The Twentieth Century American / Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great Anglo-Saxon Nations

by Harry Perry Robinson

It was, however, better as it was. The motives which prompted the refusal of the money were, as I was told, not motives of morality. It was not any objection to the act of bribery, but a mere question of expediency. It was not considered that the "goods" were worth the money. But, as always, it was better for the country that the immoral act was not done. The Free Silver poison was working in the blood of the body politic, and it was better to let the malady come to a head and fight it strenuously than to drive it back and let it go on with its work of internal corruption. Looking back now it is easy to see that the fight of 1896 must have come at some time, and it was best that it came when it did. The gentlemen who declined to produce the few thousand dollars asked of them (the sum was fifteen thousand dollars, if I remember rightly, or three thousand pounds) would, a few weeks later, have given twice the sum to have the opportunity back again. Now, I imagine, they are well content that they acted as they did.

As illustrating the methods which are not infrequent in connection with the work of the State legislatures, I may mention that I once acted (without premeditation) as witness to the depositing of two thousand dollars in gold coin in a box at a safety deposit vault, by the representative of a great corporation, the key of which box was afterwards handed to a member of the local State legislature. The vote and influence of that member were necessary for the defeat of certain bills—bills, be it said, iniquitous in themselves—which would have cost that particular corporation many times two thousand dollars; and two thousand dollars was the sum at which that legislator valued the aforesaid vote and influence.

It is not always necessary to take so much precaution to secure secrecy as was needed in this case. The recklessness with which State legislators sometimes accept cheques and other easily traceable media of exchange is a little bewildering, until one understands how secure they really are from any risk of information being lodged against them. A certain venerable legislator in one of the North-western States some years ago gained considerable notoriety, of a confidential kind, by being the only member of his party in the legislature at the time who declined to accept his share in a distribution which was going on of the mortgage bonds of a certain railway company. It was not high principle nor any absurd punctiliousness on his part that made him decline. "In my youth," said he to the representative of the railway company, "I was an earnest anti-slavery man and I still recoil from bonds." It was said that he received his proportion of the pool in a more negotiable form.

It would be easy, even from my own individual knowledge, to multiply stories of this class; but the effect would only be to mislead the English reader, while the American is already familiar with such stories in sufficiency. The object is not to insist upon the fact that there is corruption in American public life, but rather to show what kind of corruption it is, and that it is largely of a kind the opportunity for indulgence in which does not exist in England. The method of nominating candidates for Parliament in England removes the temptation to "influence" primaries and bribe delegations. In the absence of State legislatures, railway and other corporations are not exposed to the same system of blackmail.

Let us suppose that each county in England had its legislature of two chambers, as every State has in America, the members of these legislatures being elected necessarily only from constituencies in which they lived, so that a slum district of a town was obliged to elect a slum-resident, a village a resident of that village; let us further suppose that by the mixture of races in the population certain districts could by mere preponderance of the votes be expected to elect only a German, a Scandinavian, or an Irishman—in each case a man who had been perhaps, but a few years before, an immigrant drawn from a low class in the population of his own country; give that legislature almost unbridled power over all business institutions within the borders of the county, including the determination of rates of charge on that portion of the lines of great railway companies which lay within the county borders—is there not danger that that power would be frequently abused? When one party, after a long term of trial in opposition, found itself suddenly in control of both houses, would it always refrain from using its power for the gratification of party purposes, for revenge, and for the assistance of its own supporters? Local feeling sometimes becomes, even in England, much inflamed against a given railway company, or some large employer of labour, or great landlord, whether justly or not. It may be that in the case of a railway, the rates of fare are considered high, the train service bad, or the accommodations at the stations poor. At such a time a local legislature would be likely to pass almost any bill that was introduced to hurt that railway company, merely as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon it to correct the supposed shortcomings. It obviously then becomes only too easy for an unscrupulous member to bring forward a bill which will have plausible colour of public-spirited motive, and which if it became a law would cost the railway company untold inconvenience and many tens of thousands of pounds; and the railway company can have that bill withdrawn or "sidetracked" for a mere couple of hundred.

Personally I am thankful to say that I have such confidence in the sterling quality of the fibre of the English people (so long as it is free, as it is in England, from Irish or other alien influence) as to believe that, even under these circumstances, and with all these possibilities of wrong-doing, the local legislatures would remain reasonably honest. But what might come with long use and practice, long exposure to temptation, it is not easy to say. Some things occur in the colonies which are not comforting. If, then, the corruption in American politics be great, the evil is due rather to the system than to any inherent inferiority in the native honesty of the people. Their integrity, if it falls, has the excuse of abundant temptation.

The most instructive experience, I think, which I myself had of the disregard of morality in the realm of municipal politics was received when I associated myself, sentimentally rather than actively, with a movement at a certain election directed towards the defeat of one who was probably the most corrupt alderman in what was at the time perhaps the corruptest city in the United States. Of the man's entire depravity, from a political point of view, there was not the least question among either his friends or his enemies. Nominally a Democrat, his vote and policy were never guided by any other consideration than those of his own pocket. On an alderman's salary (which he spent several times over in his personal expenditure each year), without other business or visible means of making money, he had grown wealthy—wealthy enough to make his contributions to campaign funds run into the thousands of dollars,—wealthy enough to be able always to forget to take change for a five-dollar or a ten-dollar bill when buying anything in his own ward,—wealthy enough to distribute regularly (was it five hundred or a thousand?) turkeys every Thanksgiving Day among his constituents. No one pretended to suggest that his money was drawn from any other source than from the public funds, from blackmail, and from the sale of his vote and influence in the City Council. In that Council he had held his seat unassailably for many years through all the shifting and changing of parties in power. But a spirit of reform was abroad and certain public-spirited persons decided that it was time that the scandal of his continuance in office should be stopped. The same conclusion had been arrived at by various campaign managers and bodies of independent and upright citizens on divers preceding occasions, without any result worth mentioning. But at last it seemed that the time had come. There were various encouraging signs and portents in the political heavens and all auguries were favourable. There were, it is true, experienced politicians who shook their heads. They blessed us and wished us well. They even contributed liberally to our campaign fund; but the most experienced among them were not hopeful.

It was a vigorous campaign—on our side; with meetings, brass bands, constant house-to-house canvassing, and processions ad libitum. On the other side, there was no campaign at all to speak of; only the man whom we were seeking to unseat spent some portion of every day and the whole of every night going about the ward from saloon to saloon, always forgetting the change for those five-dollar and ten-dollar bills, always willing to cheer lustily when one of our processions went by, and, as we heard, daily increasing his orders for turkeys for the approaching Thanksgiving season.

So far as the saloon keepers, the gamblers, the owners and patrons of disorderly houses went, we had no hope of winning their allegiance; but, after all, they were a small numerical minority of the voters of the ward. The majority consisted of low-class Italians, unskilled labourers, and it was their votes that must decide the issue. There was not one of them who was not thoroughly talked to, as well as every member of his family of a reasoning age. There was not one who did not fully recognise that the alderman was a thief and an entirely immoral scamp; but their labour was farmed by, perhaps, half a dozen Italian contractors. These men were the Alderman's henchmen. As long as he continued in the Council, he was able to keep their men employed—on municipal works and on the work of the various railway and other large corporations which he was able to blackmail. We, on our part, had obtained promises of employment, from friends of decent government regardless of politics in all parts of the city, for approximately as many men as could possibly be thrown out of work in case of an upheaval. But of what use were these, more or less unverifiable, promises, when on the eve of the election the half a dozen contractors (who of course had grown rich with their alderman's continuance in office) gave each individual labourer in the ward to understand clearly that if the present alderman was defeated each one of them would have to go and live somewhere—live or starve,—for not one stroke of work would they ever get so long as they lived in that ward?