Unpopular government in the United States

by Albert Martin Kales

The conditions under which extra-legal government exercises its power and the manner of that exercise furnish it with certain considerable advantages in its very natural effort to maintain itself in the face of popular disapproval.

The extra-legal government has the advantage of being hidden from the electorate. The mass of voters can tell who only a few conspicuous officeholders in the legal government at any one time are. Of the existence of a thoroughly organized extra-legal government they have no real knowledge whatever. If they have some idea of machines and bosses it is vague and imperfect. They see only a little at a time and have no idea who it is that casts their ballots for them. The voter who masters such secrets is rare indeed. Even the very intelligent man who is a voter cannot tell anything in his own district about the extra-legal government. He only knows that there are bosses whom he never seems to have a chance to vote against. This secrecy on the part of the extra-legal government is an invaluable asset in enabling it to retain power. So long as extra-legal government remains hidden, there is little chance of the voter causing it any serious damage.

The extra-legal government has a great advantage also in the fact that while it is the real government, the electorate is constantly voting for the legal but dummy government of officeholders. Of course, if the voter knew the connection between each officeholder and the extra-legal government he might vote intelligently, but that is information of the most secret kind. In many instances it is impossible for anyone to obtain it. Certainly it cannot be expected that a voter who is in ignorance of the qualifications and personality of most of the candidates for office will ever know what connection any of them have with a more or less secret extra-legal government.

The wise politocrat appreciates the advantage which his extra-legal government has in hiding behind the legal government and in the fact that his power is not subject directly to the approval or disapproval of the electorate. He knows, however, that from time to time some loyal adherent of the extra-legal government will demand and must be given the nomination for an office so prominent that his record will be fully investigated and his relation to the extra-legal government become widely known. Then the existence of extra-legal government will, in the contest for that office, become an issue, especially if there be an independent anti-politocratic candidate. But experience will make it clear that such an issue must be avoided. The extra-legal government must drop as a candidate for an office of any prominence a man known by the electorate to be loyal to the politocracy. In his place may be put a fresh dummy or a real independent, as the exigencies of the case require. The former step is, of course, from the point of view of the politocrat, to be preferred. When, however, the outlook is dark and forbidding for the extra-legal government in power, its leaders will assent with a show of enthusiasm to the nomination of a Hughes or a Wilson. They know that the naming of an independent and popular man who is likely to be successful at the polls will enable their extra-legal government to appoint to office the subordinate elective officeholders in the legal government. They know that a governor surrounded by independent subordinate officers and opposed by legislators selected by and loyal to the extra-legal government can do that government no permanent damage. They know that most men can, during their term of office, when placed in close contact with such opposition, be worn down and disheartened, so that they are glad to quit when the opportunity for promotion to a place where they need no longer war upon extra-legal government is tendered them. Thus, a popular governor may be induced to accept the position of vice-president or a place upon the Supreme Court of the United States.

The failure to observe this principle of action at the Republican National Convention of 1912 has started the most widespread and serious movement against extra-legal government that we have yet had. According to all the rules of astute politocratic management, the representatives of extra-legal government in that convention should have acquiesced in the selection of the most popular and prominent leader available, in spite of the fact of his independence. They should have driven into power with him as many of their adherents as possible, or let him go down to defeat. Whichever happened, extra-legal government, as conducted by means of the control of an extra-legal oligarchy over successful candidates for office, would not have been disrupted and a general movement inimical to the whole basis of extra-legal government would have been averted. The revelation of the existence of a power in a few hands which could legally override popular desires in the selection of a candidate for the president of the United States, and the exhibition of what, to a large number of people, must have seemed to be the actual exercise of such a power, and the defeat of the popular will clearly expressed could have only the result of launching one of the greatest independent political movements of half a century, with its principal attack upon extra-legal government as it has grown up in the United States. This is the same sort of mistake that the advocates of slavery made when they underestimated the unexpressed determination of the North to preserve the Union.

There are, of course, as many rival vote-directing organizations as there are political parties which have become established and have a name with any good-will attached. If two of these organizations are at all well matched and occupy practically the entire field, their leaders frequently make secret agreements according to which the governmental power is divided. One takes the city and the other the county, or one a great metropolitan district and the other the state. Such arrangements are preferred to a life-and-death struggle for supremacy. They result in a combination which it is exceedingly difficult for the politically ignorant majority of the electorate to overcome.

After all, however, do not the people rule? Does not the power of such extra-legal government continue by their choice? Can they not smash it if they choose? Theoretically, yes; practically, no! The extreme decentralization of the legal government—the success of the constitution and laws in preventing the concentration of power at any one point in any one office in a legal government—is the very foundation upon which the existence of the extra-legal government rests. It is also the chief reason for its continuance in power. The paramount power of the electorate as a whole is broken into infinitesimal fragments by the constitution and laws providing for a multitude of independent offices to be filled by election. To turn out an extra-legal government which has filled practically all of the offices in the legal government the electorate must be vigilant, active, and successful, not in filling one office or a few offices at a single election, but in the filling of a hundred offices voted for at all the elections occurring during a period of from four to eight years. The extra-legal government stands as a solid, well-organized, single-headed army against a large but disorganized mass. The latter may triumph at points or on occasions, but it will exhaust its strength in comparatively small and unimportant victories. Coming to the voting booth constantly handicapped by the densest political ignorance, without organization and without leaders, it falls again and again before the trained and permanent feudal army of vote-directors. There will be no serious danger to our extra-legal government from the electorate as a whole while the officers of the legal government are shorn of power or the opportunity by combination to secure power and compelled to face constantly an electorate ignorant of their personalities and their qualifications for office. It is one of the maxims of modern warfare that the important thing is to destroy or disrupt the opposing army—not merely to occupy a particular place or a particular territory. In the same way, in a war upon unpopular government, it is important to destroy or disrupt it, not merely to fill a few offices, or even many offices, with good men who are opposed to an extra-legal government which still continues in existence, ready again to seize the power of government when occasion offers. So long as the real government is in an extra-legal oligarchy at the head of a feudal organization of vote-directors which remains unimpaired, while the popular army occupies for the time being a few offices denuded of power, the campaign has accomplished next to nothing. In a few more elections the extra-legal government will again have secured as complete control as before.

Even when monarchy was absolute and a popular uprising overthrew it by means of a successful revolution, the ultimate result was merely to substitute a new absolute monarchy for the old one. So with us today, when one extra-legal government by politocrats is overthrown by the extraordinary and prolonged efforts of the electorate, nothing happens ultimately but the substitution of a new extra-legal government for the old. The fact is that so long as we know of no other form of government except an absolute monarchy, or insist upon a plan of government which necessarily results in a decentralized legal government being controlled by a centralized extra-legal government of politocrats, we shall never have any other form of government except a monarchy or an extra-legal politocracy. The tendency of the mass of the people to acquiesce in any governmental arrangement that they seem not to be able to escape from is a great asset to the maintenance of power by the extra-legal government. If it takes a supreme effort for a number of years successively to oust a present extra-legal government, and when the result of so doing is merely to substitute another extra-legal government of the same sort, what is the use of the extraordinary effort made? Why not advise the voter to concentrate his efforts from time to time in getting good men in the more important offices and letting the rest go? This attitude of mind becomes more and more common, especially among intelligent men who see the actual situation. It is substantially a surrender of all the offices to the control of the extra-legal government.

Such are the circumstances which a priori make the continuance of our extra-legal government, in the face of popular disapproval, probable. The fact that it has and does now so continue is becoming every day more apparent. Suppose, for instance, at any time in the last ten years the direct issue could have been presented to the electorate whether they preferred government by an extra-legal oligarchy of politocrats, subject only indirectly and very slightly at any single election to the electorate, or a legal government, subject directly to the will of the electorate. Can there be any doubt that the great majority would vote the extra-legal government out of power and abolish politocracy as they would abolish absolute monarchy or a self-perpetuating oligarchy? If any demonstration of the temper of the electorate on such an issue be needed, we have it in the steady popularity of all measures which have been put forward aimed at the so-called political bosses and government by them. Twenty-five years ago it was apparent to the electorate that the ward boss in some districts of our larger cities maintained himself in part at least upon corrupt voting. Hence the Australian ballot. Then it was observed that political machines supported their workers by salaries from the public pay-rolls. Hence the civil service acts. Then the extra-legal government’s control over nominations seemed to be the true source of its power. Hence the direct primary. It was also observed that the extra-legal government had a grip on the state and municipal legislatures and the state and local executive offices and the judges. Hence the initiative, the referendum, and the recall. It was observed that the origin of the extra-legal government and the great source of its power came from the complexity of our municipal governments, their cumbersome administrative machinery, and the number of offices submitted to the electorate. Hence the movement for the consolidation of municipal governments and their control by a commission. It has been observed that the governor often expressed in a satisfactory manner the desires of a majority of the electorate, but that he had no power to initiate legislation. Hence the two recent proposals that the governor’s bills be given the right of way upon the legislative calendar so that they could be brought to a vote and not quietly strangled by the crowding of the legislative docket and the action of committees; and that the governor be allowed to submit for approval by the electorate generally any bill presented to the legislature and not passed by it.[5] The judges, especially those of the Supreme Court, were observed to be declaring laws, in favor of which there was great popular sentiment, unconstitutional. The courts were then at once placed by the electorate in the same camp with the extra-legal government—quite unjustly perhaps—and the demand arose for the recall of judges, or the recall of judicial decisions on constitutional questions, or in any event the greatest possible restriction upon the court’s power to declare acts of the legislature unconstitutional, or the elimination of that power altogether. Finally, we have had most recently a new national party, which has been dedicated in general to the war on extra-legal government and to a program of governmental reform believed to be inimical to its existence. Every one of these movements upon analysis shows the electorate conscious of the deprivation of its power to express its will and to enforce responsibility to it from the officers of the legal government.

We are obviously in the midst of a great effort to meet an overpowering extra-legal governmental force which has been depriving the electorate of its power and legitimate influence in the functioning of the legal government. Such continued, increasingly aggressive, and always popular efforts to rid ourselves of extra-legal government by politocrats points very clearly to the conclusion that our state and municipal governments have in a greater or less degree fallen into the hands of that sort of government, and that it has been able for a generation, and is even now able, to maintain itself in the face of popular disapproval. A practical, workable form of unpopular government has, in spite of the precautions taken to prevent it, been established in the United States.