Popular misgovernment in the United States

by Alfred Byron Cruikshank

The professional reformers dare not attack universal suffrage; they are nearly all office-seekers, open or conceded. The writers on American politics and government are generally careful to ignore the evils of the system, so they cannot possibly urge its removal. In fact, the reader needs to be warned against most of them as blind guides; the more apparently respectable are the more timid and time serving; unable to entirely overlook the grievous condition of affairs, they carefully avoid criticism offensive to popular vanity and to the powers that be; they flatter us by pretending to ascribe the actual and notorious failure of our democracy to the careless generosity of our national character. They prattle of American good nature, national optimism, easy-going tolerance; of our engrossment in business, and of American “fatalism,” all of which nonsense is supposed to account in a manner rather to our credit for our submission to plunder and misrule. There are other explanations equally amusing. We are told with an air of profundity that these rascalities have been permitted because of peculiar circumstances; from 1860 to 1870 it was because of slavery agitation and the Civil War; that people were too busy agitating and fighting to watch the thieves. In the very next breath we are told that in the Civil War the “moral forces” were in possession of the nation. For the next decade the excuse is that we were immersed in great speculations and so on. But these explanations really explain nothing; they fail to explain why our official guardians and rulers systematically rob us whenever we are too busy to watch them, nor why they are not replaced by people who can be trusted. These expounders proclaim that the people need only to “arise in their might” and the corruption of three generations will become incorruption. When at any election one political ring goes out and another comes in they utter childish blasts of triumph. One wonders, inexperienced as some of these so called publicists are, whether they really can themselves believe such rubbish. After the explosion of some superlative political scandal they can often be heard telling the public that all will come right by and by; which means that we have only to continue to sit patiently and let ourselves be fleeced until the kind fairies bring good times. We are supposed to be very easily soothed and perhaps we are. Bryce, for instance, who as a political radical has been trained to give ear to the bellowing of the vox populi, speaking of our rascal legislators, tells us reassuringly that “if before a mischievous bill passes, its opponents can get the attention of the people fixed upon it, its chances are slight.” (Vol. II, p. 369.) As though one should say to a merchant, “Don’t worry about your clerk robbing you, any time you actually catch him stealing he’ll stop; he won’t persist in that particular theft anyhow; he’ll just be compelled to drop that and wait for a chance at something else.” From all which it appears as a result of all these discussions that no one pretends to see any definite prospect of substantial improvement or alleviation. In all the ten thousand pages on American government written by a score of authors, domestic and foreign, not one is able to say that we have an honest, decent or efficient governmental system, and not one offers any definite scheme for practical relief. On all sides we are told that there is little to do but to believe and hope.

As far as this hope can be said to refer to anything specific or to be more than mere sighing wishfulness which profiteth nothing, it is founded on belief in the educational work of the schools and the vague notion that thereby all the people will some time become so good and so well informed that manhood suffrage will be pure, safe and efficient. This hope is all moonshine. The mentally deficient and the ignorant will always be with us. There will always be upper, middle and lower classes as long as private property endures and free play is given to human activities; that is to say as long as our American civilization prevails. In the march of life some will always be in the front and some hopelessly in the rear. Faster than the increase of the information of the common man and the development of his mentality will proceed the growth of the great body of human knowledge; and the greater therefore will be the comparative ignorance of the ordinary citizen. The wealth, education, refinement, mental power, efficiency and achievement of the gifted will always far exceed those of the common people; and the distance between the efficient and the inefficient, the dullards and the intellectuals will probably become even greater and greater as time goes on. Though ordinary information will become more widespread, the science of government as well as other sciences will continue year by year in the future as in the past to become more complicated; and more and more as the years pass it will be found essential that the hands which operate the machinery of state shall be skilled to the very utmost. Meantime envy, prejudice, cupidity, neglect, intolerance and imprudence will continue to be human qualities, pushing men downward physically and morally; disease and misfortune will continue to do their work in the world, and a century from now it will be more dangerous even than today to trust men of the least developed or more unfortunate classes to select competent and trustworthy managers of the business of government. The future as far as can now be seen will not of itself give us relief from our present misgovernment; the action of our own hands and brains must be invoked for that purpose. Of that action there should be neither delay nor postponement. Our plight needs a remedy and needs it now.

CHAPTER XXXII

CONCLUSION

Here, in the last chapter, seems to be an appropriate place to anticipate and reply to a few prospective objections.

Objection that the project is undemocratic. This assumes that universal suffrage is a democratic institution; but in practise it operates to the contrary as has already been shown. The prospect practically offered by the property qualification project, is the democratic one of the door of political opportunity opened to that honest ability which is now by the machines and rings excluded from a public career. So much for the practical test. Looking at the project in the abstract, it is satisfying to the democratic mind, whether viewed in the light of high principle, of idealism, of nature’s law, or of democratic policy. It recognizes and rewards merit, it puts a premium on industry and capacity, and thus satisfies a principle. Its ideal is noble; it is that of the creation of a high grade of citizenship, the establishment of a democracy of virtue and talent. It conforms to nature’s law by preferring the fittest; by creating order in the ranks of citizenship; by putting government into the hands of those whom nature herself has selected as competent. It accords with democratic policy because it will give democracy more strength and more wisdom; because it is progressive, and calculated to encourage progress; because it glorifies citizenship by making it a token of distinction; because it at once makes its active citizenship select by excluding the unworthy, and at the same time, open and free to all, by inviting all to qualify to exercise it. It will create a true majority rule; for the new electorate will undoubtedly constitute a great majority in numbers of the men of the country; and will represent practically all its civilization, education, talent, energy and ability. It will give the humble his due which is opportunity to rise; he is entitled to no more. To the poor man of capacity the door to the voting booth will be as wide open as the free high school door is to his son; the entrance in either case is for those who can qualify and the terms are the same for all. To admit the unqualified would not benefit them, while it would harm those who are properly inside. Only the shiftless and worthless poor are permanently excluded. The industrious thrifty poor man is only postponed; and he will know that when he does enter by virtue of achievement, he will possess something worth while, something of value; he will be an active citizen, and his suffrage will not be offset and nullified by the purchased vote of a worthless loafer.

Objection that the proposal is oppressive. It would be oppressive if it were arbitrary, or unreasonable, or personal; but it is none of these. It is a greater hardship to be discharged from a job than to be prevented from voting at a public election; and if a man can properly be discharged for incompetency, he can certainly be deprived of his vote for incapacity, under a rule which applies to all under similar circumstances.

The objection that the project will be barren of results is sure to be made. But good results will surely issue from it unless the whole conception of this volume is a mistake. It was within the purpose of some of the master-minds of the republic’s early days to direct the nation in the paths of true and scientific Federal achievement. The far-reaching plans of Washington and John Quincy Adams for the development of mutually interacting national systems of industrial, transportational and educational development were finally defeated by the ignorant and tiger-like rapacity of the Jacksonian manhood suffrage bands. (Degradation of the Democratic Dogma; Brooks Adams, p. 13-62.) But those noble though aborted schemes at least serve to indicate the great possibilities belonging to pure and scientific government. In Federal affairs we may confidently expect a return to the pure and noble traditions of the old Federal government of the second Adams and his predecessors, when the democratic principle was infused with the aristocratic passion for excellence; and our representatives will then be qualified to consider and deal with national questions with ability and intelligence, and a patriotism such as has not been in political operation in this country for ninety years. Some of the direct benefits of the reform may be expected to appear in the most striking and satisfactory possible manner, in the complete reconstruction of our state legislatures, and our municipal governments. The change will seem almost magical. The creation of the new and purified electorate will at one stroke smash the machines, and dislodge the political oligarchies; the standard of public conscience will be immediately elevated, and bribery at elections will almost disappear. We will then be justified in expecting to elect legislators who can be trusted to legislate, and worthy and competent municipal officials. We will be relieved from the burden of maintaining watch dog societies and they will disappear together with the daily political scandals which brought them into being. In a word, we will be able to do for the body politic that which is done in every decent business corporation in the land; find and employ men, honest and competent, for the work assigned to them. The prospect is alluring; one is tempted to dwell on the fine possibilities were each of our forty-eight state legislatures composed of the first men in each state in probity, experience and political intelligence. There has not in our day been much really good government in the world. One would like to see our first-rate American men, of the type and class who have developed our industrial and transportation systems, get a fair opportunity to show the world what can be done, not only in progressive and enlightened domestic legislation, but also in pure and efficient administration of public affairs. Dignified and purified elections; advanced and just legislation; improved and honest administration; a justified and scientific democracy; such if not fully within the promise of the proposed reform are within the possibilities for which by appeal to the new electorate we will be encouraged to work with a fair hope of success.

Objection that the new system will not accomplish this or that desirable thing. Of course, no one will claim that it will bring about everything humanly possible in the way of political improvement. No one can doubt that even after a purification of the electorate there will remain many evils in politics and much still to be done to improve our governmental system. There will remain, for instance, the problem of furnishing the electorate with the facts concerning public measures, or the means of getting them; a problem heretofore generally ignored. Walter Lippman in a very able article in a recent number of the Atlantic Monthly has pointed out the great importance of providing the public with real political information, to take the place of the mess of misinformation now daily served up to us by the daily press. There is an entirely new field to be covered lying in that direction. Then there is the question of how, in great cities especially, the voter is to be made acquainted with the personality and qualifications of the respective candidates. But why attempt to specify, when the fact is that the whole region of scientific domestic legislation remains almost unexplored and uncultivated. Under our machine system of politics, the science of legislation has been absolutely neglected for generations, and the whole administrative and judicial system in every state in the Union needs revision. But the primary, the essential reform is that of the electorate. We must begin there, because by so doing we cleanse and put in good working order the machinery which will itself undertake what else remains to be done. We cannot expect wise measures to be furthered or even understood by an ignorant and corrupt electorate; nor can we expect a sordid political oligarchy to enforce them, even though enacted. The electorate is the Alpha and Omega; the key to everything in politics and government.

For example, the proposed elevation of the franchise would have the effect of making practicable municipal home rule. We are all familiar with the evils of state control of our large cities; and yet the mischiefs of civic home rule under manhood suffrage are even greater. At present, the voters of the great cities are necessarily deprived of all share in many departments of municipal management; which are put in the hands of state boards and commissions because the voters cannot be trusted. The establishment of a competent and conservative electorate in cities, would at once prepare the way for the granting to cities of local self-government; thus advancing the cause of practical democracy, and effecting a result for which civic reformers have labored ineffectually for years.