Reflections and Comments 1865-1895

by Edwin Lawrence Godkin

We have, of course, only indicated in the briefest way some of the things which may be regarded as symptomatic of strange mental and moral conditions in the circle in which the affair has occurred. The explanation of them in any way that would generally be considered satisfactory would be a difficult task. The influences which bring about a certain state of manners at any given time or place are always numerous and generally obscure, but we think something of this sort may be safely offered in consideration of the late "goings on" in Brooklyn.

In the first place, the newspapers and other cheap periodicals, and the lyceum lectures and small colleges, have diffused through the community a kind of smattering of all sorts of knowledge, a taste for reading and for "art"—that is, a desire to see and own pictures— which, taken together, pass with a large body of slenderly equipped persons as "culture," and give them an unprecedented self-confidence in dealing with all the problems of life, and raise them in their own minds to a plane on which they see nothing higher, greater, or better than themselves. Now, culture, in the only correct and safe sense of the term, is the result of a process of discipline, both mental and moral. It is not a thing that can be picked up, or that can be got by doing what one pleases. It cannot be acquired by desultory reading, for instance, or travelling in Europe. It comes of the protracted exercise of the faculties for given ends, under restraints of some kind, whether imposed by one's self or other people. In fact, it might not improperly be called the art of doing easily what you don't like to do. It is the breaking-in of the powers to the service of the will; and a man who has got it is not simply a person who knows a good deal, for he may know very little, but a man who has obtained an accurate estimate of his own capacity, and of that of his fellows and predecessors, who is aware of the nature and extent of his relations to the world about him, and who is at the same time capable of using his powers to the best advantage. In short, the man of culture is the man who has formed his ideals through labor and self-denial. To be real, therefore, culture ought to affect a man's whole character and not merely store his memory with facts. Let us add, too, that it may be got in various ways, through home influences as well as through schools or colleges; through living in a highly organized society, making imperious demands on one's time and faculties, as well as through the restraints of a severe course of study. A good deal of it was obtained from the old Calvinistic theology, against which, in the days of its predominance, the most bumptious youth hit his head at an early period of his career, and was reduced to thoughtfulness and self-examination, and forced to walk in ways that were not always to his liking.

If all this be true, the mischievous effects of the pseudo-culture of which we have spoken above may be readily estimated. A society of ignoramuses who know they are ignoramuses might lead a tolerably happy and useful existence, but a society of ignoramuses each of whom thinks he is a Solon would be an approach to Bedlam let loose, and something analogous to this may really be seen to-day in some parts of this country. A large body of persons has arisen, under the influence of the common schools, magazines, newspapers, and the rapid acquisition of wealth, who are not only engaged in enjoying themselves after their fashion, but who firmly believe that they have reached, in the matter of social, mental, and moral culture, all that is attainable or desirable by anybody, and who, therefore, tackle all the problems of the day—men's, women's, and children's rights and duties, marriage, education, suffrage, life, death, and immortality—with supreme indifference to what anybody else thinks or has ever thought, and have their own trumpery prophets, prophetesses, heroes and heroines, poets, orators, scholars and philosophers, whom they worship with a kind of barbaric fervor. The result is a kind of mental and moral chaos, in which many of the fundamental rules of living, which have been worked out painfully by thousands of years of bitter human experience, seem in imminent risk of disappearing totally.

Now, if we said that a specimen of this society had been unearthed in Brooklyn by the recent exposures, we should, doubtless to many people, seem to say a very hard thing, and yet this, with the allowances and reservations which have of course to be made for all attempts to describe anything so vague and fleeting as a social state, is what we do mean to say. That Mr. Beecher's preaching, falling on such a mass of disorder, should not have had a more purifying and organizing effect, is due, we think, to the absence from it of anything in the smallest degree disciplinary, either in the shape of systematic theology, with its tests and standards, or of a social code, with its pains and penalties. What he has most encouraged, if we may judge by some of the fruits, is vague aspiration and lachrymose sensibility. The ability to dare and do, the readiness to ask one's due which comes of readiness to render their due to others, the profound consciousness of the need of sound habits to brace and fortify morals, which are the only true foundation and support of a healthy civilization, are things which he either has not preached or which his preaching has only stifled.

"THE SHORT-HAIRS" AND "THE SWALLOW-TAILS"

There is a story afloat that Mr. John Morrissey made his appearance, one day during the past week, in Madison Square, in full evening dress, including white gloves and cravat, and bearing a French dictionary under his arm, and that, being questioned by his friends as to the object of this display, he replied that he was going to see Major Wickham and ask him for an office in the only costume in which such an application would have a chance of success. In other words, he was acting what over in Brooklyn would be called "an allegory," and which was intended to expose in a severe and telling way the Mayor's gross partiality, in the use of his patronage, for the well-dressed and well-educated members of society—a partiality which Mr. Morrissey and his party consider not only unfair but ridiculous. This demonstration, too, was one of the few indications which have as yet met the public eye of a very real division of the Democratic party in this city into two sets of politicians, known familiarly as "Short-Hairs" and "Swallow-Tails"—the former comprising the rank and file of the voters and the latter "the property-owners and substantial men," who are endeavoring to make Tammany an instrument of reform and to manage the city in the interest of the taxpayers. Mayor Wickham belongs, it is said, to the latter class, and has given, it seems, in the eyes of the former, some proofs of a desire to reserve responsible offices for persons of some pretensions to gentility, and exhibited some disfavor for the selections of the "workers" in the various wards.

But we do not undertake to describe with accuracy the origin or nature of the split; all we know is that the Short-Hairs are disgusted, and that their hostility to the Swallow-Tails is very bitter, and that when Mr. Morrissey proclaimed, in the manner we have described, that a man needed to wear evening dress and to know French in order to get a place, he gave feeble expression to the rage of the masses. They have, too, concocted an arrangement which embodies their idea of a well-administered government, and which consists in compelling the departments to spend in wages in each district at least $1.50 for each Democratic vote cast, and to apportion the appropriations with strict reference to this rule, the money, of course, to go to the nominees of Democratic politicians. The plan departs from that of the French national workshops in that it discriminates between laborers, but in other respects it has all the characteristics of well-developed Communism. The way to meet it, according to our venerable contemporary, the Evening Post, is to have the taxpayers point out to the voters who are to receive the money that they (the taxpayers) cannot well spare it, that they need it for their own use, and that this mode of administering corporate funds is condemned by all the leading writers on government. The Swallow-Tails know so well, however, with what howls of mingled mirth and indignation the Short-Hairs would receive such suggestions that they never make them, but content themselves with confining the distribution of the money to the members of their own division quietly and unostentatiously, as far as lies in their power, which, we candidly confess, we do not think is very far.

It would be doing the Short-Hairs injustice, however, if we allowed the reader to remain under the impression that the unwillingness to have the Swallow-Tails monopolize or even have a share of the office was peculiar to them, or that John Morrissey's protest would be unintelligible anywhere out of New York. On the contrary, when he started out with his French dictionary he was giving expression to a feeling which is to be found in greater or less intensity in every State in the Union. The great division of politicians into Short-Hairs and Swallow-Tails is not confined to this city. It is found in every city in the country in which there is much diversity of condition among the inhabitants. Nor did Morrissey mean simply to protest against training as a qualification for the work of administration, as the Tribune assumed in a sharp and incisive lecture which it read him the other day. We doubt if any pugilist in his secret heart despises training. He knows how much depends on it, and as he is not apt to possess much discriminating power, he is not likely to mark off any particular class of work as not needing it. What the Short-Hairs dislike in the Swallow-Tails is the feeling of personal superiority which they imagine them to entertain, and which they think finds a certain expression in careful dressing and in the possession of certain accomplishments. In fact, the Swallow-Tails whom the New York rough detests and would like to keep out of public life, belong to the class known in Massachusetts as the "White-cravat-and-daily-bath gentlemen," and which is there just as unpopular as here, and has even greater difficulty in getting office there than here.

The line of division in New York is, however, drawn much lower down. The Massachusetts Short-Hair is a man of intelligence, of some education, who wears a plain black négligé and rumpled shirt-front and soft hat, and disregards the condition of his nails, and takes a warm bath occasionally. The New Yorker, on the other hand, wears such clothes as he can get, and only bathes in the hot weather and off the public wharf. If he has good luck and makes money, either in the public service or otherwise, he displays it not in any richness in his toilet or in greater care of his person, but in the splendor of his jewels. One of his first purchases is a diamond-pin, which he sticks in his shirt-front, but he never sees any connection of an aesthetic kind between the linen and the pin, and will wear the latter in a very dirty shirt-front as cheerfully as in a clean one—in fact, more cheerfully, as he has a vague feeling that by showing it he atones for or excuses the condition of the linen. In fact, the Short-Hair view of dress would be found on examination to be, in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, something of this kind: that the constant care of the person which produces an impression of neatness and appropriateness, and makes a man look "genteel," is the expression of a certain state of mind; that a man would not take so much trouble to make himself look different from the ordinary run of people whom he meets, unless he thought himself in some way superior to them, or, in other words, thought himself a "gentleman" and them common fellows, and that he therefore fairly deserves the hatred of those of whom he thus openly parades his contempt.

A New York Short-Hair seldom goes farther than this in his speculations, though he doubtless has also a vague idea that a well-dressed man is not so likely to stand by his friends in politics as a more careless one. In New England, as might be expected, however, the popular dislike of that "culte de la personne," as some Frenchman has called it, which distinguishes "the white-cravat-and-daily-bath gentleman," has provided itself with a moral basis. There is there a strong presumption that the Swallow-Tail is a frivolous person, who bestows on his tailoring, and his linen, and his bathing, and his manners the time and attention which the Short-Hair or "plain blunt man" reserves for reflection on the graver concerns of life, and especially on the elevation of his fellow-men, and this presumption even a career of philanthropy and the composition of the "Principia" would not in many minds suffice to overthrow. We believe it is authentic that General Grant never got over the impression produced on him by seeing that Mr. Motley parted his hair in the middle, and it is said—and if not true is not unlikely,—that Mr. R. H. Dana's practice of wearing kid gloves told heavily against him in his memorable contest with Butler in the Essex district. We may all remember, too, the gigantic efforts made by Mr. Sumner and others in Congress to have our representatives abroad prohibited from wearing court-dress. What dress they wore was of course, per se, a matter of no consequence, provided it was not immodest. The fervor on the subject was due to the deeply rooted feeling that even the amount of care for externals exhibited in putting on an embroidered coat or knee-breeches indicated a light-mindedness against the very appearance of which the minister of a republic ought to guard carefully. It is partly to produce the effect of seriousness of purpose, but mainly to avoid the appearance of airs of social or mental superiority, that nearly all skilful politicians dress with elaborate negligence. In most country districts no complaints can be made of men in office such as the New York Short-Hair makes against the Swallow-Tail. They fling on their easy-fitting black clothes in a way that leaves them their whole time for the study of public affairs and attention to the wants of their constituents, and at the same time recalls their humble beginnings.