement during the last

twenty-five years, it appears that, while reform has had a history, this

history is only beginning. Since 1880, or even 1895 or 1900, it has been

transformed in many significant ways. In the beginning it was spasmodic

in its outbursts, innocent in its purposes, and narrow in its outlook.

It sprang up almost spontaneously in a number of different places and in

a number of different detached movements; and its adherents did not look

much beyond a victory at a particular election, or the passage of a few

remedial laws. Gradually, however, it increased in definiteness,

persistence, and comprehensiveness of purpose. The reformers found the

need of permanent organization, of constant work, and even within

limits, of a positive programme. Their success and their influence upon

public opinion increased just in proportion as they began to take their

job seriously. Indeed, they have become extremely self-conscious in

relation to their present standing and their future responsibilities.

They are beginning to predict the most abundant results from the

"uplift" movement, of which they are the leaders. They confidently

anticipate that they are destined to make a much more salient and

significant contribution to the history of their country than has been

made by any group of political leaders since the Civil War.

It is in a sense a misnomer to write of "Reform" as a single thing.

Reform is, as a matter of fact, all sorts of things. The name has been

applied to a number of separate political agitations, which have been

started by different people at different times in different parts of the

country, and these separate movements have secured very different kinds

of support, and have run very different courses. Tariff reform, for

instance, was an early and popular agitation whose peculiarity has

consisted in securing the support of one of the two national parties,

but which in spite of that support has so far made little substantial

progress. Civil service reform, on the other hand, was the first

agitation looking in the direction of political purification. The early

reformers believed that the eradication of the spoils system would deal

a deadly blow at political corruption and professional politics. But

although they have been fairly successful in establishing the "merit"

system in the various public offices, the results of the reform have not

equaled the promises of its advocates. While it is still an important

part of the programme of reform from the point of view of many

reformers, it has recently been over-shadowed by other issues. It does

not provoke either as much interest as it did or as much opposition.

Municipal reform has, of course, almost as many centers of agitation as

there are centers of corruption--that is, large municipalities in the

United States. It began as a series of local non-partisan movements for

the enforcement of the laws, the dispossession of the "rascals," and the

businesslike, efficient administration of municipal affairs; but the

reformers discovered in many cases that municipal corruption could not

be eradicated without the reform of state politics, and without some

drastic purging of the local public service corporations. They have

consequently in many cases enlarged the area of their agitation; but in

so doing they have become divided among themselves, and their agitation

has usually lost its non-partisan character. Finally the agitation

against the trusts has developed a confused hodge-podge of harmless and

deadly, overlapping and mutually exclusive, remedies, which are the

cause of endless disagreements. Of course they are all for the People

and against the Octopus, but beyond this precise and comprehensive

statement of the issue, the reformers have endlessly different views

about the nature of the disease and the severity of the necessary

remedy.

If reform is an ambiguous and many-headed thing, the leading reformers

are as far as possible from being a body of men capable of mutual

coöperation. They differ almost as widely among themselves as they do

from the beneficiaries or supporters of the existing abuses. William R.

Hearst, William Travers Jerome, Seth Low, and George B. McClellan are

all in their different ways reformers; but they would not constitute

precisely a happy family. Indeed, Mr. Hearst, who in his own opinion is

the only immaculate reformer, is, in the eyes of his fellow-reformers,

as dangerous a public enemy as the most corrupt politician or the most

unscrupulous millionaire. Any reformer who, like Mr. William Jennings

Bryan, proclaims views which are in some respects more than usually

radical, comes in for heartier denunciation from his brothers in reform

than he does from the conservatives. Each of our leading reformers is

more or less a man on horseback, who is seeking to popularize a

particular brand of reform, and who is inclined to doubt whether the

other brands are available for public consumption without rigid

inspection. Consequently, the party of reform is broken up into a number

of insurgent personalities. "The typical reformer," says the late Alfred

Hodder in a book written in praise of Mr. William Travers Jerome, "The

typical reformer is a 'star,' and a typical reform administration is

usually a company of stars," and a most amusing piece of special

pleading is the reasoning whereby the same author seeks to prove that

Mr. Jerome himself is or was not a "star" performer. The preference

which individual performers have shown for leading parts is in itself

far from being a bad thing, but the lack of "team play" has none the

less diminished the efficiency of reform as a practical and prosperous

political agitation.

These disagreements are the more significant, because the different

"star" reformers are sufficiently united upon their statement of

fundamental principles. They all of them agree to conceive of reform as

at bottom a moral protest and awakening, which seeks to enforce the

violated laws and to restore the American political and economic system

to its pristine purity and vigor. From their point of view certain

abuses have become unwholesomely conspicuous, because the average

American citizen has been a little lethargic, and allowed a few of his

more energetic and unscrupulous fellow-citizens to exploit for selfish

purposes the opportunities of American business and politics. The

function of reform, consequently, is to deprive these parasites of their

peculiar opportunities. Few reformers anticipate now that this task will

be easily or quickly accomplished. They are coming to realize that the

abuses are firmly intrenched, and a prolonged siege as well as constant

assaults are necessary for final success. Some reformers are even

tending to the opinion that a tradition of reform and succession of

reformers will be demanded for the vigilant protection of the American

political and economic system against abuse. But the point is the

agreement among practical reformers that reform means at bottom no more

than moral and political purification. It may, indeed, bring with it the

necessity of a certain amount of reorganization; but such reorganization

will aim merely at the improvement of the existing political and

economic machinery. Present and future reformers must cleanse, oil, and

patch a piece of economic and political machinery, which in all

essentials is adequate to its purpose. The millionaire and the trust

have appropriated too many of the economic opportunities formerly

enjoyed by the people. The corrupt politician has usurped too much of

the power which should be exercised by the people. Reform must restore

to the people the opportunities and power of which they have been

deprived.

An agitation of this kind, deriving as it does its principles and

purposes from the very source of American democracy, would seem to

deserve the support of all good Americans: and such support was in the

beginning expected. Reformers have always tended to believe that their

agitation ought to be and essentially was non-partisan. They considered

it inconceivable either that patriotic American citizens should hesitate

about restoring the purity and vigor of American institutions, or such

an object should not appeal to every disinterested man, irrespective of

party. It was a fight between the law and its violators, between the

Faithful and the Heretic, between the Good and the Wicked. In such a

fight there was, of course, only one aide to take. It was not to be

doubted that the honest men, who constitute, of course, an enormous

majority of the "plain people," would rally to the banners of reform.

The rascals would be turned out; the people would regain their economic

opportunities and political rights; and the American democracy would

pursue undefiled its triumphant career of legalized prosperity.

These hopes have never been realized. Reform has rarely been

non-partisan--except in the minds of its more innocent advocates. Now

and then an agitation for municipal reform in a particular city will

suffer a spasm of non-partisanship; but the reformers soon develop such

lively differences among themselves, that they separate into special

groups or else resume their regular party ties. Their common conception

of reform as fundamentally a moral awakening, which seeks to restore the

American, political and economic system to its early purity and vigor,

does not help them to unity of action or to unity in the framing of a

remedial policy. Different reformers really mean something very

different by the traditional system, from which American practice has

departed and which they propose to restore. Some of them mean thereby a

condition of spiritual excellence, which will be restored by a sort of

politico-moral revivalism and which will somehow make the results of

divine and popular election coincide. Others mean nothing more than the

rigid enforcement of existing laws. Still others mean a new legal

expression of the traditional democratic principle, framed to meet the

new political and social conditions; but the reformers who agree upon

this last conception of reform disagree radically as to what the new

legal expression should be. The traditional system, which they seek to

restore, assumes almost as many shapes as there are leading reformers;

and as the reforming movement develops, the disagreements among the

reformers become more instead of less definite and acute.

The inability of the reformers to coöperate in action or to agree as to

the application of their principles is in part merely a natural result

of their essential work. Reformers are primarily protestants; and

protestants are naturally insubordinate. They have been protesting

against the established order in American business and politics. Their

protest implies a certain degree of moral and intellectual independence,

which makes them dislike to surrender or subordinate their own personal

opinions and manner of action. Such independence is a new and refreshing

thing, which has suddenly made American politics much more interesting

and significant than it has been at any time since the Civil War. It has

a high value wholly apart from its immediate political results. It means

that the American people are beginning a new phase of their political

experience,--a phase in which there will be room for a much freer play

of individual ability and character. Inevitably the sudden realization

by certain exceptional politicians that they have a right to be

individuals, and that they can take a strong line of their own in

politics without being disqualified for practical political association

with their fellow-countrymen--such a new light could hardly break

without tempting the performers to over-play the part. The fact that

they have over-played their parts, and have wasted time and energy over

meaningless and unnecessary disagreements is not in itself a matter of

much importance. The great majority of them are disinterested and

patriotic men, who will not allow in the long run either personal

ambition or political crotchets to prevent them from coöperating for the

good of the cause.

Unfortunately, however, neither public spirit nor patriotism will be

sufficient to bring them effectively together--any more than genuine

excellence of intention and real public spirit enabled patriotic

Americans to coöperate upon a remedial policy during the years

immediately preceding the Civil War. The plain fact is that the

traditional American political system, which so many good reformers wish

to restore by some sort of reforming revivalism, is just as much

responsible for the existing political and economic abuses as the

Constitution was responsible for the evil of slavery. As long,

consequently, as reform is considered to be a species of higher

conservatism, the existing abuses can no more be frankly faced and fully

understood than the Whig leaders were able to face and understand the

full meaning and consequences of any attempt on the part of a democracy

to keep house with slavery. The first condition of a better

understanding and a more efficient coöperation among the reforming

leaders is a better understanding of the meaning of reform and the

function of reformers. They will never be united on the basis of

allegiance to the traditional American political creed, because that

creed itself is overflowing with inconsistencies and ambiguities, which

afford a footing for almost every extreme of radicalism and

conservatism; and in case they persist in the attempt to reform

political and economic abuses merely by a restoration of earlier

conditions and methods, they will be compromising much that is good in

the present economic and political organization without recovering that

which was good in the past.

II

THE LOGIC OF REFORM

The prevailing preconception of the reformers, that the existing evils

and abuses have been due chiefly to the energy and lack of scruple with

which business men and politicians have taken advantage of the good but

easy-going American, and that a general increase of moral energy,

assisted by some minor legal changes, will restore the balance,--such a

conception of the situation is less than half true. No doubt, the "plain

people" of the United States have been morally indifferent, and have

allowed unscrupulous special interests to usurp too much power; but that

is far from being the whole story. The unscrupulous energy of the "Boss"

or the "tainted" millionaire is vitally related to the moral

indifference of the "plain people." Both of them have been encouraged to

believe by the nature of our traditional ideas and institutions that a

man could be patriotic without being either public-spirited or

disinterested. The democratic state has been conceived as a piece of

political machinery, which existed for the purpose of securing certain

individual rights and opportunities--the expectation being that the

greatest individual happiness would be thereby promoted, and one which

harmonized with the public interest. Consequently when the "Boss" and

the "tainted" millionaire took advantage of this situation to secure for

themselves an unusually large amount of political and economic power,

they were putting into practice an idea which traditionally had been

entirely respectable, and which during the pioneer period had not worked

badly. On the other hand, when, the mass of American voters failed to

detect the danger of such usurpation until it had gone altogether too

far, they, too, were not without warrant for their lethargy and

callousness. They, too, in a smaller way had considered the American

political and economic system chiefly as a system framed for their

individual benefit, and it did not seem sportsmanlike to turn and rend

their more successful competitors, until they were told that the

"trusts" and the "Bosses" were violating the sacred principle of equal

rights. Thus the abuses of which we are complaining are not weeds which

have been allowed to spring up from neglect, and which can be eradicated

by a man with a hoe. They are cultivated plants, which, if not

precisely specified in the plan of the American political and economic

garden, have at least been encouraged by traditional methods of

cultivation.

The fact that this dangerous usurpation of power has been accomplished

partly by illegal methods has blinded many reformers to two

considerations, which have a vital relation to both the theory and the

practice of reform. Violation of the law was itself partly the result of

conflicting and unwise state legislation, and for this reason did not

seem very heinous either to its perpetrators or to public opinion. But

even if the law had not been violated, similar results would have

followed. Under the traditional American system, with the freedom

permitted to the individual, with the restriction placed on the central

authority, and with its assumption of a substantial identity between the

individual and the public interest--under such a system unusually

energetic and unscrupulous men were bound to seize a kind and an amount

of political and economic power which was not entirely wholesome. They

had a license to do so; and if they had failed to take advantage

thereof, their failure would have been an indication, not of

disinterestedness or moral impeccability, but of sheer weakness and

inefficiency.

How utterly confusing it is, consequently, to consider reform as

equivalent merely to the restoration of the American democracy to a

former condition of purity and excellence! Our earlier political and

economic condition was not at its best a fit subject for any great

amount of complacency. It cannot be restored, even if we would; and the

public interest has nothing to gain by its restoration. The usurpation

of power by "trusts" and "Bosses" is more than anything else an

expression of a desirable individual initiative and organizing

ability--which have been allowed to become dangerous and partly corrupt,

because of the incoherence and the lack of purpose and responsibility in

the traditional American political and economic system. A "purification"

might well destroy the good with the evil; and even if it were

successful in eradicating certain abuses, would only prepare the way for

the outbreak in another form of the tendency towards individual

aggrandizement and social classification. No amount of moral energy,

directed merely towards the enforcement of the laws, can possibly avail

to accomplish any genuine or lasting reform. It is the laws themselves

which are partly at fault, and still more at fault is the group of ideas

and traditional practices behind the laws.

Reformers have failed for the most part to reach a correct diagnosis of

existing political and economic abuses, because they are almost as much

the victim of perverted, confused, and routine habits of political

thought as is the ordinary politician. They have eschewed the tradition

of partisan conformity in reference to controverted political questions,

but they have not eschewed a still more insidious tradition of

conformity--the tradition that a patriotic American citizen must not in

his political thinking go beyond the formulas consecrated in the sacred

American writings. They adhere to the stupefying rule that the good

Fathers of the Republic relieved their children from the necessity of

vigorous, independent, or consistent thinking in political

matters,--that it is the duty of their loyal children to repeat the

sacred words and then await a miraculous consummation of individual and

social prosperity. Accordingly, all the leading reformers begin by

piously reiterating certain phrases about equal rights for all and

special privileges for none, and of government of the people, by the

people, and for the people. Having in this way proved their fundamental

political orthodoxy, they proceed to interpret the phrases according to

their personal, class, local, and partisan preconceptions and interests.

They have never stopped to inquire whether the principle of equal rights

in its actual embodiment in American institutional and political

practice has not been partly responsible for some of the existing

abuses, whether it is either a safe or sufficient platform for a

reforming movement, and whether its continued proclamation as the

fundamental political principle of a democracy will help or hinder the

higher democratic consummation. Their unquestioning orthodoxy in this

respect has made them faithless both to their own personal interest as

reformers and to the cause of reform. Reform exclusively as a moral

protest and awakening is condemned to sterility. Reformers exclusively

as moral protestants and purifiers are condemned to misdirected effort,

to an illiberal puritanism, and to personal self-stultification. Reform

must necessarily mean an intellectual as well as a moral challenge; and

its higher purposes will never be accomplished unless it is accompanied

by a masterful and jubilant intellectual awakening.

All Americans, whether they are professional politicians or reformer,

"predatory" millionaires or common people, political philosophers or

schoolboys, accept the principle of "equal rights for all and special

privileges for none" as the absolutely sufficient rule of an American

democratic political system. The platforms of both parties testify on

its behalf. Corporation lawyers and their clients appear frequently to

believe in it. Tammany offers tribute to it during every local political

campaign in New York. A Democratic Senator, in the intervals between his

votes for increased duties on the products of his state, declares it to

be the summary of all political wisdom. The fact that Mr. Bryan

incorporates it in most of his speeches does not prevent Mr. Hearst from

keeping it standing in type for the purpose of showing how very American

the _American_ can be. The fact that Mr. Hearst has appropriated it with

the American flag as belonging peculiarly to himself has not prevented

Mr. Roosevelt from explaining the whole of his policy of reform as at

the bottom an attempt to restore a "Square Deal"--that is, a condition

of equal rights and non-existing privileges. More radical reformers find

the same principle equally useful for their own purposes. Mr. Frederic

C. Howe, in his "Hope of Democracy," bases an elaborate scheme of

municipal socialism exclusively upon it. Mr. William Smythe, in his

"Constructive Democracy," finds warrant in the same principle for the

immediate purchase by the central government of the railway and "trust"

franchises. Mr. Henry George, Jr., in his "Menace of Privilege," asserts

that the plain American citizen can never enjoy equality of rights as

long as land, mines, railroad rights of way and terminals, and the like

remain in the hands of private owners. The collectivist socialists are

no less certain that the institution of private property necessarily

gives some men an unjust advantage over others. There is no extreme of

radicalism or conservatism, of individualism or socialism, of

Republicanism or Democracy, which does not rest its argument on this one

consummate principle.

In this respect, the good American finds himself in a situation similar

to that with which he was confronted before the Civil War. At that time,

also, Abolitionist and slave-holder, Republican and pioneer Democrat,

each of them declared himself to be the interpreter of the true

democratic doctrine; and no substantial progress could be made towards

the settlement of the question, until public opinion had been instructed

as to the real meaning of democracy in relation to the double-headed

problem of slavery and states' rights. It required the utmost

intellectual courage and ability to emancipate the conception of

democracy from the illusions and confusions of thought which enabled

Davis, Douglas, and Garrison all to pose as impeccable democrats; and at

the present time reformers need to devote as much ability and more

courage to the task of framing a fitting creed for a reformed and

reforming American democracy.

The political lessons of the anti-slavery and states' rights discussions

may not be of much obvious assistance in thinking out such a creed; but

they should at least help the reformers to understand the methods

whereby the purposes of a reformed democracy can be achieved. No

progress was made towards the solution of the slavery question until the

question itself was admitted to be national in scope, and its solution a

national responsibility. No substantial progress had been made in the

direction of reform until it began to be understood that here, also, a

national responsibility existed, which demanded an exercise of the

powers of the central government. Reform is both meaningless and

powerless unless the Jeffersonian principle of non-interference is

abandoned. The experience of the last generation plainly shows that the

American economic and social system cannot be allowed to take care of

itself, and that the automatic harmony of the individual and the public

interest, which is the essence of the Jeffersonian democratic creed, has

proved to be an illusion. Interference with the natural course of

individual and popular action there must be in the public interest; and

such interference must at least be sufficient to accomplish its

purposes. The house of the American democracy is again by way of being

divided against itself, because the national interest has not been

consistently asserted as against special and local interests; and again,

also, it can be reunited only by being partly reconstructed on better

foundations. If reform does not and cannot mean restoration, it is bound

to mean reconstruction.

The reformers have come partly to realize that the Jeffersonian policy

of drift must be abandoned. They no longer expect the American ship of

state by virtue of its own righteous framework to sail away to a safe

harbor in the Promised Land. They understand that there must be a

vigorous and conscious assertion of the public as opposed to private and

special interests, and that the American people must to a greater extent

than they have in the past subordinate the latter to the former. They

behave as if the American ship of state will hereafter require careful

steering; and a turn or two at the wheel has given them some idea of the

course they must set. On the other hand, even the best of them have not

learned the name of its ultimate destination, the full difficulties of

the navigation, or the stern discipline which may eventually be imposed

upon the ship's crew. They do not realize, that is, how thoroughly

Jeffersonian individualism must be abandoned for the benefit of a

genuinely individual and social consummation; and they do not realize

how dangerous and fallacious a chart their cherished principle of equal

rights may well become. In reviving the practice of vigorous national

action for the achievement of a national purpose, the better reformers

have, if they only knew it, been looking in the direction of a much more

trustworthy and serviceable political principle. The assumption of such

a responsibility implies the rejection of a large part of the

Jeffersonian creed, and a renewed attempt to establish in its place the

popularity of its Hamiltonian rival. On the other hand, it involves no

less surely the transformation of Hamiltonianism into a thoroughly

democratic political principle. None of these inferences have, however,

as yet been generally drawn, and no leading reformer has sought to give

reform its necessary foundation of positive, political principle.

Only a very innocent person will expect reformers to be convinced of

such a novel notion of reform by mere assertion, no matter how emphatic,

or by argument, no matter how conclusive. But if, as I have said, reform

actually implies a criticism of traditional American ideas, and a more

responsible and more positive conception of democracy, these

implications will necessarily be revealed in the future history of the

reforming agitation. The reformers who understand will be assisted by

the logic of events, whereas those who cannot and will not understand

will be thwarted by the logic of events. Gradually (it may be

anticipated) reformers, who dare to criticise and who are not afraid to

reconstruct will be sharply distinguished from reformers who believe

reform to be a species of higher conservatism. The latter will be

forced where they belong into the ranks of the supporters and

beneficiaries of the existing system; and the party of genuine reform

will be strengthened by their departure. On the other hand, the sincere

and thorough-going reformers can hardly avoid a division into two

divergent groups. One of these groups will stick faithfully to the

principle of equal rights and to the spirit of the true Jeffersonian

faith. It will seek still further to undermine the representative

character of American institutions, to deprive official leadership of

any genuine responsibility, and to cultivate individualism at the

expense of individual and national integrity. The second group, on the

other hand, may learn from experience that the principle of equal rights

is a dangerous weapon in the hands of factious and merely revolutionary

agitators, and even that such a principle is only a partial and

poverty-stricken statement of the purpose of a democratic polity. The

logic of its purposes will compel it to favor the principle of

responsible representative government, and it will seek to forge

institutions which will endow responsible political government with

renewed life. Above all, it may discover that the attempt to unite the

Hamiltonian principle of national political responsibility and

efficiency with a frank democratic purpose will give a new meaning to

the Hamiltonian system of political ideas and a new power to democracy.

III

WILLIAM J. BRYAN AS A REFORMER

One would hardly dare to assert that such a future for the reforming

agitation is already prophesied by the history of reform; but the

divergence between different classes of the reformers is certainly

widening, and some such alignment can already be distinguished. Hitherto

I have been classing reformers together and have been occupied in

pointing out the merits and failings which they possess in common. Such

a method of treatment hardly does justice to the significance of their

mutual disagreements, or to the individual value of their several

personalities and points of view. In many instances their disagreements

are meaningless, and are not the result of any genuine conviction; but

in other instances they do represent a relevant and significant conflict

of ideas. It remains to be seen, consequently, what can be made out of

their differences of opinion and policy, and whether they point in the

direction of a gradual transformation of the agitation for reform. For

this purpose I shall select a number of leading reformers whose work has

been most important, and whose individual opinions are most significant,

and seek some sort of an appraisal both of the comparative value of

their work and of the promise of their characteristic ideas. The men who

naturally suggest themselves for this purpose are William J. Bryan,

William Travers Jerome, William Randolph Hearst, and Theodore Roosevelt.

Each of these gentlemen throughout his public life has consistently

stood for reform of one kind or another; and together they include

almost every popular brand or phase thereof. Reform as a practical

agitation is pretty well exhausted by the points of view of these four

gentlemen. They exhibit its weakness and its strength, its illusions and

its good intentions, its dangerous and its salutary tendencies.

Be it remarked at the outset that three of these gentlemen call

themselves Democrats, while the fourth has been the official leader of

the Republican party. The distinction to be made on this ground is

sufficiently obvious, but it is also extremely important. The three

Democrats differ among themselves in certain very important respects,

and these differences will receive their full share of attention.

Nevertheless the fact that under ordinary circumstances they affiliate

with the Democratic party and accept its traditions gives them certain

common characteristics, and (it must be added) subjects them to certain

common disabilities. On the other hand the fact that Theodore Roosevelt,

although a reformer from the very beginning of his public life, has

resolutely adhered to the Republican partisan organization and has

accepted its peculiar traditions,--this fact, also, has largely

determined the character and the limits of his work. These limits are

plainly revealed in the opinions, the public policy, and the public

action of the four typical reformers; and attempt to appraise the value

of their individual opinions and their personalities must be constantly

checked by a careful consideration of the advantages or disadvantages

which they have enjoyed or suffered from their partisan ties.

Mr. William J. Bryan is a fine figure of a man--amiable, winning,

disinterested, courageous, enthusiastic, genuinely patriotic, and after

a fashion liberal in spirit. Although he hails from Nebraska, he is in

temperament a Democrat of the Middle Period--a Democrat of the days when

organization in business and politics did not count for as much as it

does to-day, and when excellent intentions and noble sentiments embodied

in big flowing words were the popular currency of American democracy.

But while an old-fashioned Democrat in temperament, he has become in

ideas a curious mixture of traditional democracy and modern Western

radicalism; and he can, perhaps, be best understood as a Democrat of

both Jeffersonian and Jacksonian tendencies, who has been born a few

generations too late. He is honestly seeking to deal with contemporary

American political problems in the spirit, if not according to the

letter, of traditional democracy; but though he is making a gallant

fight and a brave show, his efforts are not being rewarded with any

conspicuous measure of success.

Mr. Bryan has always been a reformer, but his programme of reform has

always been ill conceived. His first conspicuous appearance in public

life in the Democratic Convention of 1806 was occasioned by the acute

and widespread economic distress among his own people west of the

Mississippi; and the means whereby he sought to remedy that distress,

viz. by a change in the currency system, which would enable the Western

debtors partly to repudiate their debts, was a genuine result of

Jacksonian economic ideas. The Jacksonian Democracy, being the product

of agricultural life, and being inexperienced in the complicated

business of finance, has always relished financial heresies. Bryan's

first campaign was, consequently, a new assertion of a time-honored

tendency of his party; and in other respects, also, he exhibited a

lingering fealty to its older traditions. Reformer though he be, he has

never been much interested in civil service reform, or in any agitations

looking in the direction of the diminution of the influence of the

professional politician. The reforms for which he has stood have been

economic, and he has had little sympathy with any thorough-going

attempt to disturb even such an equivocally Democratic institution as

the spoils system. Yet his lack of sympathy with this aspect of reform

was not due to any preference for corruption. It must be traced to a

persistence of the old Democratic prejudice that administrative

specialization, like other kinds of expert service, implied a

discrimination against the average Democrat.

After the revival of prosperity among his own people had shown that

partial repudiation was not the only cure for poverty, Mr. Bryan fought

his second campaign chiefly on the issue of imperialism, and again met

with defeat. But in this instance his platform was influenced more by

Jeffersonian than Jacksonian ideas. The Jacksonian Democracy had always

been expansionist in disposition and policy, and under the influence of

their nationalism they had lost interest in Jefferson's humanitarianism.

In this matter, however, Mr. Bryan has shown more sympathy with the

first than with the second phase of the Democratic tradition; and in

making this choice he was undoubtedly more faithful to the spirit and

the letter of the Democratic creed than were the expansionist Democrats

of the Middle Period. The traditional American democracy has frequently

been national in feeling, but it has never been national in idea and

purpose. In the campaign of 1900 Mr. Bryan committed himself and his

party to an anti-national point of view; and no matter how well

intentioned and consistent he was in so doing, he made a second mistake,

even more disastrous than the first. In seeking to prevent his

countrymen from asserting their national interest beyond their own

continent, he was also opposing in effect the resolute assertion of the

national interest in domestic affairs. He stamped himself, that is, as

an anti-nationalist, and his anti-nationalism has disqualified him for

effective leadership of the party of reform.

Mr. Bryan's anti-nationalism is peculiarly embarrassing to his political

efficiency just because he is, as I have indicated, in many of his ideas

an advanced contemporary radical. He is, indeed, more of a radical than

any other political leader of similar prominence; and his radicalism is

the result of a sincere and a candid attempt to think out a satisfactory

solution of the contemporary economic and political problems. As a

result of these reflections he dared to advocate openly and

unequivocally the public ownership of the railway system of the country;

and he has proposed, also, a measure of Federal regulation of

corporations, conducting an inter-state business, much more drastic than

that of Mr. Roosevelt. These proposed increases of Federal

responsibility and power would have been considered outrageous by an

old-fashioned Democrat; and they indicate on the part of Mr. Bryan an

unusually liberal and courageous mind. But the value and effect of his

radicalism is seriously impaired by the manner in which it is qualified.

He proposes in one breath enormous increases of Federal power and

responsibility, and in the next betrays the old Democratic distrust of

effective national organization. He is willing to grant power to the

Federal authorities, but he denies them any confidence, because of the

democratic tradition of an essential conflict between political

authority, particularly so far as it is centralized, and the popular

interest. He is incapable of adapting his general political theories to

his actual political programme; and, consequently, the utmost personal

enthusiasm on his part and great power of effective political agitation

cannot give essential coherence, substantial integrity, or triumphant

effect to his campaigns.

The incoherence of his political thinking is best exemplified by the way

in which he proposed to nationalize the American railway system. His

advocacy of public ownership was the most courageous act of his

political career; but he soon showed that he was prepared neither to

insist upon such a policy nor even to carry it to a logical conclusion.

Almost as soon as the words were out of his mouth, he became horrified

at his own audacity and sought to mitigate its effects. He admitted that

the centralization of so much power was dangerous, and he sought to make

these dangers less by proposing that the states appropriate the

railroads operating within the boundaries of one state, and the central

government, only the large inter-state systems. But this qualification

destroyed the effect of his Federalist audacity. The inter-state

railroads constitute such an enormous percentage of the total mileage of

the country that if centralized governmental control was dangerous for

all the railroads of the country, it would be almost equally dangerous

for that proportion of the railway mileage operated as part of

inter-state systems. In the one and the same speech, that is, Mr. Bryan

placed himself on record as a radical centralizer of economic and

political power and as a man who was on general principles afraid of

centralization and opposed to it. No wonder public opinion did not take

his proposal seriously, and no wonder he himself has gradually dropped

it out of his practical programme.

The confusion and inconsistency of Mr. Bryan's own thinking is merely

the reflection of the confusion and inconsistency resident in the creed

of his party. It is particularly conspicuous in his case, because he is,

as I have intimated, a sincere and within limits a candid thinker; but

Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democrats alike have always distrusted and

condemned the means whereby alone the underlying purposes of democracy

can be fulfilled. Mr. Bryan is in no respect more genuinely Democratic

than in his incoherence. The remedial policy which he proposes for the

ills of the American political body are meaningless, unless sustained by

faith in the ability of the national political organization to promote

the national welfare. His needs for the success and integrity of his own

policy a conviction which his traditions prevent him from entertaining.

He is possessed by the time-honored Democratic dislike of organization

and of the faith in expert skill, in specialized training, and in large

personal opportunities and responsibilities which are implied by a trust

in organization. Of course he himself would deny that he was the enemy

of anything which made towards human betterment, for it is

characteristic of the old-fashioned Democrats verbally to side with the

angels, but at the same time to insist on clipping their wings. His

fundamental prejudice against efficient organization and personal

independence is plainly betrayed by his opinions in relation to

institutional reform--which are absolutely those of a Democrat of the

Middle Period. He is on record in favor of destroying the independence

of the Federal judiciary by making it elective, of diminishing the

authority of the President by allowing him only a suspensive veto on

legislation, and of converting representative assemblies into a

machinery, like that of the old French Parliaments, for merely

registering the Sovereign will. Faith in the people and confidence in

popular government means to Mr. Bryan an utter lack of faith in those

personal instruments whereby such rule can be endowed with foresight,

moderation, and direction. Confidence in the average man, that is, means

to him distrust in the exceptional man, or in any sort of organization

which bestows on the exceptional man an opportunity equal to his ability

and equipment. He stands for the sacrifice of the individual to the

popular average; and the perpetuation of such a sacrifice would mean

ultimate democratic degeneration.

IV

WILLIAM TRAVERS JEROME AS A REFORMER

Mr. William Travers Jerome has not so assured a rank in the hierarchy of

reformers as he had a few years ago, but his work and his point of view

remain typical and significant. Unlike Mr. Bryan, he is in temperament

and sympathies far from being an old-fashioned Democrat. He is, as his

official expositor, the late Mr. Alfred Hodder, says, "a typical

American of the new time." No old-fashioned Democrat would have smoked

cigarettes, tossed dice in public for drinks, and "handed out" slang to

his constituents; and his unconventionally in these respects is merely

an occasional expression of a novel, individual, and refreshing point of

view. Mr. Jerome alone among American politicians has made a specialty

of plain speaking. He has revolted against the tradition in our politics

which seeks to stop every leak with a good intention and plaster every

sore with a "decorative phrase." He has, says Mr. Hodder, "a partly

Gallic passion for intellectual veracity, for a clear recognition of the

facts before him, however ugly, and a wholly Gallic hatred of

hypocrisy." It is Mr. Jerome's intellectual veracity, his somewhat

conscious and strenuous ideal of plain speaking, which has been his

personal contribution to the cause of reform; and he is right in

believing it to be a very important contribution. The effective work of

reform, as has already been pointed out, demands on the part of its

leaders the intellectual virtues of candor, consistency, and a clear

recognition of facts. In Mr. Jerome's own case his candor and his clear

recognition of facts have been used almost exclusively in the field of

municipal reform. He has vigorously protested against existing laws

which have been passed in obedience to a rigorous puritanism, which,

because of their defiance of stubborn facts, can scarcely be enforced,

and whose statutory existence merely provides an opportunity for the

"grafter." He has clearly discerned that in seeking the amendment of

such laws he is obliged to fight, not merely an unwise statute, but an

erroneous, superficial, and hypocritical state of mind. Although it may

have been his own official duty as district attorney to see that certain

laws are enforced and to prosecute the law breakers, he fully realizes

that municipal reform at least will never attain its ends until the

public--the respectable, well-to-do, church-going public--is converted

to an abandonment of what Mr. Hodder calls administrative lying.

Consequently his intellectual candor is more than a personal

peculiarity--more even than an extremely effective method of popular

agitation. It is the expression of a deeper aspect of reform, which many

respectable reformers, not merely ignore, but fear and reprobate,--an

aspect of reform which can never prevail until the reformers themselves

are subjected to a process of purgation and education.

It has happened, however, that Mr. Jerome's reputation and successes

have been won in the field of local politics; and, unfortunately, as

soon as he transgressed the boundaries of that field, he lost his

efficiency, his insight, and, to my mind, his interest. Only a year

after he was elected to the district attorneyship of New York County, in

spite of the opposition both of Tammany and William R. Hearst, he

offered himself as a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial

nomination of New York on the comprehensive platform of his oath of

office; but in the larger arena his tactics proved to be ineffective,

and his recent popularity of small avail. He cut no figure at all in the

convention, and a very insignificant one outside. Neither was there any

reason to be surprised at this result. In municipal politics he stood

for an ideal and a method of agitation which was both individual and of

great value. In state and national politics he stood for nothing

individual, for nothing of peculiar value, for no specific group of

ideas or scheme of policy. The announcement that a candidate's platform

consists of his oath of office doubtless has a full persuasive sound to

many Americans; but it was none the less on Mr. Jerome's part an inept

and meaningless performance. He was bidding for support merely on the

ground that he was an honest man who proposed to keep his word; but

honesty and good faith are qualities which the public have a right to

take for granted in their officials, and no candidate can lay peculiar

claim to them without becoming politically sanctimonious. Mr. Hearst's

strength consisted in the fact that he had for years stood for a

particular group of ideas and a particular attitude of mind towards the

problems of state and national politics, while Mr. Jerome's weakness

consisted in the fact that he had never really tried to lead public

opinion in relation to state and national political problems, and that

he was obliged to claim support on the score of personal moral

superiority to his opponent. The moral superiority may be admitted; but

alone it never would and never should contribute to his election. In

times like these a reformer must identify a particular group of remedial

measures with his public personality. The public has a right to know in

what definite ways a reformer's righteousness is to be made effective;

and Mr. Jerome has never taken any vigorous and novel line in relation

to the problems of state and national politics. When he speaks on those

subjects, he loses his vivacity, and betrays in his thinking a tendency

to old-fashioned Democracy far beyond that of Mr. Bryan. He becomes in

his opinions eminently respectable and tolerably dull, which is, as the

late Mr. Alfred Hodder could have told him, quite out of keeping with

the part of a "New American."

Mr. Jerome has never given the smallest evidence of having taken serious

independent thought on our fundamental political problems. In certain

points of detail respecting general political questions he has shown a

refreshing freedom from conventional illusions; but, so far as I know,

no public word has ever escaped him, which indicates that he has applied

his "ideal of intellectual veracity," "his Gallic instinct for

consistency," to the creed of his own party. When confronted by the

fabric of traditional Jeffersonian Democracy, his mind, like that of so

many other Democrats, is immediately lulled into repose. In one of his

speeches, for instance, he has referred to his party as essentially the

party of "liberal ideas," and he was much praised by the anti-Hearst

newspapers for this consoling description; but it can hardly be

considered as an illustration of Mr. Jerome's "intellectual veracity."

If by "liberal ideas" one means economic and political heresies, such as

nullification, "squatter" sovereignty, secession, free silver, and

occasional projects of repudiation, then, indeed, the Democracy has

been a party of "liberal ideas." But heresies of this kind are not the

expression of liberal thought; they are the result of various phases of

local political and economic discontent. When a group of Democrats

become "liberal," it usually means that they are doing a bad business,

or are suffering from a real or supposed injury. But if by "liberal" we

mean, not merely radical and subversive, but progressive national ideas,

the application of the adjective to the Democratic party is attended

with certain difficulties. In the course of American history what

measure of legislation expressive of a progressive national idea can be

attributed to the Democratic party? At times it has been possessed by

certain revolutionary tendencies; at other times it has been steeped in

Bourbon conservatism. At present it is alternating between one and the

other, according to the needs and opportunities of the immediate

political situation. It is trying to find room within its hospitable

folds for both Alton B. Parker and William J. Bryan, and it has such an

appetite for inconsistencies that it may succeed. But in that event one

would expect some symptoms of uneasiness on the part of a Democratic

reformer with "Gallic clearness and consistency of mind, with an

instinct for consistency, and a hatred of hypocrisy."

V

WILLIAM R. HEARST AS A REFORMER

The truth is that Mr. William R. Hearst offers his countrymen a fair

expression of the kind of "liberal ideas" proper to the creed of

democracy. In respect to patriotism and personal character Mr. Bryan is

a better example of the representative Democrat than is Mr. Hearst; but

in the tendency and spirit of his agitation for reform Hearst more

completely reveals the true nature of Democratic "liberalism." When Mr.

Lincoln Steffens asserts on the authority of the "man of mystery"

himself that one of Hearst's mysterious actions has been a profound and

searching study of Jeffersonian doctrine, I can almost bring myself to

believe the assertion. The radicalism of Hearst is simply an

unscrupulous expression of the radical element in the Jeffersonian

tradition. He bases his whole agitation upon the sacred idea of equal

rights for all and special privileges for none, and he indignantly

disclaims the taint of socialism. His specific remedial proposals do not

differ essentially from those of Mr. Bryan. His methods of agitation and

his popular catch words are an ingenious adaptation of Jefferson to the

needs of political "yellow journalism." He is always an advocate of the

popular fact. He always detests the unpopular word. He approves

expansion, but abhors imperialism. He welcomes any opportunity for war,

but execrates militarism. He wants the Federal government to crush the

trusts by the most drastic legislation, but he is opposed to

centralization. The institutional reforms which he favors all of them

look in the direction of destroying what remains of judicial, executive,

or legislative independence. The whole programme is as incoherent as is

that of Mr. Bryan; but incoherence is the least of his faults. Mr.

Bryan's inconsistencies are partly redeemed by his genuine patriotism.

The distracting effect of Hearst's inconsistencies is intensified by his

factiousness. He is more and less than a radical. He is in temper a

revolutionist. The disgust and distrust which he excites is the issue of

a wholesome political and social instinct, for the political instincts

of the American people are often much sounder than their ideas. Hearst

and Hearstism is a living menace to the orderly process of reform and to

American national integrity.

Hearst is revolutionary in spirit, because the principle of equal rights

itself, in the hand either of a fanatic or a demagogue, can be converted

into a revolutionary principle. He considers, as do all reformers, the

prevalent inequalities of economic and political power to be violations

of that principle. He also believes in the truth of American political

individualism, and in the adequacy, except in certain minor respects, of

our systems of inherited institutions. How, then, did these inequalities

come about? How did the Democratic political system of Jefferson and

Jackson issue in undemocratic inequalities? The answer is obviously (and

it is an answer drawn by other reformers) that these inequalities are

the work of wicked and unscrupulous men. Financial or political pirates

of one kind or another have been preying on the guileless public, and by

means of their aggressions have perversely violated the supreme law of

equal rights. These men must be exposed; they must be denounced as

enemies of the people; they must be held up to public execration and

scorn; they must become the objects of a righteous popular vengeance.

Such are the feelings and ideas which possess the followers of Hearst,

and on the basis of which Hearst himself acts and talks. An apparent

justification is reached for a systematic vilification of the trusts,

the "predatory" millionaires and their supporters; and such vilification

has become Hearst's peculiar stock in trade. In effect he treats his

opponents very much as the French revolutionary leaders treated their

opponents, so that in case the conflict should become still more

embittered, his "reformed" democracy may resemble the purified republic

of which Robespierre and St. Just dreamed when they sent Desmoulins and

Danton to the guillotine. When he embodies such ideas and betrays such a

spirit, the disputed point as to Hearst's sincerity sinks into

insignificance. A fanatic sincerely possessed by these ideas is a more

dangerous menace to American national integrity and the Promise of

American democracy than the sheerest demagogue.

The logic of Hearst's agitation is analogous to the logic of the

anti-slavery agitation in 1830, and Hearstism is merely Abolitionism

applied to a new material and translated into rowdy journalism. The

Abolitionists, believing as they did, that the institution of slavery

violated an abstract principle of political justice, felt thereby fully

authorized to vilify the Southern slaveholders as far as the resources

of the English language would permit. They attempted to remedy one

injustice by committing another injustice; and by the violence of their

methods they almost succeeded in tearing apart the good fabric of our

national life. Hearst is headed in precisely the same direction. He is

doing a radical injustice to a large body of respectable American

citizens who, like Hearst himself, have merely shown a certain lack of

scruple in taking advantage of the opportunities which the American

political and economic system offers, and who have been distinguished

rather by peculiar ability and energy than by peculiar selfishness. On a

rigid interpretation of the principle of equal rights he may be

justified in holding them up to public execration, just as the

Abolitionists, on the principle that the right to freedom was a Divine

law, might be justified in vilifying the Southerners. But as a matter of

fact we know that personally neither the millionaire nor the

slave-holder deserves such denunciation; and we ought to know that the

prejudices and passions provoked by language of this kind violate the

essential principle both of nationality and democracy. The foundation of

nationality is mutual confidence and fair dealing, and the aim of

democracy is a better quality of human nature effected by a higher type

of human association. Hearstism, like Abolitionism, is the work of

unbalanced and vindictive men, and increases enormously the difficulty

of the wise and effective cure of the contemporary evils.

Yet Hearst, as little as the millionaires he denounces, is not entirely

responsible for himself. Such a responsibility would be too heavy for

the shoulders of one man. He has been given to the American people for

their sins in politics and economics. His opponents may scold him as

much as they please. They may call him a demagogue and a charlatan; they

may accuse him of corrupting the public mind and pandering to degrading

passions; they may declare that his abusive attacks on the late Mr.

McKinley were at least indirectly the cause of that gentleman's

assassination; they may, in short, behave and talk as if he were a much

more dangerous public enemy than the most "tainted" millionaire or the

most corrupt politician. Nevertheless they cannot deprive him or his

imitators of the standing to be obtained from the proclamation of a

rigorous interpretation of the principle of equal rights. Hearst has

understood that principle better than the other reformers, or the

conservatives who claim its authority. He has exhibited its

disintegrating and revolutionary implications; and he has convinced a

large, though fluctuating, following that he is only fighting for

justice. He personally may or may not have run his course, but it is

manifest that his peculiar application of the principle of equal rights

to our contemporary economic and political problems has come to stay. As

long as that principle keeps its present high position in the hierarchy

of American political ideas, just so long will it afford authority and

countenance to agitators like Hearst. He is not a passing danger, which

will disappear in case the truly Herculean efforts to discredit him

personally continue to be successful. Just as slavery was the ghost in

the House of the American Democracy during the Middle Period, so

Hearstism is and will remain the ghost in the House of Reform. And the

incantation by which it will be permanently exorcised has not yet been

publicly phrased.

VI

THEODORE ROOSEVELT AS A REFORMER

It is fortunate, consequently, that one reformer can be named whose work

has tended to give reform the dignity of a constructive mission. Mr.

Theodore Roosevelt's behavior at least is not dictated by negative

conception of reform. During the course of an extremely active and

varied political career he has, indeed, been all kinds of a reformer.

His first appearance in public life, as a member of the Legislature of

New York, coincided with an outbreak of dissatisfaction over the charter

of New York City; and Mr. Roosevelt's name was identified with the bills

which began the revision of that very much revised instrument. Somewhat

later, as one of the Federal Commissioners, Mr. Roosevelt made a most

useful contribution to the more effective enforcement of the Civil

Service Law. Still later, as Police Commissioner of New York City, he

had his experience of reform by means of unregenerate instruments and

administrative lies. Then, as Governor of the State of New York, he was

instrumental in securing the passage of a law taxing franchises as real

property and thus faced for the first time and in a preliminary way the

many-headed problem of the trusts. Finally, when an accident placed him

in the Presidential chair, he consistently used the power of the Federal

government and his own influence and popularity for the purpose of

regulating the corporations in what he believed to be the public

interest. No other American has had anything like so varied and so

intimate an acquaintance with the practical work of reform as has Mr.

Roosevelt; and when, after more than twenty years of such experience, he

adds to the work of administrative reform the additional task of

political and economic reconstruction, his originality cannot be

considered the result of innocence. Mr. Roosevelt's reconstructive

policy does not go very far in purpose or achievement, but limited as it

is, it does tend to give the agitation for reform the benefit of a much

more positive significance and a much more dignified task.

Mr. Roosevelt has imparted a higher and more positive significance to

reform, because throughout his career he has consistently stood for an

idea, from which the idea of reform cannot be separated--namely, the

national idea. He has, indeed, been even more of a nationalist than he

has a reformer. His most important literary work was a history of the

beginning of American national expansion. He has treated all public

questions from a vigorous, even from an extreme, national standpoint. No

American politician was more eager to assert the national interest

against an actual or a possible foreign enemy; and not even William R.

Hearst was more resolute to involve his country in a war with Spain.

Fortunately, however, his aggressive nationalism did not, like that of

so many other statesmen, faint from exhaustion as soon as there were no

more foreign enemies to defy. He was the first political leader of the

American people to identify the national principle with an ideal of

reform. He was the first to realize that an American statesman could no

longer really represent the national interest without becoming a

reformer. Mr. Grover Cleveland showed a glimmering of the necessity of

this affiliation; but he could not carry it far, because, as a sincere

traditional Democrat, he could not reach a clear understanding of the

meaning either of reform or of nationality. Mr. Roosevelt, however,

divined that an American statesman who eschewed or evaded the work of

reform came inevitably to represent either special and local interests

or else a merely Bourbon political tradition, and in this way was

disqualified for genuinely national service. He divined that the

national principle involved a continual process of internal reformation;

and that the reforming idea implied the necessity of more efficient

national organization. Consequently, when he became President of the

United States and the official representative of the national interest

of the country, he attained finally his proper sphere of action. He

immediately began the salutary and indispensable work of nationalizing

the reform movement.

The nationalization of reform endowed the movement with new vitality and

meaning. What Mr. Roosevelt really did was to revive the Hamiltonian

ideal of constructive national legislation. During the whole of the

nineteenth century that ideal, while by no means dead, was disabled by

associations and conditions from active and efficient service. Not until

the end of the Spanish War was a condition of public feeling created,

which made it possible to revive Hamiltonianism. That war and its

resulting policy of extra-territorial expansion, so far from hindering

the process of domestic amelioration, availed, from the sheer force of

the national aspirations it aroused, to give a tremendous impulse to the

work of national reform. It made Americans more sensitive to a national

idea and more conscious of their national responsibilities, and it

indirectly helped to place in the Presidential chair the man who, as I

have said, represented both the national idea and the spirit of reform.

The sincere and intelligent combination of those two ideas is bound to

issue in the Hamiltonian practice of constructive national legislation.

Of course Theodore Roosevelt is Hamiltonian with a difference.

Hamilton's fatal error consisted in his attempt to make the Federal

organization not merely the effective engine of the national interest,

but also a bulwark against the rising tide of democracy. The new

Federalism or rather new Nationalism is not in any way inimical to

democracy. On the contrary, not only does Mr. Roosevelt believe himself

to be an unimpeachable democrat in theory, but he has given his

fellow-countrymen a useful example of the way in which a college-bred

and a well-to-do man can become by somewhat forcible means a good

practical democrat. The whole tendency of his programme is to give a

democratic meaning and purpose to the Hamiltonian tradition and method.

He proposes to use the power and the resources of the Federal government

for the purpose of making his countrymen a more complete democracy in

organization and practice; but he does not make these proposals, as Mr.

Bryan does, gingerly and with a bad conscience. He makes them with a

frank and full confidence in an efficient national organization as the

necessary agent of the national interest and purpose. He has completely

abandoned that part of the traditional democratic creed which tends to

regard the assumption by the government of responsibility, and its

endowment with power adequate to the responsibility as inherently

dangerous and undemocratic. He realizes that any efficiency of

organization and delegation of power which is necessary to the

promotion of the American national interest must be helpful to

democracy. More than any other American political leader, except

Lincoln, his devotion both to the national and to the democratic ideas

is thorough-going and absolute.

As the founder of a new national democracy, then, his influence and his

work have tended to emancipate American democracy from its Jeffersonian

bondage. They have tended to give a new meaning to popular government by

endowing it with larger powers, more positive responsibilities, and a

better faith in human excellence. Jefferson believed theoretically in

human goodness, but in actual practice his faith in human nature was

exceedingly restricted. Just as the older aristocratic theory had been

to justify hereditary political leadership by considering the ordinary

man as necessarily irresponsible and incapable, so the early French

democrats, and Jefferson after them, made faith in the people equivalent

to a profound suspicion of responsible official leadership. Exceptional

power merely offered exceptional opportunities for abuse. He refused, as

far as he could, to endow special men, even when chosen by the people,

with any opportunity to promote the public welfare proportionate to

their abilities. So far as his influence has prevailed the government of

the country was organized on the basis of a cordial distrust of the man

of exceptional competence, training, or independence as a public

official. To the present day this distrust remains the sign by which the

demoralizing influence of the Jeffersonian democratic creed is most

plainly to be traced. So far as it continues to be influential it

destroys one necessary condition of responsible and efficient

government, and it is bound to paralyze any attempt to make the national

organization adequate to the promotion of the national interest. Mr.

Roosevelt has exhibited his genuinely national spirit in nothing so

clearly as in his endeavor to give to men of special ability, training,

and eminence a better opportunity to serve the public. He has not only

appointed such men to office, but he has tried to supply them with an

administrative machinery which would enable them to use their abilities

to the best public advantage; and he has thereby shown a faith in human

nature far more edifying and far more genuinely democratic than that of

Jefferson or Jackson.

Mr. Roosevelt, however, has still another title to distinction among the

brethren of reform. He has not only nationalized the movement, and

pointed it in the direction of a better conception of democracy, but he

has rallied to its hammer the ostensible, if not the very enthusiastic,

support of the Republican party. He has restored that party to some

sense of its historic position and purpose. As the party which before

the War had insisted on making the nation answerable for the solution of

the slavery problem, it has inherited the tradition of national

responsibility for the national good; but it was rapidly losing all

sense of its historic mission, and, like the Whigs, was constantly using

its principle and its prestige as a cloak for the aggrandizement of

special interests. At its worst it had, indeed, earned some claim on the

allegiance of patriotic Americans by its defense of the fiscal system of

the country against Mr. Bryan's well-meant but dangerous attack, and by

its acceptance after the Spanish War of the responsibilities of

extra-territorial expansion; but there was grave danger that its

alliance with the "vested" interests would make it unfaithful to its

past as the party of responsible national action. It escaped such a fate

only by an extremely narrow margin; and the fact that it did escape is

due chiefly to the personal influence of Theodore Roosevelt. The

Republican party is still very far from being a wholly sincere agent of

the national reform interest. Its official leadership is opposed to

reform; and it cannot be made to take a single step in advance except

under compulsion. But Mr. Roosevelt probably prevented it from drifting

into the position of an anti-reform party--which if it had happened

would have meant its ruin, and would have damaged the cause of national

reform. A Republican party which was untrue to the principle of national

responsibility would have no reason for existence; and the Democratic

party, as we have seen, cannot become the party of national

responsibility without being faithless to its own creed.

VII

THE REFORMATION OF THEODORE ROOSEVELT

Before finishing this account of Mr. Roosevelt's services as a reformer,

and his place in the reforming movement, a serious objection on the

score of consistency must be fairly faced. Even admitting that Mr.

Roosevelt has dignified reform by identifying it with a programme of

constructive national legislation, does the fundamental purpose of his

reforming legislation differ essentially from that of Mr. Bryan or Mr.

Hearst? How can he be called the founder of a new national democracy

when the purpose of democracy from his point of view remains

substantially the Jeffersonian ideal of equal rights for all and special

privileges for none? If, in one respect, he has been emancipating

American democracy from the Jeffersonian bondage, he has in another

respect been tightening the bonds, because he has continued to identify

democracy with the legal constitution of a system of insurgent,

ambiguous, and indiscriminate individual rights.

The validity of such a criticism from the point of view of this book

cannot be disputed. The figure of the "Square Deal," which Mr. Roosevelt

has flourished so vigorously in public addresses, is a translation into

the American vernacular of the Jeffersonian principle of equal rights;

and in Mr. Roosevelt's dissertations upon the American ideal he has

expressly disclaimed the notion of any more positive definition of the

purpose of American democracy. Moreover, his favorite figure gives a

sinister application to his assertions that the principle of equal

rights is being violated. If the American people are not getting a

"Square Deal," it must mean that they are having the cards stacked

against them; and in that case the questions of paramount importance

are: Who are stacking the cards? And how can they be punished? These are

precisely the questions which Hearst is always asking and Hearstism is

seeking to answer. Neither has Mr. Roosevelt himself entirely escaped

the misleading effects of his own figure. He has too frequently talked

as if his opponents deserved to be treated as dishonest sharpers; and he

has sometimes behaved as if his suspicions of unfair play on their part

were injuring the coolness of his judgment. But at bottom and in the

long run Mr. Roosevelt is too fair-minded a man and too patriotic a

citizen to become much the victim of his dangerous figure of the "Square

Deal." He inculcates for the most part in his political sermons a

spirit, not of suspicion and hatred, but of mutual forbearance and

confidence; and his programme of reform attaches more importance to a

revision of the rules of the game than to the treatment of the winners

under the old rules as one would treat a dishonest gambler.

In truth, Mr. Roosevelt has been building either better than he knows or

better than he cares to admit. The real meaning of his programme is more

novel and more radical than he himself has publicly proclaimed. It

implies a conception of democracy and its purpose very different from

the Jeffersonian doctrine of equal rights. Evidences of deep antagonism

can be discerned between the Hamiltonian method and spirit, represented

by Mr. Roosevelt, and a conception of democracy which makes it consist

fundamentally in the practical realization of any system of equal

rights. The distrust with which thorough-going Jeffersonians regard Mr.

Roosevelt's nationalizing programme is a justifiable distrust, because

efficient and responsible national organization would be dangerous

either to or in the sort of democracy which the doctrine of equal rights

encourages--a democracy of suspicious discontent, of selfish claims, of

factious agitation, and of individual and class aggression. A thoroughly

responsible and efficient national organization would be dangerous in

such a democracy, because it might well be captured by some combination

of local individual or class interests; and the only effective way to

guard against such a danger is to substitute for the Jeffersonian

democracy of individual rights a democracy of individual and social

improvement. A democracy of individual rights, that is, must either

suffer reconstruction by the logic of a process of efficient national

organization, or else it may pervert that organization to the service of

its own ambiguous, contradictory, and in the end subversive political

purposes. A better justification for these statements must be reserved

for the succeeding chapter; but in the meantime I will take the risk

asserting that Mr. Roosevelt's nationalism really implies a democracy of

individual and social improvement. His nationalizing programme has in

effect questioned the value of certain fundamental American ideas, and

if Mr. Roosevelt has not himself outgrown these ideas, his misreading of

his own work need not be a matter of surprise. It is what one would

expect from the prophet of the Strenuous Life.

Mr. Roosevelt has done little to encourage candid and consistent

thinking. He has preached the doctrine that the paramount and almost the

exclusive duty of the American citizen consists in being a

sixty-horse-power moral motor-car. In his own career his intelligence

has been the handmaid of his will; and the balance between those

faculties, so finely exemplified in Abraham Lincoln, has been destroyed

by sheer exuberance of moral energy. But although his intelligence is

merely the servant of his will, it is at least the willing and competent

servant of a single-minded master. If it has not been leavened by the

rigorous routine of its work, neither has it been cheapened; and the

service has constantly been growing better worth while. During the

course of his public career, his original integrity of character

has been intensified by the stress of his labors, his achievements,

his experiences, and his exhortations. An individuality such as

his--wrought with so much consistent purpose out of much variety of

experience--brings with it an intellectual economy of its own and a

sincere and useful sort of intellectual enlightenment. He may be figured

as a Thor wielding with power and effect a sledge-hammer in the cause of

national righteousness; and the sympathetic observer, who is not stunned

by the noise of the hammer, may occasionally be rewarded by the sight of

something more illuminating than a piece of rebellious metal beaten into

shape. He may be rewarded by certain unexpected gleams of insight, as if

the face of the sledge-hammer were worn bright by hard service and

flashed in the sunlight. Mr. Roosevelt sees as far ahead and as much as

he needs to see. He has an almost infallible sense of where to strike

the next important blow, and even during the ponderous labors of the day

he prudently and confidently lays out the task of to-morrow. Thus while

he has contributed to the liberation of American intelligence chiefly in

the sense that he has given his fellow-countrymen something to think

about, he is very far from being a blind, narrow, or unenlightened

leader.

Doubtless the only practical road of advance at present is laborious,

slow, and not too enlightened. For the time being the hammer is a

mightier weapon than the sword or the pen. Americans have the habit of

action rather than of thought. Like their forbears in England, they

begin to do things, because their common sense tells them that such

things have to be done, and then at a later date think over the

accomplished fact. A man in public life who told them that their "noble

national theory" was ambiguous and distracting, and that many of their

popular catchwords were false and exercised a mischievous influence on

public affairs, would do so at his own personal risk and cost. The task

of plain speaking must be suggested and justified by the achievement of

a considerable body of national reconstructive legislation, and must

even then devolve largely upon men who have from the political point of

view little to gain or to lose by their apparent heresies. The fact,

however, that a responsible politician like Mr. Roosevelt must be an

example more of moral than of intellectual independence, increases

rather than diminishes the eventual importance of consistent thinking

and plain speaking as essential parts of the work of political reform. A

reforming movement, whose supporters never understand its own proper

meaning and purpose, is sure in the end to go astray. It is all very

well for Englishmen to do their thinking after the event, because

tradition lies at the basis of their national life. But Americans, as a

nation, are consecrated to the realization of a group of ideas; and

ideas to be fruitful must square both with the facts to which they are

applied and with one another. Mr. Roosevelt and his hammer must be

accepted gratefully, as the best available type of national reformer;

but the day may and should come when a national reformer will appear who

can be figured more in the guise of St. Michael, armed with a flaming

sword and winged for flight.