The Promise of American Life

by Herbert David Croly

I

STATE INSTITUTIONAL REFORM

In the foregoing chapter I have traced the larger aspects of a constructive relation between the national and democratic principles in the field of foreign politics. The task remains of depicting somewhat in detail the aspect which our more important domestic problems assume from the point of view of the same relationship. The general outlines of this picture have already been roughly sketched; but the mere sketch of a fruitful general policy is not enough. A national policy must be justified by the flexibility with which, without any loss of its integrity, it can be applied to specific problems, differing radically one from another in character and significance. That the idea of a constructive relationship between nationality and democracy is flexible without being invertebrate is one of its greatest merits. It is not a rigid abstract and partial ideal, as is that of an exclusively socialist or an exclusively individualist democracy. Neither is it merely a compromise, suited to certain practical exigencies, between individualism and socialism. Its central formative idea can lend itself to many different and novel applications, while still remaining true to its own fundamental interest.

Flexible though the national ideal may be, its demands are in one respect inflexible. It is the strenuous and irrevocable enemy of the policy of drift. It can counsel patience; but it cannot abide collective indifference or irresponsibility. A constructive national ideal must at least seek humbly to be constructive. The only question is, as to how this responsibility for the collective welfare can at any one time be most usefully redeemed. In the case of our own country at the present time an intelligent conception of the national interest will counsel patient agitation rather than any hazardous attempts at radical reconstruction. No such reform can be permanent, or even healthy, until American public opinion has been converted to a completer realization of the nature and extent of its national responsibilities. The ship of reform will gather most headway from the association of certain very moderate practical proposals with the issue of a deliberate, persistent, and far more radical challenge to popular political prejudices and errors. It will be sufficient, in case our practical proposals seek to accomplish some small measure both of political and economic reconstruction, and in case they occupy some sort of a family relation to plans of the same kind with which American public opinion is already more or less familiar.

In considering this matter of institutional reform, I shall be guided chiefly by the extent to which certain specific reforms have already become living questions. From this point of view it would be a sheer waste of time just at present to discuss seriously any radical modification, say, of the Federal Constitution. Certain transformations of the Constitution either by insidious effect of practice, by deliberate judicial construction, or by amendment are, of course, an inevitable aspect of the contemporary American political problem; but all such possible and proposed changes must be confined to specific details. They should not raise any question as to the fundamental desirability of a system of checks and balances or of the other principles upon which the Federal political organization is based. Much, consequently, as a political theorist may be interested in some ideal plan of American national organization, it will be of little benefit under existing conditions to enter into such a discussion. Let it wait until Americans have come to think seriously and consistently about fundamental political problems. The Federal Constitution is not all it should be, but it is better than any substitute upon which American public opinion could now agree. Modifications may and should somehow be made in details, but for the present not in fundamentals. On the other hand, no similar sanctity attaches to municipal charters and state constitutions. The ordinary state constitution is a sufficiently ephemeral piece of legislation. State and municipal political forms are being constantly changed, and they are being changed because they have been so extremely unsatisfactory in their actual operation. The local political machinery becomes, consequently, the natural and useful subject of reconstructive experiments. A policy of institutional reform must prove its value and gain its experience chiefly in this field; and in formulating such a policy reformers will be placing their hands upon the most palpable and best-recognized weakness in the American political system.

A popular but ill-founded American political illusion concerns the success of their state governments. Americans tend to believe that these governments have on the whole served them well, whereas in truth they have on the whole been ill served by their machinery of local administration and government. The failure has not, perhaps, been as egregious or as scandalous as has been that of their municipal institutions; but it has been sufficiently serious to provoke continual but abortive attempts to improve them; and it has had so many dangerous consequences that the cause and cure of their inefficiency constitute one of the most fundamental of American political problems. The consequences of the failure have been mitigated because the weakness of the state governments has been partly concealed and redeemed by the comparative strength and efficiency of the central government. But the failures have none the less been sufficiently distressing; and if they are permitted to continue, they will compromise the success of the American democratic experiment. The Federal government has done much to ameliorate the condition of the American people, whereas the state governments have done little or nothing. Instead of representing, as a government should, the better contemporary ideals and methods, they have reflected at best the average standard of popular behavior and at worst a standard decidedly below the average. The lawlessness which so many Americans bemoan in American life must be traced to the inefficiency of the state governments. If the central government had shared this weakness, the American political organism would have already dissolved in violence and bloodshed.

The local authorities retain under the American Federal organization many of the primary functions of government. They preserve order, administer civil and criminal justice, collect taxes for general and local purposes, and are directly or indirectly responsible for the system of public education. If it can be proved that the state governments have exercised any of these functions in an efficient manner, that proof certainly does not lie upon the surface of the facts. The provisions they have made for keeping order have been utterly inadequate, and have usually broken down when any serious reason for disorder has existed. A certain part of this violence is, moreover, the immediate result of the failure of American criminal justice. The criminal laws have been so carefully framed and so admirably expounded for the benefit of the lawyers and their clients, the malefactors, that a very large proportion of American murderers escape the proper penalty of their acts; and these dilatory and dubious judicial methods are undoubtedly one effective cause of the prevalence of lynching in the South. There is more to be said in favor of our civil than of our criminal courts. In spite of a good deal of corruption and of subserviency to special interests, the judges are usually honest men and good average lawyers; but the fact that they are elected for comparatively short terms has made them the creatures of the political machine, and has demoralized their political standards. They use court patronage largely for the benefit of the machine; and whatever influence they have in politics is usually exercised in favor of the professional politician. If they do not constitute a positive weakness in the system of local government, they are certainly far from constituting a source of strength; and considering the extent to which our government is a government of judges, they should exercise a far more beneficent influence than they do.

Neither are the administrative and legislative responsibilities of the states redeemed with any more success. The tax systems of the several states are in a chaotic condition. Their basis consists of the old property tax, which under its application to modern conditions has become both unjust and unproductive, but which the state legislatures seem to be wholly incapable of either abandoning or properly transforming. In the matter of education the states have been, except in the South, liberal; but they have not been as intelligent and well-informed as they have been well-intentioned. The educational system of the country is not only chaotic, but it is very imperfectly adapted to the needs of an industrial and agricultural democracy. Finally, if the legislatures of the several states have ever done anything to increase respect for the wisdom and conservatism of American representative government, it is certainly hard to discover indications thereof. The financial and economic legislation of the states has usually shown incompetence and frequently dishonesty. They have sometimes been ready to repudiate their debts. In their relations to the corporations they have occupied the positions alternately of blackmailers and creatures. They have been as ready to confiscate private property as they have to confer on it excessive privileges. If the word "law" means something less majestic and authoritative to Americans than it should, the mass of trivial, contradictory, unwise, ephemeral, and corrupt legislation passed by the state legislatures is largely responsible.

No doubt a certain part of this failure of the state governments is irremediable as long as existing standards of public and private morality prevail; but most assuredly a certain part is the direct result of unwise organization. American state governments have been corrupt and inefficient largely because they have been organized for the benefit of corrupt and inefficient men; and as long as they continue to be organized on such a basis, no permanent or substantial improvement can be expected. Moreover, any reorganization in order to be effective must not deal merely with details and expedients. It must be as radical as are the existing disorganization and abuses. It must be founded on a different relation between the executive and legislative branches and a wholly different conception of the function of a state legislative body.

The demand for some such reorganization has already become popular, particularly in the West. A generation or more ago the makers of new state constitutions, being confronted by palpable proofs of the inefficiency and corruption of the state governments, sought to provide a remedy chiefly by limiting the power of the legislature. All sorts of important details, which would have formerly been left to legislative action, were incorporated in the fundamental law; and in the same spirit severe restrictions were imposed on legislative procedure, designed to prevent the most flagrant existing abuses. These prudential measures have not served to improve the legislative output, and the reformers are now crying for more drastic remedies. In the West the tendency is to transfer legislative authority from a representative body directly to the people. A movement in favor of the initiative and the referendum is gaining so much headway, that in all probability it will spread throughout the country much as the Australian ballot did over a decade ago. But the adoption of the initiative and the referendum substitutes a new principle for the one which has hitherto underlain American local institutions. Representative government is either abandoned thereby or very much restricted; and direct government, so far as possible, is substituted for it. Such a fundamental principle and tradition as that of representation should not be thrown away, unless the change can be justified by a specific, comprehensive, and conclusive analysis of the causes of the failure of the state governments.