Popular misgovernment in the United States

by Alfred Byron Cruikshank

THE SAFEGUARD OF A PROPERTY QUALIFICATION FOR VOTERS WAS DISCARDED BY A GENERATION OF AMERICANS WHO DID NOT REALIZE ITS VALUE OR THE DANGERS ATTENDANT UPON UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE

The circumstances of the adoption of the system of manhood suffrage by state after state a century ago are not such as to justify us of today in according much authority to their determination. The movement was one of weakness, ignorance and degeneracy, not part of an effort to further achieve the highest ideals of republican theories, but a reactionary yielding to cheap, selfish and opportunist politics. It was successful because the mass of the American people lacked both the experience and the foresight necessary to enable them to realize the probably fatal result of the proposed change.

We have already noted that following the establishment of the Federal Government in 1789, though the upper and educated classes, especially in the older American states, did not display much enthusiasm for French radical political ideas, and though Washington and the propertied class were openly hostile to them, they were acclaimed by the working classes, the poor farmers, the immigrants, and many of the romantic youths of the country; and were partly adopted by Jefferson and such others as like him were somewhat under French influence. We may add to the influences favoring manhood suffrage in the old and populous states that of the resident foreigners, which was considerable. It would be a mistake to suppose that at this early period there had been little immigration to this country. The fact is that the proportion of immigrants to the whole population was then probably greater than at any subsequent time; the foreign element at the time of the independence, including British and Irish, Germans, Dutch, Swedes and French, probably amounting to about one-third of the entire population. Another class of people who unquestioningly accepted the doctrine of manhood suffrage was that of the frontiersmen or pioneer western settlers. It is the fashion in these days to hail every political novelty as an “advance,” and accordingly the twaddlers, including writers of that ilk, tell us unctuously that the adoption of manhood suffrage was part of the “advance” of civilization. The truth is, however, that it was not the fruit of an improved civilization, but was first adopted when and where the population was coarse, rough and unlettered. In the new and sparsely settled states, New Hampshire, Vermont, Kentucky, Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio, the principle of manhood suffrage was accepted almost as a matter of course and without any serious discussion. In those states there was at that time an approximation to practical equality among the inhabitants both in property and intelligence, the standard of both being low; political problems were simple and primitive; and an equal share in government to all men seemed natural and reasonable. There was but little property except land which was plenty and cheap; farming was the principal occupation; and the farmer was confined to the home market there being no railroads to carry his produce to distant places. The great differences between rich and poor existing in older communities were not present; none of the conditions which render manhood suffrage so objectionable in large cities were found in these new states. When Georgia adopted a low qualification in 1789 her population was less than two to the square mile; when Vermont entered the Union she had less than ten to the square mile; Kentucky had two; Ohio one; Tennessee two. There must have seemed little reason in attempting to create distinctions in rude and primitive communities where none actually existed.

Another consideration operating to lower the suffrage was the competition among the new states to get settlers on any terms. Nearly all of those who had land in the newer states had more than they could use and were not only very anxious to sell some of it, but to get new neighbors on any terms, since each new arrival measurably increased the value of their holdings. One of the baits to induce immigration was the right to vote and hold office offered to all new comers. Even in our own day a number of western states permit aliens to vote as an inducement to settle in their limits, and we have had in the last few years the curious spectacle of unnaturalized and presumably hostile Germans voting at elections. The right to vote was highly valued in those early communities, where fortunes were not easily made, and where political preferment was much sought after as the most available road to distinction. To close that avenue to ambition was to discourage new settlers. It was therefore inevitable that such of the original thirteen as were sparsely settled states with populations composed partly of frontiersmen, and also all the new states as they came in one by one, should be willing to waive property qualifications for voters. And thus it was that in 1789 Georgia reduced her suffrage qualification to a small annual tax requirement; that in 1791 Vermont and in 1792 Kentucky came into the Union under manhood suffrage constitutions; that in 1792 New Hampshire adopted manhood suffrage; that in 1803 Ohio entered with a minimum tax qualification and that Indiana in 1816, Illinois in 1818 and Missouri in 1820 were admitted as manhood suffrage states, while some of the others, such as Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana, merely prescribed tax qualifications which were far from onerous.

In the older states the advance of the manhood suffrage movement was aided by the influences already referred to; by the French Revolutionary party, including many foreigners; the city laboring classes, the thriftless and discontented, and the restless horde of theorists, dreamers, penny-a-liners, political adventurers, demagogues, agitators, radicals of every stripe, and many of that numerous class who had more facility in talking than in thinking. There is even yet among people of small intelligence a widespread belief in the miraculous efficiency of voting; and that belief is no doubt accountable for some of the eagerness with which the suffrage was demanded by superficial men who thought to better their condition by politics, and who, though plainly lacking in efficiency, unable even to get together a few hundred dollars in property to qualify them as voters, nevertheless rated high their own capacity to decide problems of state. We may add to this as helping the movement the plausibility to shallow minds of the assertion that all men are equal; and the prestige given it by its being quite unnecessarily put by Jefferson into the Declaration of Independence. Another cause which has been said to have contributed, was the severe financial panic of 1819 which brought widespread distress and consequent discontent with things as they were. Why not try a change? is an argument which has more or less success at every election. Then too the American easy good nature and hospitality of character must have helped along; that softness which makes many dislike to refuse a boon which will not cost anything in cash or its equivalent. It must have seemed to many men easy and pleasant to vote to allow their neighbors to vote, especially when to a dull man the reasons to the contrary were not altogether obvious.

Nor is it altogether strange that even in New York and Massachusetts few except the best trained minds had any real understanding of the dangers of letting in the ignorant and the thriftless classes to a voice in government. The American people had no experience of a political machine or of demagogues in power, and to most of them the operation of government seemed comparatively simple and within easy comprehension. Even in the old states the population was mostly rural; there were no railroads or telegraphs, comparatively little machinery, and none operated by steam. The property of the country consisted of houses, lands, farms, cattle and sheep; living was very plain, and the expenses of government comparatively small. Life was not then the complicated affair that it is at present, specialization was rare, efficiency in any branch of business was not near so difficult to achieve as it has since become. Under the election system then in practice, and following the old colonial traditions then still extant, the candidates for office had usually been men of distinction whose reputations were well known in the community, and who were personally known at least by sight and speech to most of the voters. The people had had no real experience of government by election in large constituencies. There were few large cities, the largest in 1820 being New York, with a population of 125,000, while Philadelphia had but 65,000 and Boston 45,000 population. Probably it was comparatively safe in most urban communities to leave the street door unguarded at night, a practice scarcely recommendable in New York or Chicago in these times. Their governors had previously either been sent from England or chosen by their state legislatures, and their high state officials had been appointed by the crown, the governor, the proprietor or the legislature. Their only real experience with the suffrage had been in small local elections, parishes, boroughs and towns, where the prizes of office were small and everyone knew his neighbor. Most of the voters were substantial American farmers and tradesmen, who anticipated as the result of the granting of manhood suffrage nothing worse than that the roll of new voters would include their own sons, the village schoolmaster, together with a few poor artisans and farm hands who had no class prejudices, who could be depended upon to vote with their well-to-do neighbors, and whose numbers were not sufficient to seriously affect election results.

To the extent to which the manhood suffrage movement was conscious of its own tendencies, it was a revolt led by political adventurers against government by the intelligence of the country, and above all and beyond all the forces operating in furtherance of the movement for manhood suffrage in the older states was the new influence of the politicians and political office seekers, who by 1820 began, though in a comparatively small way, to appear as a real political power in the land. Though many of our ancestors early distrusted and later learned to hate and despise the politicians, the people have never organized to oppose them and in the beginning failed to realize the insidious growth of their sway. The politicians then as now clamored for an extended electorate, the more ignorant, simple, emotional and easily influenced the better. They welcomed the uninstructed male vote of that day for the same reason that they welcome the still more ignorant female vote of this day. The ears of the masses were open to them because they could talk and bellow the political cant and jargon in which the rabble delight. Then as now they wanted all the offices made elective; suffrage for everybody, even aliens, and especially the ignorant and shiftless; and they kept up their efforts in the old states until the bars were let down, and every man had a vote.

Most of the old populous states began the change by lowering the qualification, changing it from the actual ownership of property to the payment of a tax, usually a small one, sometimes merely nominal. Pennsylvania, a state tainted with French radical sympathies, had already reduced the qualification to the payment of a state or county tax; this standard was adopted by Delaware in 1792. In 1809 Maryland adopted manhood suffrage. In 1810 South Carolina and in 1819 Connecticut reduced the qualification to an almost nominal tax rate. In 1829 Virginia reduced the property requirement and finally abolished it in 1850. New Jersey held out till 1844.

The great battles, however, and those which finally decided the controversy in the United States were fought in Massachusetts and in New York in 1820 and 1821, though in both states the success of the manhood suffrage party was a foregone conclusion before the final test was made. The situation was much the same as it has since been in relation to woman suffrage. As long as woman suffrage partisans had no votes anywhere the politicians gave them but scant courtesy. Even after they gained one or two states they were not much considered. But as soon as they had four or five states to their credit the politicians began to flock to their standard; the weaker and more unscrupulous going over first. The reason is plain. Every politician of note has his eye on the presidency either for himself or for his leader and his party. Under our system where the presidential vote is by states a single state may turn the election, and a woman suffrage state as well as another. Mr. Wilson for instance and Mr. Roosevelt, though on opposite sides on everything else, were united in patriotism, in burning desire for office and in devotion to democracy. Of course they both became champions of woman suffrage just as soon as a few states had been captured by the women and also of course their party followers took their cue accordingly. So it undoubtedly was in 1820. By that time there were nine new states west of the Alleghany Mountains. When it was seen that in all these new states manhood suffrage was in vogue, no presidential possibility dared oppose manhood suffrage anywhere, nor dared his followers differ from him on this point. It was a rush to get on the band wagon. And why should the professional politicians oppose a measure so obviously in their interest as a degradation of the ballot? Naturally therefore, in the New York Constitutional Convention of 1821 we had Martin Van Buren, a Jackson politician, leading the battle for extension of the suffrage and carrying all before him.

One naturally turns for enlightenment on the merits of the question to the records giving the arguments used pro and con in the discussions on the suffrage extension propositions of that time, but they are more interesting than important, because the debaters lacked the light of modern experience. Our political bosses and machines had not yet arrived, and America had then no immense populations of millions accustomed to live on daily wages, lacking the slightest knowledge of the principles or practical operation of finance, banking, trade and commerce; ignorant of the very elements of political economy, and yet ready to vote on all these matters under the direction of demagogues, themselves in the employ of bosses and machines. There were then no such divisions of classes as now; no large criminal and pauper population; no masses of foreigners herded together in tenement house life and ignorant of our problems and conditions. Our ancestors of a century ago were not gifted with imagination or prevision sufficient to enable them to foresee the enormous future immigration from Europe; the factory and tenement house systems; the vote market; the absolute and corrupt oligarchy of politicians, the political ring, machine and boss. Had they been gifted with this foresight it is safe to say that instead of lowering the suffrage qualifications they would have put the bars up so high that the disgraceful record of American politics for the last eighty years would never have been made.