TOPICS OF THE TIME

A WAY OUT OF THE CANAL BLUNDER: REPEAL THE EXEMPTION

ANY one who knows how little consideration is given to the preparation of political platforms can readily understand how both the Democratic and the Progressive parties were “committed” to the blunder of advocating the exemption of our coastwise shipping from the tolls to be charged for the use of the Panama Canal. It is this sort of inside arrangement of party policies—which usually, in the last hours of fatigue, restlessness, and excitement, there is never time to discuss on their merits—that has cast discredit on platforms and has justified many a candidate in disregarding or modifying a given “plank.” The overwhelming judgment of our people, as reflected in the press, that nothing is so important to us as a strict observance of our plighted faith,—just as nothing is so important to a merchant as his credit and reputation for honorable dealing,—shows how easy it is for half a dozen men in a hotel parlor, at the suggestion of some “good fellow,” to lead a convention to the indorsement of a disastrous policy.

To claim that we have not broken our pledge that there shall be no discrimination in the tolls and conditions when we thus favor our own coastwise trade, as against that of Canada, Mexico, and Colombia,—each with an Atlantic and a Pacific coast,—simply does not rise to the dignity of a quibble. Already by misrepresentation of the sense of fair-dealing which pervades American commercial life, incalculable injury has been done to our standing abroad—an injury which cannot be measured in money. After all our honorable diplomacy—the return of the Boxer indemnity, the open door policy in the Far East, and the strict observance of our promise to withdraw from Cuba, which foreign sneerers at America said we never would observe, “and never meant to observe”—it is shameful to have to drop to a lower plane of national conduct.

As if our cup of humiliation were not already full, it is argued that we are at liberty to refuse to submit the question of the breach of the Panama Treaty to the Hague Tribunal, if Great Britain should make the appeal. “Nicht zwei dumme streiche für eins” (Not two stupid strokes for one), says Lessing’s character in “Minna von Barnhelm.” Unless we desire to become the welsher of the nations, it is time that the good faith of the people should find an adequate expression in the good faith of the Government. All the money saved (to whom?) in tolls in a hundred years by the exemption could not compensate for the loss in money—not to reckon honor—which will result from the loss of credit and of great commercial opportunities all over the world. A strange way, indeed, to promote American commerce!

But there remains for us another chance—or will, if Great Britain shall a little longer pursue her friendly and forbearing course of waiting for our public opinion to assert itself. The coastwise exemption should be repealed. And, our obligations aside, why should we enter upon a policy of subsidizing our ships just at the time when apparently we are giving up the policy of subsidizing our manufactures? Are we never to get away from the inequality of privilege, that has already corrupted the sources of government by the “vicious circle,” creating and feeding by legislation agencies whose natural interest it thus becomes to destroy the principle of equality? Why subsidize ships any more than subsidize railways, or newspapers, or authorship? But if we must subsidize our ships, let it be done outright, in bills for that purpose, and not through the violation of the plain words of a solemn treaty.

Not only should the exemption be repealed, but, if we are to recover the ground that has been lost, it should be done in the first week of the December session of Congress. We feel sure that President Taft, whose misgivings tinctured his message of assent, now that the Canal bill has provided for a modus operandi, would not interpose his veto to the sober second thought of Congress. If the repeal is not accomplished, and if we refuse the appeal to The Hague, the great cause of Arbitration—the substitute for war—will be set back for unreckonable years. And it is the championship of Arbitration, together with his far-sighted and consistent defense and extension of the Merit System, which will give the President his highest claim to the respect of posterity. The object of the latter is to keep politicians from gambling with the resources of office; the object of the former is to prevent governments from gambling with the lives of men.

Should the repeal not be promptly made, it will become the duty of the people to organize to bring it about. We much mistake the temper of the country if within another six months its servants do not remove this blot in the national escutcheon.

WANTED: STRAIGHT THINKING ABOUT MILITANT SUFFRAGISTS

APROPOS OF THE RENEWAL OF VIOLENCE IN ENGLAND

ONE of the startling signs of the times is the recrudescence of violence among the militant suffragists in England. The physical attacks by women upon members of the government, including the hurling of a hatchet at the Prime Minister’s party; the attempt to set fire to a theater in which he was about to make an address, and other outrages, are in themselves a sufficiently deplorable symptom of lawless impulses, with which the government, as it was obliged, has dealt promptly and vigorously. As we have recognized in previous articles, this course of action has been disavowed in England by other prominent bodies of suffragists, who deserve honor for their refusal to be deflected from their “appeal to reason” to a policy which can only end in disaster. In this number of THE CENTURY we give place to an article by Mrs. Fawcett, President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, of Great Britain, written at our request for a disavowal of this policy. If, besides the editorials in the New York “Evening Post,” there has been any similar official disavowal in America, it has escaped the attention of one careful reader of the daily news. Already many men in this country must be asking themselves whether it is wise to add to the electorate a body of voters who do not see the perilous influence of tolerating such actions—the influence not only upon women, but upon other impressionable classes having a real or fancied grievance.

And now comes another test of the wisdom and patriotism of these ladies. Before these lines shall be published, Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, two convicted lawbreakers of England, are to be honored by a reception by the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York, as Mrs. Pankhurst was received at Carnegie Hall after a similar conviction. We cannot conceal our sympathy with any person willing to suffer for opinion’s sake, but in these instances the punishment was inflicted not for opinion, but for deliberate violation of the elementary principles of civilized government—by the destruction of property (usually of unoffending persons) and the creation of public disorder. Of what use is it for conservative agencies to address themselves to the discouragement of lynching in the South, or in Pennsylvania, or of hired assassination in New York City, or the lawlessness of capital or of labor, or the lawlessness of brutal students, fashionable smugglers, bribed officials, or “fixed” juries, when the sentiment of so large and estimable a part of the community as the advocates of woman suffrage—teachers of the young—fail to see their responsibility toward their followers and the public? The defense that “no class has ever obtained its rights except by violence” is both false and insidious, and sets an example which will rise to plague the women themselves if they ever obtain a measure of responsible power. Deeper even than this vicious idea is the world-old delusion—which has its strongest exponent in politics—that the end justifies the means. The drift toward the employment of this standard is a hard blow to those who believe that women are to show us a more excellent way in government.

Admitting that this policy of terrorizing one’s opponents is valuable as advertising a movement, it seems never to have occurred to the advocates of woman suffrage that as effective a presentation of their cause could have been obtained without violence. Ruskin said that war would cease in Europe if on the declaration of hostilities Englishwomen would put on mourning. Ingenuity certainly could devise some form of réclame more worthy than the precipitation of delicately minded young women into the program of a New York vaudeville theater. Something must be allowed to the instinctive protest of human nature that everything shall not be thrown into the melting-pot of agitation.

THE NEW WAY OF FINANCING A CAMPAIGN

A NOTE OF POLITICAL HEALTH AND PROGRESS

WE called slaveholding and Mormon polygamy “twin relics of barbarism,” persisting in our modern civilization, and we put an end to them long ago. We have now made an end of those twin evils of our politics, the spoils system and secret campaign funds. Ten years of agitation put the merit system into our laws, the movement for publicity of campaign contributions, actively urged on after 1904, became effective in less than six years. The Federal act bears date of June 25, 1910. The spoils system and the secret campaign fund have the likeness of twins. Both are a fraud upon the people, both are illegitimate devices for perpetuating party power, both are indefensible save by frankly and cynically immoral arguments.

Perhaps the greater evil of the two, as a betrayal of the interests of the people, is the acceptance by campaign committees of large gifts of money from persons or corporations who expect, and who have usually received, much more than the worth of their money in legislative favors or valuable privilege. There have been many indiscreet revelations of the theory and practical working of the system. Indignantly protesting that the highly protected manufacturing interests had been too niggardly in their giving, one politician gave instructions to “fry the fat” out of them; and it is notorious that in the field of tariff legislation the covenant between the party in power and the corporations that gave bountifully to keep it in power was faithfully kept. The hand that gave the fund guided the pen that wrote the schedules. It is equally notorious that with these great sums the suffrage was corrupted. In one of the States where directions were given to marshal the “floaters” in “blocks of five,” a distinguished beneficiary of that process humorously admitted the efficiency of “soap” in achieving the victory. It was bad, wholly bad; in a republic no political evil could be much worse.

The completeness of the reform is astonishing. The statute enacted two years ago and amended last year commands campaign committees to keep accurate accounts of receipts and expenditures, and sworn detailed statement of contributions received, with contributors’ names and the objects for which the money was spent, must be filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives fifteen days before the day of election and every sixth day thereafter; thirty days after election a final statement must be so filed. The statements are open for inspection and publication.

This law of publicity has been complied with in this campaign with such alacrity that two of the party committees “rushed into print” with their statements of contributions more than a month in advance of the date fixed by the statute. The Democratic committee gave out the names and the figures on September 9, and on September 10 the statement of the Progressive party was given out.

It was then that the public suddenly became aware that this Presidential campaign is unlike any other in our recent history. The first striking fact observed was that the total of the contributions was pitifully meager compared with the royal profusion with which, according to the prevailing belief, former campaign committees have been put in funds. The Wilson and Marshall Committee acknowledged the receipt of $175,000 up to the date of publication, and there were only three gifts as large as ten thousand dollars; the Roosevelt and Johnson Committee had received $55,199, and the largest contributions were two of $15,000 each. Comparison was at once made with the Republican campaign fund of 1904, amounting to $1,900,000 as stated in testimony and with old-time individual contributions of $50,000 and $100,000. The total of the Republican fund in 1896 is not accurately known, but it was certainly much larger than in 1904.

The second point of unlikeness of this campaign to all others within any man’s memory is the fact that the fortunes of all three candidates are committed to the management of men who are amateurs in “big politics.” The “Zach” Chandlers, the Mark Hannas, the Arthur Pue Gormans, where are they? If these men have successors in our day, they are watching and waiting, it may be; certainly they are not in the strife, they are not at the heads of the committees, they are not the chief men in the work.

It means that our politics, our political campaign methods, have in good faith been changed and reformed. As a part of what in the broad sense, not in any party sense, we may call the progressive movement, this change is of impressive significance. The machines and the bosses may devise ways to retain much of their old power under the conditions of what is called “direct government” of the people in the States, but now that their dominance is destroyed in respect to the great quadrennial contest of the parties, it is not easy to see how they can regain control. They carried on the war of politics with money; they bartered, when they could, government policies for cash. We have put an end to all that. The qualities of the candidates, the merits of the argument, the decision of the people for or against promised measures and policies, are now to be determining. That is as it should be, it is the ideal way, in a government by the people. For a government by the “interests” and the politicians the old way was ideal.

In very truth the publicity of campaign contributions is a reform of far-reaching vitality and importance, and it is immensely gratifying that it has been ungrudgingly accepted by those upon whom this ordinance of great self-denial has been imposed. But the people, the voters themselves, must understand that their emancipation brings its duties and responsibilities. It costs a great deal of money properly to enlighten the electorate upon the issues of a Presidential campaign, as it is of the very essence of good government that the voter should make his choice with understanding. Knowledge is necessary, it is to his interest that he have it, and he should pay the cost of putting it within his reach. The corporations and the “interests” have been relieved of this burden of expense. Let the men of the parties assume it, willingly, for their own benefit, for the benefit of all. Campaign committees must spend money, yet if at the close of the campaign they are left with heavy debts, it will not be long before we lapse into the old, bad conditions. Campaigns can be “financed” with the money of the voters. A multitude of small individual contributions will fill the campaign chest, and candidates and party will be under no obligations save to the people, and those it will be their highest duty to fulfil.

IF LINCOLN COULD RETURN

(FIFTY YEARS AFTER EMANCIPATION)

ON Sunday, September 22, in negro churches everywhere, men and women of dark skin celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first Emancipation Proclamation. It was an occasion which might well have been made a day of heart-searching, to ask ourselves whether, in our treatment of the negro, the nation as a whole is honoring the memory of Lincoln himself, and of those who labored, fought, and died to abolish slavery. Are we, as a nation, dealing fairly with the negro? Or is “The Independent” correct when it declares that of all our ninety millions there are none to-day so oppressed as the race that Lincoln freed?

In this number of THE CENTURY we group examples of the work of four members of the race,—in prose, poetry, art, and musical composition, the first being a paper of entire authoritativeness and singular moderation of tone. In it Dr. Washington, with the dauntless faith and courage which have carried him so far, sets forth his answer to the question whether the American negro is having a fair chance. Discouragement he will not admit; he fixes his eyes ever upon the hopeful signs. When he goes abroad it seems to him the working-classes of Europe are worse off than our own colored people, whose accessions from abroad are proof to him that the negro fares nowhere else so well.

That Dr. Washington serves a useful purpose in ever presenting the cheerful side, is obvious. But he who fifty years after Emancipation would stop there would see but one side of the question. The shadows upon the race which the head of Tuskegee glides over so lightly lie heavily upon ever-growing numbers of intellectual colored people, who are moved but little by figures of increased negro farm holdings, by statistics about negro grocers, lawyers, physicians, and teachers. Grateful as their hearts may be that they are to-day in possession of their own bodies, they regard the future with troubled eyes.

Looking upon their children they ask with panic fear if these are to be the children of the ghettos now being established, set apart as though leprous, with one avenue of advancement after another closed to them, denied the participation in government guaranteed to them by law, and in some States put beyond the pale of law. They read that the American Bar Association has virtually drawn the color line. They read almost every week of men of their race burned at the stake, North and South; of their women, done to death, ruthlessly shot out of semblance to their Maker, by the mobs that destroy them in the name of the purity of the white race! They read that even Northern communities where the mob rules, like Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Illinois, once the very home of Lincoln, fail to punish those who defy the laws and slay the accused or the innocent with barbarities known in no other land. They see themselves left out of account in the South by a leader of a new political party that boasts its desire for “social justice.” If their children, deprived of school by the thousands, and depressed and ignorant, without a single influence to uplift, go wrong, the imputed shame is that of the whole race. Every negro criminal becomes a living indictment of his people. Bitterest of all, they cannot defend themselves against official wrong-doing, for having only a phantom ballot in their hands, the vilest sheriff is beyond their reach. Moreover, to the injury of the whole body-politic, no adequate education through self-government is provided for them in this Republic of Lincoln.

This is the reverse of the picture and its pathos is beyond description. What would Lincoln say? Would he, if reembodied, declare that the negro, for all his progress, is having a fair chance, North or South, to-day?