“A large number of congressmen were treated to a very profitable investment in connection with the building of the Union Pacific Railway. If this was not technical bribery, it was accounted its moral equivalent.” (Cyclopedia American Government, Bribery.)
And in the same article it is stated that “State Legislatures are less subject to bribery than are City Councils, but here also the cases of proven or confessed bribery are numerous.”
It is difficult to imagine what can be said by the defenders of manhood suffrage in reply to these charges and proofs. The witnesses are mostly Americans, friends of democracy, men of trained minds and high standing, speaking from observation and common report. Look again at the array of names: James Bryce; Theodore Roosevelt; John Stuart Mill; Professor Garner; M. Faguet; E. L. Godkin; Professor Commons; Professor Hyslop; Ostrogorski; Lecky; Professor Reinsch; Albert Shaw; J. Bleecker Miller; M. de Tocqueville; Reemelin; Brooks Adams; New York Evening Post; Appleton’s Cyclopedia; San Francisco Bulletin; American Political Science Review; no one can impeach such testimony. It covers the whole period under survey. These witnesses charge that the present system of election of legislators by manhood suffrage in the two most enlightened countries where practised, namely, France and the United States, has produced inferior legislators; that the tendency to widen the suffrage has everywhere brought about like results; that the quality of the membership of the United States Congress has strikingly deteriorated under the manhood suffrage régime, while the state legislatures composed of still inferior men have actually become infested by blackmailers and the like; that the legislature of New York is like a school of vice, while that of California is vile, an assemblage of bandits; that the others are similarly corrupt; their members being the tools of political machines, and that highly cultivated men therefore refuse to accept seats in these bodies. A great part of what they thus assert is within the knowledge or reach of knowledge of most of us. Is the American reader of these lines willing to continue to tolerate longer this atrocious system? Whether he believes in a property qualification for voters or not, the writer calls upon him to resolve that this present foul system be forever destroyed, and be replaced by something which an American can think of without rage and shame.
CHAPTER XIII
MANHOOD SUFFRAGE AS APPLIED TO THE GOVERNMENT OF AMERICAN CITIES HAS NOT ONLY BEEN A FAILURE BUT A DISASTER AND A SCANDAL
The worst ravages of pestilence do not appear in thinly settled countries, but in the dense populations of cities. In like manner the worst records of our manhood suffrage misgovernment are to be found in American cities rather than in country districts. In the United States all elective municipal officers are chosen by manhood suffrage. In Europe this is not the case. In England, France and Germany it has not been considered safe to trust the populace with the power to squander away the city taxes; the municipal purse is by one device or another kept within the control of the local property owners and business men. The result is that the city governments in all these three countries are far superior to ours. A prominent American writer says:
“There can be no reason or justice in permitting people who do not pay taxes to vote away the property of those who do. In the European cities, however wide the suffrage may be in national matters, probably not one-half the men vote for city offices. In Great Britain, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy such an absurdity as universal suffrage for city officers is unknown (except in the very rare cases where a non-taxpayer’s educational qualifications prevent his voting being absurd); and it is in these countries that cities are best and most fully developed, and do most for the health and happiness of the very people who are not permitted to vote.” (Holt, Civic Relations, 1907.)
Limit of space forbids going into the details of the municipal governments of the foreign countries just referred to; for that the reader is recommended to Munro’s Government of European Cities and Albert Shaw’s two works, Municipal Government in Great Britain and Municipal Government in Continental Europe. The important thing in city politics is to get the right men in office, and the inferiority of American public officials as a class as compared with European office holders is well known. In the New York Times of October 19, 1919, this inferiority is stated as a cause for a certain contempt of foreigners for American institutions for which you can scarcely blame them. We quote:
“The very poor types of public officials in our large cities, particularly in New York, make a decided impression on our foreign element. In their native countries public officials are held in great respect, nearly all of them being men of standing in their communities and generally men of education and culture. Socialist agitators take great delight in holding up to ridicule the grade of men appointed and elected to public office in this country. Most of these agitators being foreign born realize that the high ideals of the foreign born have been shattered after they have learned that ignorant and uncouth men can reach high public position.”
The complete failure of municipal government in the United States has caused great disappointment not only to our city taxpayers, but to the friends of democracy throughout the world. Those who can not or will not see the fatal defects in manhood suffrage are quite at a loss to explain the situation. One of these is Lord Bryce, who says: