Volume 1 — A NEEDED UNPOPULAR REFORM

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.