Search Light Letters Part 9

"He uttered nothing but glittering generalities; that he desired to know who his friends were, and whether in case he were elected he could be of any service to our corporation. The English of that is, he expects in the first place a liberal subscription for campaign expenses--and after that retaining fees from time to time as our attorney or agent, which will vary in size according to the value of the services rendered."

A faint gleam of cunning hope appeared in Mr. Barnstable's eyes.

"Then anything we--er--contributed could properly be charged to attorney's fees?" he said by way of thinking aloud.

"Certainly--attorney's fees, services as agent, profit and loss, extraordinary expenses, machinery account, bad debts--there are a dozen ways of explaining the outlay. And no outlay may be necessary. A tip on the stock will do just as well."

"Dear, dear," reiterated Mr. Barnstable. "It's a deplorable situation; deplorable and very awkward."

"And the awkward part is, that we're a dead c.o.c.k in the pit if we incline to virtue's side."

Mr. Barnstable sighed deeply and drummed on his desk. Then he began to walk up and down. After a few moments he stopped short and said:

"I shall have to lay it before my directors, Dowling."

"Certainly, sir. But in general terms, I hope. A single--er--impractical man might block the situation until it was too late. Then the expense of remedying the blunder might be much greater."

Mr. Barnstable inclined his head gravely. "I shall consult some of the wisest heads on the Board, and if in their opinion it is advisable to conciliate these blackmailers, a formal expression of approval will scarcely be necessary."

A few days later the President sent for the Manager and waved him to a chair. His expression was grave--almost sad, yet resolute. His manner was dignified and cold.

"We have considered," said he, "the matter of which we were speaking recently, and under the peculiar circ.u.mstances in which we are placed, and in view of the fact that the success of our bill and the defeat of the Underground Steam Company is necessary for the protection of the best interests of the public and the facilitation of honest corporate business enterprise, I am empowered to authorize you to take such steps, Mr. Dowling, as seem to you desirable and requisite for the proper protection of our interests."

"Very good, sir. That is all that is necessary."

There was a brief silence, during which Mr. Barnstable joined his finger-tips together and looked at the fire. Then he rose augustly, and putting out his hand with a repellant gesture said, "There is one thing I insist on, which is that I shall know nothing of the details of this disagreeable business. I leave the matter wholly in your hands, Dowling."

"Oh, certainly, sir. And you may rely on my giving the cold shoulder to the rascals wherever it is possible for me to do so."

That is a pitiful story, isn't it? Virtue a.s.saulted almost in its very temple, and given a black eye by sheer force of cruel, overwhelming circ.u.mstances. Yet a true story, and the prototype in its general features of a host of similar episodes occurring in the different cities of this land of the free and the home of the brave. Each case, of course, has its peculiar atmosphere. Not every leading villain has the sensitive and combative conscience of Thomas Barnstable; nor every general manager the bold, frank style of Mr. Dowling. There is every phase of soul-struggle and method from unblushing, business-like bargain and sale to sphinx-like and purposely unenlightened and ostrich-like submission. In the piteous language of a defender of Thomas Barnstable (not Josephine), what can one do but submit? If one meets a highwayman on the road, is one to be turned back if a purse will secure a pa.s.sage? Surely not if the journey be of moment. Then is a corporate body (a corporation has no soul) to be starved to death by delay and hostile legislation if peace and plenty are to be had for an attorney's fee? If so, only the rascals would thrive and honest corporations would bite the dust. And so it happened that Mr. Dowling before election cast his moral influence in favor of the big four, and a little bird flew from headquarters with a secret message, couched in sufficiently vague language, to the effect that the management would be pleased if the employees of the People's Heat and Power Company were to mark crosses on their Australian ballots against the names of Peter Lynch, Jeremiah Dolan, Hon. William H. Bird, and the Hon. John P. Driscoll.

Let us allow the curtain to descend to slow music, and after a brief pause rise on some of our other characters. Behold now the 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. As a sample take Mr. John Baker, amiable and well-meaning physician, a practical philanthropist and an intelligent student of science by virtue of his active daily professional labors.

For a week before election he is apt to have a distressing, soul-haunting consciousness that a City Government is shortly to be chosen and that he must, as a free-born and virtue-loving citizen, vote for somebody. He remembers that during the year there has been more or less agitation in the newspapers concerning this or that individual connected with the aldermanic office, but he has forgotten names and is all at sea as to who is who or what is what. Two days before election he receives and puts aside a circular containing a list of the most desirable candidates, as indicated by the Reform Society, intending to peruse it, but he is called from home on one evening by professional demands, and on the other by tickets for the theatre, so election morning arrives without his having looked at it.

He forgets that it is election day, and is reminded of the fact while on his way to visit his patients by noticing that many of his acquaintances seem to be walking in the wrong direction. He turns also at the spur of memory, and mournfully realizes that he has left the list at home. To return would spoil his professional day, so he proceeds to the polls, and, in the hope of wise enlightenment, joins the first sagacious friend he encounters. It happens, perhaps, to be Dowling.

"Ah," says Dr. Baker, genially, "you're just the man to tell me whom to vote for. One vote doesn't count for much, but I like to do my duty as an American citizen."

"It's a pretty poor list," says Dowling, pathetically, drawing a paper from his pocket. "I believe, however, in accomplishing the best possible results under existing circ.u.mstances. If I thought the Reform candidates could be elected, I would vote for them and for them only; but it's equally important that the very worst men should be kept out.

I am going to vote for the Reform candidates and for Lynch, Dolan, Bird, and Driscoll. They're capable and they have had experience. If they steal, they'll steal judiciously and that is something. Some of those other fellows would steal the lamp-posts and hydrants if they got the chance."

"All right," says Dr. Baker. "I'll take your word for it. Let me write those names down. I suppose that some day or other we shall get a decent City Government. I admit that I don't give as much consideration to such matters as I ought, but the days are only twenty-four hours long."

Then from the same company there is Mr. David Jones, hay and grain dealer, honest and a diligent, reputable business man. He harbors the amiable delusion that the free-born American citizen in the exercise of the suffrage has intuitive knowledge as to whom to vote for, and that in the long run the choice of the sovereign people is wise and satisfactory. He is ready to admit that political considerations should not control selection for munic.i.p.al office, but he has a latent distrust of reformers as aristocratic self-seekers or enemies of popular government. For instance, the idea that he or any other American citizen of ordinary education and good moral character is not fit to serve on the school committee offends his patriotism.

"What's the matter with Lynch, anyway?" he asks on his way to the polls. "I see some of his political enemies are attacking him in the press. If he were crooked, some one would have found it out in ten years. I met him once and he talked well. He has no frills round his neck."

"Nor wheels in his head," answers a fellow-patriot, who wishes to get a street developed and has put his case in Lynch's hands.

"He shall have my vote," says the hay and grain dealer.

As for the twenty-five thousand hide-bound partisans, I will state to begin with, my optimistic correspondent, that if this drama were concerned with any election but a city election, their number would be larger. But these make up in unswerving fixity of purpose for any diminution of their forces due to munic.i.p.al considerations. They are content to have their thinking done for them in advance by a packed caucus, and they go to the polls snorting like war-horses and eager to vindicate by their ballots the party choice of candidates, or meekly and reverently prepared to make a criss-cross after every R or D, according to their faith, with the fatuous fealty of sheep. Bigotry and suspicions, ignorance and easy-going willingness to be led, keep their phalanx steady and a constant old guard for the protection of comedians and villains.

In another corner of the stage stand the ten thousand superior, self-centred souls who neglect to vote and despise politics--the mixed corps of pessimists, impractical dreamers, careless idlers, and hyper-cultured world-disdainers, who hold aloof, from one motive or another, from contact with common life and a share in its responsibilities--some on the plea that universal suffrage is a folly or a failure, some that earth is but a vale of travail which concerns little the wise or righteous thinker, some from sheer b.u.t.terfly or stupid idleness. Were they to vote they would help to offset that no less large body of suffragists--the active enemies of order, the hoodlum, tobacco-spitting, woman-insulting, rum-drinking ruffian brigade. There are only left the ten thousand conscientious citizens, real patriots--a corporal's guard, amid the general optimistic sweep toward the polls. These mark their crosses with care against the names of the honest men and perhaps some of the pretty honest, only to read in the newspapers next morning that the big four have been returned to power and that the confidence of the plain and sovereign people in the disinterested conduct of their public servants has again been demonstrated.

"Ho, ho, ho," laugh the low comedians. "Mum's the word." The faces of the big four are wreathed in self-congratulatory smiles. At the homes of Peter Lynch and Jeremiah Dolan, those experienced individuals without occupation, there are cakes and ale. It is a mistake to a.s.sume that because a citizen is an Alderman he is not human and amiably domestic in his tastes. Jeremiah loves the little Dolans and is no less fond of riding his children on his leg than Thomas Barnstable, or any of the leading villains. When their father looks happy in the late autumn, the children know that their Christmas stockings will be full.

Jeremiah is at peace with all the world and is ready to sit with slicked hair for his photograph, from which a steel (or is it steal?) engraving will shortly be prepared for the new City Government yearbook, superscribed: "Jeremiah Dolan, Chairman of the Board of Aldermen." A framed enlargement of this will hang on one side of the fire-place, and an embroidered motto, "G.o.d Bless Our Home," on the other, and all will be well with the Dolans for another twelve months.

In his own home Jeremiah is a man of few words on public matters. Not unnaturally his children believe him to be of the salt of the earth, and he lets it go at that, attending strictly to business without seeking to defend himself in the bosom of his family from the diatribes of reformers. Still, it is reasonable to a.s.sume that, under the fillip of the large majority rolled up in his favor, he would be liable to give vent to his sense of humor so far as to refer in the presence of his wife and children to the young man who was willing to become an Alderman while waiting to be Senator, as a T. w.i.l.l.y.

If you have read "The Hon. Peter Stirling," you will remember that the hero rose to political stature largely by means of attending to the needs of the district, befriending the poor and the helpless and having a friendly, encouraging word for his const.i.tuents, high or low.

The American public welcomed the book because it was glad to see the boss vindicated by these human qualities, and to think that there was a saving grace of unselfish service in the composition of the average successful politician. It would be unjust to the big four were I not to acknowledge that they have been shrewd or human enough to pursue in some measure this affable policy, and that the neighborhood and the district in which they live recognize them as hustlers to obtain office, privileges, and jobs for the humble citizen wishing to be employed by or to sell something to the City Government. To this const.i.tuency the comparatively small tax levied seems all in the day's work, a natural incident of the principle that when a man does something, he ought to be paid for it. To them the distinction that public service is a trust which has no right to pecuniary profit beyond the salary attached, and a reasonable amount of stationery, seems to savor of the millennium and to suggest a lack of practical intelligence on the part of its advocates. They pay the lawyer and the doctor; why not the Alderman?

To _A Political Optimist_. III.

I am reminded by Josephine that I seem to be getting into the dumps, which does not befit one who claims to be an optimistic philosopher.

The drama just set before you is not, I admit, encouraging as a national exhibit, and I can imagine that you are already impatient to retort that the munic.i.p.al stage is no fair criterion of public life in this country. I can hear you a.s.sert, with that confident air of national righteousness peculiar to the cla.s.s of blind patriots to which you belong, that the leading politicians of the nation disdain to soil their hands by contact with city politics. Yet there I take issue with you squarely, not as to the fact but as to the truth of the lofty postulate seething in your mind that the higher planes of political activity are free from the venal and debasing characteristics of munic.i.p.al public service--from the influence of the money power operating on a low public standard of honesty.

Most of us--even philosophers like myself--try to cling to the fine theory that the legislators of the country represent the best morals and brains of the community, and that the men elected to public office in the councils of the land have been put forward as being peculiarly fitted to interpret and provide for our needs, by force of their predominant individual virtues and abilities. Most of us appreciate in our secret souls that this theory is not lived up to, and is available only for Fourth of July or other rhetorical purposes. Yet we dislike to dismiss the ideal as unattainable, even though we know that actual practice is remote from it; and patriots still, we go on a.s.serting that this is our method of choice, vaguely hoping, like the well-intentioned but careless voter, that some day we shall get a decent government, munic.i.p.al, state, national--that is decent from the standpoint of our democratic ideal. And there is another theory, part and parcel of the other, which we try to cling to at the same time, that our public representatives, though the obviously ornamental and fine specimens of their several const.i.tuencies, are after all only every-day Americans with whom a host of citizens could change places without disparagement to either. In other words, that our theory of government is government by the average, and that the average is remarkably high. This comfortable view induces many like yourself to wrap themselves round with the American flag and smile at destiny, sure that everything will result well with us sooner or later, and impatient of criticism or doubts. As a people we delight in patting ourselves on the back and dismissing our worries as mere flea-bites.

The hard cider of our patriotism gets readily into the brain and causes us to deny fiercely or serenely, according to our dispositions, that anything serious is the matter.

Yet whatever Fourth of July orators may say to the contrary, the fact remains that the sorry taint of bargain and sale, of holding up on the political highway and pacification by bribery in one form or another, permeates to-day the whole of our political system from the lowest stratum of munic.i.p.al public life to the councils which make Presidents and United States Senators. To be sure, the Alderman in his capacity of low comedian dictating terms to corporations seeking civic privileges is the most unblushing, and hence the most obviously flagrant case; but it is well recognized by all who are brought in contact with legislative bodies of any sort in the country that either directly or indirectly the machinery of public life is controlled by aggregations of capital working on the hungry, easy-going, or readily flattered susceptibilities of a considerable percentage of the members. Certainly our national and state a.s.semblies contain many high-minded, honest, intellectually capable men, but they contain as many more who are either dishonest or are so ignorant and easily cajoled that they permit themselves to be the tools of leading villains. Those cognizant of what goes on behind the scenes on the political stage would perhaps deny that such men as our friend Thomas Barnstable or his agent, Dowling, attempt to dictate nominations to either branch of the legislature on the tacit understanding that a member thus supported is to advocate or vote for their measures, and by their denial they might deceive a real simon-pure philosopher. But this philosopher knows better, and so do you, my optimistic friend. It is the fashion, I am aware, among conservative people, lawyers looking for employment, bankers and solid men of affairs, to put the finger on the lips when this evil is broached and whisper, "Hush!" They admit confidentially the truth of it, but they say "Hush! What's the use of stirring things up? It can't do any good and it makes the public discontented. It excites the populists." So there is perpetual mystery and the game goes on. Men who wish things good or bad come reluctantly or willingly to the conclusion that the only way to get them is by paying for them. Not all pay cash. Some obtain that which they desire by working on the weaknesses of legislators; following them into banks where they borrow money, getting people who hold them in their employ or give them business to interfere, asking influential friends to press them. Every railroad corporation in the country has agents to look after its affairs before the legislature of the State through which it operates, and what some of those agents have said and done in order to avert molestation would, if published, be among the most interesting memoirs ever written. Who doubts that elections to the United States Senate and House of Representatives are constantly secured by the use of money among those who have the power to bestow nominations and influence votes? It is notorious, yet to prove it would be no less difficult than to prove that Peter Lynch, Alderman for ten years without occupation, has received bribes from his fellow-citizens. How are the vast sums of money levied on rich men to secure the success of a political party in a Presidential campaign expended? For stationery, postage stamps, and campaign doc.u.ments? For torch-light processions, rallies, and b.u.t.tons? Some of it, certainly.

The unwritten inside history of the political progress of many of the favorite sons of the nation during the last forty years would make the scale of public honor kick the beam though it were weighted with the cherry-tree and hatchet of George Washington. In one of our cities where a deputation of city officials attended the funeral of a hero of the late war with Spain, there is a record of four hundred dollars spent for ice-cream. Presumably this was a transcript of petty thievery inartistically audited. But there are no auditings of the real use of the thousands of dollars contributed to keep a party in power or to secure the triumph of a politically ambitious millionaire.

[_Note._--Josephine, who had been sitting lost in thought since the conclusion of the drama, and who is fond of problem plays, inquired at this point whether I consider the low comedians or the leading villains the most to blame for the existing state of things.

"It is a pertinent question, Josephine, and one not easily answered.

What is your view of the matter?"

"I suppose," she answered, "as you have termed the bribers the leading villains, they are the worst. And I do think that the temptation must be very great among the cla.s.s of men who are without fine sensibilities to let themselves become the tools of rich and powerful people, who, as you have indicated, can help them immensely in return for a vote. It is astonishing that those in the community who are educated, well-to-do citizens, should commit such sins against decency and patriotism."

"Yes, it seems astonishing, but their plea is pathetic, as I have already stated, and somewhat plausible. Suppose for a minute that I am Thomas Barnstable defending himself and see how eloquent I can be.

'What would you have me do, Madam? I am an honest man and my directors are honest men; the bills we ask for are always just and reasonable. I have never in my life approached a legislator with an improper offer, nor have I used direct or indirect bribery so long as it was absolutely possible to avoid doing so. But when a gang of cheap and cunning tricksters block the pa.s.sage of my corporation's measures, and will not let them become law until we have been bled, I yield as a last resort. We are at their mercy. It is a detestable thing to do, I admit, but it is necessary if we are to remain in business. There is no alternative. The responsibility is on the dishonest and incapable men whom the American public elects to office, and who under the specious plea of protecting the rights of the plain people levy blackmail on corporate interests. Corporations do not wish to bribe, but they are forced to do so in self-defence.' There! Is not that a tear-compelling statement?"

"I can see your side," said Josephine.

"Pardon me," I interrupted. "It is Mr. Barnstable's side, not mine. I am not a capitalist, only a philosopher."

"Well, his side then; and I feel sorry for him in spite of the weakness of his case. Only his argument does not explain the others. I should not suppose that men like Mr. Prendergast could truthfully declare that all the legislation they ask for is just and reasonable."

"Precisely. Yet they buy their desires in the open market from the free-born representatives of the people. If any one states so at the time he is hushed up, if possible; if not, there is an investigation, nothing is proved, and the integrity of the legislative body is vindicated. I can shed a tear on behalf of men like Mr. Barnstable, a crocodile tear, yet still a tear. But there is the larger army of hard-headed, dollar-hunting, practical capitalists, who are not forming corporations for their health, so to speak, to be reckoned with. My eloquence is palsied by them. They would tell you that they were obliged to bribe, but they do not waste much time in resistance or remorse. They seem to regard the evil as a national custom, unfortunate and expensive, but not altogether inconvenient.

Confidentially over a cigar they will a.s.sure you that the French, the Spanish, the Turks, and the Chinese are infinitely worse and that this is merely a pa.s.sing phase of democracy, whatever that may mean."

"Dreadful," said Josephine. "And then there are the people with money who aid and abet their own nominations for Congress. I think I could mention some of them."

"Well, you mustn't. It might hurt their feelings, for they may not know exactly what was done except in a general way. After all is over they ask 'how much?' draw a check and make few inquiries. That is the genteel way. But in some states it is not necessary or politic to be genteel. The principle is the same, but the process is less subtle and aristocratic. But haven't you a word of extenuation to offer on behalf of the low comedians? Think of Jeremiah Dolan and the little Dolans."