The American people in their frugal rural days enjoyed their freedom,
knew all their neighbors, and governed themselves simply and directly.
They knew personally the men they elected. Now bosses govern them, and
the men they elect are unknown to the voters. The republic is rich,
the people are many. Still possessed of that spirit of liberty which
Edmund Burke noted as characteristic of the American colonists, and
still reaching for complete self-government, they have grasped too
much, and have lost their grip on what is essential. They have seen
the setting up of secret oligarchies in all the chief cities and
states. The head of the most considerable of these oligarchies,
regnant save in times of extraordinary protest and agitation, is
virtually king of a tributary city and state, whose population is over
thrice that of the original thirteen Colonies, whose public
expenditures are three hundred millions of dollars yearly, and whose
wealth amounts to twenty-five billions. He and his associates, too,
partake of this fierce American spirit, in the sense that they are
strong individualists. And they are captains of a peculiar industry.
The fathers foresaw this danger to the republic. Judah Hammond says
that Washington, before the close of his second term, "rebuked
self-creative societies from an apprehension that their ultimate
tendency would be hostile to the public tranquillity." The members of
the Society of Tammany, who were then celebrating its eighth birthday,
"supposed their institution to be included in the reproof, and they
almost all forsook it." But the organization's founder, William
Mooney, and a few with him, made Aaron Burr their leader, and he and
his friend Matthew L. Davis forged it and tempered it into an
instrument of perpetual and public plunder.
It was inevitable that there should be "self-creative societies" in
the United States devoted to the political preferment and personal
emolument of their members. It accorded with the genius of a people
who wished, above all things, individually to be let alone in their
lives, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Vast natural possessions
must be explored and exploited. The victorious new nation was engaged
in ravaging a bountiful land and in despoiling its savage possessors.
To the spirit of liberty which its citizens inherited as Englishmen
and as sons of dissidence and protestantism, was added a contagion of
wildness from their redskin foes. The "Burrites" paraded in Indian
garb, danced, and used savage ceremonies. The climate, changeable and
stimulating, and the conditions of the time, charged with the
possibilities of material and political conquest, had bred desperate
leaders differing from the patriots who headed the societies of the
Revolution. These leaders naturally opposed the party of Alexander
Hamilton, with its suggestions of a responsible, centralized, and
controlling government. The Society of old Tamenund welcomed Aaron
Burr into its wigwam after he slew Hamilton. It shielded its founder,
Mooney, after he was convicted for stealing "wampum," or "trifles for
Mrs. Mooney," from New York City's supplies. It acclaimed Benjamin
Romaine as its Grand Sachem, after his removal in 1806 from the City
Controllership for malfeasance. Abraham Stagg, political ancestor of
Charles F. Murphy, continued to get the contracts for paving the
city's streets after his conviction, in 1808, of concealing accounts
as Collector of Assessments. Tammany's braves assaulted the City Hall
in 1815 and removed the Mayor, DeWitt Clinton, who was the honest and
better prototype of William Sulzer; but Clinton later repelled their
attack on him as Governor. Under Matthew Davis they had early
perfected their mode of raiding the primaries that they might
consequently raid the City Treasury, and in 1800 their manipulations
actually resulted in the election of President Jefferson. Their
councils were so crafty that by 1816 they were ruling New York by a
committee of fourteen chieftains. In his excellent history of Tammany
Hall, Gustavus Myers says:
Substantially, fourteen men were acting for over five thousand
Republican voters, and eight members of the fourteen composed a
majority. Yet the system had all the pretence of a pure
democracy; the wards were called upon to elect delegates; the
latter chose candidates and made party rules; and the "great
popular meeting" accepted or rejected nominees; it all seemed to
spring directly from the people.
Thus early was formed the perfect and predatory "system" which
typifies the oligarchies that have acquired control of the American
states and cities. Their forays and assaults have been continuous
through more than a century. Now and then a warrior, chief, or Sachem
has been captured with his booty and punished. Such were the cases of
the treasury stealings by Ruggles Hubbard and John L. Broome in 1817;
of Jacob Barker and his fellow Sachems in the bank frauds of 1826; of
the procurement of legislative charters by bribery in 1834, involving
Peter Betts and Luke Metcalfe; of the lobbying by Samuel Swartout for
the Harlem Railroad in 1835, and his defalcations in 1838; of the
Manhattan Bank's lendings to Tammany leaders in 1840; of the gambler
Rynders and the Empire Club scandal in 1844; of the sales of
nominations under Fernando Wood in 1846, and the Council of the "Forty
Thieves" in 1851; of the extortions for ferry leases and railroad
franchises in 1854; of the election frauds of 1857, and so on, down to
the monumental thieveries of "Boss" Tweed and his "ring," exposed in
1871, the death of "Honest" John Kelly in 1886, the rise of Richard
Croker in 1890, who testified that he worked "for his pocket all the
time," and to Murphy, who in 1913 displayed the supreme power of
Tammany by bringing about the removal of William Sulzer from the
Governorship for disobeying the "invisible government." These
exposures merely punctuate a long history of sustained and systematic
plunder, for a parallel with which we must go back to the times of the
Medici and the oligarchy they reared above the fabric of the
Florentine republic.
But the rule of thieves, corruptionists, and "machine" men, which must
be acknowledged as nearly universal in the United States, a rule which
makes it impossible for the people to select their own candidates for
office, and usually dictates the elections, is strangely the price the
public pays for social and economic freedom. It was the intent of the
founders that the people should control their own government. The
founders made it as nearly a pure democracy as they dared. The
charters of American cities and the constitutions of the states reveal
long lists of elective offices. The statutes define strictly the
duties of officials; their terms are made short, and through the
multitude of offices, important and petty, it is clear that one
purpose runs to make each directly answerable to the voters. In every
quadrennial cycle the voters of New York City engage in the election
of over five hundred incumbents of offices, state and municipal.
Tickets with candidates for thirty offices in a single election are of
normal length, and between the rival candidates on four or five such
tickets each voter is expected intelligently to make his selection. If
he makes it intelligently, the officials elected will be fit; if he
understands their duties, and can spare time to watch their conduct
while he observes the behavior of several score other officials whose
terms have not yet expired, he can punish those who are unfaithful,
and reward those who show themselves worthy of public trust. But to
carry on an efficient government in this way, most of the voters would
have to leave their private pursuits, abandon the opportunities of a
great and rich country, and give their minds chiefly to the complex
administrations of all the public offices. Will they do it? Can they?
The voters, the least and most intelligent of them, all know that it
is impracticable to leave their private pursuits, to which they devote
time and energy unsparingly, and attend in this way to the government.
The very method the people have provided to secure the offices under
their direct control defeats its purpose by the amount of work and
study it entails. No owner of a large business establishment would
pretend that he could judge the qualifications of _all_ his employees
and know their work, yet this ability to assure good service in the
great business establishment of government, is presumed in every
voter. The presumption is as distinguished for its foolishness as for
its age. It has not been well founded in a century, during which time
it has been repeatedly proved false. Most elections go by default.
Excepting in the cases of a few conspicuous candidates, about whom the
public can make itself informed, and in small communities where
everyone knows his neighbor and the men in petty offices, the
electorate obeys mechanically the dictates of political leaders.
The notion of having most offices elective, originated, of course, in
the practice of the old New England town meetings. But as the towns
grew into cities, and these increased in population, the public works
expanded, public interests and activities became complex, and the
number of offices and instruments of government was multiplied, each
with its peculiar responsibilities. The private concerns of the
voters, likewise, acquired a complexity that made extra demands on
their attention, and the trades and professions became specialized.
The people could no longer rule themselves by any method resembling
that of the town meeting. As they developed their unexampled
opportunities, their eyes were diverted from the multitude of public
offices, and the plunderers came in.
The politicians were devoted. They dedicated the time the voters could
not spare to holding together the complicated public machinery. The
people could not very well go to the primaries; that should be the
business of the bosses, their bread and butter. They do their work at
least zealously. They are called traitors and plunderers, many hate
them, but perforce everybody tolerates them, and the states and cities
under the present system cannot do without them. Their low
organizations, their dives and groggeries, their gangs of "floaters"
and intimidators of voters, their levyings of tribute, their control
of men in high places, their sales of power and patronage, and their
gigantic thefts and corruption show only in its perverse working that
fierce individualistic spirit which is in freer play here and now
among all ranks of men, and in all pursuits, than elsewhere in the
world during the course of human history.
To say that the influence of such men, self-constituted governors of
the public for their own private interest, has been pernicious beyond
their immediate stealings and "honest graft," would be saying too
little. The people in their local governments, which are closer to
their lives and in the aggregate more important than the national
government, have not had the equal protection of the laws. Under the
bosses, legislatures were for sale, and sold. The corporations got
their public franchises by bribery. Vast insurance funds were juggled
in speculation. The necessaries of life were monopolized. Wholesale
adulteration of foods and medicines was permitted. Refrigerated meats
were kept for higher prices until ptomaines were produced. Unsafe
buildings were erected. The boss, in whose power was the enforcement
of laws, could instruct the aldermen or the legislators not to
appropriate money for their enforcement. He could bargain for the
passage of unwise or oppressive statutes, and he could instruct
judges, appointed to their candidacies by him, how to interpret them.
Had his influence extended only to the heads of lawless trusts, it
might have been less dangerous than it was and is. But it was
pervasive, it infected the common people. They saw the laws unequally
administered, and a general contempt for law was bred. Dr. Fritz
Reichmann, Superintendent of Weights and Measures at Albany, recently
calculated that petty tradesmen cheated New York's consumers with
short measures by at least $10,000,000 yearly. Raids upon the small
groceries and shops of Greater New York during a reform
administration, disclosed false weights and measures in the majority
of them. Here was evidence that the fabric of the body politic had
been warped and wrenched from the standards of individual rectitude.
Fortunately, signs are not lacking of what has been called a great
moral awakening. Taking advantage of the Federal system at Washington,
which is based upon the theory that the boss shall be selected by the
people and placed in the Presidency by them, appointing heads of all
the subordinate offices, the people have through the Presidents caused
the dissolution of great monopolies, and have made the business of
captaining industries by unfair means disreputable. The industrial
captains are no longer satisfied with their material gains. They want
the respect of their fellows. They are reforming their bad companies
or forsaking them, and are devoting their wealth to public ends. One
of the states has greatly aided in this change, and its example is
instructive. New Jersey, the "home of the trusts," notorious
throughout the world for its fathering of monopolies, is in all but
its legislature a "short ballot" state. The legislators are elected at
large by counties; the ballot is long in the thickly populated urban
counties, and the unfair representation of the rural counties unites
with the city bosses to control the law-making power, usually, also,
dictating the nominations for Governor. But the Governorship of New
Jersey is practically the only office to be filled by the people's
vote. Like the President at Washington the Governor appoints his own
cabinet and the rest of the state's executive and judicial officers.
New Jersey's pre-eminence as the home of the trusts was gained after
the nomination of Governor after Governor by the bosses.
In the Fall of 1910 New Jersey's bosses overreached themselves.
Ex-Senator James Smith and his nephew "Jim" Nugent, chairman of the
Democratic State Committee, saw an opportunity to defeat the
Republicans, who were in power, by the nomination of Woodrow Wilson,
then President of Princeton University. The New Jersey Democracy
adopted a platform which bore the impress of Mr. Wilson's style and
principles, and it gave to a great citizen a great opportunity for
service. He at once proclaimed his independence of his political
creators. He said that if elected Governor he would act as leader of
his party. He became, in fact, a leader among many able Governors in a
series of harmonious reforms for which the inspiration came from
within the States. But ex-Governor Pennypacker of Pennsylvania, who
was a creature of the boss system, accused Mr. Wilson of becoming the
"most arrogant boss of them all when he got to be Governor." James
Smith, shorn of his power, remarked:
New Jersey is unlike any other State in the Union. It elects very
few of its officials. Nearly all of them are named by the
Governor. He has about two hundred appointees, whose salaries
range from $2,000 to $15,000 a year. Among these appointees are
Judges, and other places that carry a great deal of influence
with them. The method gives the Governor a chance to build up a
system--which is something which I believe I was charged with
having, and of which I have recently been deprived.
No more significant utterance had been made in a century of American
politics. Governor Wilson rose immediately to the full stature of his
powers. He carried out his platform pledges, appealing to public
opinion in the passage through a hostile legislature of laws reforming
the conduct of elections, making employers liable for the injuries of
workmen, restricting campaign expenses and requiring that they be
published before elections, creating a public utilities commission,
regulating the cold storage of foods, permitting cities to adopt
governments by the short ballot, and preventing the grant of charters
to monopolistic companies. He drove through a body of reform
legislation such as had never been seen on New Jersey's statute books,
eclipsing the record of a generation. He defeated Boss Smith's
candidacy for re-election to the United States Senate, both because he
was a boss and because as one of the "Senators from Havemeyer" in
1894, Smith had betrayed the principles of the Wilson tariff bill and
President Cleveland's program for tariff reduction. Wilson became a
"veto Governor," disposing of 150 bills invading home rule, or
reckless of debts, which were dumped on him in the closing days of his
first legislative session, and which were carelessly drawn. And he
fulfilled his pledge to comply with the Civil Service rules in making
all appointments. His acceptance of the National Democratic nomination
to the Presidency in 1912 resulted in his becoming the head of a
"short ballot" nation.
President Wilson, like many of his predecessors at the National
capital, is vindicating the principle of the short ballot. The state
bosses have often invaded the Federal legislature and government, but
in comparison with their control of state machines they have never got
very far. The national party machines are made up of local fragments.
But their nominating machinery, which has such an inevitable and
disastrous influence on local elections, is concentrated upon the
three offices of President, Senator, and Representative, all of which
are of primary concern to the voters. The national candidates must
conform to higher standards than local candidates, because they are
few, conspicuous, and known of all their constituencies. In this fact
may be seen the controlling reason why, while the local governments
have everywhere been taken by the bosses from the hands of the people,
the Federal system is still theirs.
Despite the brilliant and recent example of New Jersey, handicapped as
she is by a long-ballot legislature organized on the bi-cameral
principle, and despite the continuing example of successive
administrations at Washington, it is nevertheless hard for the alarmed
electorates of the states to give up their old direct-election,
town-meeting ideals. The representative system has failed, they say.
They should see that it has failed because of its weight of machinery,
necessitated by the number of elective offices. But the tendency is
marked toward discarding the representative principle at the
primaries, and making it the duty of the people to nominate as well as
elect directly to the many offices. That adds to the work of each
voter, which is already, and confessedly, too great. Tear down
representative government; away with the system of electing delegates
at the primaries; let us nominate as well as vote for each candidate
ourselves--that is the principle of the direct primary bills which
have acquired the force of statutes in the western states, and are
being agitated in the east. It is but natural that the people should
be enraged at the manipulation of primaries by the politicians. To do
away with delegates and conventions is their first impulse. Certainly
the delegates elected, and the conventions held, are injurious to good
government. But the principle of representation by the best qualified
men of the electorate is not impaired. The establishment of the direct
primary makes necessary two campaigns instead of one, necessitates a
new equipment of political machinery, and doubles the distraction of
the people by the many offices they must fill. They do not yet see
that fewer and more responsible offices would bring abler candidates
into the field, that public opinion might be concentrated upon their
choosing by delegates in conventions, and on their intelligent
election at the polls.
The constitutional amendment submitted last Fall to the voters of
Ohio, providing fewer elective offices and centering in the Executive
the power of appointment to all lesser posts, was opposed on the
ground that it would take authority from the people. Governor Cox was
accused of trying to be king. He might well have pointed to
Washington, which has had its "kingship" since the foundation of the
republic. Governor Glynn of New York, who needed advice and counsel
after the impeached Sulzer left the capitol, held cabinet meetings
with the Secretary of State, the Attorney-General, Comptroller, State
Treasurer, and State Engineer and Surveyor. Unlike President Wilson's
cabinet, these men had been appointed, not by the Chief Executive, but
by the party machines, whose leaders foresaw that they would be voted
blindly into office. Officials whom the public did not know had the
spending of millions in party patronage. To them the new Governor was
constrained to look for support. In theory the Chief Executive, he had
to work through agents who might be hostile to his purposes. Through
such officers Mr. Murphy had extended his power throughout the state,
and his contractors were beneficiaries of the millions wasted upon
ill-constructed highways and canals.
How to dispense with the cumbersome political machinery that has
oppressed the local elections as the needs of the increasing
population became more complex, is a chief problem of these times. The
bosses have, indeed, prepared the way for its solution. It is
necessary for the people to recognize that the bosses' unofficial work
should be placed in the hands of responsible executive officials, and
thus changed from its private ends to public uses. The unskilled
committees of citizens formed during times of public agitation and
revolt may occasionally defeat the machines of more skilled
politicians, but their triumphs are short-lived, and the reform
administrations are often unsatisfactory. Public spirit abounds, it
grapples with enormous difficulties. The chief difficulty now is in a
lack of apprehension of the chief source of the public's troubles.
The smaller cities are leading in the fundamental reform. Nearly three
hundred of them have adopted the short ballot in charters that confer
government by commission. Each of the commissioners, usually five in
number, focuses public attention on his headship of a municipal
department, and the five make most or all of the appointments. The
states, likewise, are beginning to follow the lead of New Jersey. Ohio
has granted its cities the option of government by commissioners, and
has started to prune the list of state elective offices. California is
heading in the same direction, for it has made appointive its state
printer, three railroad commissioners, and clerk of the supreme court.
In New York it is sought to make the Governor's "cabinet" appointive,
as well as the state judiciary, which compares ill with the judiciary
of other states, such as New Jersey and Massachusetts, where the
judges are appointed by the Governor. The Supreme Court of the United
States, whose judges are appointed by the President for life, has won
the respect of high juridical authorities for its ability, probity,
and learning, in which it endures comparison with the greatest
European courts of last resort. A reduction of the legislatures into
single bodies has been advocated, notably by Governor Hodges of
Kansas. The legislatures with two chambers have not worked to the ends
of deliberation, but the contrary. The progress of measures has been
obscured in them until the closing days of their sessions, when there
are "jammed through" questionable acts that have never met the public
gaze until their enactment. New York has its legislative members
apportioned by districts, which, if reduced to fifty for a single
chamber, would be approved by advocates of the short ballot.
Deliberation might then be had by requiring a certain interval of time
between introduction of bills and their final passage, after revision
by skilled drafters. The county governments, also, need overhauling,
relegating the sheriffs, county clerks, registers, surrogates, and
district attorneys to the appointive lists. As for the cities, the
tendency is to fix responsibility in the Mayor or a commission.
The multiplied elective offices have come by evolution. As the needs
of the body politic increased more of them were created, with
developed and specialized functions. They were made elective because
the people were jealous of their own control, anxious to select their
representatives, and to make them responsive to their will. The people
are now more eager and persistent in their purpose of having a really
representative government than at any previous time in the national
history. They occasionally seize control of their complex machinery,
and for a time succeed in running it. But they are beginning to see
that the levers they throw must be fewer, though more powerful.
Gradually, by the reluctant assent of legislatures submitting to the
force of public opinion well led, or more rapidly and comprehensively
in constitutional conventions guided by the enlightened and patriotic
wills of public-spirited revisers, the change to a government of a few
elected executives with large appointive powers will be wrought. The
unchartered freedom of the private oligarchies will yield to the
restraints imposed by the people through their instructed heads.