If we now recur for a moment to the state of things described in the essay on politics, we see that our government in all its branches has reflected the occupation and spiritual state of the people very perfectly. But outside of the recurrent and regular political activity of the country, there has grown up during the past few years a sort of guerilla warfare of reform. This represents the conservative morality of the community, the instinct of right government which resents the treason to our institutions seen in their operation for private gain. The reformers’ methods of work are necessarily democratic, and it is here that the most delicate tests of self-seeking are to be found. These reformers desire to increase the unselfishness in the world, yet the moment they attempt a practical reform they are told that any appeal to an unselfish motive in politics means sure failure. They accordingly make every variety of endeavor to use the selfishness of some one as a lever to increase the unselfishness of somebody else. The thing is worked out in daylight time after time, year after year, and the results are recorded in millegrams. No obscurity is possible because every man stands on the same footing. Our minds are not obscured by thinking that A must be sincere because he is a bishop, or need not be sincere because he is a lord.
There is no landlord class with prejudices, no socialist class with theories. There are no interests except money interests, and against money the fight is made. If a man is a traitor it is because he has been bought. The results, stated in terms of ethical theory, are simply startling.
A reform movement employs a paid secretary. In so far as he gets the place because of his reform principles he represents an appeal to selfishness. This is instantly reflected in his associates, it colors the movement. He himself is attracted partly by the pay. By an operation as impossible to avoid as the law of gravity he enlists others who are also partially self-seeking.
A Good Government Club is formed by X, and every member is called upon for dues and work. It thrives. Another is founded by Y and supported by him because of his belief that reform cannot support itself but must be subsidized. Inside of three weeks the existence of X’s Club is threatened, because its members hear that Y’s Club is charitably supported and they themselves wish relief. They are turned from workers into strikers by the mere report that there is money somewhere. Spend $100 on the Club, and Tammany will be able to buy it when the need arises. So frightfully accurate is the record of an appeal to self-interest made in the course of reform, that no one who watches such an attempt can ever thereafter hope to do evil that good may come.
The system lays bare the operation of forces hitherto merely suspected. Democracy makes the bold cut across every man and divides him into a public man and a private man. It is a man-ometer. You could by means of it stand up in line every man in New York, grading them according to the ratio of principle and self-interest in each.
In England a man takes office as the pay for services to the government. In America he does the same. It is part of their system, part of our corruption. This may seem a small point, but it will work out large. An absolute standard is imposed. That our most pronounced reformers are far from understanding their duties gives proof of the degradation of the times, but it exalts the plan of government. These men will lead a reform for four weeks, as a great favor, a great sacrifice, under protest, apologizing to business. They say public duties come first only in war time. They give, out of conscience and with the left hand, what remains after a feast for themselves. And these are the saints. Tell one of them that he has not set an honorable standard of living for his contemporaries unless, having his wants supplied, he makes public activity his first aim in life, and he will reply he wishes he could do so. He hopes later to devote himself to such things. He will give you a subscription. This man lives in a Democracy but he denies its claims. He too is recorded.
The English, who gave us all we know of freedom, have been the first to understand its meaning. They too have suffered during the last century from the ravages of plutocracy, from the disease of commerce. But they had behind them the intellectual heritage of the world. They had bulwarks of education, philanthropy, thought, training, ambition, enthusiasm, the ideals of man. It was these things, this reservoir of spiritual power, that turned the tide of commercialism in England, and not as we so cheaply imagine her “leisure class.” The men and women who in the last ten years have taken hold of the Municipality of London, and now work like beavers in its reform, are not rich. Some of them may be rich, but the force that makes them toil comes neither out of riches nor out of poverty, but out of a discovery as to the use of life. These Englishmen have outlived the illusions of business. As towards them we are like children. If it were a matter of mere riches we have wealth enough to make their “leisure class” ridiculous. If there must be some term in the heaping of money before the energies of our better burghers are to be diverted toward public ends, we may wait till doomsday. But the reaction is of another sort, and is very simple. Let us be just to the conscience-givers. They dare not give more. The American is ashamed to lose a dollar. He does not want the dollar half the time, but he will lose caste if he foregoes it. Our merchant princes go on special commissions for rapid transit, and receive $5000 apiece. They must be paid. Out of custom they must receive pay because “their time is valuable,” and thus the virtue and meaning of their office receives a soil: they do not work. All this is, even at the present moment, against the private instincts of many of them. It is apparent that they stand without, shame-faced. It needs only example to give them courage. A few more reform movements in which they see each other as citizens, will knock the shackles from their imagination and make men of them. And then we shall have reform in earnest. For with this enfranchisement will come their great awakening to the fact that not they only but all men are really unselfish. It is the obscure disbelief in this salvation which has made reform so hard where it might be so easy. As soon as the reformers shall have reformed themselves, they will avoid making any appeal to self-interest as so much lost time, so much corruption, and will walk boldly upon the waves of idealism which will hold them up.
If commerce has been our ruin, our form of government is our salvation. Imagine a hereditary aristocracy, a State church, a limited monarchy to have existed here during the last thirty years. By this time it would have been owned hand and foot, tied up and anchored in every abuse, engaged day and night in devising new yokes for the people. The interests now dominant know the ropes and do their best, but they cannot corrupt the sea. They cannot stop the continual ferment of popular election and reform candidate. The whole apparatus of government is a great educational machine which no one can stop. The power of light is enlisted on the side of order. A property qualification would have been an anchor to windward for the unrighteous. At the bottom of the peculiarly hopeless condition of Philadelphia lie the small house and lot of the laboring man. They can be taxed. They can be cajoled and conjured with. Corruption is entrenched.
We find then in democracy a frame of government by which private selfishness, the bane and terror of all government, is thrust brutally to the front and kept there, staring in hideous openness.