Behind the Mirrors Part 10

Mr. Hughes, Mr. Hoover, and Mr. Daugherty are the only outstanding figures in the Cabinet. The Attorney General lives in an unreal world of his own, which at the moment of this writing threatens to come tumbling down about his head.

The clue to Mr. Daugherty's world is found in a sentence of Thomas Felder's letter apropos of the failure to collect the $25,000 fee for securing the release of Charles W. Morse from prison, in which he tells how he a.s.sociated with himself Mr. Daugherty, "who stood as close to the President as any other lawyer or citizen of the United States."

"Standing close," men may laugh at the G.o.ds, may "take the cash and let the credit go." It is a world of little things without any tomorrow.

Long views and large views do not matter. Forces? Principles? Perhaps, but the main thing is all men should "stand close." It is an immensely human world, where men if they are not masters of their own destiny may at least cheat fate for a little brief hour, if only they remain true to each other no matter what befalls.

Mr. Harding, one side of him belongs to that world of Mr. Daugherty's, while another side belongs to that larger political world where morals, wrapped in vague sentimental words, hold sway. It is because he belongs to that world that Mr. Daugherty is Attorney General. Mr. Daugherty "stood close" to Mr. Harding all his life. "Standing close" creates an obligation. Mr. Harding, as President, must in return "stand close" to Mr. Daugherty.

He does so. To the caller who visited him when the Morse-Felder letters were coming out daily, and who was apprehensive of the consequences, the President said, "You don't know Harry Daugherty. He is as clean and honorable a man as there is in this country." In such a world as this, your friend can do no wrong. Goldstein, who received the $2,500 from Lowden's campaign manager, belongs to it. Therefore, he can do no wrong.

Therefore, his name goes from the White House to the Senate for confirmation as Collector of Internal Revenue at St. Louis.

To go back to the time before he became Attorney General, Daugherty practiced law in Columbus, Ohio. His cases came to him, largely as the Morse retainer did, because he "stood close" to somebody, to the President, to Senators, to Governors of Ohio, or Legislatures of Ohio.

His was not a highly lucrative practice, for Mr. Daugherty is one of the few relatively poor men in the present Cabinet. You may deduce from this circ.u.mstance a conclusion as favorable as that which the President, who knows him so well, does. I am concerned only in presenting the facts. At least Mr. Daugherty did not grow rich out of "standing close."

Nor did he acc.u.mulate a reputation. When men "stand close" those who are outside the circle invariably regard them with a certain suspicion. Your professional politician, for that is what Daugherty was, always is an object of doubt. And for this reason he always seeks what is technically known as a "vindication." Conscious of his own rect.i.tude, as he measures it, he may come out of office cleared in the world's eyes, and with a fine t.i.tle, to boot, ready for life upon a new level. And this "vindication" sometimes does take place.

I have no doubt that Mr. Daugherty entered office with the most excellent intentions. He had everything to gain personally from "making a record" in the Attorney Generalship, a t.i.tle and a higher standing at the bar. Moreover, he was the loyal friend of the President and desired the success of the administration.

But it is not so easy. You cannot one moment by "standing close" laugh at the G.o.ds and the next range yourself easily and commodiously on the side of the G.o.ds. The G.o.ds may be unkind even to those who mean to be with them from the outset, establishing their feet firmly upon logic or upon calories; how much more so may they be with those who would suddenly change sides?

At least it is a matter that admits of no compromise. What is he going to do in office with those who "stood close" to him as he "stood close"

to President Taft? All the "close standers" turn up in Washington. For example, Mr. Felder, who "stood close" in the Morse case and who perhaps for that reason appears as counsel in the Bosch-Magneto case, where the prosecution moves slowly, and who moreover permits himself some indiscretions. There is a whole army of "close standers." There are the prosecutions that move slowly. Neither circ.u.mstance is necessarily significant. There are always the "close standers." Prosecutions always move slowly. But the two circ.u.mstances together!

I present all this merely to show what kind of adviser the Attorney General is, his limited conception of life on this little world, and life's, perhaps temporary, revenge upon him. No one at this writing can pa.s.s judgment, so I give, along with the facts and the appearances, the best testimonial that a man can have, that quoted above from the President.

In physique the Attorney General is burly, thick-necked, his eyes are unsteady, his face alternately jovial and minatory,--I should say he bluffed effectively,--rough in personality, a physical law requiring that bodies easily cemented together, and thus "standing close," should not have too smooth an exterior. His view of the world being highly personal, his instinctive idea of office is that it, too, is personal, something to be used, always within the law, to aid friends and punish enemies. He wrote once to a newspaper, which was opposing his appointment, in substance that he would be Attorney General in spite of it and that he had a long memory.

Secretary of War Weeks is the only other general adviser of Mr. Harding in the Cabinet. He is politically minded. Like Mr. Harding he is half of the persuasion of Mr. Daugherty about organization, and half of the other persuasion about the sway of moral forces. All in all he is nearer akin mentally to the President than any other member of the Cabinet, but with more industry and more capacity for details than his chief. He is of the clean desk tradition; Mr. Harding is not.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ATTORNEY-GENERAL H. M. DAUGHERTY]

Half politician and half business man, he interprets business to the politician, and politics to business. He is a middle grounder. He quit banking satisfied with a moderate fortune, saying, "The easiest thing I ever did was to make money."

His bland voice and mild manner indicate the same moderation in everything that he showed in making money; his narrowing eyes, the caution which led him to quit banking when he went into politics.

Politics intrigues him, but he has not a first-cla.s.s mind for it, as his experiences in Ma.s.sachusetts proved.

Frank to the utmost limits his caution will permit, people like him, but not pa.s.sionately. Men respect his ability, but they do not feel strongly about it. He never becomes the center of controversy, as Daugherty is, as Hoover has been, and as Hughes may at any time be. I have never seen him angry, I have seen him enthusiastic. A Laodicean in short.

Secretary Fall hoped to be one of the chief advisers, but has been disappointed. Mr. Harding had said of him, "His is the best mind in the Senate," but he has found other minds more to his liking in the Cabinet.

With a long drooping mustache, he looks like a stage sheriff of the Far West in the movies. His voice is always loud and angry. He has the frontiers-man's impatience. From his kind lynch law springs.

He wanted to lynch Mexico. When he entered the Cabinet he said to his Senate friends, "If they don't follow me on Mexico I shall resign." He has been a negative rather than a positive force there regarding Mexico, deviating Mr. Hughes into the ineffective position he occupies.

He has the frontiers-man's impatience of conservation. Probably he is right. His biggest contribution to his country's welfare will be oil land leases, like that of Teapot Dome.

The Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Wallace, is an excellent technical adviser, as un.o.btrusive as experts usually are.

The Secretary of the Navy, Mr. Denby, with his flabby jowls and large shapeless mouth, has a big heart, and more enthusiasm than he has self-command, judgment, or intelligence. He committed political suicide cheerfully, when the Cannon machine in the House fell into disfavor. He would do anything for a friend, not as Mr. Daugherty would because it pays, but because he is a friend. A cause commands an equal loyalty from him. Just because his head is not as big as his heart he is a minor factor.

Mr. Davis, Secretary of Labor, is a professional glad hand man, appointed because the administration meant to extend nothing to Labor but a glad hand. When a crisis presents itself in industrial relations, Mr. Hoover, who spreads himself over several departments, attends to it.

At the conference on unemployment, which was Mr. Hoover's, the best and only example of the unemployed present was the Secretary of Labor.

CHAPTER VIII

THE GREATEST COMMON DIVISOR OF MUCH LITTLENESS

We have a form of government suited to effect the will of a simple primitive people, a people with one clear aim. When we are all of one mind the government works. The executive represents the general intention, Congress represents the same intention. The party in power owes its position to the thoroughness with which it expresses the common purpose. Or, if you go back further, the structure of business serves the same social aim.

Now, under such circ.u.mstances, it makes little difference where authority resides, whether there is government by business, or government by parties, or executive domination, or whether Congress is the ruling branch. The result is the same, the single purpose of the community finds its just expression.

And so it was in the blessed nineties to which Mr. Harding would have us return. The people were united upon one end, the rapid appropriation of the virgin wealth of this continent and its distribution among the public, and they had no doubt this was being admirably accomplished by the existing business structure. Parties and governments were subsidiary. The system worked.

In a pioneer society waste is unimportant; it may even be economy.

Forests are cut and all but the choicest wood thrown away. They are not replanted. While they are so plentiful it would be a waste of time and effort to use the poor timber or to replace the felled trees.

In a similar society faulty distribution, which is ordinarily a social waste, is unimportant. There is plenty for all. And it may even be a waste of time and effort, checking accomplishment, to seek better adjustments. The object of society is the rapid exploitation of the resources nature has made available. Everyone gains in the process.

Justice is a detail, as much a detail as is the inferior timber left to rot.

We no longer have the unity of aim of a pioneer society, yet we have not readjusted our actual government in conformity with the altered social consciousness. Instead we are trying to readjust ourselves to a practice that is outworn. Having ceased to be pioneers, becoming various and healthily divided, instead of making our system express the new variety in our life, and still function, we are trying to force ourselves by heavy penalties and awful bugaboos back into that unity under which our system does work.

And when I say that we have a form of government suited only to a pioneer society, though we have ceased to be a pioneer society, let no one think that I would lay a profane hand upon that venerated instrument, the Const.i.tution of the United States. I am thinking only of the Const.i.tution's boasted elasticity. A new stretching is required, to fit a larger and more diversified society than that to which we have hitherto applied it.

For a simple, primitive people, for a pioneer society with but one task to accomplish,--the appropriation and distribution of the undeveloped resources of a continent,--details of distribution being unimportant where natural wealth was so vast, government by business or government by parties as the agents of business served admirably. The essential unity which is not to be found in our government of divided powers existed in the single engrossing aim of the public.

For a temporary end, like the common defense, against an external enemy or against an imagined internal enemy, concentration upon the Executive also serves. The unity of purpose which the nation has is imported into the government through elevating the President into a dominant position.

In the one case the government is made to work by putting all branches of it under control of one authority outside itself; in the other, by upsetting the nice balance which the Fathers of the Const.i.tution set up and, under the fiction of party authority, resorting to one man Government.

But what happens when there ceases to be a single aim, when the fruits of the earth are no longer sufficient to go around generously so that no one need question his share, when a conflict of interests arises, when cla.s.ses begin to emerge, when in short we have the situation which exists in America today?

Let us examine for a moment the Executive as a source of unity in the government of such a divergent society. To make him executive minorities must agree upon him. He must, to use Mr. Harding as an ill.u.s.tration, be satisfactory to the farmers with one point of view and to Wall Street with another, he must be acceptable to the Irish Americans and to the German Americans and to several other varieties of Americans, he must take the fence between those who believe in a League of Nations and those who hate a League of Nations, he must please capital and at the same time not alienate labor.

Mr. Harding gave a glimpse of his difficulties when he said during the campaign, "I could make better speeches than these, but I have to be so careful." The greatest common divisor of all the minorities that go to making a winning national combination must be neutral, he must be colorless, he must not know that his soul is his own. The greatest common divisor of all the elements in the nation's political consciousness today is inevitably a Mr. Harding. We shall probably have a whole series of Mr. Hardings in the White House.

And when this greatest common divisor of all the cla.s.ses and all the interests, this neutral, colorless person to whom no one can find any objection, enters the White House does he represent Labor? So little that he will not have a labor man in his Cabinet. Does he represent Capital? By instinct, by party training, by preference, yes, but capital is so divided that it is hard to represent, and the President, like the candidate, "has to be so careful." Does he represent the farmers? He says so, but the farmers choose to be represented elsewhere, on the hill, where they can find agents whose allegiance is not so divided.

And carefulness does not end upon election. Once a candidate always a candidate. The entire first term of a president is his second candidacy.

His second term, if he wins one, is the candidacy of his successor, in whose election he is vitally interested; for the continuance of his party in power is the measure of public approval of himself. A president who is the greatest common divisor of groups and interests "must always be so careful" that he can never be a Roosevelt or a Wilson.

Recapitulating the experiences of other peoples with political inst.i.tutions, we have quickly, since our discovery of one man rule, run upon the period of little kings. The Carolingians have followed close upon the heels of the great Carl. The inst.i.tution which in the first decade of the twentieth century was a wonderful example of our capacity to adopt the rigors of a written const.i.tution to our ends, of the practical genius of the American people, in the third decade of the twentieth century is already dead.

The monarch with power, not the mere survival who satisfies the instinct for the picturesque, for the play of the emotions in politics, is suited to an undifferentiated people pursuing a single simple end; one end, one man, many ends, many men is the rule. The greatest common divisor of such ma.s.ses of men as inhabit this continent, so variously sprung, so variously seeking their place in the sun, is something that has to be so careful as to become a nullity.

There is no reason why our presidents should not become like all single heads of modern civilized peoples, largely ornamental, largely links with the past, symbols to stir our inherited feelings as we watch their gracious progress through the movies. Mr. Harding is headed that way and if that Providence which watches over American destinies vouchsafes him to us for eight years instead of only four, the Presidency under him will make progress toward a place alongside monarchy under King George.