AMERICAN POLITICS IN ENGLAND
The System of Parties--Interdependence of National and Local
Organisations--The Federal Government and Sovereign States--The
Boss of Warwickshire--The Unit System--Prime Minister Crooks--
Lanark and the Nation--New York and Tammany Hall--America's
Superior Opportunities for Wickedness--But England is Catching
up--Campaign Reminiscences--The "Hell-box"--Politics in a
Gravel-pit--Mr. Hearst and Mr. Bryan.
The subject of this chapter will, perhaps, be more easy of comprehension
to the English reader if he will for a moment surrender his imagination
into my charge while we transfer to England certain political conditions
of the United States.
There are in the first place, then, the great political parties, in the
nation and in Parliament (Congress); with the fact always to be borne in
mind that the members of Congress are not nominated by any central
committee or association, but are selected and nominated by the people
of each district. A candidate is not "sent down" to contest a given
constituency. He is a resident of that constituency, selected in small
local meetings by the voters themselves.
Next, every County (State) has its own machinery of government,
including a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and other County officials as
well as a bi-cameral Legislature, with a membership ranging from seventy
in some Counties to over three hundred in others. In these County
Legislatures and governments, parties are split on precisely the same
lines as in the nation and in Parliament. Members of the House of
Commons have usually qualified for election by a previous term in the
County Legislature, while members of the House of Lords are actually
elected direct, not by the people in the mass, but by the members of the
County Legislatures only, each county sending to Westminster two members
so elected. Nor is it to be supposed that these County governments are
governments in name only.
It is not easy to imagine that in England the Counties, each with its
separate and sovereign government, preceded the National Government and
voluntarily called it into existence only as a federation of themselves.
But that, we must for the present understand, was indeed the course of
history; and when that federation was formed, the various Counties
entrusted to the Central Government only a strictly limited list of
powers. The Central Government was authorised to treat with foreign
nations in the name of the United Counties; to maintain a standing army
of limited size, and to create a navy; to establish postal routes,
regardless of County boundaries; to regulate commerce between the
different Counties, to care for the national coast line and all
navigable waters within the national dominions, and to levy taxes for
national purposes. All powers not thus specifically conceded to the
central authority were, in theory at least, reserved by the individual
Counties to themselves; and to-day a County government, except that it
cannot interfere with the postal service within its borders, nor erect
custom-houses on its County lines to levy taxes on goods coming in from
neighbouring Counties, is practically a sovereign government within its
own territory.
It is only within the last ten years that the right of the Central
Government--the Crown--to use the King's troops to protect from violence
the King's property, in the shape of the Royal mails, in defiance of the
wishes of the Governor of a County, was established by a decision of the
Supreme Court. The Governor protested that the suppression of mobs and
tumults within his County borders was his business, his County police
and militia being the proper instruments for the purpose, and for the
Crown to intervene without his request and sanction was an invasion of
the sovereign dignity of the County.
Although so much has been said on this subject by various English
writers, from Mr. Bryce downwards, few Englishmen, I think, have
comprehended the theoretical significance of this independence of the
individual States, and fewer still grasp its practical importance.
Perhaps the most instructive illustration of what it means is to be
found in the dilemma in which the American government has, on two
occasions in recent years, found itself from its inability to compel a
particular State to observe the national treaty obligations to a foreign
power.
The former of the two cases arose in Louisiana when a number of citizens
of New Orleans (including not only leading bankers and merchants but
also, it is said, at least one ex-Governor of the State and one Judge),
finding that a jury could not, because of terrorisation, be found to
convict certain murderers, Italians and members of the Mafia, took the
murderers out of gaol and hanged them in a public square in broad
daylight. The Italian government demanded the punishment of the
lynchers, and the American government had to confess itself entirely
unable to comply with the request. Whether it would have given the
satisfaction if it could is another question; but the dealing with the
criminals was a matter solely for the Louisiana State authorities, and
the Federal Government had no power to interfere with them or to dictate
what they should do. The only way in which it could have obtained
jurisdiction over the offenders would have been by sending Federal
troops into the State to take them by force, a proceeding which the
State of Louisiana would certainly have resisted by force, and civil war
would have followed. Ultimately, the United States, without
acknowledging any liability in the matter, paid to the Italian
government a certain sum of money as a voluntary _solatium_ to the
widows and families of those who had been killed, and the incident was
closed.
The second case, which has recently strained so seriously the relations
between the United States and Japan, arose with the State of California,
which refused to extend to Japanese subjects the privileges to which
they are unquestionably entitled under the "most favoured nation" clause
of the treaty between the two governments. It is a matter which cannot
be dealt with fully here without too long a digression from the path of
our present argument, and will be referred to later. It is enough for
the present to point out that once again the National Government--or
what we have called the Crown--has been seen to be entirely incapable,
without recourse to civil war, of compelling an individual State--or
County--to respect the national word when pledged to a treaty with a
foreign power.[264:1]
The States then, or Counties, are independent units, in each of which
there exists a complete party organisation of each of the great parties,
which organisations control the destinies of the parties within the
County borders and have no concern whatever with the party fortunes
outside. The great parties in the nation and in Parliament must look to
the organisations within the several Counties for their support and
existence. The loss of a County, say Hampshire, by the local
Conservative organisation will mean to the Conservative party in the
nation not merely that the members to be elected to the lower house of
Parliament by the Hampshire constituencies will be Liberal, but that the
County Legislature will elect two Liberal Peers to the upper house as
well; and it is likely that in one or other of the two houses parties
may be so evenly balanced that the loss of the members from the one
County may overthrow the government's working majority. Moreover, the
loss of the County in the local County election will probably mean the
loss of that County's vote at the next presidential election, which may
result in the entire dethronement of the party from power.
Wherefore it is obviously necessary that the party as a whole--in the
nation and in Congress--should do all that it can to help and strengthen
the party leaders in the County. This it does in contests believed to be
critical, and particularly just in advance of a national election, by
contributing to the local campaign funds when a purely County (State)
election is in progress (with which, of course, the national party ought
theoretically to have nothing to do) and in divers other ways; but
especially by judicious use of the national patronage in making
appointments to office when the party is in power.
The President--or let us say the Prime Minister--would rarely presume to
appoint a postmaster at Winchester or Petersfield, or a collector of the
port of Portsmouth or Southampton, without the advice and consent of the
Hampshire Peers or Senators. And the advice of the Hampshire Peers, we
may be sure, would be shaped in accordance with their personal political
interests or by considerations of the welfare of the party in the
County. They would not be likely to recommend for preferment either a
member of the opposite party or a member of their own party who was a
personal opponent. Moreover, besides the appointments in the County
itself, there are many posts in the government offices in Whitehall, as
well as a number of consulates and other more remote positions, to be
filled. In spite of much that has been done to make the United States
civil service independent of party politics, it remains that the bulk of
these posts are necessarily still filled on recommendations made by the
Congressmen or party leaders from the respective Counties, and again it
is the good of the party inside those Counties which inspires those
recommendations.
Thus we see how the national party when in power is able to fatten and
strengthen the hands of the party organisations within the several
Counties; and strengthen them it must, for if they lose control of the
voters within their territory then is the national party itself ruined
and dethroned.
And below the County party organisations, the County governments, are
the organisations and governments in the cities, which again are split
on precisely the same lines of cleavage. The City Council of Petersfield
or Midhurst is divided into Conservatives and Liberals precisely as the
Hampshire Legislature or the Parliament at Westminster. Jealousies often
arise between the County organisations and those in the cities. The
influence of Birmingham might well become overpowering in the
Warwickshire Legislature, whereby it would be difficult for any but a
resident of Birmingham to become Governor of the County or to be elected
to the House of Lords. If the Birmingham municipal organisation chanced
to be controlled by a strong hand, it is not difficult to see how he
might impose his will upon the County Legislature and the County party
organisation, how he might claim more than his share of the sweets and
spoils of office for his immediate friends and colleagues in the city,
to the disgust of the other parts of the County. For the most part,
however, such quarrels, between the city and County organisations of the
same party, when they arise, are but lovers' quarrels, rarely pushed to
the point of endangering the unity of the party in the State at election
time.
But now if we remember what was said at first, that no candidates for
Parliament or other elected functionaries are "sent down" by a central
organisation, but all are "sent up" from the bottom, the impulse
starting from small meetings in public-house parlours and the like (in
the case of cities, meetings being held by "precincts" to elect
delegates to a meeting of the "ward," which meeting again elects
delegates to the meeting of the city), when we see how the city can
coerce the County and the County sway the nation, then we have also no
difficulty in seeing how it is, as has been said already, that the same
power that appoints a janitor in a town-hall may dictate the nomination
of a President. Even more than the County organisation is to the
national party, is the city organisation to the County. The party, both
as a national and as a County organisation, must fatten and strengthen
the hands of the city machine. Thus comes it that such an alderman as
the Delectable One is unassailable. His power reaches far beyond the
city. The party organisation in the city cannot dispense with him,
because he can be relied upon always to carry his ward, and that ward
may be necessary, not to the city machine only, but to the County and
the nation.
It is hardly necessary to explain that in a general election in England
the party which is returned to power need not necessarily have a
majority of the votes throughout the country. A party may win ten seats
by majorities of less than a hundred in each and lose one, being therein
in a minority of a thousand; with the result that, with fewer votes than
were cast for its opponents, it will have a clear majority of nine in
the eleven seats. This is of course well understood.
But in an American general or presidential election, this anomaly is
immensely aggravated by the fact that the electoral unit is not a city
or a borough but a whole County or State. The various States have a
voice in proportion to their population, but that vote is cast as a
unit. A majority of ten votes in New York carries the entire
thirty-seven votes of that State, while a majority of one thousand in
Montana only counts three. There are forty-six States in the Republic,
but the thirteen most populous possess more than half the votes, and a
presidential candidate who received the votes of those thirteen, though
each was won by only the narrowest majority, would be elected over an
antagonist who carried the other thirty-three States, though in each of
the thirty-three his majority might be overwhelming. Bearing this in
mind, we see at once what immense importance may, in a doubtful
election, attach to the control of a single populous State.
If in an English election, similarly conducted, the country was known to
be so equally divided that the vote of Warwickshire, with, perhaps,
twenty votes, would certainly decide the issue, the man who could
control Warwickshire would practically control the country. We have seen
further, however, that the man who controls Warwickshire will probably
be the man who controls Birmingham. He may be the Mayor of Birmingham,
or, more likely, the chairman (or "boss") of the municipal machine who
nominated and elected the Mayor and whose puppet the Mayor practically
is. It then becomes evident that the man who can sway the politics of
the nation is not merely the man who controls the single County of
Warwickshire, but the man who, inside that County, controls the single
city.
To go a step below that again, the control of the city may depend
entirely on the control of a given ward in the city. That ward may
contain a very large labouring vote, by reason of the existence of a
number of big factories within its limits. Unless that labouring vote
can be polled for the Liberal party, the ward will not go Liberal, and
without it the city will be lost. The loss of the city involves the loss
of the County, and the loss of the County means the loss of the nation.
The man therefore who by his personal influence, or by his leadership in
a perfectly organised party machine in one ward of Birmingham, can be
relied on to call out the full Liberal strength in that one ward of a
single city may be absolutely indispensable to the success of the party
in the country as a whole. And it is even conceivable that that man
again may be dependent on one of his own henchmen, the "Captain" of a
single precinct in the ward or the man who has the ear and confidence of
the hands in the largest of the factories.
Let me not be understood as saying that the personal influence of an
individual may not be extremely powerful in an English election; and
that power may rest, similarly, on his popularity in, and consequent
ability to carry with him into the party fold, one particular district.
But there is not the same established form of County government on
avowedly national lines, nor the same city government, as in America,
through which that influence can make itself definitely and continuously
felt.
* * * * *
We will state the situation in another way, which will make it clear to
Englishmen from another point of view:
Let it be imagined that at the next general election in England, the
decision is to be arrived at by a direct vote of the country as a whole
for a Conservative or a Liberal Prime Minister. Instead of each County
and borough electing its members of Parliament (they will do that only
incidentally) the real struggle will take the form of a direct contest
between two men. Each of the great parties will choose its own
candidate, and the Conservatives have already nominated Mr. Balfour. It
remains for the Liberals to name their man who is to run against Mr.
Balfour. The selection is to be made in a National Convention, to be
held in Manchester, at which each County will be represented by a number
of delegates proportioned to its population. Those delegates have
already been elected in each County by local meetings within the
Counties themselves, and in nearly every case the delegations so elected
will come into the Convention Hall at Manchester prepared to vote and
act as a unit. Whether that has been arrived at by choice of the
individual Counties when they elected their delegations or whether the
Convention itself has decided the matter by adopting the "unit rule"
does not matter. The fact is that each county will be compelled to vote
in a body, _i. e._, that if London has forty votes and Kent twenty,
those forty votes or those twenty will have to be cast solidly for some
one man. They cannot be split into thirty votes for one man and ten for
another; or into fifteen for one man and one each for five other men.
The Convention meets and it is plain from the first that the two
strongest candidates are Lord Rosebery and Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman.
There are scattering votes for Mr. Morley and Mr. Asquith, each of them
getting the vote of one or more small Counties. But after the first
ballot, which is always more or less preliminary, it is apparent that
neither of those gentlemen can hope to be chosen, so the Counties which
voted for them, having expressed their preference, proceed on the next
ballot to give their suffrages either to Lord Rosebery or to Sir Henry.
The second ballot is completed. Every County has voted, with the result
that (out of a total vote of 521, of which 261 are necessary for a
choice) there are 248 votes for Lord Rosebery and 253 for Sir Henry
Campbell-Bannerman. But there is still one County which has not voted
for either. Kent at both ballots has cast its twenty votes for Mr. Will
Crooks. The reason why Kent does this is because the representatives
from Woolwich and the neighbourhood are a numerical majority of the Kent
delegation and those men are devoted to Mr. Crooks.
The third ballot produces the same result: Rosebery 248; Bannerman, 253;
Crooks, 20. The fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh ballots show no change
except that once in a while Rutland with three votes and Merioneth with
four have amused themselves or caused a temporary flutter by swinging
their votes from one side to the other or, perhaps, again casting them
for Mr. Morley or Mr. Asquith. There is a deadlock. The Convention
becomes impatient. The evening wears on and midnight arrives and still
there is no change. Neither Lord Rosebery nor Sir Henry can get the
extra dozen votes that are needed: still with regularity when the name
of Kent is called the leader of the delegation rises and responds "Kent
casts twenty votes for William Crooks."
At last in the small hours of the morning something happens. How it has
been arrived at nobody seems to know; but when the roll is called for
the thirteenth time, Norfolk, heretofore loyal to Sir Henry, suddenly
votes for Crooks. Tremendous excitement follows. The word goes round
that Campbell-Bannerman is beaten; his friends have given up and it is
useless to vote for him any longer. Meanwhile in the course of the
evening feeling between the supporters of Sir Henry and the Roseberyites
has grown so bitter that whatever the deserting Bannermanites do, they
will not help to elect Lord Rosebery. Here and there a Scotch County
remains firm to its leader, but Oxford swings off to Mr. Morley;
Suffolk, amid yells that make it difficult to tell who the vote is cast
for, follows Norfolk and plumps for Crooks. Sussex brings in Mr. Asquith
again and Warwickshire goes for Crooks. Amid breathless silence the
result of the thirteenth ballot is read out: Rosebery, 248; Crooks, 96;
Morley, 72; Asquith, 50; Bannerman, 43; etc.
The fourteenth ballot begins. "Aberdeen!" calls the Chairman. The head
of the Aberdeen delegation stands up in a suspense so tense that it
almost hurts. "Aberdeen casts seventeen votes for Mr. Will Crooks!" In
an instant the whole hall is filled with maniacs. County after County
rushes to range itself on the winning side. Before the roll is more than
half completed it is evident that Crooks must be chosen. Thereafter
there is no dissentient voice. The ballot is interrupted by a voice
which is known to belong to Lord Rosebery's personal representative. He
moves that the nomination of Mr. Crooks be made unanimous. In a din
wherein no voice can be heard the erstwhile leader of the Bannermanite
forces is seen waving his arms and is known to be seconding the motion.
In ten minutes the hall is singing _God Save the King_ and Mr. Will
Crooks is the chosen candidate of the Liberal party to oppose Mr.
Balfour at the coming election.
That is not materially different from what happened when Mr. Bryan was
first nominated for the Presidency against Mr. McKinley--except that it
did not take so long to accomplish. I have said that Mr. Bryan's
nomination could have been defeated if a certain local delegation had
been "attended to" in advance. What is to be noted is that Mr. Crooks
has been nominated simply because he had a hold which could not be
shaken on a small but compact body of men at Woolwich. It is true that
it is not often that so dramatic a thing would happen as the nomination
of Mr. Crooks himself but more frequently an arrangement--a "trade" or
"deal"--would be entered into by which in consideration of the Crooks
vote being thrown to one or other of the leading candidates, in the
event of the latter's defeating Mr. Balfour and being elected to the
Premiership, certain political advantages, in the form of appointments
to office and "patronage" generally, would accrue, not necessarily to
Mr. Crooks himself, but to his "machine," the citizens of Woolwich, and
the Liberal party in the County of Kent at large. We see here how the
local "boss" may become all-powerful in national affairs (and this is of
course only one of fifty ways) and how the interdependence of the party
in the nation with the party organisation in the County or the
municipality tends to the fattening of the latter and, it must be added,
the debauching of all three.
At the last general election in England, in January, 1906, there is no
doubt that the Conservative party owed the loss of a large number of
seats merely to the fact that it had been in office for so long, without
serious conflict, that the local party organisations had not merely
grown rusty but were practically defunct. In the United States the same
thing, in anything like the same degree, would be impossible, because
between the periods of the general elections (which themselves come
every four years) come the State and municipal elections for the
purposes of which the local party organisations are kept in continuous
and more or less active existence. A State or a city may, of course, be
so confirmedly Republican or Democratic that, even though elections be
frequent, the ruling party organisation will become, in a measure, soft
and careless, but it can never sink altogether out of fighting
condition. When a general election comes round, each great party in the
nation possesses--or organises for the occasion--a national committee as
well as a national campaign organisation; but that committee and that
national organisation co-operate with the local organisations in each
State and city and it is the local organisations that really do the
work--the same organisations as conduct the fight, in intermediate
years, for the election of members to the State Legislature or of a
mayor and aldermen. And each of those local organisations necessarily
tends to come under the control of a recognised "boss."
Let us see another of the fifty ways in which, as has been said, one of
these local bosses may be all-powerful in national affairs. A general
election is approaching in Great Britain, and, as before, the Liberal
party is in doubt whether to select as its candidate for the
Premiership Lord Rosebery or Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. The political
complexion of almost every County is known and there is no chance of
changing that complexion--a condition, be it said, which exists in
America in the case of a large majority of the States. It is evident
that at the coming election the vote is going to be extremely close, the
most important of the "doubtful" Counties being Lanarkshire, which has
25 votes; which 25 votes will of course be governed by the course of the
working population of Glasgow. Whichever party can secure Lanarkshire's
vote will probably be successful; so that the destiny of the country
really depends on the temper of the labouring men of Glasgow. Glasgow
has, let us suppose, a strong and well-organised local Liberal "machine"
which carried the city at the last municipal election, so that the mayor
and a large majority of the aldermen of Glasgow are Liberals to-day; and
the dictator or "boss" of this machine is (we are merely using a name
for the sake of illustration) Lord Inverclyde. Lord Inverclyde does not
believe that Lord Rosebery is the right man for the Premiership. So he
lets his views be known to the Liberal National Committee. "I am, as you
know," he says, "a strong Liberal; but frankly I would rather see Mr.
Balfour made Prime Minister than Lord Rosebery. Glasgow will not vote
for Lord Rosebery. The party can nominate any other man whom it pleases
and we will elect him. I will undertake to carry Lanark for Sir Henry or
Mr. Morley or anybody else; but I warn you that if Lord Rosebery is
nominated, we will 'knife' him"--that being the euphonious phrase used
to describe the operation when a party leader or party machine turns
against any particular candidate nominated by the party.
What are the party leaders to do in such a case? To nominate Lord
Rosebery after that warning (Lord Inverclyde is known to be a man of his
word) will be merely to invite defeat at the election; consequently,
though he may be the actual preference of a large majority of the
Liberals of the country, Lord Rosebery does not get the nomination. It
goes to some one who can carry Lanarkshire,--some one, that is, who is
pleasing to the boss of the local machine of Glasgow. It would be not
unlikely that the national leaders might resent the dictation of Lord
Inverclyde and might (but not until after the election was safely over)
start intriguing in Glasgow politics to have him dethroned from the
position of local "boss,"--might, in fact, begin "knifing" him in turn.
Whether they would succeed in their object before another general
election supervened would depend on the security of his hold on the
local Liberal organisation; and that would depend on his personal
ability as a politician and--very largely--on his unscrupulousness. For
it may, I think, be stated as an axiom that no man can long retain his
hold as "boss" of the machine in a large city except by questionable
methods,--methods which sometimes involve dishonesty. He must--no matter
whether he likes it or not--use his patronage and his power to advance
unworthy men; and he must in some measure show leniency to certain forms
of lawlessness. Otherwise the influence of the saloons, gamblers,
keepers of disorderly houses, and all the other non-law-abiding elements
will be thrown against him with sufficient weight to work his downfall.
Unscrupulousness and friendship with wickedness in the slums of a city
may thus be the direct road to influence in the councils of the national
party. When it is remembered that not a few large cities, and therefore
some States, are practically controlled, through the balance of power,
by voters of an alien nationality, it is further plain how such an alien
vote may become a serious factor in the politics of the nation. Thus is
the German element very strong in Milwaukee, and the Scandinavian
element in the towns and State of Minnesota. Thus the Irish influence
has been almost paramount in New York, though now outnumbered by
Germans, Italians, and others; and it is there, in New York, that the
conditions which we have imagined in connection with Glasgow and Lord
Inverclyde are actually being almost exactly repeated in American
Democratic politics as often as a general election comes round.
You may frequently hear it said in America that "as goes New York, so
goes the country"; which is to say that in a presidential election the
party which carries New York will carry the nation. In theory this is
not necessarily so, although it is evident that New York's thirty-six
votes in the electoral college must be an important contribution to the
support of a candidate. In practice it has proven itself a good rule,
partly by reason of the importance of those thirty-six votes, but more,
perhaps, because the popular impetus which sways one part of the country
is likely to be felt in others--that, in fact, New York goes as the
country goes.
But let us assume that the New York vote is really essential to the
election of a candidate--that the vote in the country as a whole is
evidently so evenly divided that whichever candidate can win New York
must be elected the next President. Tammany Hall is a purely local
organisation of the Democratic party in New York City. New York State,
outside the city, is normally Republican, but many times the great
Democratic majority in the Metropolitan district has swamped a
Republican majority in the rest of the State. That Democratic vote in
the Metropolitan district can only be properly "brought out" and
controlled by Tammany; so that the cordial support of Tammany Hall,
though, as has been said, it is in reality a strictly local
organisation, and as such is probably the worst and most corrupt
organisation (as it is also the best managed) that has been built up in
the country, may be absolutely vital to the success of a Democratic
presidential candidate. Tammany is practically an autocracy, the power
of the Chief being almost absolute. England and English society have had
some acquaintance with one Chief, and do not like him. But, as Chief of
Tammany Hall, it is easy to see how even a coarse-grained Irishman may
become for a time influential in American national affairs--even to the
dictating of a nominee for the Presidency.
I am not prepared to say that under the same conditions the same things
could occur in England. What I am saying is that they do occur in the
United States under conditions which do not exist in England; and, while
it may be that British civic virtue would be proof against the manifold
temptations of a similar political system, we have no sufficient data to
justify us in being sure of it, nor is it wise or charitable to assume
that because a certain number of American politicians yield to
temptations which Englishmen have never experienced, therefore the
people are of a less rigid virtue. Mr. Bryce has recorded his opinion
that the mass of the public servants in America are no more corrupt than
those in England. I prefer not to agree with him for, if it was true
when he wrote it, the Americans to-day must be much the better, because
since then there has unquestionably been an enormous improvement in the
United States, while we have no evidence of a corresponding improvement
in England. I believe, not only that many more public men are corrupt in
America than in England, but that a larger proportion of the public men
are corrupt, which, however, need not imply a lower standard of
political incorruptibility: only that there are much greater
opportunities of going wrong.
It is interesting to note, moreover, that in the public service the
opportunities of malfeasance in public officers in Great Britain are
increasing rapidly and, moreover, in precisely those lines wherein they
have proved most demoralising in America. I have elsewhere recorded the
apprehension with which many Englishmen cannot help regarding the
closeness of the relations which are growing up between the national and
local party organisations, but in addition to this the urban public
bodies are coming to play a vastly larger role in the life of the
people, while the multiplication of electric car lines and similar
enterprises is exposing the members of those bodies to somewhat the same
class of untoward influence as has so often proven fatal to the civic
virtue of similar bodies in America. Whether, as a result, any large
number of cases of individual frailty have exposed themselves, probably
only those immediately interested know; the exposure at least has not
reached the general public.
It may not, however, be amiss to remember that a century and a half ago,
when the conditions in the two countries were widely different from what
they are to-day, Benjamin Franklin, coming to England, was shocked and
astounded at the corruption then prevalent in English public life.
* * * * *
The procedure of an American presidential campaign has been sufficiently
often described for the benefit of English readers. Suffice it to say
that it is devastating, at times almost titanic. I have had some
experience of the amenities of political campaigning in England, but the
most bitterly contested fight in England never produces anything like
the intensity of passion that is let loose in the quadrennial upheavals
in the United States.
It was my lot to be closely associated with the conduct of a national
campaign--as bitterly fought a campaign as the country has seen since
the days of the war,--namely that of 1896 when Mr. Bryan was the
candidate of the Free Silver Democracy. Early in the fight I began to
receive abusive letters, for which a large and capacious drawer was
provided in the office, into which they were tossed as they came, on the
chance of their containing some reading which might be interesting when
the trouble was over. As the fight waxed, they came by every post and in
every form, ranging from mere incoherent personal abuse to threats of
assassination. Hundreds of them were entirely insane: many hundred more
the work, on the face of them, of anarchists pure and simple. A large
proportion of them were written in red ink, and in many--very
many--cases the passions of the writers had got so far beyond their
control that you could see where they had broken their pens in the
futile effort to make written words curse harder than they would. The
receptacle in which they were placed was officially known in the office
as the Chamber of Horrors, but it was, I think, universally spoken of
among the staff as the "Hell-box." Before the end of the campaign,
capacious though it was, it was crowded to overflowing, and hardly a
document that was not as venomous as human wrath could make it.
Incidentally I wish to say that never was a campaign--at least as far as
my colleagues in our particular department were concerned--more purely
in the interest of public morality, without any sort of selfish aims,
and less deserving of abuse. What the correspondence of a presidential
candidate himself must be in like circumstances, it is horrible to
think.[281:1]
The intense feverishness of the campaign is of course increased by the
vastness of the country, the tremendous distances over which the
national organisation has to endeavour to exercise control, and the
immense diversity in the conditions of the people and communities to
whom appeal has to be made. The voting takes place all over the country
on the same day; and it must be remembered that the area of the United
States (not counting Alaska or any external dependencies) is so great
that it reaches from west to east about as far as from London to
Teheran, and north and south from London to below the southern boundary
of Morocco. The difficulty of organisation over such an area can,
perhaps, be imagined. In the course of the campaign there came in one
day in my mail a letter written on a torn half of a railway time-card.
It ran:
"DEAR SIR--There is sixty-five of us here working in a gravel
pit and we was going to vote solid for Bryan and Free Silver.
Some of your books [_i. e._, campaign leaflets, etc.] was
thrown to us out of a passing train. We have organised a Club
and will cast sixty-five votes for William McKinley.--Yours,
etc."
So far as those sixty-five were concerned our chief interest thereafter
lay in seeing that the existence of that gravel-pit was never discovered
by the enemy. A faith which had been so speedily and unanimously
embraced might perhaps not have been unassailable.
Before leaving this subject it may be well to say a few words on a
recent election in New York which excited, perhaps, more interest in
England than any American political event of late years. The eminence
which Mr. Hearst has won is an entirely deplorable thing, which has been
made possible by the fact, already sufficiently dwelt upon, that
political power in the United States is so largely exerted from the
bottom up. In their comments on the incident after the event, however,
English papers missed some of its significance. Most English writers
spoke of Mr. Hearst's appeal to the forces of discontent as a new
phenomenon and drew therefrom grave inferences as to what would happen
next in the United States. The fact is that the phenomenon is not new in
any way. Mr. Hearst, in but a slightly different form, appealed to
precisely the same passions as Mr. Bryan aroused--the same as every
demagogue has appealed to throughout, at least, the northern and western
sections of the country any time in this generation. Mr. Hearst began
from the East and Mr. Bryan from the West, but in all essentials the
appeal was the same. And Mr. Hearst was not elected. And Mr. Bryan was
not elected. What will happen next will be that the next man who makes
the same appeal will not be elected also.
It is the allegory of the river and its ripples over again. Englishmen
need not despair of the United States, for the great body of the people
is extraordinarily conservative and well-poised. In America, man never
is, but always to be, cursed. Dreadful things are on the eve of
happening, and never happen. There is a great saving fund of
common-sense in the people--a sense which probably rests as much on the
fact that they are as a whole conspicuously well-to-do as on anything
else--which as the last resort shrinks from radicalism. In spite of the
yellow press, in spite of all the Socialist and Anarchist talk, in spite
of corruption and brass bands and torchlight processions, when the
people as a whole is called upon to speak the final word, that word has
never yet been wrong. Perhaps some day it will be, for all peoples go
mad at times; but the nation is normally sound and sane, with a sanity
that is peculiarly like that of the English.
FOOTNOTES:
[264:1] I trust that, because, for the purpose of making an illustration
which will bring the matter home familiarly to English minds, I speak of
the States as English Counties, I shall not be suspected of thinking (as
some writers appear to have thought) that there is really any historical
or structural analogy between the two.
[281:1] None the less my friendly American critic (already quoted)
holds, and remains firm in, the opinion that "however strenuous the
fighting, the political issues produce no such social changes or
personal differences in the United States as have frequently obtained in
England, say at the time of the leadership of Gladstone, or more
recently, in connection with the 'tariff reform' of Chamberlain." It is
his contention that Americans take their politics on the whole more
good-humouredly than has always been found possible by their English
cousins, and that when the campaign is over, there is more readiness in
the United States than in England to let pass into oblivion any
bitterness that may have found expression during the fighting.