SHORT SKETCHES OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE PROGENY; THE POLITICIAN AND THE
BOSS; THEIR CREATIONS THE RING AND THE MACHINE; AND THEIR
BY-PRODUCT, THE LOBBY
No account of manhood suffrage would be complete without proper mention
of the politicians and their work, for they are the essential product of
the system, its distinctive feature and its condemnation. It is they who
manage the controllable vote created by manhood suffrage and without
which they themselves would cease to exist; and it is they who nurse
that vote, feed it and train and fashion it to their malign uses as an
instrument of perfect control of American political life. The
politicians are absolutely indispensable to the working of the present
political system in the United States. They handle the voters like
cattle intended for the stock market; like the animals the voters go
willingly or half willingly to the places prepared for them, in
pursuance of plans in which they take no part, which they do not
understand. The voters are bargained for and delivered in batches just
as the animals are, and the managers and their subordinates in charge
are the political masters of the country.
These managers from the very first have been a sordid lot. De
Tocqueville, writing about 1835, when the manhood suffrage régime was
only ten years old said of them, “I have heard of patriotism in the
United States, and I have found true patriotism among the people, but
never among the leaders of the people.” (_Democracy in America_, Vol.
I.) The present-day professional politicians may be as lacking in
patriotism as the political leaders of De Tocqueville’s time, but taken
all together they are and have always been a picturesque company, who
have been frequently described by able writers, from some of whom
extracts will here be given for the delectation and information of the
reader.
There are of course high and low grade politicians, small and large
leaders and managers and various grades between; besides retainers and
subordinates, known as captains or henchmen with their followers or
heelers. In cities, the local or district leader is often an able man in
his way; and of late years as politics has developed into a science, he
is often found to be sober, shrewd and well mannered. His duties are
varied. He assists and protects his constituents in local political
matters; obtains the saloon license; also permits for the small trades
or businesses, the boot-black, the lemonade seller, etc. He protects
against arrests, gets bail for culprits, sees police judges, lends small
sums, distributes coal in winter, gives poultry at Christmas, sends
medicine for the sick, helps bury the dead by procuring credit or cheap
rates at the undertaker’s, orders drinks at the saloon, and is looked on
as a ready helper in time of trouble of all kinds. He may have placed a
large number of men on the city pay-roll who never do much work and
whose principal duties are to attend conventions, get out the vote on
election day, promise places and favors, and threaten and intimidate
opposition to the regular ticket. In some cities these petty leaders are
numbered by the thousand. It was estimated at one time that they totaled
12,000 to 15,000 in New York alone. As time passes the outward semblance
and methods of the politician may change, or they may vary with his
situation and station in the political hierarchy, but his spirit and
objects and evil influence continue unaltered. The politician of our day
is thus described by Dr. Clark:
“The perfect type of the American politician is a mixture of the
demagogue, the intriguer and the jobber; flattering the people,
locking arms with every surrounding influence and all the time
looking out for himself.” (_The Machine Abolished_, p. 43.)
Bryce thus sketches the ward politician:
“As there are weeds that follow human dwellings, so this species
thrives best in cities, and even in the most crowded parts of
cities. It is known to the Americans as the ‘ward politician,’
because the city ward is the chief sphere of its activity, and the
ward meeting the first scene of its exploits. A statesman of this
type usually begins as a saloon or barkeeper, an occupation which
enables him to form a large circle of acquaintances, especially
among the ‘loafer’ class who have votes but no reason for using
them one way more than another, and whose interest in political
issues is therefore as limited as their stock of political
knowledge. But he may have started as a lawyer of the lowest kind,
or lodging-house keeper, or have taken to politics after failure in
store-keeping. The education of this class is only that of the
elementary schools; if they have come after boyhood from Europe, it
is not even that. They have of course no comprehension of political
questions or zeal for political principles; politics mean to them
merely a scramble for places or jobs. They are usually vulgar,
sometimes brutal, not so often criminal, or at least the associates
of criminals. They it is who move about the populous quarters of
the great cities, form groups through whom they can reach and
control the ignorant voter, pack meetings with their creatures.”
...
“In the smaller cities and in the country generally, the minor
politicians are mostly native Americans, less ignorant and more
respectable than these last-mentioned street vultures. The
bar-keeping element is represented among them, but the bulk are
petty lawyers, officials, Federal as well as State and county, and
people who for want of a better occupation have turned
office-seekers, with a fair sprinkling of store-keepers, farmers,
and newspaper men.” ...
“These two classes do the local work and dirty work of politics.
They are the rank and file. Above them stand the officers in the
political army, the party managers, including the members of
Congress and chief men in the State legislatures, and the editors
of influential newspapers. Some of these have pushed their way up
from the humbler ranks. Others are men of superior ability and
education, often college graduates, lawyers who have had practice,
less frequently merchants or manufacturers who have slipped into
politics from business. There are all sorts among them, creatures
clean and unclean, as in the sheet of St. Peter’s vision, but that
one may say of politicians in all countries.” (_American
Commonwealth_, Vol. II, pp. 63, 64, 65.)
The political leaders, says Eaton, endeavor to bring “every form of
human depravity, imbecility and ignorance to the polls. They and their
minions search the garrets and the cellars, the prisons and the asylums,
the grog shops and the poor houses; they lead and hustle to the ballot
boxes the vilest specimens of humanity which can be made to cast a vote”
(_Government of Municipalities_, p. 122), and he adds that some of these
leaders are public officials, some have even been on the bench of
justice as police magistrates. Here is a sketch of a New York district
leader, veracious though imaginary, from the facile pen of O. Henry
(_The Social Triangle_).
“Billy McMahan was the district leader. Upon him the Tiger purred,
and his hand held manna to scatter. Now, as Ikey entered (the bar
room) McMahan stood, flushed and triumphant and mighty, the center
of a huzzaing concourse of his lieutenants and constituents. It
seems there had been an election; a signal victory had been won;
the city had been swept back into line by a resistless besom of
ballots. How magnificent was Billy McMahan, with his great smooth
laughing face; his gray eye shrewd as a chicken hawk’s; his diamond
ring; his voice like a bugle call; his prince’s air; his plump and
active roll of money; his clarion call to friend and comrade--oh,
what a king of men he was! How he obscured his lieutenants, though
they themselves loomed large and serious, blue of chin and
important of mien, with hands buried deep in the pockets of their
short overcoats.”
Besides the immediate lieutenants of the boss there are in the cities
gangs of “heelers” formed by the political organizations who, as said by
Ostrogorski, constitute a latent political force under the management of
henchmen. They are described by him as ignorant, brutal, averse to
regular work, mostly recruited from the criminal or semi-criminal
classes, from among frequenters of drinking saloons and from failures
and loafers of every description. When the elections come around they
furnish compact bands of “floaters” or “repeaters” as they are often
called, ready, for a consideration, to vote early and as often as
permitted. Professor Woodburn of Indiana University writing in 1903,
says that:
“A politician has come to mean one devoted not to the science and
art of government, but to the success of a political party; a party
worker who devotes himself to the art of making nominations and
carrying elections; one who manages caucuses, committees and
conventions, by which the party business and the party machinery
are carried on. It is because the people have consented to turn
over their parties and their party government to this self
constituted class of party managers that they have come under the
control of rings and bosses.” (_Political Parties and Party
Problems_, p. 360.)
He describes a political ring as a group of these professional
politicians who live by politics, bound together for mutual support in
pursuit of offices, public patronage, contracts and other pecuniary
opportunities, and generally unscrupulous in their methods. The leader
of the ring is the boss, who usually does not hold office but controls
the offices from outside, by backstairs influence.
This from Professor Hyslop:
“But the single purpose that animates the average politician is the
same that inspires the beggar or the thief. Either he has failed
for want of ability of an honest kind in legitimate methods of
business and in competition with his fellows, and seeks a public
salary with freedom to indulge his natural indolence, or he uses
his ingenuity and abilities to secure the irresponsible power to
plunder the public with impunity.” (_Democracy_, p. 270.)
The purchase of votes and the collection of funds for that purpose has
always been an important part of the politician’s work. The expression
“bunches of five” has become a byword ever since its use some twenty
years ago by a prominent Republican politician in reference to delivery
of votes for money. “Frying out the fat” is another striking expression
which became current about the same time in the same way and was
intended to be descriptive of the method of getting large sums from
corporations for use in election purposes. The total amounts thus
contributed in the past forty years to carry presidential elections
would probably run into the hundreds of millions. In 1910 President
Vreeland of the Metropolitan Street Railway of New York testified before
a legislative committee that his company contributed campaign funds to
both parties. One year it divided about $40,000 between them. This is
not mentioned as an exceptional instance but as illustrative of a well
known practice.
Let us now glance at the great man himself, the real Boss, the magnate,
the prince of American Democracy, the man who of all men most thoroughly
believes in manhood suffrage, understands it and profits by it; one of
the real political rulers of the American people; he who makes and
unmakes governors, senators and high judges; he for whom sheriffs,
aldermen, assemblymen, state senators, and sometimes even our mayors of
cities are glad to run errands and to wait in anterooms. Writing in 1914
Goodnow says of the bosses: “They control the making of laws and their
execution after they are made.” (_Politics and Administration_, p. 169.)
What is a boss like? What are his outward manifestations?
About the best analysis of his character and functions was made by
Professor Reinsch of Wisconsin, as follows:
“Sooner or later there is evolved the boss, the fruit and flower of
commercial politics in America. He represents the main interest but
also holds the balance between the minor tributary groups. The
secrecy necessary for his work gives him great power. He alone
holds all the threads that bind the system together. In his person
are united the confidence of the favored interests and the hopes of
his political lieutenants. He commands the source of supplies. He
has mastered the study of political psychology and knows by
intimate experience the personal character of the prominent
politicians in the state. Most of them are dependent upon him for
future favors or are bound to him through past indiscretions. The
character of the system demands an absolute ruler. For this reason,
too, the power of the boss is continuous; it is rarely overthrown
from within and only a great public upheaval can affect it. Bosses
maintain themselves in the saddle and enjoy a long lease of power,
because of their direct and confidential relations with the
controlling interests; their inborn secretiveness leads them to
keep their own counsel, and not to allow any other person a
complete insight into all the intricacies of the system. They grow
stronger as the years pass and no indiscretion or even crime is
able to shake their authority while they keep in their hands the
main threads connecting influence with its obedient tools. The
abler men of this type are filled with a keen sense of the irony of
their position. They have the clear insight into the coarser
actualities of politics that characterized Machiavelli. The
political exhorter who sways the multitudes from the stump does not
become a boss; to achieve that position the power of cool analysis,
of impassive control, and of unflinching execution, are more
essential than any gifts of popular leadership.” (_American
Legislatures and Legislative Methods_, pp. 236, 237.)
Another sketch:
“It must not be supposed that the members of Rings, or the great
Boss himself are wicked men. They are the offspring of a system.
Their morality is that of their surroundings. They see a door open
to wealth and power, and they walk in. The obligations of
patriotism or duty to the public are not disregarded by them, for
these obligations have never been present to their minds. A State
boss is usually a native American and a person of some education,
who avoids the grosser forms of corruption, though he has to wink
at them when practised by his friends. He may be a man of personal
integrity. A city boss is often of foreign birth and humble origin;
he has grown up in an atmosphere of oaths and cocktails; ideas of
honour and purity are as strange to him as ideas about the nature
of the currency and the incidence of taxation; politics is merely a
means for getting and distributing places.” (Bryce, _American
Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 110.)
Under the supervision of the political boss blackmail is levied for
party purposes from gambling houses, saloons and houses of ill repute.
He is not primarily concerned with political opinions. He controls his
best men by their interests. It is his business to carry the elections
and thus get power and places for self and followers. He is able to
dismiss almost any politician from office and to close his political
career. He and not the people is the real master of the inferior
office-holders. “At all hazards he must prevent the incoming of an
honest administration that will apply the public offices for public
uses.” For this purpose the bosses of opposite parties unite when
necessary. Woodburn mentions an instance of this in Philadelphia in
1901, and adds referring to the boss:
“Those who support him have their reward--the laborer gets his job,
the placeman office; the policeman his promotion or his “divvy”;
the contractor a chance at the public works; the banker the use of
the public money; the gambler and the criminal immunity from
prosecution; the honest merchant certain sidewalk privileges; the
rich corporations lowered assessments and immunity from equitable
taxation. All buy these special favors by support of the Boss’s
power and policy, and all enjoy the blessings of the Boss’s
government, high taxation, maladministration, stolen franchises,
robbery of the public treasury, and criminal disorder in the
community.” (_Political Parties and Party Platforms_, p. 364.)
In an article in the _Outlook_, April 2, 1898, Miss Jane Addams of
Chicago, a well-known settlement worker, writing no doubt from personal
observation, describes the Boss as an institution of American politics
in similar language to that of Professor Woodburn. She depicts the
typical city political boss, his personality and good-natured
freebooting methods with piquancy and vigor; he is, she says, a
successful boodler who is popular with the poor because in their
ignorance they suppose that he only robs the rich while to the poor he
is a sympathetic friend; or as they say, he has a good heart. The reader
can easily trace for himself the direct connection between this point of
view of the lower classes and their support of Tweed, the robber
politician whom a New York City district triumphantly elected state
senator shortly after his rascalities were exposed. With that connection
in mind the relation between the power of the boss and universal
suffrage is perfectly apparent. The class of voters brought in by
unqualified suffrage prefer friendly bosses and free-handed boodlers to
men who are governed by motives so superior to their own as to seem to
them visionary or fantastic; who have in their pockets no stolen or easy
got cash to squander on their followers, and who not being professional
“handshakers” seem to the masses lacking in sympathy for common men.
But there is a power greater even than the Boss; and that is the
Machine, a creation which has reached its highest development in our own
time and of which the greatest politicians speak with awe. Theodore
Roosevelt, the “Big Bull Moose,” was a big politician, a glorified Boss;
but he went down at Chicago in 1912 crushed by the steam roller
attachment of the Machine. “For the Roller came and with great eclat it
laid that turrible animile flat,” was the doggerel verdict of a
newspaper of that day.
“The tremendous power of party organization has been described. It
enslaves local officials, it increases the tendency to regard
members of Congress as mere delegates, it keeps men of independent
character out of local and national politics, it puts bad men into
place, it perverts the wishes of the people, it has in some places
set up a tyranny under the forms of democracy.” (Bryce, _American
Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 612.)
The word “machine” indicates its character.
“The professional politicians (says Ostrogorski) operated, under
the direction of the managers, and the wire pullers with such
uniformity and with such indifference or insensibility to right and
wrong, that they evoked the idea of a piece of mechanism working
automatically and blindly; of a machine; the effect appeared so
precisely identical, that the term “machine” was foisted on the
Organization as a nick-name which it bears down to the present
day.” (_Democracy_, p. 60.)
In this machine the voter is a very small cog; he neither devised the
machine, nor can he in the least control it, nor is it constructed to
serve his interests. It is organized in the interests of discipline and
on the principle of obedience. In New York, for instance, an important
part of the Tammany Machine is the Committee on Organization, composed
of the leaders of certain wards and districts, each one of whom either
holds a public office or has a valuable public contract or is in some
way dependent on the Boss for his yearly income. The committee man looks
after his district and is responsible to the Boss for its vote. Not by
the people but by the political machines are offices filled, laws
enacted, government carried on. The machine discipline though sometimes
severe operates on the whole for the benefit of the politician by
protecting the faithful. The efficient members of the class of
professional politicians are never more than temporarily shelved. If
defeated at one election they are chosen at another. If they fail to get
one office, room is made for them somewhere else, and so they are made
to form a class of permanent office-holders, and the power and
efficiency of the political oligarchy are steadily maintained.
“The City machine makes friends with saloon keepers, with gamblers
and other criminal classes, or with large financial institutions,
seeking to obtain control of the vast sums expended for public
improvements. This source of revenue has of late proved vastly more
fruitful than the earlier and more primitive methods. By means of
these various alliances a large body of pledged supporters is
secured. In addition to ordinary party officers the machine employs
a body of workers formerly known as ward heelers now more generally
called workers, gangs, gunmen, or district leaders, some of whom
are accustomed to commit various sorts of crime, such as securing
fraudulent naturalization papers for foreigners, entering
fictitious names on the register of voters, organizing repeaters
and voting them on election day.” (_Cyclopedia American Political
Government_, Machine, Political, 1914.)
We quote once more from Bryce, writing in 1894, as to the operation of
machine rule in New York City:
“Such an organization as this, with its tentacles touching every
point in a vast and amorphous city, is evidently a most potent
force, especially as this force is concentrated in one hand--that
of the Boss of the Hall. He is practically autocratic; and under
him these thousands of officers, controlling from 120,000 to
150,000 votes, move with the precision of a machine. However, it is
not only in this mechanism, which may be called a legitimate method
of reaching the voters, that the strength of Tammany lies. Its
control of the city government gives it endless opportunities of
helping its friends, of worrying its opponents, and of enslaving
the liquor-dealers. Their licenses are at its mercy, for the police
can proceed against or wink at breaches of the law, according to
the amount of loyalty the saloon-keeper shows to the Hall. From the
contributions of the liquor interest a considerable revenue is
raised; more is obtained by assessing office-holders, down to the
very small ones; and perhaps most of all by blackmailing wealthy
men and corporations, who find that the city authorities have so
many opportunities of interfering vexatiously with their business
that they prefer to buy them off and live in peace. The worst form
of this extortion is the actual complicity with criminals which
consists in sharing the profits of crime. A fruitful source of
revenue, roughly estimated at $1,000,000 a year, is derived, when
the party is supreme at Albany, from legislative blackmailing in
the legislature, or, rather, from undertaking to protect the great
corporations from the numerous ‘strikers,’ who threaten them there
with bills. A case has been mentioned in which as much as $60,000
was demanded from a great company; and the president of another is
reported to have said (1893): ‘Formerly we had to keep a man at
Albany to buy off the “strikers” one by one. This year we simply
paid over a lump sum to the Ring, and they looked after our
interests.’ But of all their engines of power none is so elastic as
their command of the administration of criminal justice. The mayor
appoints the police justices, usually selecting them from certain
Tammany workers, sometimes from the criminal class, not often from
the legal profession. These justices are often Tammany leaders in
their respective districts.” ...
“With such sources of power it is not surprising that Tammany Hall
commands the majority of the lower and the foreign masses of New
York, though it has never been shown to hold an absolute majority
of all the voters of the city. Its local strength is exactly
proportioned to the character of the local population; and though
there are plenty of native Americans among the rank and file as
well as among the leaders, still it is from the poorer districts,
inhabited by Jews, Irish, Germans, Italians, Bohemians, that its
heaviest vote comes.” (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, pp.
398-400.)
A booklet published in 1887 gives some account of the organization of
the political machines of New York City, showing that they all depend
upon the use of a minority controllable vote presumably of men without
substantial means and whose political support is therefore purchasable
in one way or another. The writer says:
“The machine is governed by a singleness of purpose which produces
a compactness against which good citizens can only break themselves
to pieces when fighting it from within, while if they organize an
outside opposition in which everything is done by honest
discussion, compactness is almost impossible of achievement.... The
politicians would not be difficult to beat if the people would
organize for their own protection and from principle; but it is the
matter of organization which is difficult, and no one understands
this better than the bosses,” (Ivins, _Machine Politics_.)
The machine is not peculiar to the cities:
“It is also found at the court house of the rural county, at the
cross roads postoffice, the village store, the town hall. The
difference is one of degree; the mechanism is everywhere the
same.... The corrupt political machine of today controlled by a
boss is contrary to the American system of government, and were it
not a terrible reality this creation would be deemed an
impossibility. It is in its present state of perfection, rule of
the people by the individual for the boss, his relatives and
friends. It is the most complete political despotism ever known.”
(Coler on _Municipal Government_, 1900, pp. 188-190.)
Nor is the use of the machine confined to the Democratic party; even in
New York it is part of the Republican party system also. In an address
delivered in New York May 2d, 1880, George William Curtis described the
Republican political machine and its operations, how it practically
excluded nearly nine-tenths of the Republican voters from the primaries.
He stated that the bosses were “huge contractors of votes, traders and
hucksters in place and pelf,” who “made personal servility the condition
of political success” and were ready to “betray the party by bargaining
with the enemy”; “that good men stayed at home feeling” that “politics
are tiresome and dirty and politicians vulgar bullies and bravadoes”;
that “public officers multiply uselessly that there may be more rewards
for political and personal service. Primaries, caucuses, conventions,
are controlled by the promise and expectation of a chance of plunder
which the machine distributes.” Here is an account of how the votes of
working men were used in Philadelphia by the Republican boss McManes, to
build up a corrupt political organization:
“This gentleman, Mr. James McManes, having gained influence among
the humbler voters, was appointed one of the Gas Trustees, and soon
managed to bring the whole of that department under his control. It
employed (I was told) about two thousand persons, received large
sums, and gave out large contracts. Appointing his friends and
dependents to the chief places under the Trust, and requiring them
to fill the ranks of its ordinary workmen with persons on whom they
could rely, the Boss acquired the control of a considerable number
of votes and of a large annual revenue. He and his confederates
then purchased a controlling interest in the principal horse-car
(street tramway) company of the city, whereby they became masters
of a large number of additional voters. All these voters were of
course expected to act as ‘workers,’ i.e., they occupied themselves
with the party organization of the city, they knew the meanest
streets and those who dwelt therein, they attended and swayed the
primaries, and when an election came round, they canvassed and
brought up the voters. Their power, therefore, went far beyond
their mere voting strength, for a hundred energetic ‘workers’ mean
at least a thousand votes. With so much strength behind them, the
Gas Ring, and Mr. McManes at its head, became not merely
indispensable to the Republican party in the city, but in fact its
chiefs, able therefore to dispose of the votes of all those who
were employed permanently or temporarily in the other departments
of the city government--a number which one hears estimated as high
as twenty thousand. Nearly all the municipal offices were held by
their nominees. They commanded a majority in the Select council and
Common council. They managed the nomination of members of the State
legislature. Even the Federal officials in the custom-house and
post-office were forced into a dependent alliance with them,
because their support was so valuable to the leaders in Federal
politics that it had to be purchased by giving them their way in
city affairs.” (Bryce, _American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 405.)
“Machine politics are completely subversive both of democracy and
of the principle of responsibility for which democracy is supposed
to stand. It constitutes nothing except a system of self-appointed
rulers, and the principle of elective representation of which we
boast becomes a farce. Public servants and officers can in some
way, usually, be made responsible for the administration of
government, but political bosses never, or at least not until they
have retired with plunder enough to live without politics. The
despotism of Russia can lay some claim to legitimacy. The Czar
obtains his throne and power by the forms of law and has a healthy
fear of something, but not so with our bosses. They nominate our
candidates for office and mortgage their support, so that we are
ruled by men who are not elected to govern us at all, our nominal
officers being the mere puppets of the machine. Public opinion is
defied until its patience is exhausted, when it is gratified in
some caprice and it lapses back again into indifference and the old
game goes on. Property of all kinds is blackmailed directly or
indirectly, and business terrorized. Even vice and crime come in
for tribute as is well known. This is anarchy, not government, and
yet we indulge the pleasing illusion that democracy is a paradise.”
(Hyslop, _Democracy_, pp. 32-33.)
And further:
“It is the insolent disregard of public welfare, the deliberate
exclusion of intelligent and honest men from office, the refusal to
reason about public policy, the shameless corruption of its
leaders, its organized methods of deception, bribery, and blackmail
with public jobbery and frauds upon the tax-payers, that make
machine politics so despicable in the estimation of the public
conscience.” (_Idem_, p. 268.)
All nominations for public office to be voted on by the people are made
by a machine whatever may be the party in whose name they are made. This
is true not only of the high offices, such as president, governor,
senator, etc., but also of such lower offices as mayor, judges of the
state courts, state senators and assemblymen. Sometimes these
nominations are made at primaries which are carried by the boss through
the local organizations; or at political conventions also controlled by
the machine. The details of the secret manipulations under the recent
primary laws have not yet been and may never be published and exposed;
but those of the old political conventions were laid bare in a book
published in 1899 by Senator Breen, an experienced politician of New
York. He there describes the power of the bosses and the subserviency of
the masses.
“There is scarcely a place on earth (says Breen) where one can see
so fully the extremes of sycophancy to which human nature will
descend as one does in a political convention in the City of New
York.... I blush to record the fact that the convention which I
attended (and the same may be said of every political convention in
this city even at the present day) was composed of as spineless a
lot of creatures as ever prostrated themselves before a throne, or
crouched in the presence of autocratic power. Subserviency was
shown not only to the local leader or deputy boss himself, but to
the understrappers, who were supposed to have his ear. Not able to
get into the immediate presence of the leader, persons well dressed
and apparently prosperous, as well as those who were ill
conditioned, fawned upon forbidding looking beings who were
supposed to be close to the leader, and whose intelligence was
limited to understanding orders and obeying them....
“Several positions connected with the court were at the disposal of
the judge to be elected; the Democratic nomination was equivalent
to the certificate of election. There were 177 delegates in all,
and although many of them had the appearance of independent men,
yet every one of them was there as an automaton to be set in
motion and shifted hither and thither at the whim of the local
boss. Free born citizens, though they were, with the sacred right
of the ballot, they were there merely to register his will and obey
his orders without question. Not only this, but they seemed to
revel in their subserviency, and to feel joyous and even proud of
the distinction of being political slaves. Nor was this degradation
confined to the ignorant. Men of education, men who were members of
the learned professions, were in that body, and vied with the worst
in snivelling sycophancy. They knew, as every one knew, that the
person who was to be nominated for a seat on the bench was wholly
incompetent, in point of education and training, to fill the
office, not to speak of other disqualifications. Yet they were
there to obey pliantly the mandates of a deputy boss and stifle
their conviction and their conscience.” (_Thirty Years of New York
Politics_, pp. 205, 206, 207.)
Here you have a veracious picture made by an expert of the actual
operation of manhood suffrage, which according to the twaddlers is so
effective in stimulating the manly character of the citizens of a free
republic.
Bryce visited one of these conventions, and this is what he saw:
“During the morning, a tremendous coming and going and chattering
and clattering of crowds of men who looked at once sordid and
flashy, faces shrewd but mean and sometimes brutal, vulgar figures
in good coats forming into small groups and talking eagerly, and
then dissolving to form fresh groups; a universal _camaraderie_,
with no touch of friendship about it; something between a
betting-ring and the flags outside the Liverpool Exchange. It
reminded one of the swarming of bees in tree boughs, a ceaseless
humming and buzzing which betokens immense excitement over
proceedings which the bystander does not comprehend. After some
hours all this settled down; the meeting was duly organized;
speeches were made, all dull and thinly declamatory, except one by
an eloquent Irishman; the candidates for State offices were
proposed and carried by acclamation; and the business ended.
Everything had evidently been pre-arranged; and the discontented,
if any there were, had been talked over during the swarming
hours.” (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 105.)
The members of these nominating conventions, or “delegates,” as they are
called, are supposed to be chosen by the voters at elections held for
that purpose, called “primaries.” The vote at these primaries is never
more than a fraction of those belonging to the party. It ranges from two
per cent to ten per cent unless when there is a contest between two
party men, when it may go as high as forty per cent of those entitled to
vote. Outside of the party workers, scarcely anyone attends these
primaries. Bryce sketches the means taken by the boss to control the
primary election, which include trickery, fraud and violence. (_American
Commonwealth_, Vol. II, pp. 102, 103.) He describes the workings of the
primary system and the convention as in operation in Philadelphia under
the management of the Gas Ring in 1881:
“The delegates chosen were usually office-holders, with a
sprinkling of public works contractors, liquor-dealers, always a
potent factor in ward politics, and office expectants. For
instance, the Convention of 13th January, 1881, for nominating a
candidate for mayor, consisted of 199 delegates, 86 of whom were
connected with some branch of the city government, 9 were members
of the city councils, 5 were police magistrates, 4 constables, and
23 policemen, while of the rest some were employed in some other
city department, and some others were the known associates and
dependants of the Ring. These delegates, assembled in convention of
the party, duly went through the farce of selecting and voting for
persons already determined on by the Ring as candidates for the
chief offices. The persons so selected thereby became the
authorized candidates of the party, for whom every good party man
was expected to give his vote. Disgusted he might be to find a
person unknown, or known only for evil, perhaps a fraudulent
bankrupt, or a broken-down barkeeper, proposed for his acceptance.
But as his only alternative was to vote for the Democratic nominee,
who was probably no better, he submitted, and thus the party was
forced to ratify the choice of the Boss.” (_American Commonwealth_,
Vol. II, p. 408.)
The method adopted by the local boss in Breen’s time, to assure himself
that every man in the convention would do his bidding, is worthy of
admiration for its bold and unscrupulous impudence. He does this, says
Breen, in advance of the primary election by making out a list of the
delegates whom he desires chosen and obtaining from the inspectors a
certificate that they have been duly elected. What occurs thereafter at
the primary election is of little consequence as the credentials are
already in the possession of the leader, who when the convention meets
draws them from his pocket and as there is no going behind the returns
the delegates take their seats. Times and laws have changed since
Breen’s time and this plan may have been superseded by another, at
present not generally known, but the Boss and Machine are still with us
as powerful as ever; the class of officials they put over us is the same
as before, there is the same material to work with and it is presumable
that the present system is equally corrupt and tyrannical with the old
one.
A large part of the fuel to keep the machine going is provided for by
voluntary contributions from business men and corporations desirous of
political favors, such as street privileges, franchises, contracts, or
is levied as blackmail upon them or upon saloon keepers, gamblers,
keepers of brothels and others whose habits or occupations leave them
open to police persecution; also by assessments on office holders,
candidates for office and levies on corporations sometimes called
“strikes.”
“The levying of blackmail on companies, either as a contribution to
campaign expenses or as fees to pay for protection, is now one of
the principal sources of a Boss’s revenue, and, in states like New
York, goes a good way towards enabling him to defy hostile
sentiment. It furnishes him with funds for subsidizing the
legislature and the press.” (_Atlantic Monthly_, July, 1896.)
Bryce states that the collection of revenues of a political Ring flow
from five sources, viz., public subscriptions, contributions from
contractors and others expecting favors, surreptitious appropriations
from the city or state treasury, assessments upon the office holders,
and sale of offices and nominations to office. Breen says truly in the
book already quoted that the majority of voters are utterly unaware of
what is really going on in the party. There are, he says, “scarcely
5,000 persons in the City of New York who are aware of the secret and
surreptitious methods governing the inside of politics or of the
subterranean channels thereto by which gross wrongs are perpetrated. The
secret combinations, conspiracies, deals and bribery are confined to the
expert politician.” How few, for instance, know the facts in relation to
the practice of the barter of high offices. One of the inevitable
results of the development of the present system is the sale of
nominations to public office negotiated by the boss for the benefit of
the machine. The existence of this traffic though secretly conducted is
well known in political circles. Sometimes the payment is direct;
sometimes it is disguised in the shape of contributions to campaign
funds made by the candidate or someone in his behalf.
“In the large cities, with New York at their head, practice
established a sort of tariff for each set of offices according to
the length of the term and the importance of the place. Thus a
judgeship, that is to say, the nomination to it amounted to
$15,000; a seat in Congress was rated at $4,000; for membership of
a state legislature $1,500 was demanded; a like amount for the
position of alderman in a city council, etc.” (Ostrogorski, _Idem_,
p. 70.)
“Candidates for the judiciary in New York City have paid Tammany
Hall $5,000 to $10,000 for their offices.” (_Commons on
Proportional Representation_, p. 303.)
Dr. Clark writing in 1900 says:
“By credible accounts as much as $100,000 has been paid to get
nominated by the Convention of the dominant party for Clerk,
Register or Sheriff of the County of New York; half that sum for
Treasurer of Pennsylvania, and, in proportion to their
opportunities for others the like offices all over the country. A
seat on the Supreme Judicial bench costs from $5,000 to $15,000. A
nomination to Congress from the lean pastures of Vermont or New
Hampshire can sometimes be had for a thousand dollars, but in the
golden fields of California and Nevada it has cost fifty thousand.”
(_The Machine Abolished_, p. 40.)
The figures contained in Bryce’s _American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p.
119, as to ruling rates for political nominations under this much prized
system of political brigandage are these: Alderman, $1,500; Legislature,
$500 to $1,500; Judgeship, $5,000 to $15,000; Congress, $4,000. The New
York County Clerk at one time collected about $80,000 a year in fees, of
which the political machine required him to hand over two-thirds.
Writing in 1899 Dorman B. Eaton states the regular price of a high
judicial nomination is $10,000 to $15,000. (_Government of
Municipalities_, p. 107.) Another more recent writer gives the figures
for political assessments for the large city as follows: For County
Clerk and Register, $15,000; Alderman, $13,000; Sheriff, $25,000;
Comptroller, $10,000; Mayor, $20,000; Police Justice, $6,500.
Not only the offices but the party itself is sometimes for sale in this
or that ward or city. The bargains between the Republican and Democratic
machines in New York City and elsewhere have been so frequently
denounced and exposed by the politicians themselves as to need no proof.
It is a matter of common knowledge that the bosses are able at times in
shrewd transactions with opposing bosses to barter certain public
offices, batches of offices and measures for other similar merchandise,
and to carry out the bargain; thus causing the votes cast at an election
to have directly the opposite effect from that supposed to be desired by
the voters, though perhaps many of the floaters or regulars among them
would be perfectly satisfied with the “deal.” It must be borne in mind
that the ultimate object of all these “deals” and this political traffic
is money; the party managers are not looking for public honors but for
cash; they are actually engaged in building up fortunes for themselves
and their backers, who are public contractors and the like. “Hence it is
the opportunity and desire for public pelf, directly or indirectly, and
for gratifying personal ambition without reference to public service,
that are the most potent influences in the formation and cohesiveness of
the ‘machine.’” (_Democracy_, p. 269.)
An instance of the friendly relations between rival machines is
mentioned by Bryce in writing of the effort to get the Democratic
machine in Philadelphia in 1870 to help oust the Republican Gas Ring:
“But the Democratic wire-pullers, being mostly men of the same
stamp as the Gas Ring, did not seek a temporary gain at the expense
of a permanent disparagement of their own class. Political
principles are the last thing which the professional city
politician cares for. It was better worth the while of the
Democratic chiefs to wait for their turn, and in the meantime to
get something out of occasional bargains with their (nominal)
Republican opponents, than to strengthen the cause of good
government at the expense of the professional class.” (_American
Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 411.)
And Eaton mentions an instance in New York City of the leaders of one
political party being in the pay of the other. (_Government of
Municipalities_, p. 116--Note.)
Here, to make the sketch complete must be said a brief word about the
lobby, by which expressive term is designated the class of paid agents
of public service corporations and others, who frequent the lobbies of
the state legislatures and of Congress in order to promote legislation
favorable to their principals and to watch and fend off “strikes,”
“hold-ups” and other legislative attacks upon them. In a country where
ridiculously small salaries are paid to members of legislative bodies
the lobby does much to make a legislator’s career profitable. Details of
those lobby transactions have been often published as newspaper
sensations, and some of them will be referred to in this book later on.
A short quotation from Prof. Commons will suffice here to give an idea
of their character:
“It is not to be inferred that the lobby alone is responsible for
corrupt legislatures and councils. It is equally true that corrupt
legislatures are responsible for the lobby. Law-makers introduce
bills attacking corporations for the express purpose of forcing a
bribe. This is called a ‘strike,’ and has become a recognized
feature of American legislation, to meet which the corporations are
compelled to organize their lobby.” (Commons, _Proportional
Representation_, p. 47.)
A word from Bryce, on the lobby:
“All legislative bodies which control important pecuniary interests
are as sure to have a lobby as an army to have its camp followers.
Where the body is, there will the vultures be gathered together.
Great and wealthy States, like New York, and Pennsylvania, support
the largest and most active lobbies.... Thus there are at
Washington, says Mr. Spofford, ‘pension lobbyists, tariff
lobbyists, steamship subsidy lobbyists, railway lobbyists, Indian
ring lobbyists, patent lobbyists, river and harbour lobbyists,
mining lobbyists, bank lobbyists, mail-contract lobbyists, war
damages lobbyists, back-pay and bounty lobbyists, Isthmus canal
lobbyists, public building lobbyists, State claims lobbyists,
cotton-tax lobbyists, and French spoliations lobbyists. Of the
office-seeking lobbyists at Washington it may be said that their
name is legion. There are even artist lobbyists, bent upon
wheedling Congress into buying bad paintings and worse sculptures;
and too frequently with success.’”
He also says that women are said to be among the most active and
successful lobbyists at Washington, and that they have been widely
employed and efficient in soliciting members of the Legislature with a
view to the passing of private bills and the obtaining of places.
(_American Commonwealth_, Vol. I, p. 680; Vol. II, p. 732.)
So here let us end the chapter on the politicians, with the picture of a
purchasable legislature created by a political machine and representing
a purchasable manhood suffrage constituency, and of the traffic
conducted by bosses and rings on one side and a lobby on the other.
Granted American activity, and enterprise in public improvements to
cause the stream of dollars to flow steadily, and what more is required
to produce what Mr. Carnegie happily dubs “Triumphant Democracy”?