Search Light Letters Part 7

To _A Political Optimist_. I.

I approve of you, for I am an optimist myself in regard to human affairs, and can conscientiously agree with many of the patriotic statements concerning the greatness of the American people contained in your letter. Your letter interested me because it differed so signally in its point of view from the others which I received at the same time--the time when I ran for Congress as a Democrat in a hopelessly Republican district and was defeated. The other letters were gloomy in tone. They deplored the degeneracy of our political inst.i.tutions, and argued from the circ.u.mstance that the voters of my district preferred "a hack politician" and "blatant demagogue" to "an educated philosopher" (the epithets are not mine) that we were going to the dogs as a nation. The prophecy was flattering to me in my individual capacity, but it has not served to soil the limpid, sunny flow of my philosophy. I was gratified, but not convinced. I behold the flag of my country still with moistened eyes--the eyes of pride, and I continue to bow affably to my successful rival.

Your suggestion was much nearer the truth. You indicated with pardonable levity that I was not elected because the other man received more votes. I smiled at that as an apt statement. You went on to take me to task for having given the impression in my published account of the political canva.s.s not merely that I ought to have been elected, but that the failure to elect me was the sign of a lack of moral and intellectual fibre in the American people. If I mistake not, you referred to me farther on in the style of airy persiflage as a "holier than thou," a journalistic, scriptural phrase in current use among so-called patriotic Americans. And then you began to argue: You requested me to give us time, and called attention to the fact that the English system of rotten boroughs in vogue fifty years ago was worse than anything we have to-day. "We are a young and impetuous people," you wrote, "but there is n.o.ble blood in our veins--the blood which inspired the greatness of Washington and Hamilton and Franklin and Jefferson and Webster and Abraham Lincoln. Water does not run up hill. Neither do the American people move backward. Their destiny is to progress and to grow mightier and mightier. And those who seek to r.e.t.a.r.d our national march by cynical insinuations and sneers, by scholastic sophistries and philosophical wimwams, will find themselves inevitably under the wheels of Juggernaut, the car of republican inst.i.tutions."

Philosophical wimwams! You sought to wound me in a tender spot. I forgive you for that, and I like your fervor. Those rotten boroughs have done yeoman service. They are on the tongue of every American citizen seeking for excuses for our national shortcomings. But for my dread of a mixed metaphor I would add that they are moth-eaten and threadbare.

Your letter becomes then a miscellaneous catalogue of our national prowess. You instance the cotton-gin, the telegraph, the sewing-machine, and the telephone, and ask me to bear witness that they are the inventions of free-born Americans. You refer to the heroism and vigor of the nation during the Civil War, and its mighty growth in prosperity and population since; to the colleges and academies of learning, to the hospitals and other monuments of intelligent philanthropy, to the huge railroad systems, public works, and private plants which have come into being with mushroom-like growth over the country. You recall the energy, independence, and conscientious desire for Christian progress among our citizens, young and old, and, as a new proof of their disinterested readiness to sacrifice comfort for the sake of principle, you cite the recent emanc.i.p.ation of Cuba. Your letter closes with a Fourth of July panegyric on the heroes on land and sea of the war with Spain, followed by an exclamation point which seems to say, "Mr. Philosopher, put that in your pipe and smoke it."

I have done so, and admit that there is a great deal to be proud of in the Olla Podrida of exploits and virtues which you have set before me.

Far be it from me to question the greatness and capacity of your and my countrymen. But while my heart throbs agreeably from the thrill of sincere patriotism, I venture to remind you that cotton-gins, academies of learning, and first-cla.s.s battle-ships have little to do with the matter in question. Your mode of procedure reminds me of the plea I have heard used to obtain partners for a homely girl--that she is good to her mother. I notice that you include our political sanct.i.ty by a few sonorous phrases in the dazzling compendium of national success, but I also notice that you do not condescend to details. That is what I intend to do, philosophically yet firmly.

To begin with, I am not willing to admit that I was piqued by my failure to be elected to Congress. I did not expect to succeed, and my tone was, it seems to me, blandly resigned and even rather grateful than otherwise that such a serious honor had not been thrust upon me.

Success would have postponed indefinitely the trip to j.a.pan on which my wife, Josephine, had set her heart. In short, I supposed that I had concealed alike grief and jubilation, and taken the result in a purely philosophic spirit. It seems though that you were able to read between the lines--that is what you state--and to discern my condescending tone and lack of faith in the desire and intention of the plain people of these United States to select competent political representatives.

I can a.s.sure you that I have arrived at no such dire state of mind, and I should be sorry to come to that conclusion; but, though a philosopher, and hence, politically speaking, a worm, I have a proper spirit of my own and beg to inform you that the desire and intention of our fellow-countrymen, whether plain or otherwise, so to do is, judging by their behavior, open to grave question. So you see I stand at bay almost where you supposed, and there is a definite issue between us. Judging by their behavior, remember. Judging by their words, b.u.t.ter would not melt in their mouths. I merely wish to call your attention to a few notorious facts in defence of my att.i.tude of suspicion.

[_Note._--"Josephine," said I to my wife at this point, "please enumerate the prominent elective offices in the gift of the American people."

My wife rose and after a courtesy, which was mock deferential, proceeded to recite with the glib fluency of a school-girl the following list--"Please, sir,

President.

Senators of the United States (elected by the State legislatures).

Representatives of the United States.

State Senators.

State a.s.semblymen or Representatives.

Aldermen.

Members of the City Council.

Members of the School Committee."

"Correct, Josephine. I pride myself that, thanks to my prodding, you are beginning to acquire some rudimentary knowledge concerning the inst.i.tutions of your country. Thanks to me and Professor Bryce. Before Professor Bryce wrote 'The American Commonwealth,' American women seemed to care little to know anything about our political system.

They studied more or less about the systems of other countries, but displayed a profound ignorance concerning our own form of government.

But after an Englishman had published a book on the subject, and made manifest to them that our inst.i.tutions were reasonably worthy of attention, considerable improvement has been noticeable. But I will say that few women are as well posted as you, Josephine."

She made another mock deferential courtesy. "Thank you, my lord and master; and lest you have not made it sufficiently clear that my superiority in this respect is due to your--your nagging, I mention again that you are chiefly responsible for it. It bores me, but I submit to it."

"Continue then your docility so far as to write the names which you have just recited on separate slips of paper and put them in a proper receptacle. Then I will draw one as a preliminary step in the political drama which I intend to present for the edification of our correspondent."

Josephine did as she was bid, and in the process, by way of showing that she was not such a martyr as she would have the world believe, remarked, "If you had really been elected, Fred, I think I might have made a valuable political ally. What I find tedious about politics is that they're not practical--that is for me. If you were in Congress now, I should make a point of having everything political at the tip of my tongue."

"Curiously enough, my dear, I am just going to give an object lesson in practical politics, and you as well as our young friend may be able to learn wisdom from it. Now for a blind choice!" I added, putting my hand into the work-bag which she held out.

"Aldermen!" I announced after scrutinizing the slip which I had drawn.

Josephine's nose went up a trifle.

"A very fortunate and comprehensive selection," I a.s.serted. "The Alderman and the influences which operate upon and around him lie at the root of American practical politics. And from a careful study of the root you will be able to decide how genuinely healthy and free from taint must be the tree--the tree which bears such ornamental flowers as Presidents and United States Senators, gorgeous blooms of apparent dignity and perfume."]

This being a drama, my young patriot, I wish to introduce you to the stage and the princ.i.p.al characters. The stage is any city in the United States of three hundred thousand or more inhabitants. It would be invidious for me to mention names where any one would answer to the requirements. Some may be worse than others, but all are bad enough. A bold and pessimistic beginning, is it not, my optimistic friend?

And now for the company. This drama differs from most dramatic productions in that it makes demands upon a large number of actors. To produce it properly on the theatrical stage would bankrupt any manager unless he were subsidized heavily from the revenues of the twenty leading villains. The cast includes besides twenty leading villains, twelve low comedians, no hero, no heroine (except, incidentally, Josephine); eight newspaper editors; ten thousand easy-going second-cla.s.s villains; ten thousand patriotic, conscientious, and enlightened citizens, including a sprinkling of ardent reformers; twenty-five thousand zealous, hide-bound partisans; fifty thousand respectable, well-intentioned, tolerably ignorant citizens who vote but are too busy with their own affairs to pay attention to politics, and as a consequence generally vote the party ticket, or vote to please a "friend"; ten thousand superior, self-centred souls who neglect to vote and despise politics anyway, among them poets, artists, scientists, some men of leisure, and travellers; ten thousand enemies of social order such as gamblers, thieves, keepers of dives, drunkards, and toughs; and your philosopher.

A very large stock company. I will leave the precise arithmetic to you. I wish merely to indicate the variegated composition of the average political const.i.tuency, and to let you perceive that the piece which is being performed is no parlor comedy. It is written in dead earnest, and it seems to me that the twenty leading villains, though smooth and in some instances aristocratic appearing individuals, are among the most dangerous characters in the history of this or any other stage. But before I refer to them more particularly I will make you acquainted with our twelve low comedians--the Board of Aldermen.

It is probably a surprise to you and to Josephine that the Aldermen are not the villains. Everything is comparative in this world, and, though I might have made them villains without injustice to such virtues as they possess, I should have been at a loss how to stigmatize the real promoters of the villainy. And after all there is an element of grotesque comedy about the character of Aldermen in a large American city. The indecency of the situation is so unblushing, and the public is so helpless, that the performers remind one in their good-natured antics of the thieves in Fra Diavolo; they get bolder and bolder and now barely take the trouble to wear the mask of respectability.

Have I written "thieves?" Patriotic Americans look askance at such full-blooded expressions. They prefer ambiguity, and a less harsh phraseology--"slight irregularities," "business misfortunes,"

"commercial usages," "professional services," "campaign expenses,"

"lack of fine sensibilities," "unauthenticated rumors." There are fifty ways of letting one's fellow-citizens down easily in the public prints and in private conversation. This is a charitable age, and the word thief has become unfamiliar except as applied to rogues who enter houses as a trade. The community and the newspapers are chary of applying it to folk who steal covertly but steadily and largely as an increment of munic.i.p.al office. It is inconvenient to hurt the feelings of public servants, especially when one may have voted for them from carelessness or ignorance.

Here is a list of the twelve low comedians for your inspection:

Peter Lynch, no occupation.

James Griffin, stevedore.

William H. Bird, real-estate.

John S. Maloney, saloon-keeper.

David H. Barker, carpenter.

Jeremiah Dolan, no occupation.

Patrick K. Higgins, junk dealer.

Joseph Heffernan, liquors.

William T. Moore, apothecary.

James O. Frost, paints and oils.

Michael O'Rourke, tailor.

John P. Driscoll, lawyer.

You will be surprised by my first statement regarding them, I dare say. Four of them, Peter Lynch, James Griffin, Jeremiah Dolan, and Michael O'Rourke neither drink nor smoke. Jeremiah Dolan chews, but the three others do not use tobacco in any form. They are patterns of Sunday-school virtue in these respects. This was a very surprising discovery to one of the minor characters in our drama--to two of them in fact--Mr. Arthur Langdon Waterhouse and his father, James Langdon Waterhouse, Esq. The young man, who had just returned from Europe with the idea of becoming United States Senator and who expressed a willingness to serve as a Reform Alderman while waiting, announced the discovery to his parent shortly before election with a mystified air.

"Do you know," said he to the old gentleman, who, by the way, though he has denounced every person and every measure in connection with our politics for forty years, was secretly pleased at his son's senatorial aspirations, "do you know that some one told me to-day that four of the very worst of those fellows have never drunk a drop of liquor, nor smoked a pipe of tobacco in their lives. Isn't it a curious circ.u.mstance? I supposed they were intoxicated most of the time."

You will notice also that Peter Lynch and Jeremiah Dolan have no occupation. Each of them has been connected in some capacity with the City Government for nearly twenty years, and they are persons of great experience. They have more than once near election time been amiably referred to in the press as "valuable public servants," and it must be admitted that they are efficient in their way. Certainly, they know the red tape of City Hall from A to Z, and understand how to block or forward any measure. The salary of Alderman is not large--certainly not large enough to satisfy indefinitely such capable men as they, and yet they continue to appear year after year at the same old stand.

Moreover, they resist vigorously every effort to dislodge them, whether proceeding from political opponents or envious rivals of their own party. A philosopher like myself, who is, politically speaking, a worm, is expected to believe that valuable public servants retain office for the honor of the thing; but even a philosopher becomes suspicious of a patriot who has no occupation.

Next in importance are Hon. William H. Bird and Hon. John P. Driscoll.

It is a well-known axiom of popular government that citizens are called from the plough or counting-room to public office by the urgent request of their friends and neighbors. As a fact, this takes place two or three times in a century. Most aspirants for office go through the form of having a letter from their friends and neighbors published in the newspapers, but only the very guileless portion of the public do not understand that the candidates in these cases suggest themselves. It is sometimes done delicately, as, for instance, in the case of young Arthur Langdon Waterhouse of whom I was writing just now. He let a close friend intimate to the ward committee that he would like to run for Alderman, and that in consideration thereof his father would be willing to subscribe two thousand dollars to the party campaign fund. It seems to a philosopher that a patriotic people should either re-edit its political axioms or live up to them.

Now Hon. William H. Bird and Hon. John P. Driscoll never go through the ceremony of being called from the plough--in their case the ward bar-room. They announce six months in advance that they wish something, and they state clearly what. They are perpetual candidates for, or inc.u.mbents of, office, and to be elected or defeated annually costs each of them from two to four thousand dollars according to circ.u.mstances. One of them has been in the a.s.sembly, the Governor's Council, and in both branches of the City Government; the other a member of the a.s.sembly, a State Senator, and an Alderman, and both of them are now glad to be Alderman once more after a desperate Kilkenny contest for the nomination. They are called Honorable by the reporters; and philosophers and other students of newspapers are constantly informed that Hon. William H. Bird has done this, and Hon.

John P. Driscoll said that.

These four are the big men of the Board. The others are smaller fry; ambitious and imitative, but less experienced and smooth and audacious. Yet the four have their virtues, too. It is safe to state that no one of them would take anything beyond his reach. Moreover, if you, a patriot, or I, a philosopher, were to find himself alone in a room with one of them and had five thousand dollars in bills in a pocket-book and the fact were known to him, he would make no effort to possess himself of the money. We should be absolutely safe from a.s.sault or sleight of hand. Whoever would maintain the opposite does not appreciate the honesty of the American people. If, on the other hand, under similar circ.u.mstances, the right man were to place an envelope containing one thousand dollars in bills on the table and saunter to the window to admire the view, the packet would disappear before he returned to his seat and neither party would be able to remember that it ever was there. I do not intend to intimate that this is the precise method of procedure; I am merely explaining that our comedians have not the harsh habits of old-fashioned highwaymen.

Then again, there are people so fatuous as to believe that Aldermen are accustomed to help themselves out of the city treasury. That is a foolish fiction, for no Alderman could. The City Hall is too bulky to remove, and all appropriations of the public money are made by draft and have to be accounted for. If any member of the Board were to make a descent on the funds in the safe, he would be arrested as a lunatic and sent to an insane asylum.

As for the other eight low comedians, it happens in this particular drama that I would be unwilling to make an affidavit as to the absolute integrity of any one of them. But there are apt to be two or even three completely honest members of these august bodies, and two or three more who are pretty honest. A pretty honest Alderman is like a pretty good egg. A pretty honest Alderman would be incapable of touching an envelope containing one thousand dollars, or charging one hundred in return for his support to a pet.i.tion for a bay-window; but if he were in the paint and oil business or the lumber trade, or interested in hay and oats, it would be safe to a.s.sume that any department of the City Government which did not give his firm directly or indirectly a part of its trade would receive no aldermanic favors at his hands. Then again, a pretty honest Alderman would allow a friend to sell a spavined horse to the city.

To _A Political Optimist_. II.