Nothing in this country appears to the stranger more intricate and
inexplicable than our politics. The different parties, two big ones and
several little ones, the various machines, county, state, and national,
the “bosses,” “heelers,” and “workers” present such a confusion of ideas
and a terminology so varied, that it is only after many years that
the foreigner begins to comprehend our system of government and the
principles underlying our political movements. Indeed, the majority of
Americans themselves are no better off and have no clear perception of
the part they are playing in the administration of affairs or the ethical
effects of the ballot which they cast. Ask the ordinary voter why he
supports the candidates of a certain party and you will find that his
reasons are reducible to a few concrete facts, and are rarely governed by
any general principles.
In the Southern states the vast majority of the whites are democrats
through opposition to the republican party which fought the war and
deprived them of their slaves. The negroes on the other hand are
republicans because it is to that party they owe their freedom, and
from it they expect protection for themselves in the exercise of their
political rights and the blessings of opportunity for education. The
political question there becomes a race question, utterly regardless
of the principles which the two great parties represent. Let there be
a complete change of platforms and the result would be precisely the
same as it has been for the past generation—the South would still remain
democratic, and the votes of their presidential electors would still be
cast for the candidates of that party.
There is a minor race question in the feeling against foreigners, more
especially Irish, Italians, and Germans, influenced to some extent by
the fact that a large number of these foreigners are Roman Catholics and
that there is an uneasy suspicion on the part of some Americans that the
Catholic church is hostile to the spirit of democracy, a suspicion not
entirely unfounded if one should judge solely by the sayings and doings
of some of the prelates of that church for the past forty years. This
“Know-nothing” sentiment at one time threatened to create a solid foreign
vote in opposition. Germans and Irish united under the protecting wings
of Tammany Hall and, aided by clergymen who hoped to obtain part of the
state educational fund for their private parochial schools, formed a
strong ally to the national democratic party. Happily prejudices of race
and religion are dying out and neither party can now claim a monopoly
of the foreign vote. Strange as it may seem, however, the Irish and
German elements, so recently the objects of proscription themselves,
have in late years become embittered against the Chinese. To the patient
industry of the Mongolian immigrants is due the building of the Pacific
railroads, when it would have been impossible to obtain white labor, and
the cultivation and development of the Pacific coast states. Congress was
terrorised into passing the law excluding all Chinese laborers. It was
more than race prejudice which contributed to this hatred of the Chinese.
The chief reason for Chinese exclusion was an economic one. Great masses
of laborers feared that the Chinese by immigrating in vast numbers would
deprive them of work by taking their places at lower wages, and, having
the ballot, they dictated to Congress the terms of the Anti-Chinese Act.
The alien contract labor law is a measure conceived in the same
spirit and directed against the hiring of laborers abroad by American
contractors, who could thus displace their employés at lower wages by
Hungarians, or Poles, or Russians, ignorant of the language of this
country and whose compensation could be the more easily reduced to a
bare maintenance, and who in sickness or old age could be turned out on
the roads to die without costing the contractor any contraction of his
bank account. There was some excuse for this law, or at least for the
feeling which prompted it, when the miners of a whole section could be
evicted and they and their families made to suffer the pangs of slow
starvation because the owners of the coal lands found they could obtain
human machines at a less cost from abroad. It was natural that the
laborers should demand a law which offered some immediate relief even
at the risk of meeting wrong with wrong, rather than that they should
attempt to regulate affairs on abstract principles of justice while their
stomachs were empty and their wives and children were dying for want of
sufficient nourishment. That feeling, however, is also vanishing and
American workingmen are beginning to see that the increase in population,
native-born as well as that imported by contract, is steadily adding to
the number of competitors and lowering the rate of wages. Their attention
is becoming more and more directed to the opening of new opportunities
for work rather than to the restricting of the number of workers.
Another class of men, if they vote at all, do so on no general principle
of public welfare, but solely for their own advantage at the expense of
their fellow men. These are to be found among the rich manufacturers, the
coal, and iron, and railway kings, and the manipulators of the crops of
the nation. Rarely casting a ballot in person, they give notice to their
thousands of employés that if the latter do not support the candidates
or the party which they happen to favor, the employés’ places will be
given to more pliant servants. These men are as non-partisan as the most
ardent reformer could wish. One of them, a few years ago when questioned
by an investigating committee of the New York state legislature, said:
“In a republican district I was a strong republican; in a democratic
district I was democratic; and in doubtful districts I was doubtful, but
in politics I was an Erie railroad man every time.” Another famous man
of the same type said he had no politics; that he found it cheaper to
buy up one set of legislators after they were elected than to purchase
two sets of candidates before election. These corrupt men, counting
their wealth by tens of millions, influencing state legislatures and the
national Congress, and throwing their weight into Presidential campaigns,
constitute the chief “dangerous class” in the United States to-day,
far more threatening to the permanency of free institutions than the
anarchists who were hanged at Chicago.
Then there are the illy-paid employés of these men who do their bidding
at the polls, voting for the candidates of their masters. Promise of
office or patronage lures others into the support of one party or the
other. Lastly come the poorest of the poor who live in the most miserable
tenement houses, or when single hive in the big lodging-houses which
are found chiefly in New York and Chicago. A ton of coal or a barrel of
flour is the bribe to the former, frequently effected through the medium
of the poor wretch’s wife who does not care for politics but sees a very
material advantage in the food or fuel offered by the ward worker. The
lodging-house voters, paid by drinks of whiskey or dollar bills, until
recently in New York were marshalled in squads of twenty or thirty early
on the morning of election day, given their ballots and compelled to hold
them aloft between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand so that
the heeler or paid servant of some political faction might watch them
from the moment they took their place in the line of voters until their
ballots were handed to the election inspectors and dropped in the box.
Both parties wink at such frauds and their henchmen directly countenance
and assist in them but the party that happens to be in the majority in
any locality is usually the one most guilty. The result is that the
minority affects great virtue and loudly denounces the corruption of its
opponents.
Among those who do vote on principle are the prohibitionists, the
greenbackers, the adherents of ephemeral labor parties and the
socialists. The anarchists generally refrain from voting because they
do not believe in any government by force and say that an enlightened
public opinion will lead the people to dispense with such things as the
army and navy and police and law courts. The socialists occasionally
vote for the men of other parties whom they think represent the worst
measures, in order the sooner, as they frankly avow, to produce
revolutionary conditions, which they expect would assist them greatly
in their propaganda. The prohibitionists, greenbackers, and labor men
each take a partial view of political economy. The first see the evils
and degradation arising from intemperance and think that everything
else must yield to the one consideration of the abolition of the liquor
traffic. The panacea of the greenbackers consists in the destruction of
the monopoly of the currency now enjoyed by the national banks. The labor
men have different shibboleths at different times such as the prevention
of child labor in factories, an eight-hour work-day and the like—measures
which might effect some relief but are minor matters compared with the
great social problem of the increase of poverty in the midst of the
greatest productive energies which the world has ever seen, a problem
which is rapidly coming to the front and overshadowing all others.
But these minor movements hardly produce a ripple on the surface of our
political waters. There are only two parties worthy of the name in the
United States to-day, as there have been but two ever since the days of
Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton. These parties go on forming
platforms chiefly on the theory of offending the least number of voters
and phrasing their declarations in vague terms which may be explained one
way in one part of the country and another way in another part. Such is a
cursory view of the field of American politics to-day.
It may seem that I have made out a pretty bad indictment of corruption
against our politics and that the view of the cynic is correct that
American politics are desperately wicked and there is no health in them.
But the moral forces which are operating in the world are fortunately
not dependent upon the changeable methods or the selfish objects of
men. It is here in America, perhaps more than anywhere else, that the
natural laws of social development have fullest play. It is here that
the evolution of politics is working itself out freely, untrammelled by
tradition or custom. It is here that the ultimate ideal of politics will
first be reached. When the framers of the Declaration of Independence
formulated their proposition that governments derive their just powers
from the consent of the governed, a step in the right direction was
taken—a step that was in accordance with our old Saxon traditions, yet
for the first time in the world’s history made on an extended scale, to
base human government on the principles of natural law. And through all
the vicissitudes of our country, its struggle for independence, its
war for the liberation of its commerce, its civil conflict which would
have dismembered any other nation, or would have left one section the
subjugated serfs of the other, through a disputed presidential election
which strained the written constitution to its utmost, the great moral
force of natural law has been working, now through one party, now through
another, gathering impetus as it goes and giving promise always of better
times to come.
It is in this broad view that all the petty thieveries and striving for
place and power sink into utter insignificance. The people do still rule.
They may sleep for a time but are sure, sooner or later, to assert their
rights in accordance with the instincts of the human mind, which are
good and not bad. As long as the suffrage shall exist it is reasonably
certain that this American government, “of the people, by the people, for
the people,” shall not perish from the earth. If the wealthy monopolists
could control the suffrage, the prospects might be different. The freedom
of the voter has been impaired to a certain extent but the American
people with quick instincts have awakened to the danger. The Australian
system of voting, which secures secrecy and freedom from intimidation and
almost extinguishes bribery is now becoming very popular. Fifteen of the
states have adopted it and the other twenty-nine will, no doubt, follow
their example in a few years. But the introduction of measures for its
establishment presented the curious anomaly of being opposed by democrats
in some localities and by republicans in others, both for partisan
reasons, constitutional and high moral pretexts being of course advanced.
When it becomes the general law, it will do more than anything else to
purify electoral methods.
Entirely above the question of methods, however, there are certain
principles involved in American politics which it becomes of the highest
importance to comprehend and which furnish the key to the apparently
inexplicable confusion. These principles, it seems to me, are reducible
to two, which may be likened to the centripetal and centrifugal forces in
nature. As both are needed for the stability of the physical universe,
so both the centralising and decentralising tendencies in politics are
necessary for the co-ordination of the state. It is in the free play
of these forces, each in its proper sphere, that lies the assurance of
the perpetuity of American institutions. But as the ideal has not yet
been reached, the practical result is that one tendency begins to act,
at first legitimately, then from the aggrandisement of power and the
“cohesive force of public plunder” the administrators of government
attempt to stretch it unduly, the opposition comes to power and the
same story is repeated. In each case the liberal party succeeds the
conservative, acts at first wisely, then corrupted by the subtle
temptations of place and power, and wishing to retain both, it becomes
opposed to change and begets a new conservatism, while new liberals arise
on a higher plane of evolution to continue the never-ending struggle. And
it must be recollected that the conservative party of each generation is
far more liberal than the one which it displaced, thus giving assurance
of perpetual progress.
This has been the epitome of all American history; each party
government, by whatever name it may have been known, has been liberal in
comparison with its predecessor and conservative as to its successor.
When Washington organised his administration it was no doubt regarded
in Europe as highly revolutionary and anarchistic. But such a class
government, with laws of entail and slavery, and cruel punishments for
petty offences, as existed then, would not be tolerated for a single year
at the present time. Thomas Jefferson who founded the democratic party,
then called the republican, was a consistent opponent of aristocracy
and personally was a man far in advance of his time, but most of his
followers would be horrified if they should now come back to earth and
see the powers possessed by the general government to-day, necessary,
legitimate powers, without which the affairs of the nation could not be
administered for a single week. The United States soon got rid of laws
of entail and the established churches. The democracy came to power and
held it nearly sixty years. Long continuance in office endeared its
possession to that party while the very growth of the nation, from five
millions to thirty-one millions, demanded changes in internal policy
which were not forthcoming. There were not lacking signs of popular
discontent. In 1840 the democrats met their first defeat, and for three
or four presidential terms the votes vibrated between the democrats and
the whigs. But the latter were not united on a consistent policy. They
needed a principle. The principle was shaping itself. Slavery, which had
been abolished in the Northern states, was gradually strengthening in
the South. The democrats forgot, or rather most of them never learned,
that true democracy knows no distinction of color. The abolitionists
were denounced by press and pulpit as socialists, as the disturbers of
public order, as blasphemers against the very law of God contained in
Holy Writ. The people, however, returned to power these same socialists
and the institution of chattel slavery was doomed. That would have been
the case in any event, but the civil war precipitated it, just as many
other unjust wars in history have resulted in disestablishing the very
institutions to perpetuate which the wars were made.
The republican party grandly and patriotically fulfilled its mission. By
degrees, however, the enormous destruction of wealth during the war and
the heavy debt entailed by it, created a burdensome system of taxation
which substituted self-interest for patriotism. Duties were laid upon
imports from abroad heavier than those which formed one of the chief
causes for the revolt of the colonies against Great Britain. These duties
enabled American manufacturers to make on American soil the same class
of goods that were imported and charge the same price as the imported
goods enhanced by the duty, of course pocketing for themselves the extra
profit which the tariff aided them to obtain from consumers. The quickest
way to wealth was to start some manufacture, get the government to put a
tax on similar articles imported and pocket the difference, or to get an
internal revenue measure passed taxing a certain line of domestic goods,
pay the tax in the first instance and then charge it to the consumers
with of course a good commission added for patriotic services. As long as
the government had work for every man who could shoulder a musket, the
pernicious effect of the system was not clearly seen. But when the war
was over and one million men returned to productive avocations, wages
began to fall. Then the question of taxation inevitably came to the
front and has now become the living issue of the hour. The needle of the
suffrage is again vibrating, the republican party has been deprived of
power for four years and the democratic President emphasised the issue by
pushing the question of tariff reform to the foreground. His re-election
was defeated, but the question is debated with more vigor than ever, and
all signs point to absolute free trade as one of the certainties of the
future. Judging from the last Congressional elections, the people have at
last turned their faces in the right direction.
It will be noticed that two elements, which I have called the centripetal
and the centrifugal, have been predominant in shaping American politics.
They may be termed the socialistic and the anarchistic forces. Socialism
claims the direction of everything by a strong centralised government.
Anarchists say with the democrats, “That government is best which governs
least,” and logically argue for the abolition of all government. Now,
the right or wrong of these principles depends upon their application.
Only the most rabid anarchist would object to the Post Office, for
instance, and few socialists would claim that the state has a right to
regulate a man’s clothing or his religion. It is on the question as to
what subjects these principles should be applied that all our American
parties arise. The early federalists were socialistic in that they
believed in a strong central government and in relegating as few things
as possible to the states. President Jefferson introduced the anarchistic
or centrifugal principle of decentralisation and individualism. But as
the nation grew, it was seen that this wrought injustice, especially in
the matter of slavery which was a violation of human rights, however the
different states might regard it. Then the socialistic or centripetal
principle began to act and slavery disappeared. Now it seems likely
that the individualistic principle will again become dominant in an
attempt to abolish all fiscal restrictions upon trade. After this may
follow the socialistic principle of state ownership of railways and
telegraphs. Perhaps this will be the work of the new political forces
evidently gathering, as foreshadowed by the Farmers’ Alliance, after the
breaking-up of parties and after the democrats, having given us free
trade, will have resumed their natural position of conservatives. Then,
in the remoter future, may come the anarchistic principle of the removal
of the restrictions against female suffrage. And so it will go on, first
one principle acting and fulfilling its mission, then the other, each
bringing the nation to a higher plane of progress and uniting it more and
more closely with the grand upward march of the human race.
What is this, after all? It is not socialism. It is not anarchy. It is
neither democracy nor republicanism. It is EVOLUTION. It does not depend
on the temporary success of party governments for its action. It does not
even solely result from our unique position or our independence wrested
from Great Britain. Back of it lie the broad principles of British
liberty, of common law, of Magna Charta won from King John on the plains
of Runnymede. Back of it is the great wave of democracy arising out of
the darkness of the Middle Ages. Back of it are the injunctions of Him
of Galilee who taught the natural law as no man ever taught before. Back
of it is Roman jurisprudence and Greek art and culture and the early
efforts of the days when Cadmus brought the alphabet to Europe with his
Phœnician colony. Indeed, back of it lies the primeval impulse of the
first man, God-endowed, ape-descended, who stood upon his feet and began
to think. We may carry our thoughts still further to the times when the
red sunlight first filtered through the thick clouds upon an uninhabited
world, and still further may we go in thought into the ages of eternity,
and assert with fullest confidence that the principles of progress to-day
working themselves out in politics are but the reflection of the divine
ideals founded in the laws of nature.
Can the course of such progress be turned back? Can we despair of the
future in the light of all the past? Is not the general movement onward
and upward? Will not the sneers at ephemeral phases of our American
politics pass away with the incidents which they justly condemn, while
the principles of progress remain forever?