THE BETTER ELEMENT.
The evening after this glorious day, Peter came in from his ride, but
instead of going at once to his room, he passed down a little passage,
and stood in a doorway.
“Is everything going right, Jenifer?” he queried.
“Yissah!”
“The flowers came from Thorley’s?”
“Yissah!”
“And the candies and ices from Maillard?”
“Yissah!”
“And you’ve _frappé_ the champagne?”
“Yissah?”
“Jenifer, don’t put quite so much onion juice as usual in the Queen
Isabella dressing. Ladies don’t like it as much as men.”
“Yissah!”
“And you stood the Burgundy in the sun?”
“Yissah! Wha foh yo’ think I doan do as I ginl’y do?”
Jenifer was combining into a stuffing bread crumbs, chopped broiled
oysters, onions, and many other mysterious ingredients, and was
becoming irritated at such evident doubt of his abilities.
Peter ought to have been satisfied, but he only looked worried. He
glanced round the little closet that served as a kitchen, in search of
possible sources for slips, but did not see them. All he was able to
say was, “That broth smells very nice, Jenifer.”
“Yissah. Dar ain’t nuffin in dat sup buh a quart a thick cream, and de
squeezin’s of a hunerd clams, sah. Dat sup will make de angels sorry
dey died. Dey’ll just tink you’se dreful unkine not to offer dem a
secon’ help. Buh doan yo’ do it, sah, foh when dey gits to dem
prayhens, dey’ll be pow’ful glad yo’ didn’t.” To himself, Jenifer
remarked: “Who he gwine hab dis day? He neber so anxious befoh, not
even when de Presidint an Guv’nor Pohter dey dun dine hyah.”
Peter went to his room and, after a due course of clubbing and tubbing,
dressed himself with the utmost care. Truth compels the confession that
he looked in his glass for some minutes. Not, however, apparently with
much pleasure, for an anxious look came into his face, and he remarked
aloud, as he turned away, “I don’t look so old, but I once heard Watts
say that I should never take a prize for my looks, and he was right. I
wonder if she cares for handsome men?”
Peter forgot his worry in the opening of a box in the dining-room and
the taking out of the flowers. He placed the bunches at the different
places, raising one of the bouquets of violets to his lips, before he
laid it down. Then he took the cut flowers, and smilax, and spread them
loosely in the centre of the little table, which otherwise had nothing
on it, except the furnishings placed at each seat. After that he again
kissed a bunch of violets. History doesn’t state whether it was the
same bunch. Peter must have been very fond of flowers!
“Peter,” called a voice.
“Is that you, Le Grand? Go right into my room.”
“I’ve done that already. You see I feel at home. How are you?” he
continued, as Peter joined him in the study.
“As always.”
“I thought I would run in early, so as to have a bit of you before the
rest. Peter, here’s a letter from Muller. He’s got that ‘Descent’ in
its first state, in the most brilliant condition. You had better get
it, and trash your present impression. It has always looked cheap
beside the rest.”
“Very well. Will you attend to it?”
Just then came the sound of voices and the rustle of draperies in the
little hall.
“Hello! Ladies?” said Le Grand. “This is to be one of what Lispenard
calls your ‘often, frequently, only once’ affairs, is it?”
“I’m afraid we are early,” said Mrs. D’Alloi. “We did not know how much
time to allow.”
“No. Such old friends cannot come too soon.”
“And as it is, I’m really starved,” said another personage, shaking
hands with Peter as if she had not seen him for a twelve-month instead
of parting with him but two hours before. “What an appetite riding in
the Park does give one! Especially when afterwards you drive, and
drive, and drive, over New York stones.”
“Ah,” cried Madame. “_C’est tres bien_!”
“Isn’t it jolly?” responded Leonore.
“But it is not American. It is Parisian.”
“Oh, no, it isn’t! It’s all American. Isn’t it, Peter?”
But Peter was telling Jenifer to hasten the serving of dinner. So
Leonore had to fight her country’s battles by herself.
“What’s all this to-day’s papers are saying, Peter?” asked Watts, as
soon as they were seated.
“That’s rather a large subject even for a slow dinner.”
“I mean about the row in the Democratic organization over the
nomination for governor?”
“The papers seem to know more about it than I do,” said Peter calmly.
Le Grand laughed. “Miss De Voe, Ogden, Rivington—all of us, have tried
to get Peter, first and last, to talk politics, but not a fact do we
get. They say it’s his ability to hold his tongue which made Costell
trust him and push him, and that that was the reason he was chosen to
fill Costells place.”
“_I_ don’t fill his place,” said Peter. “No one can do that. I merely
succeeded him. And Miss D’Alloi will tell you that the papers calling
me ‘Taciturnity Junior’ is a libel. Am I not a talker, Miss D’Alloi?”
“_I_ really can’t find out,” responded Leonore, with a puzzled look.
“People say you are not.”
“I didn’t think you would fail me after the other night.”
“Ah,” said madame. “The quiet men are the great men. Look at the
French.”
“Oh, madame!” exclaimed Leonore.
“You are joking” cried Mrs. D’Alloi.
“That’s delicious,” laughed Watts.
“Whew,” said Le Grand, under his breath.
“Ah! Why do you cry out? Mr. Stirling, am I not right?” Madame appealed
to the one face on which no amusement or skepticism was shown.
“I think it is rather dangerous to ascribe any particular trait to any
nationality. It is usually misleading. But most men who think much,
talk little, and the French have many thinkers”
“I always liked Von Moltke, just for it being said of him that he could
be silent in seven languages,” said Le Grand.
“Yes,” said Leonore. “It’s so restful. We crossed on the steamer with a
French Marquis who can speak six languages, and can’t say one thing
worth listening to in any.”
Peter thought the soup all Jenifer had cracked it up to be.
“Peter,” said Leonore, turning to him, “Mr. Le Grand said that you
never will talk politics with anybody. That doesn’t include me, of
course?”
“No,” said Peter promptly.
“I thought it didn’t,” said Leonore, her eyes dancing with pleasure,
however, at the reply. “We had Mr. Pell to lunch to-day and I spoke to
him as to what you said about the bosses, and he told me that bosses
could never be really good, unless the better element were allowed to
vote, and not the saloon-keepers and roughs. I could see he was right,
at once.”
“From his point of view. Or rather the view of his class.”
“Don’t you think so?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Broadly speaking, all persons of sound mind are entitled to vote on
the men and the laws which are to govern them. Aside from this, every
ounce of brain or experience you can add to the ballot, makes it more
certain. Suppose you say that half the people are too ignorant to vote
sensibly. Don’t you see that there is an even chance, at least, that
they’ll vote rightly, and if the wrong half carries the election, it is
because more intelligent people have voted wrongly, have not voted, or
have not taken the trouble to try and show the people the right way,
but have left them to the mercies of the demagogue. If we grant that
every man who takes care of himself has some brain, and some
experience, his vote is of some value, even if not a high one. Suppose
we have an eagle, and a thousand pennies. Are we any better off by
tossing away the coppers, because each is worth so little. That is why
I have always advocated giving the franchise to women. If we can add
ten million voters to an election, we have added just so much knowledge
to it, and made it just so much the harder to mislead or buy enough
votes to change results.”
“You evidently believe,” said Watts, “in the saying, ‘Everybody knows
more than anybody?’”
Peter had forgotten all about his company in his interest over—over the
franchise. So he started slightly at this question, and looked up
from—from his subject.
“Yes,” said Le Grand. “We’ve been listening and longing to ask
questions. When we see such a fit of loquacity, we want to seize the
opportunity.”
“No,” said Leonore, “I haven’t finished. Tell me. Can’t you make the
men do what you want, so as to have them choose only the best men?”
“If I had the actual power I would not,” said Peter.
“Why?”
“Because I would not dare to become responsible for so much, and
because a government of the ‘best’ men is not an American government.”
“Why not?”
“That is the aristocratic idea. That the better element, so called,
shall compel the masses to be good, whether they wish it or no. Just as
one makes a child behave without regard to its own desires. With grown
men, such a system only results in widening the distance between the
classes and masses, making the latter more dependent and unthinking.
Whereas, if we make every man vote he must think a little for himself,
because different people advise him contrarily, and thus we bring him
nearer to the more educated. He even educates himself by his own
mistakes; for every bad man elected, and every bad law passed, make him
suffer the results, and he can only blame himself. Of course we don’t
get as good a government or laws, but then we have other offsetting
advantages.”
“What are those?”
“We get men and laws which are the wish of the majority. Such are
almost self-supporting and self-administering. It is not a mere
combination of words, printing-ink, and white paper which makes a law.
It is the popular sentiment back of it which enforces it, and unless a
law is the wish of a majority of the people who are to be governed by
it, it is either a dead letter, or must be enforced by elaborate police
systems, supported oftentimes with great armies. Even then it does not
succeed, if the people choose to resist. Look at the attempt to govern
Ireland by force, in the face of popular sentiment. Then, too, we get a
stability almost unknown in governments which do not conform to the
people. This country has altered its system of government less than any
other great country in the last hundred years. And there is less
socialistic legislation and propaganda here than anywhere else. That
is, less discontent.”
“But, Peter, if the American people are as sensible as you think, how
do you account for the kind of men who exercise control?” said Le
Grand.
“By better men not trying.”
“But we have reform movements all the time, led by good men. Why aren’t
these men elected?”
“Who are as absolutely inexperienced and blind as to the way to
influence votes, as well can be. Look at it, as a contest, without
regard to the merit of the cause. On one side we have bosses, who know
and understand the men in their wards, have usually made themselves
popular, are in politics for a living, have made it a life-study, and
by dear experience have learned that they must surrender their own
opinions in order to produce harmony and a solid vote. The reformer, on
the contrary, is usually a man who has other occupations, and, if I may
say so, has usually met with only partial success in them. By that I
mean that the really successful merchant, or banker, or professional
man cannot take time to work in politics, and so only the less
successful try. Each reformer, too, is sure that he himself is right,
and as his bread and butter is not in the issue, he quarrels to his
heart’s content with his associates, so that they rarely can unite all
their force. Most of the reform movements in this city have been
attempted in a way that is simply laughable. What should we say if a
hundred busy men were to get together to-morrow, and decide that they
would open a great bank, to fight the clearing-house banks of New York?
Yet this, in effect, is what the reformers have done over and over
again in politics. They say to the men who have been kept in power for
years by the people, ‘You are scoundrels. The people who elected you
are ignorant We know how to do it better. Now we’ll turn you out.’ In
short, they tell the majority they are fools, but ask their votes. The
average reformer endorses thoroughly the theory ‘that every man is as
good as another, and a little better.’ And he himself always is the
better man. The people won’t stand that. The ‘holier than thou’ will
defeat a man quicker in this country than will any rascality he may
have done.”
“But don’t you think the reformer is right in principle?”
“In nine cases out of ten. But politics does not consist in being
right. It’s in making other people think you are. Men don’t like to be
told that they are ignorant and wrong, and this assumption is the basis
of most of the so-called educational campaigns. To give impetus to a
new movement takes immense experience, shrewdness, tact, and many other
qualities. The people are obstructive—that is conservative—in most
things, and need plenty of time.”
“Unless _you_ tell them what they are to do,” laughed Watts. “Then they
know quick enough.”
“Well, that has taken them fifteen years to learn. Don’t you see how
absurd it is to suppose that the people are going to take the opinions
of the better element off-hand? At the end of a three months’ campaign?
Men have come into my ward and spoken to empty halls; they’ve flooded
it with campaign literature, which has served to light fires; their
papers have argued, and nobody read them. But the ward knows me.
There’s hardly a voter who doesn’t. They’ve tested me. Most of them
like me. I’ve lived among them for years. I’ve gone on their summer
excursions. I’ve talked with them all over the district. I have helped
them in their troubles. I have said a kind word over their dead. I’m
godfather to many. With others I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder when the
bullets were flying. Why, the voters who were children when I first
came here, with whom I use to sit in the angle, are almost numerous
enough now to carry an election as I advise. Do you suppose, because
speakers, unknown to them, say I’m wrong, and because the three-cent
papers, which they never see, abuse me, that they are going to turn
from me unless I make them? That is the true secret of the failure of
reformers. A logical argument is all right in a court of appeals, but
when it comes to swaying five thousand votes, give me five thousand
loving hearts rather than five thousand logical reasons.”
“Yet you have carried reforms.”
“I have tried, but always in a practical way. That is, by not
antagonizing the popular men in politics, but by becoming one of them
and making them help me. I have gained political power by recognizing
that I could only have my own way by making it suit the voters. You see
there are a great many methods of doing about the same thing. And the
boss who does the most things that the people want, can do the most
things that the people don’t want. Every time I have surrendered my own
wishes, and done about what the people desire, I have added to my
power, and so have been able to do something that the people or
politicians do not care about or did not like.”
“And as a result you are called all sorts of names.”
“Yes. The papers call me a boss. If the voters didn’t agree with me,
they would call me a reformer.”
“But, Peter,” said Le Grand, “would you not like to see such a type of
man as George William Curtis in office?”
“Mr. Curtis probably stood for the noblest political ideas this country
has ever produced. But he held a beacon only to a small class. A man
who writes from an easy-chair, will only sway easy-chair people. And
easy-chair people never carried an election in this country, and never
will. This country cannot have a government of the best. It will always
be a government of the average. Mr. Curtis was only a leader to his own
grade, just as Tim Sullivan is the leader of his. Mr. Curtis, in his
editorials, spoke the feelings of one element in America. Sullivan, in
Germania Hall, voices another. Each is representative, the one of five
per cent. of New York; the other of ninety-five per cent. If the
American people have decided one thing, it is that they will not be
taken care of, nor coercively ruled, by their better element, or
minorities.”
“Yet you will acknowledge that Curtis ought to rule, rather than
Sullivan?”
“Not if our government is to be representative. I need not say that I
wish such a type as Mr. Curtis was representative.”
“I suppose if he had tried to be a boss he would have failed?”
“I think so. For it requires as unusual a combination of qualities to
be a successful boss, as to be a successful merchant or banker. Yet one
cannot tell. I myself have never been able to say what elements make a
boss, except that he must be in sympathy with the men whom he tries to
guide, and that he must be meeting them. Mr. Curtis had a broad, loving
nature and sympathies, and if the people had discovered them, they
would have liked him. But the reserve which comes with culture makes
one largely conceal one’s true feelings. Super-refinement puts a man
out of sympathy with much that is basic in humanity, and it needs a
great love, or a great sacrifice of feeling, to condone it. It is hard
work for what Watts calls a tough, and such a man, to understand and
admire one another.”
“But don’t you think,” said Mrs. D’Alloi, “that the people of our class
are better and finer?”
“The expression ‘noblesse oblige’ shows that,” said madame.
“My experience has led me to think otherwise,” said Peter. “Of course
there is a difference of standards, of ideals, and of education, in
people, and therefore there are differences in conduct. But for their
knowledge of what is right and wrong, I do not think the so-called
better classes, which should, in truth, be called the prosperous
classes, live up to their own standards of right any more than do the
poor.”
“Oh, I say, draw it mild. At least exclude the criminal classes,” cried
Watts. “They know better.”
“We all know better. But we don’t live up to our knowledge. I crossed
on one of the big Atlantic liners lately, with five hundred other
saloon passengers. They were naturally people of intelligence, and
presumably of easy circumstances. Yet at least half of those people
were plotting to rob our government of money by contriving plans to
avoid paying duties truly owed. To do this all of them had to break our
laws, and in most cases had, in addition, to lie deliberately. Many of
them were planning to accomplish this theft by the bribery of the
custom-house inspectors, thus not merely making thieves of themselves,
but bribing other men to do wrong. In this city I can show you blocks
so densely inhabited that they are election districts in themselves.
Blocks in which twenty people live and sleep in a single room, year
after year; where the birth of a little life into the world means that
all must eat less and be less warm; where man and woman, old and young,
must shiver in winter, and stifle in summer; where there is not room to
bury the people who live in the block within the ground on which they
dwell. But I cannot find you, in the poorest and vilest parts of this
city, any block where the percentage of liars and thieves and
bribe-givers is as large as was that among the first-class passengers
of that floating palace. Each condition of society has its own
mis-doings, and I believe varies little in the percentage of
wrong-doers to the whole.”
“To hear Peter talk you would think the whole of us ought to be
sentenced to life terms,” laughed Watts. “I believe it’s only an
attempt on his part to increase the practice of lawyers.”
“Do you really think people are so bad, Peter?” asked Leonore, sadly.
“No. I have not, ten times in my life, met a man whom I should now call
bad. I have met men whom I thought so, but when I knew them better I
found the good in them more than balancing the evil. Our mistake is in
supposing that some men are ‘good’ and others ‘bad,’ and that a sharp
line can be drawn between them. The truth is, that every man has both
qualities in him and in very few does the evil overbalance the good. I
marvel at the goodness I find in humanity, when I see the temptation
and opportunity there is to do wrong.”
“Some men are really depraved, though,” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
“Yes,” said madame. “Think of those strikers!”
Peter felt a thrill of pleasure pass through him, but he did not show
it. “Let me tell you something in connection with that. A high light in
place of a dark shadow. There was an attempt to convict some of the
strikers, but it failed, for want of positive evidence. The moral
proof, however, against a fellow named Connelly was so strong that
there could be no doubt that he was guilty. Two years later that man
started out in charge of a long express, up a seven-mile grade, where
one of our railroads crosses the Alleghanies. By the lay of the land
every inch of that seven miles of track can be seen throughout its
entire length, and when he had pulled half way up, he saw a section of
a freight train coming down the grade at a tremendous speed. A coupling
had broken, and this part of the train was without a man to put on the
brakes. To go on was death. To stand still was the same. No speed which
he could give his train by backing would enable it to escape those
uncontrolled cars. He sent his fireman back to the first car, with
orders to uncouple the engine. He whistled ‘on brakes’ to his train, so
that it should be held on the grade safely. And he, and the engine
alone, went on up that grade, and met that flying mass of freight. He
saved two hundred people’s lives. Yet that man, two years before, had
tried to burn alive forty of his fellow-men. Was that man good or bad?”
“Really, chum, if you ask it as a conundrum, I give it up. But there
are thoroughly and wholly good things in this world, and one of them is
this stuffing. Would it be possible for a fellow to have a second
help?”
Peter smiled. “Jenifer always makes the portions according to what is
to follow, and I don’t believe he’ll think you had better. Jenifer, can
Mr. D’Alloi have some more stuffing?”
“Yissah,” said Jenifer, grinning the true darkey grin, “if de gentmun
want’t sell his ap’tite foh a mess ob potash.”
“Never mind,” said Watts. “I’m not a dyspeptic, and so don’t need
potash. But you might wrap the rest up in a piece of newspaper, and
I’ll take it home.”
“Peter, you must have met a great many men in politics whom you knew to
be dishonest?” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
“No. I have known few men whom I could call dishonest. But then I make
a great distinction between the doer of a dishonest act and a dishonest
man.”
“That is what the English call ‘a fine-spun’ distinction, I think,”
said madame.
“I hope not. A dishonest man I hold to be one who works steadily and
persistently with bad means and motives. But there are many men whose
lives tell far more for good than for evil in the whole, yet who are
not above doing wrong at moments or under certain circumstances. This
man will lie under given conditions of temptations. Another will bribe,
if the inducement is strong enough. A third will merely trick. Almost
every man has a weak spot somewhere. Yet why let this one weakness—a
partial moral obliquity or imperfection—make us cast him aside as
useless and evil. As soon say that man physically is spoiled, because
he is near-sighted, lame or stupid. If we had our choice between a new,
bright, keen tool, or a worn, dull one, of poor material, we should not
hesitate which to use. But if we only have the latter, how foolish to
refuse to employ it as we may, because we know there are in the world a
few better ones.”
“Is not condoning a man’s sins, by failing to blame him, direct
encouragement to them?” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
“One need not condone the sin. My rule has been, in politics, or
elsewhere, to fight dishonesty wherever I found it. But I try to fight
the act, not the man. And if I find the evil doer beyond hope of
correction, I do not antagonize the doer of it. More can be done by
amity and forbearance than by embittering and alienating. Man is not
bettered by being told that he is bad. I had an alderman in here three
or four days ago who was up to mischief. I could have called him a
scoundrel, without telling him untruth. But I didn’t. I told him what I
thought was right, in a friendly way, and succeeded in straightening
him out, so that he dropped his intention, yet went away my friend. If
I had quarrelled with him, we should have parted company, he would have
done the wrong, I should have fought him when election time came—and
defeated him. But he, and probably fifty of his adherents in the ward
would have become my bitter enemies, and opposed everything I tried in
the future. If I quarrelled with enough such men, I should in time
entirely lose my influence in the ward, or have it generally lessened.
But by dealing as a friend with him, I actually prevented his doing
what he intended, and we shall continue to work together. Of course a
man can be so bad that this course is impossible, but they are as few
in politics as they are elsewhere.”
“Taciturnity Stirling in his great circus feat of riding a whole ward
at once,” said Watts.
“I don’t claim that I’m right,” said Peter. “I once thought very
differently. I started out very hotly as a reformer when I began life.
But I have learned that humanity is not reformed with a club, and that
if most people gave the energy they spend in reforming the world, or
their friends, to reforming themselves, there would be no need of
reformers.”
“The old English saying that ‘people who can’t mind their own business
invariably mind some one’s else,’ seems applicable,” said Watts.
“But is it not very humiliating to you to have to be friends with such
men?” said Mrs. D’Alloi.
“You know Mr. Drewitt?” asked Peter.
“Yes,” said all but madame.
“Do you take pleasure in knowing him?”
“Of course,” said Watts. “He’s very amusing and a regular parlor pet.”
“That is the reason I took him. For ten years that man was notoriously
one of the worst influences in New York State politics. At Albany, in
the interest of a great corporation, he was responsible for every job
and bit of lobbying done in its behalf. I don’t mean to say that he
really bribed men himself, for he had lieutenants for the actual dirty
work, but every dollar spent passed through his hands, and he knew for
what purpose it was used. At the end of that time, so well had he done
his work, that he was made president of the corporation. Because of
that position, and because he is clever, New York society swallowed him
and has ever since delighted to fête him. I find it no harder to shake
hands and associate with the men he bribed, than you do to shake hands
and associate with the man who gave the bribe.”
“Even supposing the great breweries, and railroads, and other interests
to be chiefly responsible for bribery, that makes it all the more
necessary to elect men above the possibility of being bribed,” said Le
Grand. “Why not do as they do in Parliament? Elect only men of such
high character and wealth, that money has no temptation for them.”
“The rich man is no better than the poor man, except that in place of
being bribed by other men’s money, he allows his own money to bribe
him. Look at the course of the House of Lords on the corn-laws. The
slave-holders’ course on secession. The millionaire silver senators’
course on silver. The one was willing to make every poor man in England
pay a half more for his bread than need be, in order that land might
rent for higher prices. The slave-owner was willing to destroy his own
country, rather than see justice done. The last are willing to force a
great commercial panic, ruining hundreds and throwing thousands out of
employment, if they can only get a few cents more per ounce for their
silver. Were they voting honestly in the interest of their fellow-men?
Or were their votes bribed?”
Mrs. D’Alloi rose, saying, “Peter. We came early and we must go early.
I’m afraid we’ve disgraced ourselves both ways.”
Peter went down with them to their carriage. He said to Leonore in the
descent, “I’m afraid the politics were rather dull to you. I lectured
because I wanted to make some things clear to you.”
“Why?” questioned Leonore.
“Because, in the next few months you’ll see a great deal about bosses
in the papers, and I don’t want you to think so badly of us as many
do.”
“I shan’t think badly of you, Peter,” said Leonore, in the nicest tone.
“Thank you,” said Peter. “And if you see things said of me that trouble
you, will you ask me about them?”
“Yes. But I thought you wouldn’t talk politics?”
“I will talk with you, because, you know, friends must tell each other
everything.”
When Leonore had settled back in the carriage for the long drive, she
cogitated: “Mr. Le Grand said that he and Miss De Voe, and Mr. Ogden
had all tried to get Peter to talk about politics, but that he never
would. Yet, he’s known them for years, and is great friends with them.
It’s very puzzling!”
Probably Leonore was thinking of American politics.