On the other hand, all compromise means delay. By compromise, the awakened faith of the people is sold to the politicians for a mess of reform. The failures and mistakes of Mayor Strong’s administration were among the causes for Mr. Low’s defeat. People said, “If this be reform, give us Tammany Hall.” Our reformers have always been in hot haste to get results. They want a balance-sheet at the end of every year. They think this will encourage the people. But the people recall only their mistakes. The long line of reform leaders in New York city are remembered with contempt. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
That weakness of intellect which makes reformers love quick returns is twin brother to a certain defect of character. Personal vanity is very natural in men who figure as tribunes of the people. They say, “Look at Abraham Lincoln, and how he led the people out of the wilderness; let us go no faster than the people in pushing these reforms; let us accept half-measures; let us be Abraham Lincoln.” The example of Lincoln has wrecked many a promising young man; for really Lincoln has no more to do with the case than Julius Cæsar. As soon as the reformers give up trying to be statesmen, and perceive that their own function is purely educational, and that they are mere anti-slavery agitators and persons of no account whatever, they will succeed better.
As to the methods of work in reform,—whether it shall be by clubs or by pamphlets, by caucus or by constitution,—they will be developed. Executive capacity is simply that capacity which is always found in people who really want something done.
In New York, the problem is not to oust Tammany Hall; another would arise in a year. It is to make the great public understand the boss system, of which Tammany is only a part. As fast as the reformers see that clearly themselves, they will find the right machinery to do the work in hand. It may be that, like the Jews, we shall have to spend forty years more in the wilderness, until the entire generation that lived under Pharaoh has perished. But education nowadays marches quickly. The progress that has been made during the last seven years in the city of New York gives hope that within a decade a majority of the voters will understand clearly that all the bosses are in league.
In 1890, this fact was so little understood by the managers of an anti-Tammany movement which sprang up in that year that, after raising a certain stir and outcry, they put in the field a ticket made up exclusively of political hacks, whose election would have left matters exactly where they stood. The people at large, led by the soundest political instinct, re-elected Tammany Hall, and gave to sham reform the rebuff it deserved. In 1894, after the Lexow investigation had kept the town at fever-heat of indignation all summer, Mayor Strong was nominated by the Committee of Seventy, under an arrangement with Platt. The excitement was so great that the people at large did not examine Mr. Strong’s credentials. He was a Republican merchant, and in no way identified with the boss system. Mayor Strong’s administration has been a distinct advance, in many ways encouraging. Its errors and weaknesses have been so clearly traceable to the system which helped elect him that it has been in the highest degree valuable as an object-lesson. In 1895, only one year after Mayor Strong’s election, the fruits of his administration could not yet be seen. In that year a few judges and minor local officers were to be chosen. By this time the “citizens’ movement” had become a regular part of a municipal election. A group of radicals, the legatees of the Strong campaign, had for a year been enrolled in clubs called Good Government Clubs. These men took the novel course of nominating a complete ticket of their own. This was considered a dangerous move by the moderate reformers, who were headed by the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber of Commerce and its well-meaning supporters then took a step which, from an educational standpoint, turned out to be most important. In their terror lest Tammany Hall should gain the prestige of a by-election, they made an arrangement with Platt, and were allowed to name some candidates on his ticket. This was the famous “fusion,” which the Good Government men attacked with as much energy as they might have expended on Tammany Hall. A furious campaign of crimination between the two reform factions followed, and of course Tammany was elected.
The difference between the Good Government men (the Goo-Goos, as they were called) and the Fusionists was entirely one of political education. The Goo-Goo mind had advanced to the point of seeing that Platt was a confederate of Tammany and represented one wing of the great machine. To give him money was useless; to lend him respectability was infamous. These ideas were disseminated by the press; and it was immaterial that they were disseminated in the form of denunciations of the Good Government Clubs. The people at large began to comprehend clearly what they had always instinctively believed. There was now a nucleus of men in the town who preferred Tammany Hall to any victory that would discredit reform.
It may be noted that the Good Government Clubs polled less than one per cent of the vote cast in that election; and that in the recent mayoralty campaign the Citizens’ Union ran Mr. Low on the Good Government platform, and polled 150,000 votes. In this same election, the straight Republican ticket, headed by Tracy, polled 100,000 votes, and Tammany polled about as many as both its opponents together. A total of about 40,000 votes were cast for George and other candidates.
Much surprise has been expressed that there should be 100,000 Republicans in New York whose loyalty to the party made them vote a straight ticket with the certainty of electing Tammany Hall; but in truth, when we consider the history of the city, we ought rather to be surprised at the great size of the vote for Mr. Low. He was the man who arranged the fusion of 1895. It was entirely due to a lack of clear thinking and of political courage that such an arrangement was then made. Two years ago the Chamber of Commerce did not clearly understand the evils that it was fighting. Is it a wonder that 100,000 individual voters are still backward in their education? If we discount the appeal of self-interest, which determined many of them, there are probably some 75,000 Republicans whose misguided party loyalty obscured their view and deadened their feelings. They cannot be said to hate bad government very much. They do not think Tammany Hall so very bad, after all. As the London papers said, the dog has returned to his vomit. It is unintelligent to abuse them. They are the children of the age. A few years ago we were all such as they. Of Mr. Low’s 150,000 supporters, on the other hand, there are probably at least 40,000 who would vote through thick and thin for the principles which his campaign stood for.
Any one who is a little removed by time or by distance from New York knows that the city cannot have permanent good government until a clear majority of our 500,000 voters shall develop what the economists call an “effective desire” for it. It is not enough merely to want reform. The majority must know how to get it. For educational purposes, the intelligent discussion throughout the recent campaign is worth all the effort that it cost. The Low campaign was notable in another particular. The banking and the mercantile classes subscribed liberally to the citizens’ campaign fund. They are the men who have had the most accurate knowledge of the boss system, because they support it. At last they have dared to expose it. Indeed, there was a rent in Wall Street. The great capitalists and the promoters backed Tammany and Platt, as a matter of course; but many individuals of power and importance in the street came out strongly for Low. They acted at personal risk, with courage, out of conscience. The great pendulum of wealth has swung toward decency. It is very difficult to use this or any money in the cause of reform without doing more harm than good. But the money is not the main point; the personal influence of the men who give it operates more powerfully than the money. Hereafter reform will be respectable. The professional classes are pouring into it. The young men are re-entering politics. Its victory is absolutely certain, and will not be distant.