FIRST EFFECTS AND SUBSEQUENT RESULTS OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE; SPOILS
SYSTEM; TRAFFIC IN VOTES; ORGANIZED CORRUPTION; THE BOSS; THE
MACHINE; RULE OF POLITICAL OLIGARCHY.
_Then cried they all again, saying, Not this man, but Barabas. Now
Barabas was a robber._ (John: Chap. xviii, 40.)
On March 4th, 1829, the old Federal régime died with the departure of
John Quincy Adams from the White House. The year 1828 is generally taken
as the last full year of the old honorable and high-toned political
system inaugurated by Washington; the last year at the Federal capitol
of real statesmanship, of high ideals and of strict and uncompromising
devotion to duty. Manhood suffrage had by this time become established
and in operation in almost every state in the Union, and it had
succeeded in electing as president of the United States a spoilsman,
Andrew Jackson, the apostle of extreme democracy, by whom the former
rule of appointments to public office for merit only, and the old
doctrine of the continuance of faithful officials in their places were
flung to the winds.
The change in the electorate effected by manhood suffrage was not merely
superficial, it was radical; what then appeared to many a mere
liberalizing of the franchise was in reality a breaking down of the
guard wall which had hitherto kept the country from slipping down into
the slough. It degraded the practice of American politics from an
honorable exercise of patriotism to a sordid business employment; it
created a class of professional politicians, self-seeking traffickers in
office and the spoils of office; and transferred to them the political
control which had theretofore rested in the hands of the gentlemen of
the country. This unexpected result of manhood suffrage was due to the
fact not sufficiently realized at the time, that it brought into
American politics the important element of the controllable vote, to
which was speedily applied by the politicians methods of organization,
crude and makeshift at first, and afterwards thorough and scientific.
The American people did not then foresee the existence of a proletariat
city vote, nor the immense possibilities in the organization of
floaters. The local politicians of the day, however, saw their chance
and seized it; from amateurs they developed into professionals, and they
speedily made these floaters the nucleus of a small well-disciplined
regular army, by means whereof they seized the machinery of elections
and of government, which they have ever since retained.
Let us here stop for a moment to consider and realize what the country
lost at one stroke by manhood suffrage in its swift descent from the
high character and traditions of that Federal government, the presidency
of which, much against his will, John Quincy Adams transferred on March
4th, 1829, to Andrew Jackson. The administrations of Washington and the
older Adams had been of rigid integrity; Jefferson, Madison and Monroe
had followed in their footsteps. At the time therefore of the election
of the second Adams in 1824, the nation had already acquired an
established tradition of about as pure an administration of government
as was humanly possible. The most valuable political asset of a people
consists of its high political standards and traditions; established
slowly and imperceptibly and by forces of subtle operation they are
elements of the highest importance to its well being. They afford the
explanation of many instances of the superior success of one country
over another in operating the same political machinery. Already in the
United States of 1824 there existed traditions and standards of this
high character; among them a belief that men should enter politics if
not solely from patriotic motives, then at least from a worthy ambition
for honor and power, and in order to further ideas of public policy.
This was undoubtedly the doctrine extant at that time; and men could not
then as now live and flourish in political life under the scarce denied
imputation of being in politics in order to gather political spoils, or
for the mere sake of salary or from other sordid motives.
The high national traditions were well maintained and strengthened by
John Quincy Adams during his four years’ term from 1825 to 1829. He
represented the opposite of the manhood suffrage ideal, he was
unflinchingly opposed to government by numbers; to the spoils system, to
machine political methods and objects; he was a statesman rather than a
politician, and an honest gentleman first of all. His lineage was of the
best, his public experience great; his learning deep; his reputation
unsullied; he was austere, just and high-minded; his public record was
pure and honorable. He was the only president except Washington who
obtained the office entirely on his merits, without having done anything
to court political support. While president he made appointments to
office solely on fitness, applying that test even to his political and
personal opponents, keeping them in office provided they were qualified
for its duties, and absolutely refusing to use in the slightest degree
his executive power so as to procure his renomination. In 1868 a
congressional committee reported that having consulted all accessible
means of information, they had not learned of a single removal of a
subordinate officer except for cause from the beginning of Washington’s
administration to the close of that of John Quincy Adams. Under such
management and prior to 1829 the average of office holders was generally
fair; most of them were men who had led approved lives, had inherited or
acquired a good standing in society, and had achieved a certain
prominence by a combination of social and political qualities, and
through the operation of a kind of civic evolution which had brought
them forward in their respective localities. The effect of the property
qualification laws, and of the traditionary respect for ability,
property and social standing of which those laws were at once a cause
and a symptom, was to tend to push such men to the front, and to make it
a matter of course that they should be selected as members of Congress,
judges, representatives in the legislature, and for similar high
offices. They were not required to resort to trickery and intrigue to
keep their places. It was by men of that type that the Revolution had
been led to success. It was a fatal mistake of a later generation to
suppose that a like class of men could be selected by a general vote,
and that the good results of what had practically been a system of
natural evolution and selection would be attained by an appeal to the
suffrages of the unlettered and the unwise.
No doubt there were instances of corruption in American public life long
before manhood suffrage was established; bank scandals for instance.
Banks are now chartered under a general act. A century ago, however,
they were created by special acts of the legislature, and the granting
of their charters was sometimes attended with charges of legislative
corruption. As early as 1805 at the passage of the New York Merchants
Bank charter, in 1812 at the granting of the charter of the New York
Bank of America, and again in 1824 when the New York Chemical Bank was
organized, such charges were made. Such disclosures were plain warnings
of the dangers of laxity in public affairs.
Population and wealth were increasing and so was governmental
expenditure. Even as early as 1820 there began to appear in the larger
cities a class of idle, vicious, ignorant and therefore purchasable men.
The possible means of political corruption and the temptations thereto
were therefore all in plain sight; and wisdom would have suggested,
especially in view of the continued flood of immigration, that the
greatest care be taken to make the source of government in the
electorate as pure and efficient as possible. The electorate is the
foundation of a free republic, whose political destiny clearly depends
on laying well that foundation. Instead of leaving the choice of its
materials to hazard and caprice it should have been the subject of
conferences of the very wisest among the American statesmen of those
days; the silly twaddle of the extremists of the French Revolution about
a natural right to vote should have been publicly and systematically
discredited; the doctrine that suffrage is not a right but a function
should have been formally stated and promulgated with all the authority
and prestige of our ablest and most prominent men. The people of the
older states should have been warned and warned again by assiduous
propaganda against the danger of permitting ignorance and incapacity to
lodge at the very bottom of the structure of our government. The people
of the newer states should also have been instructed that however
permissible as a temporary measure designed to attract settlers to their
vacant lands, the practice of universal suffrage is dangerous and should
be abolished as soon as society was settled down upon a permanent
foundation. Nothing of the kind was done; on the contrary, it was at
this critical time, just when in view of the changing conditions active
means should have been taken to preserve the purity of politics, that
the very opposite course was taken, and the scheme of suffrage extension
was put into effect by a heedless majority led by politicians who
overruled the wise and disinterested counsels of such able, experienced
and far-seeing men as the venerable John Adams of Massachusetts and
Chancellor Kent of New York.
The really important result of manhood suffrage and one which was
entirely unforeseen and unexpected by most people of the time was the
introduction into American politics of the purchasable or controllable
element as a permanent feature of the electorate, and the tremendous
power thereby acquired by the politicians; and the great defect in the
manhood suffrage doctrine lay in its completely ignoring the sinister
possibilities of suffrage extension in this direction. The floater or
controllable vote speedily became and still is the main reliance of the
political oligarchy. Prior to 1828 the activities of politicians had
been mostly local. In every village and small town where offices are
filled by election there is a field for the political activity of small
men of a well known and inferior type, lazy, vociferous and more or less
unscrupulous. Under the system of property qualification their
activities were much restrained; most of the rabble whom they were able
to influence had no votes. With the subsequent growth of the country in
wealth and population, the creation of cities of say over thirty
thousand inhabitants, and the increasing devotion of industrious
citizens to their own affairs, the field for the labors of these
political gentry perceptibly widened; but it was manhood suffrage and
the election of Jackson which gave them their final triumph and placed
them in power all over the land. The secret of this power lies in the
organization of this floater vote into small local political societies
which combined form at least the nucleus of a species of political army
ready to do the bidding of its officers. It consists principally of that
considerable body of men who have no political principles and no
appreciable pecuniary interest in the community. As they pay no taxes
they are quite willing that the government outlay be increased provided
that they get a share of the plunder. They include the worthless
classes, the very ignorant, the needy and shiftless, drunkards, petty
criminals, fools, and loafers. Men with small political ambitions, men
who are business failures, men too lazy to work, are attracted to these
organizations by hopes of political office or other sinecure employment.
In this way, a fairly sufficient nucleus of controllables is obtained.
To these may be joined a class of thriftless partisans or followers of
the bosses; frequenters of saloons and small local political clubrooms;
such men as seek political advantage by cheap means or have a taste for
low politics. Bribes are distributed, sometimes in the shape of small
loans, sometimes as small jobs or employments for themselves, their
relatives, or friends. Their careless habits and want of principle and
of fixed belief in anything, their small cynicism and their ignorance of
public affairs, make such men easily manageable by certain politicians
who are not above dealings of that character. The vote of every man
jack of them is as effective as that of a bishop or publicist, and any
score of them are much more easily managed and reliable than twenty
bishops and publicists would be. The local organization thus formed
lives off a traffic in votes and offices; it buys votes, works them up
into elective offices and resells them with its trade mark to the
highest bidder.
It was the chiefs of such an organized rabble who seizing the electoral
machinery rejected Adams in 1828, crying “Away with him, give us
Barabas!” and made Jackson, the illiterate spoilsman, President of the
United States. Adams’ defeat ended the epoch of high-minded,
disinterested statesmanship in the White House. “His retirement” (says
Morse) “brought to a close a list of Presidents who deserved to be
called statesmen in the highest sense of that term, honorable men, pure
patriots, and with perhaps one exception all of the first order of
ability in public affairs.” (_Life of Adams_, p. 214.) But manhood
suffrage did more by that stroke than oust Adams; it destroyed the pure
political system which he represented, the noble traditions of forty
years, and deprived the nation of all future hope of seeing as long as
manhood suffrage endures a Washington, a Hamilton or an Adams in high
office in this country. “It was” (says Merriam) “by far the most
important change made during the Jackson epoch, for it radically altered
the foundation of the Republic.” (_American Political Theories_, p.
193.)
Some of the mischief attendant upon the institution of manhood suffrage
must have been apparent to the discerning eye wherever and as soon as it
was adopted, but not its full extent. Time was required to get rid of
competent and honorable leaders, traditions and standards, to replace
them by new ones, and to invent catch words and war cries. But as time
went on this downward movement became accelerated. _Facilis descensus
Averno._ At first, little by little, afterwards more rapidly, the
ambitions and creeds of the early Republic were everywhere replaced by
the sordid cravings and sham sentimentalities of the rabble. In a
surprisingly short time we got down into the political mire, where we
now miserably splash about making a stench with every effort to escape.
The inauguration of Jackson brought the new maleficent forces into full
play. Jackson was the embodiment of the manhood suffrage ideal, and of
the growing revolt against the government of intelligence. Lecky says
that he “deserves to be remembered as the founder of the most stupendous
system of political corruption in modern history.” The following, from
the pen of Roosevelt, throws light on the situation:
“Until 1828 all the presidents, and indeed almost all the men who
took the lead in public life, alike in national and in state
affairs, had been drawn from what in Europe would have been called
the ‘upper classes.’ They were mainly college-bred men of high
social standing, as well educated as any in the community, usually
rich or at least well-to-do. Their subordinates in office were of
much the same material. It was believed, and the belief was acted
upon, that public life needed an apprenticeship of training and
experience. Many of our public men had been able; almost all had
been honorable and upright. The change of parties in 1800, when the
Jeffersonian Democracy came in, altered the policy of the
government, but not the character of the officials. In that
movement, though Jefferson had behind him the mass of the people as
the rank and file of his party, yet all his captains were still
drawn from among the men in the same social position as himself.
The Revolutionary War had been fought under the leadership of the
colonial gentry; and for years after it was over the people, as a
whole, felt that their interests could be safely intrusted to and
were identical with those of the descendants of their revolutionary
leaders. The classes in which were to be found almost all the
learning, the talent, the business activity, and the inherited
wealth and refinement of the country, had also hitherto contributed
much to the body of its rulers.
“The Jacksonian Democracy stood for the revolt against these
rulers; its leaders, as well as their followers, all came from the
mass of the people. The majority of the voters supported Jackson
because they felt he was one of themselves, and because they
understood that his selection would mean the complete overthrow of
the classes in power and their retirement from the control of the
government. There was nothing to be said against the rulers of the
day; they had served the country and all its citizens well, and
they were dismissed, not because the voters could truthfully allege
any wrong-doing whatsoever against them, but solely because, in
their purely private and personal feelings and habits of life, they
were supposed to differ from the mass of the people.” (_Life of
Benton_, pp. 70, 71, 72.)
President Jackson’s administration speedily gave discerning men an
opportunity to measure the standards and ideals of the newly
enfranchised voters. He and they considered the public offices as loot
to be distributed among party workers. With the cry of “To the victors
belong the spoils” the beneficiaries of universal suffrage began the
work of plunder and misrule which they have ever since continued.
Jackson and Van Buren--a slick politician--became the leaders of the
mobocratic movement, which they called “democratic,” and the demand for
offices became its war cry. In his first presidential message Jackson
proclaimed “that every citizen has a right to share in the emoluments of
the public service,” an ardent bid for the support of the worthless
class of men recently granted the vote. We can easily imagine what
creatures they were. In that early time in a new country, with
opportunity knocking at every man’s door, work to be had for the asking,
large farms given by the government free to settlers, with every
inducement to an honest man to follow an industrious calling, they
preferred to loaf around corners, to infest barrooms, to become members
of gangs of political rowdies, to beg, bully and coax for petty offices.
Too lazy or incompetent, or both, to accumulate or even to retain the
small amount of property needed to qualify them as voters, their only
ambition was by fair or foul means to live off the community with the
least possible exertion. After Jackson’s inauguration in March 1829, as
we are told by Ostrogorski:
“The vast popular army which marched triumphantly through the
streets of Washington dispersed to their homes, but one of its
divisions remained, the corps of marauders which followed it. This
was composed of the politicians. They wanted their spoils. The
victory was due to their efforts and as the laborer is worthy of
his hire, they deserved a reward. By way of remuneration for their
services, they demanded places in the administration. They filled
the air of Washington like locusts, they swarmed in the halls and
lobbies of the public buildings, in the adjoining streets they
besieged the residences of Jackson and his ministers.” (_Democracy
and the Party System in the United States._, p. 21.)
“It was” (says Schurz) “as if a victorious army had come to take
possession of a conquered country, expecting their general to
distribute among them the spoil of the land. A spectacle was
enacted never before known in the capital of the Republic.” (_Life
of Clay_, Vol. I, p. 334.)
“A new force, compounded in about equal proportions of corruption
and savagery, was soon made potential, alike in the battle fields
of politics, in the methods of election and in the processes of
administration.” (Lalor’s _Cyclopedia_; Spoils System.)
Prior to Jackson’s time only seventy-four Federal officials had been
removed from office in the entire history of the government. In the
first year of his administration he dismissed or caused to be dismissed
more than two thousand, and all for political reasons. The number of
persons employed by the Federal Government in the first year of John
Quincy Adams’ administration was about 55,000; under Jackson it was
increased to over 100,000. In his eight-year term he no doubt doubled
the number of Federal officials.
“A perfect reign of terror ensued among the officeholders. In the
first month of the new administration more removals took place than
during all the previous administrations put together. Appointments
were made with little or no attention to fitness, or even honesty,
but solely because of personal or political services. Removals were
not made in accordance with any known rule at all; the most
frivolous pretexts were sufficient, if advanced by useful
politicians who needed places already held by capable incumbents.
Spying and tale-bearing became prominent features of official life,
the meaner office-holders trying to save their own heads by
denouncing others. The very best men were unceremoniously and
causelessly dismissed; gray-headed clerks, who had been appointed
by the earlier presidents--by Washington, the elder Adams, and
Jefferson--being turned off at an hour’s notice, although a quarter
of a century’s faithful work in the public service had unfitted
them to earn their living elsewhere. Indeed, it was upon the best
and most efficient men that the blow fell heaviest; the spies,
tale-bearers and tricksters often retained their positions. In 1829
the public service was, as it always had been, administered purely
in the interest of the people; and the man who was styled the
especial champion of the people dealt that service the heaviest
blow it has ever received.” (Roosevelt; _Life of Benton_, pp. 82,
83.)
In a speech in the House of Representatives in 1834 Henry Clay referred
to “the ravenous pursuit after public situations not for the sake of the
honors and the performance of their public duties but as a means of
private subsistence.” He said that the office hunters were so greedy
that they watched with eagerness the dying bed of an actual incumbent.
Daniel Webster, about the time of Jackson’s election said: “As far as I
know there is no civilized country on earth in which, under change of
rulers, there is such an inquisition of spoils as we have witnessed in
this free republic.” From this time forward this degenerate type of
office seekers became an important factor in every American election.
The victory of Jackson, says Farrand,
“Was a victory of the South and West, especially by the latter; it
was a victory for democracy; but it was also a victory of organized
politics ... it seems to mark the rise of a class of professional
politicians. These men were not like the old ruling class whose
members were in politics largely from a sense of duty and public
service, or for the honor of it, or even for the sake of power; but
they were in politics as a business, not for the irregular profits
to be derived therefrom but to make a living.” (_Development of the
United States_, pp. 156, 157.)
It is really astonishing to note how speedily manhood suffrage developed
its appropriate mischiefs. Soon, with the increase of a purchasable
constituency the traffic in votes became more easy and common, and the
struggle for the spoils grew rapidly in intensity. The policy then put
into play of making the offices the spoils of politics produced in a
comparatively few years the beginnings of the political machine.
“General Jackson, the candidate of the populace, and the
representative hero of the ignorant masses, instituted a new system
of administering the government, in which the personal interests
became the most important element, and that organization and
strategy were developed which have since become known and infamous
under the name of the political machine.” (_Life of J. Q. Adams_ by
Morse, p. 214.)
About 1830 a new flood of immigration set in and the politicians made it
their business to win the favor of the immigrants and to organize the
great foreign vote and especially the Irish vote in New York City and
elsewhere. This was not difficult as there was neither opposition nor
competition. In New York they seized Tammany Hall, and perfected and
employed its organization and similar organizations elsewhere; they
developed and enthroned political bosses, and established and operated
political machines. The growth of this class is thus described by
Ostrogorski:
“But in proportion as the old generation which had founded the
republic disappeared, as the development of the country entailed
that of the public service, and the political contingents increased
through extension of the suffrage, the scramble for the loaves and
fishes became closer and keener. There arose a whole class of men
of low degree who applied all their energies in this direction, and
who sought their means of subsistence in politics, and especially
in its troubled waters.” (_Democracy and the Party System in the
United States_, p. 19.)
And further:
“The old political supremacy wielded by the élite of the nation,
... passed to an innumerable crowd of petty local leaders who
stood nearer to the masses but who too often were only needy
adventurers.” (P. 23.)
Jackson was followed in 1837 by his lieutenant, Van Buren, who was the
first machine-made President, and the situation is thus described by
Roosevelt:
“During Van Buren’s administration the standard of public honesty,
which had been lowering with frightful rapidity ever since, with
Adams, the men of high moral tone had gone out of power, went
almost as far down as it could go; although things certainly did
not change for the better under Tyler and Polk. Not only was there
the most impudent and unblushing rascality among the public
servants of the nation, but the people themselves, through their
representatives in the state legislatures, went to work to swindle
their honest creditors. Many states, in the rage for public
improvements, had contracted debts which they now refused to pay;
in many cases they were unable, or at least so professed
themselves, even to pay the annual interest. The debts of the
states were largely held abroad; they had been converted into stock
and held in shares, which had gone into a great number of hands,
and now, of course, became greatly depreciated in value. It is a
painful and shameful page in our history; and every man connected
with the repudiation of the states’ debts ought, if remembered at
all, to be remembered only with scorn and contempt.”
Towards the close of Van Buren’s administration, complaint was made of
waste of public money.
“There was good ground for their complaint, as the waste and
peculation in some of the departments had been very great.... While
they had been in power the character of the public service had
deteriorated frightfully, both as regarded its efficiency and
infinitely more as regarded its honesty; and under Van Buren the
amount of money stolen by the public officers, compared to the
amount handed in to the treasury, was greater than ever before or
since. For this the Jacksonians were solely and absolutely
responsible; they drove out the merit system of making
appointments, and introduced the ‘spoils’ system in its place; and
under the latter they chose a peculiarly dishonest and incapable
set of officers, whose sole recommendation was to be found in
knavish trickery and low cunning that enabled them to manage the
ignorant voters who formed the backbone of Jackson’s party.” (_Life
of Benton_, pp. 219, 230, 231.)
In 1841 Harrison succeeded Van Buren; there was a change of parties; the
Democrats went out, and the Whigs, who had inveighed against the spoils
system, took their places. But the expected reform did not come off; it
was no longer a question of parties or policies; the electorate itself
had been hopelessly degraded by manhood suffrage, and the leaders of
both parties were unable, if they wished, to purify politics; they were
obliged either to adopt manhood suffrage low methods, or go out of
public life. In vain Clay, the great Whig leader, thundered in Congress
against the spoils system.
“In solemn words of prophecy, he (Clay) painted the effects which
the systematic violation of this principle (Government is a trust),
inaugurated by Jackson, must inevitably bring about; political
contests turned into scrambles for plunder; a system of universal
rapacity, substituted for a system of responsibility; favoritism
for fitness; a Congress corrupted, the press corrupted, general
corruption; until the substance of free government having
disappeared, some pretorian band would arise, and with the general
concurrence of a distracted people, put an end to useless forms.”
(Schurz, _Life of Clay_, p. 335, Vol. I.)
Clay’s influence in Congress was enormous, but he was powerless to cure
the inherent rottenness of a manhood suffrage constituency. The pressure
of the spoilsmen upon the Whig Harrison’s administration equalled or
surpassed that upon the Democrat Jackson, and is said to have caused
Harrison’s death. It is thus described by Ostrogorski:
“When Harrison took up his abode in the White House, the rush
became tremendous; the applicants literally pursued the ministers
and the president day and night; they besieged the former in their
offices or in their homes, and even in the streets; a good many
candidates for offices slept in the corridors of the White House to
catch the president the next morning as soon as he got up.”
(_Democracy and the Party System in the U.S._, p. 36.)
Schurz thus describes the operation of the manhood suffrage spoils
system as it had developed in ten or twelve years after its introduction
in 1829:
“Not only were the officers of the government permitted to become
active workers in party politics, but they were made to understand
that active partisanship was one--perhaps the principal one--of
their duties. Political assessments upon office holders with all
the inseparable scandals became at once a part of the system. The
spoils politician in office grasped almost everywhere the reins of
local leadership in the party.... The spoils system bore a crop of
corruption such as had never been known before. Swartwout, the
collector of customs at New York, one of General Jackson’s
favorites, was discovered to be a defaulter to the amount of nearly
$1,250,000, and the District Attorney of the U. S. at New York to
the amount of $72,000. Almost all land officers were defaulters....
Officials seemed to help themselves to the public money, not only
without shame, but in many cases apparently without any fear of
punishment.” (_Life of Clay_, Vol. II, pp. 183, 184.)
This from Roosevelt referring to 1838:
“The Jacksonian Democracy was already completely ruled by a
machine, of which the most important cogs were the countless
office-holders, whom the spoils system had already converted into a
band of well-drilled political mercenaries. A political machine can
only be brought to a state of high perfection in a party containing
very many ignorant and uneducated voters; and the Jacksonian
Democracy held in its ranks the mass of the ignorance of the
country.” (_Life of Benton_, p. 185.)
Some writers put all the blame on Jackson for the overthrow of the old
lofty ideals and standards of Federal politics, which occurred in his
presidency. But Jackson, though coarse and ignorant, was not evil-minded
nor intentionally unpatriotic; nor was he, even if so disposed, gifted
with the power of corrupting the entire politics of the country. The
mischiefs which broke out in his time were nation-wide and must have
been due to a nation-wide cause. The fact is that the party of which
Jackson happened to be the leader was caught in a movement, the full
meaning and effect of which was unsuspected by everybody. The wash of
the French Revolution had reached us and had swept manhood suffrage into
our boat. Schurz says that in Jackson’s administration there was infused
into the government and the whole body politic a spirit of lawlessness
which outlived Jackson, and of which the demoralizing influence is felt
to this day; that barbarous habits were then first introduced into the
field of national affairs, and selfishness made a ruling motive in
politics, resulting in a crop of corruption which startled the country.
All this is true; the mistake is in ascribing to Jackson or to any one
person a widespread deterioration no one man could possibly have
accomplished. For such a far-reaching effect, a universal cause was
needed; and that that cause was manhood suffrage no candid investigator
can possibly doubt. McLaughlin in his _Life of Cass_ (p. 136) recognizes
that the introduction of the spoils system in 1829 cannot be solely
charged to Jackson or to Van Buren; that they were the mere conduits
through which was conducted into federal politics the flood of
corruption produced by other causes. But those causes he fails to
specify. “It came by natural evolution ... the offices of trust were
handed over to the men who brought the greatest pressure to bear, and
could make plain their political influences to the scullions of the
kitchen cabinet. If the student of American politics is to understand
the place which the spoils system holds he must see that its
introduction was a natural phase in our national development.” And he
describes the brutality of “the scrambling, punch-drinking mob which
invaded Washington at Jackson’s inauguration.” It needs no Sherlock
Holmes, however, to tell us that the advent of this mob and their
possession of the administration would not have been “a natural phase in
our national development” had it not been for the specific operation of
the new institution of manhood suffrage. The influences which it
introduced in our political structure were favorable to the spoils
system, which was popularly felt to be a proper result of the filling
of all offices by vote of the masses. The _Cyclopedia of American
Government_ states that the people favored the introduction of the
spoils system. As Marcy said in a speech about that time, “They see
nothing wrong in the rule that to the victors belong the spoils of the
enemy.” In a word the Democratic spirit ignored efficiency in office as
well as in the voter; and the office became what it still continues to
be, a reward, a token of gratitude for political activity.
The lamentable effects of manhood suffrage continued in full sweep after
the death of Harrison and the return of the Jackson Democracy to power
under Polk in 1845. The resultant flagrant misgovernment caused growing
popular resentment which might have produced valuable results had it not
been for the slavery agitation which soon drove all other political
questions into the background. Already in 1843 the dissatisfaction of
large numbers was displayed by the organization of the American or
Knownothing party, which born in New York and baptized with blood in
Philadelphia rapidly spread through the country. Formed ostensibly to
check the growing power of Irish Roman Catholic politicians, its real
grievance was manhood suffrage misrule. Its leaders mistook the cause of
the new political scandals. They wrongly attributed them exclusively to
the Irish; they were really due to the effect of the voting power of the
newly enfranchised and organized political floaters, both foreign and
American. Polk’s election was secured by the machine in 1844:
“By the almost solid foreign vote still unfit for the duties of
American citizenship; by the vicious and criminal classes in all
the great cities of the North and in New Orleans; by the corrupt
politicians, who found ignorance and viciousness tools ready forged
to their hands, wherewith to perpetrate the gigantic frauds without
which the election would have been lost.” (Roosevelt, _Life of
Benton_, pp. 290, 291.)
On Pierce’s inauguration in 1853, says Rhodes, “the importunate
begging for official positions in a republic where it was so easy
to earn a living was nothing less than disgraceful. Office seekers
crowded the public receptions of the President, and while greeting
him in the usual way, attempted at the same time to urge their
claims, actually thrusting their petitions into his hands.”
(_Rhodes_, I, 339.)
Meantime the bribery of voters and of legislatures rapidly grew more
common and shameless, and about this time the purchase of legislation
began to be a scandal. Referring to this period, Prof. Reinsch says:
“In those earlier days things were often managed with little
adroitness. There was much indiscriminate and broadcast bribery; to
buy men for a moderate amount per vote was the acme of ambition to
the successful lobbyist.” (_American Legislatures and Legislative
Methods_, p. 231.)
And Farrand writes, referring to the same period:
“For the first time in contemporary accounts much was made of the
vile corruption of politics, the charge being with the growth of a
class of professional politicians and the great increase of wealth
that money was used improperly, both for bribing of voters and for
accomplishing the miscarriage of justice.” (_Development of United
States_, p. 209.)
Under the united influence of manhood suffrage and its offspring the
spoils system, corruption, rascality and official incapacity increased
enormously as time went on. The historian Rhodes writing of the decade
from 1850 to 1860 says that “plentiful evidence of the popular opinion
that dishonesty prevailed may be found in the literature of the time.”
And that, “the executive and legislative departments of the national
government were undoubtedly as much tainted with corruption between
1850-60 as they are at the present time.” (1904.) Senator Benton of
Missouri writing in 1850 said:
“Now office is sought for support and for the repair of dilapidated
fortunes; applicants obtrude themselves, and prefer claims to
office. Their personal condition and party services, not
qualification, are made the basis of the demand; and the crowds
which congregate at Washington, at the change of an
administration, supplicants for office are humiliating to behold,
and threaten to change the contest of parties from a contest for
principle into a struggle for plunder.” (_Thirty Years in
Congress_, Vol. I, p. 81.)
And further: (p. 163).
“I deprecate the effect of such sweeping removals at each
revolution of parties and believe it is having a deplorable effect
both upon the purity of elections and the distribution of office,
and taking both out of the hands of the people and throwing the
management of one and the enjoyment of the other into most unfit
hands. I consider it as working a deleterious change in the
government.”
About this time public officials were assessed for political
contributions; afterwards the offices were put on sale. “Under Buchanan
(1857-1861) was established the practice of taxing federal office
holders. The politicians after the war carried it to perfection. There
were five categories of assessments on salaries; federal, state,
municipal, ward and district.” (Ostrogorski; _Democracy_, p. 68.)
The politicians under Lincoln were no whit behind their predecessors.
The new administration machine went merrily to work right after March 4,
1861. Then followed such scandals as might naturally be expected from
the appointment as Secretary of War of Simon Cameron, the rapacious and
corrupt Pennsylvania boss. Carbines were sold by the Government at $3.50
each and repurchased at $15, and the contract repeated, the second
purchase being at $22. Large sums were spent without accounting in
violation of law. Brothers-in-law were in luck. Cameron’s brother-in-law
was president of a railroad which in one year exacted from the
Government a million or more for excessive transportation charges. One
Morgan, the brother-in-law of the Secretary of the Navy, was made
purchasing agent for railroad supplies, although he was absolutely
without experience in that line. Other politicians received similar
favors. A great scandal was caused by the issuing of permits for
trading with the enemy under which supplies to numerous amounts
sufficient to furnish whole armies were sent through the rebel lines.
The machine was able to obtain the signature of Lincoln himself to these
permits. Foreign affairs were neglected in order that the offices might
be distributed. (Stickney; _Organized Democracy_, Chap. III.)
Coming to the next decade we find a systematic corruption of the
electorate, a large part whereof was willing no doubt to be corrupted.
Ostrogorski says that “after the (Civil) War the exasperation of party
spirit and the extraordinary development of the spoils system led to
bribery being used as a regular weapon.... The parties often secure, in
much the same way, the votes of the members of the labor unions; the
leaders ‘sell them out’ to the parties without the workmen having a
suspicion of it. The voters who deliberately sell themselves belong in
the cities, mostly to the dregs of the population.”
And also referring to states where the vote was close:
“These states ranked among the doubtful ones, four or five in
number, are drenched with money during the presidential campaign
for buying the ‘floaters,’ the wavering electors who sell
themselves to the highest bidder.” (Pp. 206, 207.)
During all this period and down to the present time, the spoils system
built on manhood suffrage has been the dominant force in our public
life.
“It is” (says Bryce) “these spoilsmen who have depraved and
distorted the mechanism of politics. It is they who pack the
primaries and run the conventions so as to destroy the freedom of
popular choice, they who contrive and execute the election frauds
which disgrace some States and cities--repeating and ballot
stuffing, obstruction of the polls and fraudulent countings in.
In making every administrative appointment a matter of party claim
and personal favour, the system has lowered the general tone of
public morals, for it has taught men to neglect the interests of
the community, and made insincerity ripen into cynicism. Nobody
supposes that merit has anything to do with promotion, or believes
the pretext alleged for an appointment. Politics has been turned
into the art of distributing salaries so as to secure the maximum
of support from friends with the minimum of offence to opponents.
To this art able men have been forced to bend their minds: on this
Presidents and ministers have spent those hours which were demanded
by the real problems of the country.” (_American Commonwealth_,
Vol. II, p. 137.)
Meantime the politicians, not content with the original operation of
manhood suffrage on the spoils of office, have bethought them of adding
to the fruits of these operations by increasing still further the number
of elective offices. It has been easy to persuade to this move many of
that small number of intelligent voters who trouble themselves about
such matters. The pretence of extending the sway of democracy and
liberty which has always been used to cover schemes of public plunder
was found sufficient once more. On this pretence the administrative and
judicial offices of various states were made elective instead of
appointive as formerly. As Ostrogorski says (_Idem_, p. 25):
“The democratic impulse which carried Jackson into power had forced
the way, in the constitutional sphere, for two important changes:
the introduction of universal suffrage, and the very considerable
extension of the elective principle to public offices,”
Under this system which still obtains in many states, scores of state,
county and municipal offices are offered at every election to the choice
of the mass of electors who on approaching the polls find themselves
called on to select in addition to the members of the state legislature
and Congress and state governors, a dozen or a score of administrative
officials and judges. Sometimes they are invited to vote for an
attorney-general, a state engineer and surveyor, a state treasurer, a
state comptroller, half a dozen judges and justices, a district
attorney, a sheriff, a mayor, a city treasurer, a couple of coroners,
besides a governor, a state senator, and assemblymen and aldermen, say
twenty in all. Sometimes as at an election in St. Louis, the list
contains thirteen city officials to be elected, besides state officers
and congressmen. In the cities of Ohio it sometimes includes an average
of twenty-two officers at each yearly election. In a small town near New
York there are about fifteen local offices to be filled at an election
besides a dozen or two state and federal offices and so on throughout
the Union. “Let the people rule,” say the politicians, because when the
people attempt to rule by choosing administrative officials, it is
really the politicians who make the choice. It is doubtful if there ever
was a voter, even a professional politician, who was sufficiently well
acquainted with each of the candidates on such a ticket and with his
duties to enable him to decide intelligently upon his merits as compared
with his rivals. Certainly not one in a hundred is competent to do so.
Remember, too, that the voter has no real choice in the original
selection of these candidates; that they are all chosen before the
election by party managers in secret conclave, and forced through the
primaries by the power of the machine; that if the voter rejects one
rogue or incapable whom he happens to know or has heard of, he can do no
more after all than to vote for the other party candidate who is quite
likely to be likewise of the same evil stripe. The reader can see that
manhood suffrage applied in this way is an infallible method of making
easy and safe the selection of incompetent rascals for public office.
For what the voter usually does in such case is to vote the whole party
ticket, rogues, fools and all, realizing that if he fails to do so the
rival set of scamps and incompetents will be the sole gainers.
Subsequent to 1850 and by degrees the army of American politicians
became more and more skilled and specialized in their craft; they became
highly organized and disciplined; having leaders, officers, rules and
traditions. Men went into politics in youth as a profession, grew old
and rich in its practice, and trained up their deputies and successors.
The political leader became known as the Boss; a group of Bosses as a
Ring; a combination of Rings as the Machine whose power is sometimes
irresistible. Especially after the Civil War (1865) the power of the
bosses increased, and they habitually after that time distributed
nominations, collected assessments, and gave orders to state
legislatures. The system thus perfected has continued to the present day
and is everywhere working smoothly. The American people have now
practically ceased resistance to the bosses. In a letter addressed to
Francis A. Walker signed by William Cullen Bryant, Carl Schurz and
others, dated April 6, 1876, reference is made to “the widespread
corruption in our public servants which has disgraced the republic in
the eyes of the world and threatens to poison the vitality of our
institutions.” On March 31, 1876, Schurz writes to Bristow: “We have
been so deeply disgraced in the estimation of mankind by the exposures
of corruption in our public servants, and the faith of many of our
people in our institutions has been so dangerously shaken.” David Dudley
Field of New York, writing in 1877, says:
“The corruption of American politics is a phrase in everybody’s
mouth, not only in this country, but in others.... We see offices
claimed and bestowed not for merit but for party work, and as a
natural consequence we see the public service inefficient and
disordered. We see venal legislatures and executive officers
receiving gifts.... We see legislatures, state and federal,
guaranteeing monopolies to corporations and individuals, making
gifts of the public lands and bestowing subsidies from the public
treasury; we see the plunder of local communities by what is called
local taxation, and we see demagogues clamoring for largesses under
pretense, perhaps, of equalizing bounties, or other equally
dishonest pretenses.... The condition of our civil service is a
scandal to the country.... Taking the country together two-thirds
of the present official force would do all the work needed and do
it better than it is now done.”
And proceeding, he spoke of politics as then pursued as a branch of
business, and the office holders as a band of mercenaries who were the
supporters of misgovernment. (_Corruption in Politics; International
Review_, Jan., 1877.)
Physicians tell us that from a source of disease, however small and
obscure, a disordered tooth for instance, an infection may spread
through the body until despite its apparent vigor, it in undermined and
finally destroyed. The corruption begun in the electorate, has spread
beyond the political system and has reached and invaded business life.
This progress is so easy to trace that every business man in the country
is familiar with it. Political leaders and bosses are purchasable and so
are often machine-made legislators. Hence the two-fold evil, on the one
hand the bribery of legislators and public officials, and on the other,
threats and acts of oppression by the latter so as to compel business to
pay tribute. These practices are so notorious and instances of them are
so familiar, many of them referred to in this volume, that at this point
it is sufficient to call attention to their frequency and extent. Again
quoting Bryce:
“In the United States the money power acts by corrupting sometimes
the voter, sometimes the juror, sometimes the legislator, sometimes
a whole party; for large subscriptions and promises of political
support have been known to influence a party to procure or refrain
from such legislation as wealth desires or fears. The rich, it is
but fair to say, and especially great corporations, have not only
enterprises to promote but dangers to escape from at the hands of
unscrupulous demagogues or legislators.” (_American Commonwealth_,
Vol. II, p. 614.)
In 1889 George William Curtis, referring to the United States,
approvingly quoted the saying of a United States Senator made in 1876
that “the only product of her institutions in which she surpassed all
others beyond question was her corruption.” In 1890 he said that
political corruption “has increased, is increasing and ought to be
diminished.” In 1891 Curtis said that “corruption in our politics was
never felt to be so general, so vast and penetrating, as during the last
quarter of a century.” In the Omaha Populist platform of 1892, it was
declared that:
“We are meeting in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of
moral, political and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot
box, the Legislators, the Congress and touches even the ermine of
the bench. People are demoralized.... The fruits of the toil of
millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes.... From
the same prolific womb of political justice we breed the two great
classes--tramps and millionaires.”
We forbear to quote later opinions or authorities on this branch of our
subject at this point, though contemporary magazines and newspapers
afford them in great number, because we have wished as far as possible
to keep within the domain of history and to avoid the doubtful field of
present-day partisan political controversy. If proof of the evil of
present conditions were desirable it is sufficiently found between the
covers of this book, but such proof is quite unnecessary. The
unsatisfactory character of the political life of today is as well known
to the intelligent reader as to the writer or to anyone else. There has
been no betterment of recent years. The activities of our political
masters have kept pace with the march of prosperity, the increase of the
nation’s wealth and population, and the growth of its great cities.
There is today practically no political liberty in the United States.
The country is badly, corruptly and shamefully ruled by a class, an
oligarchy, one of the most corrupt and tyrannical at present existing
anywhere, and composed of small groups of weak and tricky men not five
per cent of whom under a system of properly qualified suffrage would
have votes at all. Instead of free elections to public office what
actually occurs is as described by Dr. Charles P. Clark:
“Two organized bands of active, intriguing and self-seeking
politicians, composing less than one hundredth part of the whole
voting population, dispute with each other, and one of them obtains
the selection--mark the pregnant meaning of the word--of every
public functionary.” (_The Machine Abolished_, p. 29.)
Having identified the source and origin of this evil political condition
with the institution of manhood suffrage and traced the mischief down
to the present-day generation, let us proceed to the next chapter
wherein will be set forth a brief description or example of the nature
and characteristics of the professional politician, the political Boss,
the political Machine, the political Ring, and the Lobby; all of which
beautiful creations are the product or result direct or indirect of that
much vaunted institution, manhood suffrage. It is doubtful if any of
them can be found elsewhere than in America; certainly they reach their
highest development in the United States.