It has happened, however, that Mr. Jerome's reputation and successes have been won in the field of local politics; and, unfortunately, as soon as he transgressed the boundaries of that field, he lost his efficiency, his insight, and, to my mind, his interest. Only a year after he was elected to the district attorneyship of New York County, in spite of the opposition both of Tammany and William R. Hearst, he offered himself as a candidate for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination of New York on the comprehensive platform of his oath of office; but in the larger arena his tactics proved to be ineffective, and his recent popularity of small avail. He cut no figure at all in the convention, and a very insignificant one outside. Neither was there any reason to be surprised at this result. In municipal politics he stood for an ideal and a method of agitation which was both individual and of great value. In state and national politics he stood for nothing individual, for nothing of peculiar value, for no specific group of ideas or scheme of policy. The announcement that a candidate's platform consists of his oath of office doubtless has a full persuasive sound to many Americans; but it was none the less on Mr. Jerome's part an inept and meaningless performance. He was bidding for support merely on the ground that he was an honest man who proposed to keep his word; but honesty and good faith are qualities which the public have a right to take for granted in their officials, and no candidate can lay peculiar claim to them without becoming politically sanctimonious. Mr. Hearst's strength consisted in the fact that he had for years stood for a particular group of ideas and a particular attitude of mind towards the problems of state and national politics, while Mr. Jerome's weakness consisted in the fact that he had never really tried to lead public opinion in relation to state and national political problems, and that he was obliged to claim support on the score of personal moral superiority to his opponent. The moral superiority may be admitted; but alone it never would and never should contribute to his election. In times like these a reformer must identify a particular group of remedial measures with his public personality. The public has a right to know in what definite ways a reformer's righteousness is to be made effective; and Mr. Jerome has never taken any vigorous and novel line in relation to the problems of state and national politics. When he speaks on those subjects, he loses his vivacity, and betrays in his thinking a tendency to old-fashioned Democracy far beyond that of Mr. Bryan. He becomes in his opinions eminently respectable and tolerably dull, which is, as the late Mr. Alfred Hodder could have told him, quite out of keeping with the part of a "New American."
Mr. Jerome has never given the smallest evidence of having taken serious independent thought on our fundamental political problems. In certain points of detail respecting general political questions he has shown a refreshing freedom from conventional illusions; but, so far as I know, no public word has ever escaped him, which indicates that he has applied his "ideal of intellectual veracity," "his Gallic instinct for consistency," to the creed of his own party. When confronted by the fabric of traditional Jeffersonian Democracy, his mind, like that of so many other Democrats, is immediately lulled into repose. In one of his speeches, for instance, he has referred to his party as essentially the party of "liberal ideas," and he was much praised by the anti-Hearst newspapers for this consoling description; but it can hardly be considered as an illustration of Mr. Jerome's "intellectual veracity." If by "liberal ideas" one means economic and political heresies, such as nullification, "squatter" sovereignty, secession, free silver, and occasional projects of repudiation, then, indeed, the Democracy has been a party of "liberal ideas." But heresies of this kind are not the expression of liberal thought; they are the result of various phases of local political and economic discontent. When a group of Democrats become "liberal," it usually means that they are doing a bad business, or are suffering from a real or supposed injury. But if by "liberal" we mean, not merely radical and subversive, but progressive national ideas, the application of the adjective to the Democratic party is attended with certain difficulties. In the course of American history what measure of legislation expressive of a progressive national idea can be attributed to the Democratic party? At times it has been possessed by certain revolutionary tendencies; at other times it has been steeped in Bourbon conservatism. At present it is alternating between one and the other, according to the needs and opportunities of the immediate political situation. It is trying to find room within its hospitable folds for both Alton B. Parker and William J. Bryan, and it has such an appetite for inconsistencies that it may succeed. But in that event one would expect some symptoms of uneasiness on the part of a Democratic reformer with "Gallic clearness and consistency of mind, with an instinct for consistency, and a hatred of hypocrisy."
V
WILLIAM R. HEARST AS A REFORMER
The truth is that Mr. William R. Hearst offers his countrymen a fair expression of the kind of "liberal ideas" proper to the creed of democracy. In respect to patriotism and personal character Mr. Bryan is a better example of the representative Democrat than is Mr. Hearst; but in the tendency and spirit of his agitation for reform Hearst more completely reveals the true nature of Democratic "liberalism." When Mr. Lincoln Steffens asserts on the authority of the "man of mystery" himself that one of Hearst's mysterious actions has been a profound and searching study of Jeffersonian doctrine, I can almost bring myself to believe the assertion. The radicalism of Hearst is simply an unscrupulous expression of the radical element in the Jeffersonian tradition. He bases his whole agitation upon the sacred idea of equal rights for all and special privileges for none, and he indignantly disclaims the taint of socialism. His specific remedial proposals do not differ essentially from those of Mr. Bryan. His methods of agitation and his popular catch words are an ingenious adaptation of Jefferson to the needs of political "yellow journalism." He is always an advocate of the popular fact. He always detests the unpopular word. He approves expansion, but abhors imperialism. He welcomes any opportunity for war, but execrates militarism. He wants the Federal government to crush the trusts by the most drastic legislation, but he is opposed to centralization. The institutional reforms which he favors all of them look in the direction of destroying what remains of judicial, executive, or legislative independence. The whole programme is as incoherent as is that of Mr. Bryan; but incoherence is the least of his faults. Mr. Bryan's inconsistencies are partly redeemed by his genuine patriotism. The distracting effect of Hearst's inconsistencies is intensified by his factiousness. He is more and less than a radical. He is in temper a revolutionist. The disgust and distrust which he excites is the issue of a wholesome political and social instinct, for the political instincts of the American people are often much sounder than their ideas. Hearst and Hearstism is a living menace to the orderly process of reform and to American national integrity.
Hearst is revolutionary in spirit, because the principle of equal rights itself, in the hand either of a fanatic or a demagogue, can be converted into a revolutionary principle. He considers, as do all reformers, the prevalent inequalities of economic and political power to be violations of that principle. He also believes in the truth of American political individualism, and in the adequacy, except in certain minor respects, of our systems of inherited institutions. How, then, did these inequalities come about? How did the Democratic political system of Jefferson and Jackson issue in undemocratic inequalities? The answer is obviously (and it is an answer drawn by other reformers) that these inequalities are the work of wicked and unscrupulous men. Financial or political pirates of one kind or another have been preying on the guileless public, and by means of their aggressions have perversely violated the supreme law of equal rights. These men must be exposed; they must be denounced as enemies of the people; they must be held up to public execration and scorn; they must become the objects of a righteous popular vengeance. Such are the feelings and ideas which possess the followers of Hearst, and on the basis of which Hearst himself acts and talks. An apparent justification is reached for a systematic vilification of the trusts, the "predatory" millionaires and their supporters; and such vilification has become Hearst's peculiar stock in trade. In effect he treats his opponents very much as the French revolutionary leaders treated their opponents, so that in case the conflict should become still more embittered, his "reformed" democracy may resemble the purified republic of which Robespierre and St. Just dreamed when they sent Desmoulins and Danton to the guillotine. When he embodies such ideas and betrays such a spirit, the disputed point as to Hearst's sincerity sinks into insignificance. A fanatic sincerely possessed by these ideas is a more dangerous menace to American national integrity and the Promise of American democracy than the sheerest demagogue.
The logic of Hearst's agitation is analogous to the logic of the anti-slavery agitation in 1830, and Hearstism is merely Abolitionism applied to a new material and translated into rowdy journalism. The Abolitionists, believing as they did, that the institution of slavery violated an abstract principle of political justice, felt thereby fully authorized to vilify the Southern slaveholders as far as the resources of the English language would permit. They attempted to remedy one injustice by committing another injustice; and by the violence of their methods they almost succeeded in tearing apart the good fabric of our national life. Hearst is headed in precisely the same direction. He is doing a radical injustice to a large body of respectable American citizens who, like Hearst himself, have merely shown a certain lack of scruple in taking advantage of the opportunities which the American political and economic system offers, and who have been distinguished rather by peculiar ability and energy than by peculiar selfishness. On a rigid interpretation of the principle of equal rights he may be justified in holding them up to public execration, just as the Abolitionists, on the principle that the right to freedom was a Divine law, might be justified in vilifying the Southerners. But as a matter of fact we know that personally neither the millionaire nor the slave-holder deserves such denunciation; and we ought to know that the prejudices and passions provoked by language of this kind violate the essential principle both of nationality and democracy. The foundation of nationality is mutual confidence and fair dealing, and the aim of democracy is a better quality of human nature effected by a higher type of human association. Hearstism, like Abolitionism, is the work of unbalanced and vindictive men, and increases enormously the difficulty of the wise and effective cure of the contemporary evils.
Yet Hearst, as little as the millionaires he denounces, is not entirely responsible for himself. Such a responsibility would be too heavy for the shoulders of one man. He has been given to the American people for their sins in politics and economics. His opponents may scold him as much as they please. They may call him a demagogue and a charlatan; they may accuse him of corrupting the public mind and pandering to degrading passions; they may declare that his abusive attacks on the late Mr. McKinley were at least indirectly the cause of that gentleman's assassination; they may, in short, behave and talk as if he were a much more dangerous public enemy than the most "tainted" millionaire or the most corrupt politician. Nevertheless they cannot deprive him or his imitators of the standing to be obtained from the proclamation of a rigorous interpretation of the principle of equal rights. Hearst has understood that principle better than the other reformers, or the conservatives who claim its authority. He has exhibited its disintegrating and revolutionary implications; and he has convinced a large, though fluctuating, following that he is only fighting for justice. He personally may or may not have run his course, but it is manifest that his peculiar application of the principle of equal rights to our contemporary economic and political problems has come to stay. As long as that principle keeps its present high position in the hierarchy of American political ideas, just so long will it afford authority and countenance to agitators like Hearst. He is not a passing danger, which will disappear in case the truly Herculean efforts to discredit him personally continue to be successful. Just as slavery was the ghost in the House of the American Democracy during the Middle Period, so Hearstism is and will remain the ghost in the House of Reform. And the incantation by which it will be permanently exorcised has not yet been publicly phrased.