The Twentieth Century American Part 13

So far as the saloon keepers, the gamblers, the owners and patrons of disorderly houses went, we had no hope of winning their allegiance; but, after all, they were a small numerical minority of the voters of the ward. The majority consisted of low-cla.s.s Italians, unskilled labourers, and it was their votes that must decide the issue. There was not one of them who was not thoroughly talked to, as well as every member of his family of a reasoning age. There was not one who did not fully recognise that the alderman was a thief and an entirely immoral scamp; but their labour was farmed by, perhaps, half a dozen Italian contractors. These men were the Alderman's henchmen. As long as he continued in the Council, he was able to keep their men employed--on munic.i.p.al works and on the work of the various railway and other large corporations which he was able to blackmail. We, on our part, had obtained promises of employment, from friends of decent government regardless of politics in all parts of the city, for approximately as many men as could possibly be thrown out of work in case of an upheaval. But of what use were these, more or less unverifiable, promises, when on the eve of the election the half a dozen contractors (who of course had grown rich with their alderman's continuance in office) gave each individual labourer in the ward to understand clearly that if the present alderman was defeated each one of them would have to go and live somewhere--live or starve,--for not one stroke of work would they ever get so long as they lived in that ward?

It was, as I have said, a vigorous campaign on our side; and the Delectable One was re-elected by something more than his usual majority.

On the night of the election it was reported--though this may have been mere rumour--that the bills which he laid on the counter of each saloon in the ward (and always forgot to take any change) were of the value of fifty dollars each. That was some years ago, but I understand that he is still in that same City Council, representing that same ward.

It was in the same city that one year I received notice of my personal property tax, the amount a.s.sessed against me being about ten times higher than it ought to have been. Experience had taught me that it was useless to make any protest against small impositions, but a multiplication of my obligations by tenfold was not to be submitted to without a struggle. I wrote therefore to the proper authority, making protest, and was told that the matter would be investigated. After a lapse of some days, I was invited to call at the City Hall. There I was informed by one of the subordinate officials that it was undoubtedly a case of malice--that the a.s.sessment had been made by either a personal or a political enemy. I was then taken to see the Chief. The Chief was a corpulent Irishman of the worst type. My guide leaned over him and in an undertone, but not so low that I did not hear, gave him a brief _resume_ of the story, stating that it was undoubtedly a case of intentional injustice, and concluding with an account of myself and my interests which showed that the speaker had taken no little trouble to post himself upon the subject. He emphasised the fact of my a.s.sociation with the press. At this point for the first time the Chief evinced some interest in the tale. His intelligence responded to the word "newspapers" as promptly as if an electrical current had suddenly been switched into his system. "H'm! newspapers!" he grunted. Then, heaving his bulk half round in his chair so as partially to face me----

"This is a mistake," he said. "We will say no more about it. Your a.s.sessment's cancelled."

"I beg your pardon," I said, "I have no objection to paying one-tenth of the amount. If an '0' is cut off the end----"

"That's all right," he said. "The whole thing is cut off."

I made another protest, but he waved me away and my guide led me from the room. Because it was opined that, through the press, I might be able to make myself objectionable if the imposition was persisted in, I paid no tax at all that year. Which was every whit as immoral as the original offence.

Stories of this cla.s.s it would be easy to multiply indefinitely; but again I say that it is not my desire to insist on the corruptness which exists in American political life, but rather to explain to English readers what the nature of that corruptness is and in what spheres of the political life of the country it is able to find lodgment. What I have endeavoured to ill.u.s.trate is, first, how the peculiar political system of the United States may, under some exceptional conditions, make it possible for even the nomination of a President to be treated as a matter of purchase, though the candidate himself and those who immediately surround him may be of incorruptible integrity; second, the unrivalled opportunities for bribery and other forms of political wrong-doing furnished by the existence of the State legislatures, with their eight thousand members, drawn necessarily from all ranks and elements of the population, and possessing exceptional power over the commercial affairs of the people of their respective States; and, third, the methods by which, in certain large cities, power is attained, used, and abused by the munic.i.p.al "bosses" of all degrees, a condition of affairs which is in large measure only made possible by the identification of local and national politics and political parties. In each case the conditions which make the corruption possible do not exist in England, even though in the last named (the identification of local with national politics and parties) the tendency in Great Britain is distinctly in the direction of the American model. It is, perhaps, an inevitable result of the working of the Anglo-Saxon "particularistic"

spirit, which ultimately rebels against any form of national government or of national politics in which the individual and the individual of each locality, is debarred from making his voice heard.

As for the corruptness which is supposed to exist in Congress itself, this I believe to be largely a matter of partisan gossip and newspaper talk. It may be that every Congress contains among its members a few whose integrity is not beyond the temptation of a direct monetary bribe; and it would perhaps be curious if it were not so. But it is the opinion of the best informed that the direct bribery of a member of either the Senate or the House is extremely rare. It happens, probably, all too frequently that members consent to acquire at a low figure shares in undertakings which are likely to be favourably affected by legislation for which they vote, in the expectation or hope of profit therefrom; but it is exceedingly difficult to say in any given case whether a member's vote has been influenced by his financial interest (whether, on public grounds, he would not have voted as he did under any circ.u.mstances), and at what point the mere employment of sound business judgment ends and the prost.i.tution of legislative influence begins. The same may be said of the accusations so commonly made against members of making use of information which they acquire in the committee room for purposes of speculation.

Washington, during the sessions of Congress is full of "lobbyists"--_i.

e._, men who have no other reason for their presence at the capital than to further the progress of legislation in which they are interested or who are sent there for the purpose by others who have such an interest; but it is my conviction (and I know it is that of others better informed than myself) that the instances wherein the labours of a lobbyist go beyond the use of legitimate argument in favour of entirely meritorious measures are immensely fewer than the reader of the sensational press might suppose. The American National Legislature is, indeed, a vastly purer body than demagogues, or the American press, would have an outsider believe.

There is no doubt that large manufacturing and commercial concerns do exert themselves to secure the election to the House, and perhaps to the Senate, of persons who are practically their direct representatives, their chief business in Congress being the shaping of favourable legislation or the warding off of that which would be disadvantageous to the interests which are behind them. Undoubtedly also such large concerns, or a.s.sociated groups of them, can bring considerable pressure to bear upon individual members in divers ways, and there have been notorious cases wherein it has been shown that this pressure has been unscrupulously used. Except in the case of the railways, which have only a secondary interest in tariff legislation, this particular abuse must be charged to the account of the protective policy, and its development in some measure would perhaps be inevitable in any country where a similar policy prevailed.

In the British Parliament there are, of course, few important lines of trade or industry which are not abundantly represented, and both Houses contain railway directors and others who speak frankly as the representatives of railway interests, and lose thereby nothing of the respect of the country or their fellow-members. It is not possible here to explain in detail why the a.s.sumption, which prevails in America, that a railway company is necessarily a public enemy, and that any argument in favour of such a corporation is an argument against the public welfare, does not obtain in England. It will be necessary later on not only to refer to the fact that fear of capitalism is immensely stronger in America than it is in England, but also to explain why there is good reason why it should be so. For the present, it is enough to note that it is possible for members of Parliament to do, without incurring a shadow of suspicion of their integrity, things which would d.a.m.n a member of Congress irreparably in the eyes alike of his colleagues and of the country. There is hardly a railway bill pa.s.sed through Parliament the supporters of which would not in its pa.s.sage through Congress have to run the gauntlet of all manner of insinuation and abuse; and when the sensational press of the United States raises a hue and cry of "Steal!"

in regard to a particular measure, the Englishman (until he understands the difference in the conditions in the two countries) may be bewildered by finding on investigation that the bill is one entirely praiseworthy which would pa.s.s through Parliament as a matter of course, the only justification for the outcry being that the legislation is likely, perhaps most indirectly, to prove advantageous to some particular industry or locality. The fact that the measure is just and deserving of support on merely patriotic grounds is immaterial, when party capital can be made from such an outcry. I have on more than one occasion known entirely undeserved suffering to be inflicted in this way on men of the highest character who were acting from none but disinterested motives; and he who would have traffic with large affairs in the United States must early learn to grow callous to newspaper abuse.

In wider and more general ways than have yet been noticed, however, the members of Congress are subjected to undue influences in a measure far beyond anything known to the members of Parliament.

In the colonial days, governors not seldom complained of the law by which members of the provincial a.s.semblies could only be elected to sit for the towns or districts in which they actually resided. The same law once prevailed in England, but it was repealed in the time of George III., and had been disregarded in practice since the days of Elizabeth.[247:1] Under the Const.i.tution of the United States it is, however, still necessary that a member of Congress should be a resident (or "inhabitant") of the State from which he is elected. In some States it is the law that he must reside in the particular district of the State which elects him, and custom has made this the rule in all. A candidate rejected by his own const.i.tuency, therefore, cannot stand for another; and it follows that a member who desires to continue in public life must hold the good will of his particular locality.

So entirely is this accepted as a matter of course that any other system (the British system for instance) seems to the great majority of Americans quite unnatural and absurd; and it has the obvious immediate advantage that each member does more truly "represent" his particular const.i.tuents than is likely to be the case when he sits for a borough or a Division in which he may never have set foot until he began to canvas it. On the other hand, it is an obvious disadvantage that when a member for any petty local reason forfeits the good will of his own const.i.tuency, his services, no matter how valuable they may be, are permanently lost to the State.

The term for which a member of the Lower House is elected in America is only two years, so that a member who has any ambition for a continuous legislative career must, almost from the day of his election, begin to consider the chance of being re-elected. As this depends altogether on his ability to hold the grat.i.tude of his one const.i.tuency, it is inevitable that he should become more or less engrossed in the effort to serve the local needs; and a const.i.tuency, or the party leaders in a const.i.tuency, generally, indeed, measure a man's availability for re-election by what is called his "usefulness."

If you ask a politician of local authority whether the sitting member is a good one, he will reply, "No; he hasn't any influence at Washington at all. He can't do a thing for us!" Or, "Yes, he's pretty good; he seems to get things through all right." The "things" which the member "gets through" may be the appointment of residents of the district to minor government positions, the securing of appropriations of public moneys for such works as the dredging or widening of a river channel to the advantage of the district or the improvement of the local harbour, and the pa.s.sage of bills providing for the erection in the district of new post-offices or other government buildings. Many other measures may, of course, be of direct local interest; but a member's chief opportunities for earning the grat.i.tude of his const.i.tuency fall under the three categories enumerated.

It is obvious that two years is too short a term for any but an exceptionally gifted man to make his mark, either in the eyes of his colleagues or of his const.i.tuency, by conspicuous national services.

Even if achieved, it is doubtful if in the eyes of the majority of the const.i.tuencies (or the leaders in those const.i.tuencies) any such impalpable distinction would be held to compensate for a demonstrated inability to get the proper share of local advantages. The result is that while the member of Parliament may be said to consider himself primarily as a member of his party and his chief business to be that of co-operating with that party in securing the conduct of National affairs according to the party beliefs, the member of Congress considers himself primarily as the representative of his district and his chief business to be the securing for that district of as many plums from the Federal pie as possible.

Out of these conditions has developed the prevalence of log-rolling in Congress: "You vote for my post-office and I'll help you with your harbour appropriation." Such exchange of courtesies is continual and, I think, universal. The annual River and Harbour Bill (which last year appropriated $25,414,000 of public money for all manner of works in all corners of the country) is an amazing legislative product.

Another result is that the individual member must hold himself constantly alert to find what his "people" at home want: always on the lookout for signs of approval or disapproval from his const.i.tuency. And the const.i.tuency on its side does not hesitate to let him know just what it thinks of him and precisely what jobs it requires him to do at any given moment. Nor is it the const.i.tuency as a whole, through its recognised party leaders, which alone thinks that it has a right to instruct, direct, or influence its representative, but individuals of sufficient political standing to consider themselves ent.i.tled to have their private interest looked after, manufacturing and business concerns the payrolls of which support a large number of voters, labour unions, and all sorts of societies and organisations of various kinds--they one and all a.s.sert their right to advise the Congressman in his policies or to call for his a.s.sistance in furthering their particular ends, under threat, tacit or expressed, of the loss of their support when he seeks re-election. The English member of Parliament thinks that he is subjected to a sufficiency of pressure of this particular sort; but he has not to bear one-tenth of what is daily meted out to his American _confrere_, nor is he under any similar necessity of paying attention to it.

Under such conditions it is evident that a Congressman can have but a restricted liberty to act or vote according to his individual convictions. It is only human that, in matters which are not of great national import, a man should at times be willing to believe that his personal opinions may be wrong when adherence to those opinions would wreck his political career. So the Congressman too commonly acquires a habit of subservience which is a.s.suredly not wholesome either for the individual or for the country; and sometimes the effort to trim sails to catch every favouring breeze has curious oblique results. As an instance of this may be cited the action taken by Congress in regard to the army canteen. A year or more back, the permission to army posts to retain within their own limits and subject to the supervision of the post authorities, a canteen for the use of soldiers, was abolished. The soldiers have since been compelled to do their drinking outside, and, as a result, this drinking has been done without control or supervision, and has produced much more serious demoralisation. The action of Congress was taken in the face of an earnest and nearly unanimous protest from experienced army officers--the men, that is, who were directly concerned with the problem in question. The Congressmen acted as they did under the pressure of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and with the dread lest a vote for the canteen should be interpreted as a vote for liquor, and should stand in the way of their own political success.

From what has been said it will be seen that the member of Congress is compelled to give a deplorably large proportion of his time and thought to paltry local matters, leaving a deplorably small portion of either to be devoted to national questions; while in the exercise of his functions as a legislator he is likely to be influenced by a variety of motives which ought to be quite impertinent and are often unworthy. These things however seem to be almost inevitable results of the national political structure. The individual corruptibility of the members of either House (their readiness, that is to be influenced by any considerations, other than that of their re-election, of their own interests, financial or otherwise), I believe to be grossly exaggerated in the popular mind.

Certainly a stranger is likely to get the idea that the Congress is a much less honourable and less earnest body than it is.

The subject of the corruptness of the public service in the larger cities brings up again a matter which has been already touched upon, namely the extent to which this corruptness is in its origin Irish and not an indigenous American growth. Under the favourable influences of American political conditions the Irish have developed exceptional capacity for leadership (a capacity which they are also showing in some of the British colonies) and they do not generally use their ability or their powers for the good of the community. The rapidity with which the Irish immigrant blossoms into political authority is a commonplace of American journalism:

"Ere the steamer that brought him had got out of hearing, He was Alderman Mike introducing a bill."

It is commonly held by Americans that all political corruptness in the United States (certainly all munic.i.p.al wickedness) is chargeable to Irish influence; but it is a position not easy to maintain in the face of the example of the city of Philadelphia, the government of which has from the beginning been chiefly in the hands of Americans, many of whom have been members of the oldest and best Philadelphia families. Yet the administration of Philadelphia has been as corrupt and as openly disregardful of the welfare of the community as ever was that of New York. While Irishmen are generally Democrats, both Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania, are overwhelmingly Republican and devoted to the protective policy under which so many of the industries of the State have prospered exceedingly. Those who have fought for the cause of munic.i.p.al reform in Philadelphia find that, while the ma.s.ses of the people of the city would prefer good government, it is almost impossible to get them to reject an official candidate of the Republican party. The Republican "bosses" have thus been able to impose on the city officials of the worst kind, who have served them faithfully to the disaster of the community.[253:1] None the less, notwithstanding particular exceptions, it is a fact that as a general rule the corrupt maladministration of affairs in American cities is the direct result of Irish influence.

The opportunities of the Irish leaders for securing control of the city administration, or of certain important and lucrative divisions of this administration, have been furthered, particularly in such cities as New York and San Francisco, by the influence they are able to gain over bodies of immigrants who are also in the fold of the Roman Catholic Church, and who, on the ground of difference of language and other causes, have less quickness of perception of their own political opportunities. The Irish leaders have been able to direct in very large measure the votes of the Italians (more particularly the Italians from the South), the Bohemians, and the other groups of immigrants from Catholic communities. As the Irish immigration has decreased both absolutely and relatively, the numbers of voters supporting the leadership of the bosses of Tammany Hall and of the similar organisations in Chicago and San Francisco have been made good, and in fact substantially increased, by the addition of Catholic voters of other nationalities.

I wish the English reader to grasp fully the significance of these facts before he allows the stories which he hears of the munic.i.p.al immorality which exists in the United States to colour too deeply his estimate of the character of the American people. That immorality is chiefly Irish in its origin and is made continuously possible by the ascendency of the Irish over ma.s.ses of other non-Anglo-Saxon peoples. The Celts were never a race of individual workers either as agriculturists or in handicraft.

That "law of intense personal labour" which is the foundation of the strength of the Anglo-Saxon communities never commanded their full obedience, as the history of Ireland and the condition of the country to-day abundantly testify. It is not, then, the fault of the individual Irishman that when he migrates to America, instead of going out to the frontier to "grow up" with the territory or taking himself to agricultural work in the great districts of the West which are always calling for workers, he prefers to remain in the cities to engage when possible in the public service, or, failing that, to enter the domestic service of a private employer.

It should not be necessary to say (except that Irish-American susceptibilities are sometimes extraordinarily sensitive) that I share to the full that admiration which all people feel for the best traits in the Irish character; but, in spite of individual exceptions, I urge that it is not in the nature of the race to become good and helpful citizens according to Anglo-Saxon ideals, and that, as far as those qualities are concerned which have made the greatness of the United States, the contribution from the Irish element has been inconsiderable. The deftness of the Irishman in political organisation and his lack of desire for individual independence, as a result of which he turns either to the organising of a governing machine or to some form of personal service (in either case merging his own individuality) is as much foreign to the American spirit as is the docility of the less intelligent cla.s.s of Germans under their political leaders--a docility which, until very recently has caused the German voters in America to be used in ma.s.ses almost without protest.

It is the Anglo-Saxon, or English, spirit which has played the dominant part in moulding the government of the United States, which has made the nation what it is, which to-day controls its social usages. The Irish invasion of the political field may fairly be said to be in its essence an alien invasion; and, while it may be to the discredit of the American people that they have allowed themselves in the past to be so engrossed in other matters that they have permitted that invasion to attain the success which it has attained, I do not fear that in the long run the masterful Anglo-Saxon spirit will suffer itself to be permanently over-ridden (any more than it has allowed itself to be kept in permanent subjection in England), even in the large cities where the Anglo-Saxon voter is in a small minority. Ultimately it will throw off the incubus.

In the meanwhile it is unjust that Englishmen or other Europeans should accept as evidence of native American frailty instances of munic.i.p.al abuses and of corrupt methods in a city like New York, where it has not been by native Americans that those abuses and those methods were originated or that their perpetuation is made possible. On the contrary the American minority fights strenuously against them, and I am not sure that, being such a minority as it is, it has not made as good a fight as is practicable under most difficult conditions. The American people as a whole should not be judged by the conditions to which a portion of it submits unwillingly in certain narrow areas.

It may be well to explain here (for it is a subject on which the Englishman who has lived in America is often consulted) that the Republican party may roughly be said to be the equivalent of the Conservative party in England, while the Democrats are the Liberals. It happens that a precisely reverse notion has (or had until very recent years) some vogue in England, the misconception being an inheritance from the times of the American Civil War.

British sympathy was not nearly so exclusively with the South at the time of the war as is generally supposed in the United States; none the less, the ruling and aristocratic cla.s.ses in England did largely wish to see the success of the Southern armies. The Southerner, it was understood, was a gentleman, a man of mettle and spirit, and in many cases the direct descendant of an old English Cavalier family; while the Northerners were for the most part but humdrum and commercially minded people who inherited the necessarily somewhat bigoted, if excellent, characteristics of their Dutch, Puritan, or Quaker ancestors. The view had at least sufficient historical basis to serve as an excuse if not as a justification. So it came about that those cla.s.ses which came to form the backbone of the Conservative party were largely sympathisers with the South; and, after the war, that sympathy naturally descended to the Democratic party rather than to the Northern Republicans. Except, however, in one particular the fundamental sentiments which make a man a Republican or a Democrat to-day have nothing to do with the issues of war times.

I do not know that any one has successfully defined the fundamental difference either between a Conservative and a Liberal, or between a Republican and a Democrat, nor have I any desire to attempt it; and where both parties in each country are in a constant state of flux and give-and-take, such a definition would perhaps be impossible. It may be that Ruskin came as near to it as is practicable when he spoke of himself as "a Tory of the old school,--the school of Homer and Sir Walter Scott."

Many people in either country accept their political opinions ready made from their fathers, their early teachers, or their chance friends, and remain all their lives believing themselves to belong to--and voting for--a party with which they have essentially nothing in sympathy. If one were to say that a Conservative was a supporter of the Throne and the Established Church, a Jingo in foreign politics, an Imperialist in colonial matters, an advocate of a strong navy and a disbeliever in free trade, tens of thousands of Conservatives might object to having a.s.signed to them one or all of these sentiments, and tens of thousands of Liberals might insist on laying claim to any of them. Precisely so is it in America. None the less the Republican party in the ma.s.s is the party which believes in a strong Federal government, as opposed to the independence of the several States; it is a party which believes in the principle of a protective tariff; it conducted the Cuban War and is a party of Imperial expansion; it is the party which has in general the confidence of the business interests of the country and fought for and secured the maintenance of the gold standard of currency. It is obvious that, however blurred the party lines may be in individual cases, the man who in England is by instinct and conviction a Conservative, must in America by the same impulse be a Republican.

In both countries there is, moreover, a large element which furnishes the chief support to the miscellaneous third parties which succeed each other in public attention and whenever the lines are sharply drawn between the two great parties, the bulk of these can be trusted to go to the Liberal side in England and to the Democratic side in America. Nor is it by accident that the Irish in America are mostly Democrats.

I am acutely aware of the inadequacy of such an a.n.a.lysis as the foregoing and that many readers will have cause to be dissatisfied with what I say; but I have known many Englishmen of Conservative leanings who have come to the United States understanding that they would find themselves in sympathy with the Democrats and have been bewildered at being compelled to call themselves Republicans. Whatever the individual policy of one or the other party may be at a given moment, ultimately and fundamentally the English Conservative, especially the English Tory, is a Republican, and the Liberal, especially the Radical, is a Democrat. Both Homer and Sir Walter Scott to-day would (if they found themselves in America) be Republicans.

FOOTNOTES:

[227:1] For myself, I confess that my interest began somewhat prematurely. I had been in the country but a few months and had taken no steps towards naturalisation when I voted at an election in a small town in a Northwestern Territory where I had been living only for a week or two. My vote was quite illegal; but my friends (and every one in a small frontier town is one's friend) were all going to vote and told me to come along and vote too. The election, which was of the most friendly character, like the election of a club committee, proved to be closely contested, one man getting in (as City Attorney or Town Clerk or something) only by a single vote--my vote. Since then, the Territory has become a populous State, the frontier town has some hundred thousand inhabitants, and the gentleman whom I elected has been for some years a respected member of the United States Senate. I have never seen any cause to regret that illegal vote.

[229:1] The laws governing expenditures for electoral purposes, and the conduct of elections generally, are stricter in England than in the United States, and I think it is not to be questioned that there is much less bribery of voters. Largely owing to the exertions of Mr. Roosevelt, however, laws are now being enacted which will make it more difficult for campaign managers to raise the large funds which have heretofore been obtainable for election purposes.

[232:1] In as much as a demand that the control of the police force should be vested in the County Council has appeared in the programme of one political party in London, it may be well to call the attention of Englishmen to the fact that it is precisely the a.s.sociation of politics with the police which gives to American munic.i.p.al rings their chief power for evil.

[247:1] See Bryce, _The American Commonwealth_, vol. i., p. 188.

[253:1] Inasmuch as I have twice within a small s.p.a.ce referred to evils which incidentally grow out of the protective system, lest it be thought that I am influenced by any partisan feeling, I had better state that my personal sympathies are strongly Republican and Protectionist.