Popular misgovernment in the United States

by Alfred Byron Cruikshank

“Their servants are indeed paid liberally in money and preferment, but they are reduced to a position of dependence in which the soul is burnt to ashes. The cynicism of the political boss and his satellites and the temptations which they hold out, are the greatest corruptors of youth in our age.... It is not surprising that politics does not in general offer a satisfying career. Able men of high character are disgusted with the usual demands made upon politicians. While youth is corrupted, manhood is tyrannized; and wherever the commercial system has been most successful, property, honor, and even life have been rendered unsafe.” (American Legislatures and Legislative Methods, pp. 239, 240.)

Next, John Stuart Mill, a champion of democracy:

“It is an admitted fact that in the American democracy, which is constructed on this faulty model, the highly-cultivated members of the community, except such of them as are willing to sacrifice their own opinions and modes of judgment, and become the servile mouthpieces of their inferiors in knowledge, do not even offer themselves for Congress or the State Legislatures, so certain is it that they would have no chance of being returned.” (Representative Government, p. 160.)

J. Bleecker Miller of New York writes:

“Our rights as individuals are not properly protected by our so-called representatives because they as a rule are not up to the general moral and intellectual standard of the average citizen.” (Trade Organizations in Politics, p. 38.)

Let us give a moment’s special attention to our state legislatures. There manhood suffrage has a chance to do its best. Both houses are elected usually by manhood or universal suffrage. What do we find? It is notorious that the reputation of the membership in most of them is so bad that reputable and able men absolutely refuse to serve. It is also notorious that every meeting of a state legislature is anticipated with alarm and anxiety by the industrial and business classes. Their well founded fear is of some piece of narrow or blundering legislation in the interest of some class, or which will be inimical to some industry or business, either in the way of restriction, taxation or other unfairness. The chronic degradation of these bodies is evidenced by the ever increasing limitations upon them in the state constitutions. It is a matter of public belief that three-quarters of our state legislation is useless, and that a considerable proportion of it is injurious; that many of the members spend a large part of their time planning for the promotion of their personal interests, or for procuring places for themselves or their supporters. And yet in this case the facts probably surpass the rumors. The public hardly realizes the infamous character of much of our state legislation. It is a frequent practice of legislators to introduce bills injuriously affecting corporations for the mere purpose of blackmail. The corporation is expected to pay tribute in the shape of cash bribes to the members of the committee having the bill in charge; and sometimes to other members or to the boss to prevent this legislation. On such payment being made the proposed measure is in one way or another defeated or allowed to lapse. Such extortions are variously called “hold-ups,” “strikes,” “sandbaggers,” “fetchers,” or “old friends,” “bell-ringers” and “regulators.” During a legislative investigation into insurance scandals in 1906 a president of one of the insurance companies declared that eighty-five per cent of all legislative bills were hold-up measures. A great part of the session is sometimes occupied in manoeuvring these scandalous bills. Enormous sums of money must be obtained either by legislators or bosses by such means; and all sorts of methods, including that of a friendly game of poker are used in these transactions in the transfer of the cash, some of which no doubt is ultimately used to influence elections, thus completing the vicious circle.

The following is from a recognized authority:

“The integrity of State Legislatures is at a low ebb. Their action is looked upon as largely controlled by the business interests and by political bosses.... Charges of direct bribery are frequent.... It has been well recognized that the Legislatures of certain States, notably New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and California, have been controlled through a long series of years by great railway corporations.... A number of the members of Legislatures are ‘owned,’ that is, controlled by some outside interest. Usually there is a political leader, or boss, to whom the member is indebted for his seat. In other cases a member is serving some particular interest to which he is bound by the fact that his campaign expenses have been paid or other substantial favors given him.” (Appleton’s Cyclopedia of American Government, 1914, Corruption, Legislative.)

In an article on “Phases of State Legislation,” Theodore Roosevelt stated that about one-third of the members of the New York Legislature wherein he sat were corrupt or open to corrupt influences. He had been a member of that legislature three times and in his American Ideals (1897) he gives some account of his experiences there. While careful not to attack manhood suffrage, he pictures these legislative bodies as very inferior and corrupt assemblies whose best men were commonplace and narrow-minded; whose worst men were venal, ignorant and semi-barbarous. The best he could say was that among its one hundred and fifty members, “there were many very good men”; but he added “that there is much viciousness and political dishonesty, much moral cowardice and a good deal of actual bribe taking in Albany, no one who has had any practical experience in legislation can doubt.” After a careful examination, he and some fellow members learned “that about one-third of the members were open to corrupt influences in some form or other.” (Pp. 64-68.) He mentions four other states which are equally as badly off in the character of their legislators, if not worse. Mr. Godkin writing on the subject says:

“If I said, for instance, that the legislature at Albany was a school of vice, a fountain of political debauchery, and that few of the younger men came back from it without having learned to mock at political purity or public spirit, I should seem to be using unduly strong language, and yet I could fill nearly a volume with illustrations in support of my charges. The temptation to use their great power for the extortion of money from rich men and rich corporations, to which the legislatures in the richer and more prosperous Northern States are exposed, is great; and the legislatures are mainly composed of very poor men, with no reputation to maintain, or political future to look after. The result is that the country is filled with stories of scandals after every adjournment, and the press teems with abuse, which legislators have learned to treat with silent contempt or ridicule, so that there is no longer any restraint upon them.” (Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy, p. 140.)