The disadvantages of being classed as a reformer are not, I am sure,
sufficiently appreciated; if they were the peace of the world would
not be troubled as constantly as it is by those who would make mankind
over on a model of which they present themselves as the unattractive
example. One of those advantages is that each reformer thinks that all
the other reformers are in honor committed to his reform; he writes
them letters asking for expressions of sympathy and support, and,
generally, when he finds that each of the others has some darling
reform of his own which he is determined to try on an unwilling public,
he is at once denounced as a traitor to the whole scheme of reform
in the universe. Another disadvantage is that reformers never are
reëlected, and I might set forth others, were it my intention to embark
on that interesting subject.
I am moved to these observations, however, by the recollection of an
experience, exasperating at the time, though now of no moment, since
it has cured itself as will most exasperations if left long enough
to themselves. Its importance, if it have any importance at all, may
be ascribed to its effect of having saved me from any such fatal
classification, unless I were far enough away from home, where almost
anyone may be regarded as a reformer. To be sure, as I was just saying,
in the days immediately following my first election, I was regarded
by many of the sacred and illuminated host of reformers in the land
as one of them, since I was asked to join in all sorts of movements
for all sorts of prohibitions,--of the use of intoxicating liquors
and tobacco and cigarettes, and I know not what other vices abhorred
by those who are not addicted to them,--but it was my good luck, as
it seems now to have been, to be saved from that fate by as good and
faithful an enemy as ever helped a politician along. The Democrats had
been placed in power that year in Ohio, and with Tom Johnson, many of
us felt that it was an opportunity to secure certain changes in the
laws of Ohio relating to the government of cities, that is, we felt
it was time to secure our own reforms; everyone else, of course, felt
the same way about his reforms. We had organized late in the previous
year an association of the mayors of the cities in the state for the
purpose of making changes in the municipal code that would give the
cities a more mobile form of government and greater powers, in other
words, it was the first definite movement in favor of home rule for
cities, a liberation for which we struggled for almost a decade before
we achieved any measure of success. We had drafted a new municipal
code and had met at Columbus early in that January in which I took my
office, to put the finishing touches to our code before presenting it
to the legislature, and one morning I strolled into the hall of the
House of Representatives before the daily session had been convened.
There was in the House at that time a newly elected member whom Johnson
had supported for election and no sooner was he in his seat than he
opposed every measure Johnson espoused, and, under the warming applause
his disloyalty won from Johnson’s enemies, he became an opponent of
the mayor more vociferous than effective. He was exactly, I think, of
that type described by Emerson, who in the course of saying everything
worth saying, or that will be worth saying for the next two hundred
years, said: “Republics abound in young civilians who believe that
the laws make the city, that grave modifications of the policy and
modes of living and employments of the population, that commerce,
education and religion, may be voted in or out; and that any measure,
though it were absurd, may be imposed on a people if only you can get
sufficient voices to make it a law. But the wise know that foolish
legislation is a rope of sand which perishes in the twisting; that
the state must follow and not lead the character and progress of the
citizen; the strongest usurper is quickly got rid of; and they only
who build on Ideas build for eternity; and that the form of government
which prevails is the expression of what cultivation exists in the
population which permits it. The law is only a memorandum. We are
superstitious, and esteem the statute somewhat; so much life as it has
in the character of living men is its force.”
I knew this young civilian then only as one of the Johnson group and
as that was sufficient introduction, in the _camaraderie_ that existed
between those of us who were devoted to the same cause, I stopped, at
his salutation, and chatted with him for a moment. He had asked my
opinion on a bill he had introduced, a measure to prohibit or regulate
public dances in cities, or some such thing, and when I failed to
evince the due degree of interest in the young man’s measure, he was at
once displeased and tried to heat me to the proper degree of warmth in
the holy cause of reform. He began, of course, by an indignant demand
to know if I was in favor of the evils that were connected with public
dances, and when I tried to show him that my inability to recognize his
measure as the only adequate method of dealing with those evils did
not necessarily indicate approval of them, he struck the prescribed
attitude, held up his right hand and said something in the melodramatic
style, about the oath of office I had taken not many days before. I saw
at once then that I was dealing with a member in high standing of the
order of the indurated sectarian mind, whose fanaticism makes them the
most impossible persons in the world, and having never been certain
which of the advice in the Proverbs should be accepted, I yielded to a
fatal habit of joking--the history of the Republic is strewn with the
wrecks of careers that were broken by a jest--and told him that I had
taken my oath of office before a notary public, and that perhaps it had
not been of full efficacy on that account.
And then I went away, and forgot the incident. It was revived in my
memory, however, and intensified in its interest for me the next
morning, when on getting back home, I saw in the newspapers a despatch
from Columbus, under the most ominous of black headlines, stating that
I had told the distinguished representative, on the very floor of the
House, under the aegis, one almost might say, of the state, that I had
no reverence for my oath of office, and did not intend to respect it.
Here was anarchy for you, indeed, from the old pupil of Altgeld!
It was, of course, useless to explain, since any statement I might make
would be but one more welcome knot to the tangle of misrepresentation
in which the unhappy incident was being so gladly snarled, and I tried
to forget it, though that was impossible, since it provided the text
for many a sanctimonious editorial in the land, in each one of which
some addition was made to the original report. Herbert Spencer says
somewhere that for every story told in the world there is some basis
of truth, and I suppose he is right, but I have always felt that he
did not, at least in my reading of him, sufficiently characterize
that worst vice of the human mind, intellectual dishonesty. Perhaps
if he had associated less with scientists and more with professional
reformers of the morals of other persons he would not have omitted this
curious specimen from his philosophic analysis, if he did omit it;
and if that experience of the young civilian at Columbus had not been
sufficient, I could have supplied him with another out of an episode in
which I had borne a part some years before, one which should have been
sufficient to warn me against the type for the rest of my life.
It concerns another young civilian, though this one was so old that
he should have known better, and relates to a time years before when
I happened to be running for the state senate. I say happened, for it
was precisely of that fortuitous nature, since I had not been concerned
in the circumstances which nominated me, so entirely negative in their
character that I might as well have been said not to be running at
all. I was a young lawyer, just beginning to practice, and in my wide
leisure was out of town that summer, economically spending a holiday at
my father’s house, and, since the Democrats had no hope in this world
of carrying the district, and could get no one who was on the ground to
defend himself to accept their nomination, they had nominated me. It
was an honor, perhaps, but so empty and futile that when I came home
again it seemed useless even to decline it, and best to forget it, and
so I tried to do that, and made no campaign at all. But one afternoon
I had a caller, a tall, dark visaged man, in black clerical garb, who
came softly into my office, carefully closed the door, and, fixing
his strange, intense eyes on me, said that he came to talk politics.
He represented a reform league and he came, he said, to discuss my
candidature for the state senate, and to offer me the support of his
organization. “Of course,” he went on to explain, “we should impose
certain conditions.” He fixed on me again and very intently, those
strange, fanatic eyes.
I knew very well what the conditions were; it was hardly necessary for
him to explain that I should be expected to sign a pledge to support
the bills proposed by his organization, some of which, no doubt, were
excellent measures.
I explained to him that I was under no illusions as to the campaign,
that there was no possible chance of my election that year, that if
there had been I never would have been nominated, and nothing short
of a miracle could elect me. “But,” I added, “even if that miracle
happens, though it will not, and I should be elected, I should go down
to Columbus and to the Senate able to say that I had made no promises
whatever.”
He looked at me a moment, with those strange, cold eyes peering
narrowly out of his somber visage, and as he gazed they seemed to
contract, and with the faint shadow of a smile that was wholly without
humor, he said:
“Well, you can say that.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The smile raised the man’s cheeks a little higher until they enclosed
the little eyes in minute wrinkles, and invested them with an
expression of the deepest cunning.
“Why, since you are opposed to signing our pledge, we will waive that
in your case, and you and I can have a little private understanding--no
one need ever know, and you can say----” he was gently tapping the ends
of his fingers together, and the last terms of his proposal seemed to
be absorbed by an expression of vulpine significance so eloquent and
plain in its meaning that mere words were superfluous.
I sat there and looked at him; I had known of him, he spoke nearly
every Sunday in some church, and took up collections for the reform to
which, quite sincerely, I believe, he was devoting his life. Then I
said:
“But that isn’t my idea even of politics, to say nothing of ethics.”
I believe now that he had no conception of the moral significance of
his suggestion that we have an implied understanding which I was to
be at liberty to deny if the exigencies of politics suggested it. He
was a reformer, belonging to the order of the indurated mind. He was
possessed by a theory, which held his mind in the relentless mould of
its absolutism, and there his mind had hardened, and, alas, his heart,
too, no doubt--so that its original impressions were all fixed and
immutable, and not subject to change; they could not be erased nor
could any new impressions be superimposed. He was convinced that his
particular theory was correct, and that if only it could be imposed on
mankind, the world would be infinitely better off; and that hence any
means, no matter what, were permissible in effecting this imposition,
because of the good that would follow. It is an old mental attitude in
this world, well treated of in books, and understood and recognized by
everyone except those who adopt it, and in its spirit every new reform
is promulgated by its avatar. But the reformer never thinks of himself
in any such light, of course, he does not understand it any more than
he understands mankind’s distrust of him. It is the instinctive fear of
the theorist that has been felt for every one of them from Robespierre,
the archtype, and impossibilist par excellence, down to the latest man
haranguing his little idle crowd on the street corner.