Popular misgovernment in the United States

by Alfred Byron Cruikshank

But there is a great deal more to be said in favor of a property qualification for voters than that it will be a wall against Bolshevism. It will act on our political internal system as a tonic and a purifier. It sometimes occurs in politics and statesmanship that two mischiefs are so bound together that they can be destroyed at one blow. Such was the case in 1861-1865, when the causes of the perpetuation of the Federal Union and the emancipation of the black race became by the logic of events so involved as to be practically united, and when by the triumph of the northern armies the mischiefs of chattel slavery and disunion politics were made to perish together. And in like manner we now find not only that unqualified or manhood suffrage is the chief source of our weakness in dealing with Bolshevism, but that it has been in the past and still is the principal cause of our political corruption and governmental inefficiency. And therefore it has come about that the cause of private property and property rights is so bound up with the cause of administrative purity and efficiency in our government that by the one measure of the establishment of a property qualification for voters the perils of the menace of Bolshevism and the mischiefs of political corruption and inefficiency may be dispatched together.

It is in fact principally to the corruption and inefficiency of manhood suffrage government that we owe the popular dissatisfaction out of which the hopes of American Bolshevism are bred and nourished. The failure of democratic institutions in this country must be admitted and it is almost entirely due to the operation of manhood suffrage. We have aimed at theoretical perfection, the natural conditions have been most favorable; we have loudly called the world to witness the experiment, and the world has condemned it as a political failure. This statement will hardly be challenged, but it is well supported by available proof, and need not rest merely on the assertion or opinion of the writer. And right here the reader may as well be informed that it is the author’s intention to support his material assertions with such evidence as the nature of the subject permits. Such readers as are tolerably familiar with American political history will recognize the truth of most of the statements of fact contained in these pages; but the reasonable doubts of the politically uninstructed will be removed as far as conveniently possible by reference to records and to the testimony of reliable witnesses. Here therefore we quote on this branch of the subject from an address of Henry Jones Ford, President of The American Political Science Association, delivered at the Annual Meeting at Cleveland, December 29, 1919.

“There was at one period an enthusiastic belief that in the Constitution of the United States reflection and choice had at last superseded accident and force, and that a model of free government was now provided by which all countries and peoples might benefit. The effect upon governmental arrangements was once very marked, but complete examination of the documents shows that this influence soon spent itself, and a decided change of disposition took place. If, for instance, one shall attentively consider the constitutional documents of all the Americas, one will observe, that although in their early forms the Constitution of the United States was the model, this is no longer the case. The Constitution of the French republic now excels it in influence. The United States has lost its lead, despite the fact that never has our country bulked larger in the world than now. The present situation is indeed a striking confirmation of Hamilton’s opinion that error in our republic becomes the general misfortune of mankind, for it is a fact well known to every student of politics that a belief that our system of government is a failure on the essential point of justice is now a potent influence on the side of social revolution throughout the world....

Students of political science will generally agree that the three greatest works of this class, all displaying wide knowledge and deep thought, are De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, first published in 1885; Bryce’s American Commonwealth, 1888; and Ostrogorski’s Democracy and the Organization of Political Parties, 1902. These works form a crescendo of censure upon American government, each re-examination of the subject confirming previous disapproval and adding to it.”

Needless to say that the writers referred to by Ford and others hereinafter referred to fully sustain his statements above quoted. Our government has not only been a failure on the essential point of justice as President Ford points out, but a still greater failure on the equally essential points of purity and efficiency. The democratic system in actual operation among us has been productive of corruption and mismanagement to such an extent as to cause and justify the almost universal verdict that popular misgovernment rather than popular government has been the outcome. Hence general dissatisfaction and unrest; hence the danger of revolutionary movements, with which we are openly threatened.

It is often said that governments reflect the character of the people. If that were so in this country, as our people are conceded to be one of the most intelligent in the world, we would have one of its best working governments; instead of which we have one of the most wasteful, corrupt and inefficient. Our inferiority in this respect has been universally recognized both in this country and abroad for the last fifty years or more; it is a common-place of conversation; and has caused numberless Americans to feel rage and indignation at home and to suffer shame and humiliation abroad. It has been the subject of innumerable books, pamphlets, sermons and lectures; it has inspired denunciation, satire and invective in pulpit, and on platform; the press has reeked with the disgusting details of the corruption, ignorance and incompetence of our office holders. Everywhere in the United States is to be found great popular dissatisfaction with the operations of our government, profound distrust of its methods and spirit, and conviction that there has been a failure to reach the standards and to realize the hopes of the Fathers of the Republic. This dissatisfaction and distrust, this conviction of failure is not confined to any class; it pervades all classes; it is widespread; it is to be heard freely expressed day by day and hour by hour alike in the business office and in the bar-room, in the private dwelling and on the street; by the mechanic, banker, tradesman, laborer and lawyer. In short it is a matter of common knowledge that for about eighty years past the United States and each of them has been in many important respects badly, corruptly and inefficiently governed. Read for instance this statement recently published by an able American student and writer, and say whether it does not indicate a state of things fruitful with danger to the Republic, in two principal ways; one, that of its decay by corruption, the other by furnishing material for scandal and propaganda to its enemies.

“The present situation has been described over and over again. Briefly, it is constant encroachments by the legislature upon the executive; legislation under irresponsible ‘bosses’ for personal ends, blackmailing of corporations by politicians, and of society by corporations to recoup the plunder of the politician, or to accumulate ill-gotten gain, both of them very good imitations of the Spanish policy in the colonies which is terminating in the ruin of an empire; favours shown to special forms of business and industry; unjust taxation; the irresponsible conduct of our legislatures whose deliberations are the signal for alarm and confusion in the commercial world; and mass-meetings every week to frighten politicians into submission, libel, bribery, and lying in campaign work, government by perjurers, pugilists and pimps, and political leadership by men who know no arts but those of Alcibiades and Catiline—all these and a hundred other facts like them create a profound and justifiable suspicion of institutions that confer the supreme power upon those who are equally unfit to govern themselves and others.” Democracy, Hyslop, p. 294.

Now, let us more carefully examine and consider the essential character of the political system which has produced these unsatisfactory results. Its basis is unlimited or unqualified suffrage, until recently appearing and manifested as “manhood suffrage,” but now, since the so-called “enfranchisement” of women more nearly fitting the name “universal suffrage.” In any case in theory at least it is government by numbers, in contradistinction to government by intelligence, birth, wealth, experience, talent or by any combination of these or other qualities or achievements. This doctrine of unlimited or unqualified suffrage is now and has long been recognized as an established principle of government in this country by most of us; indeed we may say by all Americans with the exception of the natives or inhabitants of the Southern or former slave States. By these latter pure manhood suffrage has been tried and condemned and has been replaced by white manhood suffrage by means of certain well known and successful political devices amounting practically to a strict race qualification; though the important and suggestive fact that thereby the basic principle of manhood suffrage was expressly repudiated by the entire South has been carefully blinked by Americans generally.

In a general way we may say then that manhood suffrage is everywhere in the United States the legally recognized method of choosing all our lawmakers and many of our administrative officials; that white manhood suffrage actually obtains in the Southern States; and that in the other States constituting about three fourths of the whole, every resident male citizen, native or naturalized, and in some of them residents not naturalized, may vote. In sixteen of the forty-eight States the suffrage has within recent years been extended to women. So that at present the basis of government in the United States is manhood or male suffrage in all the States with the addition in some of them of female suffrage; or in other words, ignoring the negro situation, we have manhood suffrage in thirty-two and universal suffrage in sixteen States. In all of these States elections are frequent, in most annual, in others biennial, in a few quadrennial.

The controlling political importance of these elections is evident when we consider that thereby are chosen all the members of both houses of the various State Legislatures, of both houses of Congress, the governors of the states and the President and Vice-President of the United States, that is to say the entire body of lawmakers of the country. Also in many of the States are thus selected the Judges of the Courts higher and lower, and numerous administrative state officials, such as State Attorneys, Auditors, State Engineers, Financial Officers, etc. Besides these there are elections of almost equal practical importance of minor or local officers, such as Sheriffs, County Attorneys and Supervisors, Mayors and Aldermen of Cities, and miscellaneous officials. Beyond all this, the electorate is required from time to time, and in some States at nearly every election, to pass upon constitutions, or amendments or provisions of constitutions, state and federal, referenda and propositions of various kinds involving sometimes vast expenditures. For none of these elections is any voting qualification practically required of the resident citizen, except that of color, and that only in the South.