Under such conditions it is evident that a Congressman can have but a restricted liberty to act or vote according to his individual convictions. It is only human that, in matters which are not of great national import, a man should at times be willing to believe that his personal opinions may be wrong when adherence to those opinions would wreck his political career. So the Congressman too commonly acquires a habit of subservience which is assuredly not wholesome either for the individual or for the country; and sometimes the effort to trim sails to catch every favouring breeze has curious oblique results. As an instance of this may be cited the action taken by Congress in regard to the army canteen. A year or more back, the permission to army posts to retain within their own limits and subject to the supervision of the post authorities, a canteen for the use of soldiers, was abolished. The soldiers have since been compelled to do their drinking outside, and, as a result, this drinking has been done without control or supervision, and has produced much more serious demoralisation. The action of Congress was taken in the face of an earnest and nearly unanimous protest from experienced army officers—the men, that is, who were directly concerned with the problem in question. The Congressmen acted as they did under the pressure of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and with the dread lest a vote for the canteen should be interpreted as a vote for liquor, and should stand in the way of their own political success.
From what has been said it will be seen that the member of Congress is compelled to give a deplorably large proportion of his time and thought to paltry local matters, leaving a deplorably small portion of either to be devoted to national questions; while in the exercise of his functions as a legislator he is likely to be influenced by a variety of motives which ought to be quite impertinent and are often unworthy. These things however seem to be almost inevitable results of the national political structure. The individual corruptibility of the members of either House (their readiness, that is to be influenced by any considerations, other than that of their re-election, of their own interests, financial or otherwise), I believe to be grossly exaggerated in the popular mind. Certainly a stranger is likely to get the idea that the Congress is a much less honourable and less earnest body than it is.
The subject of the corruptness of the public service in the larger cities brings up again a matter which has been already touched upon, namely the extent to which this corruptness is in its origin Irish and not an indigenous American growth. Under the favourable influences of American political conditions the Irish have developed exceptional capacity for leadership (a capacity which they are also showing in some of the British colonies) and they do not generally use their ability or their powers for the good of the community. The rapidity with which the Irish immigrant blossoms into political authority is a commonplace of American journalism:
"Ere the steamer that brought him had got out of hearing,
He was Alderman Mike introducing a bill."
It is commonly held by Americans that all political corruptness in the United States (certainly all municipal wickedness) is chargeable to Irish influence; but it is a position not easy to maintain in the face of the example of the city of Philadelphia, the government of which has from the beginning been chiefly in the hands of Americans, many of whom have been members of the oldest and best Philadelphia families. Yet the administration of Philadelphia has been as corrupt and as openly disregardful of the welfare of the community as ever was that of New York. While Irishmen are generally Democrats, both Philadelphia and the State of Pennsylvania, are overwhelmingly Republican and devoted to the protective policy under which so many of the industries of the State have prospered exceedingly. Those who have fought for the cause of municipal reform in Philadelphia find that, while the masses of the people of the city would prefer good government, it is almost impossible to get them to reject an official candidate of the Republican party. The Republican "bosses" have thus been able to impose on the city officials of the worst kind, who have served them faithfully to the disaster of the community.[253:1] None the less, notwithstanding particular exceptions, it is a fact that as a general rule the corrupt maladministration of affairs in American cities is the direct result of Irish influence.
The opportunities of the Irish leaders for securing control of the city administration, or of certain important and lucrative divisions of this administration, have been furthered, particularly in such cities as New York and San Francisco, by the influence they are able to gain over bodies of immigrants who are also in the fold of the Roman Catholic Church, and who, on the ground of difference of language and other causes, have less quickness of perception of their own political opportunities. The Irish leaders have been able to direct in very large measure the votes of the Italians (more particularly the Italians from the South), the Bohemians, and the other groups of immigrants from Catholic communities. As the Irish immigration has decreased both absolutely and relatively, the numbers of voters supporting the leadership of the bosses of Tammany Hall and of the similar organisations in Chicago and San Francisco have been made good, and in fact substantially increased, by the addition of Catholic voters of other nationalities.
I wish the English reader to grasp fully the significance of these facts before he allows the stories which he hears of the municipal immorality which exists in the United States to colour too deeply his estimate of the character of the American people. That immorality is chiefly Irish in its origin and is made continuously possible by the ascendency of the Irish over masses of other non-Anglo-Saxon peoples. The Celts were never a race of individual workers either as agriculturists or in handicraft. That "law of intense personal labour" which is the foundation of the strength of the Anglo-Saxon communities never commanded their full obedience, as the history of Ireland and the condition of the country to-day abundantly testify. It is not, then, the fault of the individual Irishman that when he migrates to America, instead of going out to the frontier to "grow up" with the territory or taking himself to agricultural work in the great districts of the West which are always calling for workers, he prefers to remain in the cities to engage when possible in the public service, or, failing that, to enter the domestic service of a private employer.
It should not be necessary to say (except that Irish-American susceptibilities are sometimes extraordinarily sensitive) that I share to the full that admiration which all people feel for the best traits in the Irish character; but, in spite of individual exceptions, I urge that it is not in the nature of the race to become good and helpful citizens according to Anglo-Saxon ideals, and that, as far as those qualities are concerned which have made the greatness of the United States, the contribution from the Irish element has been inconsiderable. The deftness of the Irishman in political organisation and his lack of desire for individual independence, as a result of which he turns either to the organising of a governing machine or to some form of personal service (in either case merging his own individuality) is as much foreign to the American spirit as is the docility of the less intelligent class of Germans under their political leaders—a docility which, until very recently has caused the German voters in America to be used in masses almost without protest.
It is the Anglo-Saxon, or English, spirit which has played the dominant part in moulding the government of the United States, which has made the nation what it is, which to-day controls its social usages. The Irish invasion of the political field may fairly be said to be in its essence an alien invasion; and, while it may be to the discredit of the American people that they have allowed themselves in the past to be so engrossed in other matters that they have permitted that invasion to attain the success which it has attained, I do not fear that in the long run the masterful Anglo-Saxon spirit will suffer itself to be permanently over-ridden (any more than it has allowed itself to be kept in permanent subjection in England), even in the large cities where the Anglo-Saxon voter is in a small minority. Ultimately it will throw off the incubus. In the meanwhile it is unjust that Englishmen or other Europeans should accept as evidence of native American frailty instances of municipal abuses and of corrupt methods in a city like New York, where it has not been by native Americans that those abuses and those methods were originated or that their perpetuation is made possible. On the contrary the American minority fights strenuously against them, and I am not sure that, being such a minority as it is, it has not made as good a fight as is practicable under most difficult conditions. The American people as a whole should not be judged by the conditions to which a portion of it submits unwillingly in certain narrow areas.
