The effect of public-spirited activity on the character is very rapid. Here again we cannot separate the cause from the consequence; but it is certain that the moral tone of the community is changing very rapidly for the better, and that the thousands of men who are at this moment preparing to take part in the next citizens’ campaign, and who count public activity as one of the regular occupations of their lives, are affecting the social and commercial life of New York. The young men who are working to reform politics find in it not only the satisfaction of a religious instinct, but an excitement which business cannot provide.
One effect of the commercial supremacy has been to make social life intolerably dull, by dividing people into cliques and trade unions. The millionaire dines with the millionaire, the artist with the artist, the hat-maker with the hat-maker, gentlefolk with gentlefolk. All of these sets are equally uninspiring, equally frightened at a strange face. The hierarchy of commerce is dull. The intelligent people in America are dull, because they have no contact, no social experience. Their intelligence is a clique and wears a badge. They think they are not affected by the commercialism of the times; but their attitude of mind is precisely that of a lettered class living under a tyranny. They flock by themselves. It is certain that the cure for class feeling is public activity. The young jeweller, the young printer, and the golf-player, each, after a campaign in which they have been fighting for a principle, finds that social enjoyment lies in working with people unlike himself, for a common object. Reform movements bring men into touch, into struggle with the powers that are really shaping our destinies, and show them the sinews and bones of the social organism. The absurd social prejudices which unman the rich and the poor alike vanish in a six weeks’ campaign. Indeed, the exhilaration of real life is too much for many of the reformers. Even bankers neglect their business, and dare not meet their partners, and a dim thought crosses their minds that perhaps the most enlightened way to spend money is, not to make it, but to invest their energies directly in life.
The reasons for believing that the boss system has reached its climax are manifold. Some of them have been stated, others may be noted. In the first place, the railroads are built. Business is growing more settled. The sacking of the country’s natural resources goes on at a slower pace. It is a matter of history, that economic laws did so operate, that the New York Central Railroad controlled the State legislature during the period of the building and consolidation of the many small roads which make up the present great system. But the conditions have changed. Bribery, like any other crime, may be explained by an emergency; but everyone believes that bribery is not a permanent necessity in the running of a railroad, and this general belief will determine the practices of the future. Public opinion will not stand the abuses; and without the abuse where is the profit? In many places, the old system of bribery is still being continued out of habit, and at a loss. The corporations can get what they want more cheaply by legal methods, and they are discovering this. In the second place, the boss system is now very generally understood. The people are no longer deceived. The ratio between party feeling and self-interest is changing rapidly, in the mind of the average man. It was the mania of party feeling that supported the boss system and rendered political progress impossible, and party feeling is dying out. We have seen, for instance, that those men who, by the accident of the war, were shaken in their party loyalty, have been the most politically intelligent class in the nation. The Northern Democrats, who sided with their opponents to save the Union, were the first men to be weaned of party prejudice, and from their ranks, accordingly, came civil service reformers, tariff reformers, etc.
It is noteworthy, also, that the Jewish mind is active in all reform movements. The isolation of the race has saved it from party blindness, and has given scope to its extraordinary intelligence. The Hebrew prophet first put his finger on blackmail, as the curse of the world, and boldly laid the charge at the door of those who profited by the abuse. It was the Jew who perceived that, in the nature of things, the rich and the powerful in a community will be trammelled up and identified with the evils of the times. The wrath of the Hebrew prophets and the arraignments of the New Testament owe part of their eternal power to their recognition of that fact. They record an economic law.
Moreover, time fights for reform. The old voters die off, and the young men care little about party shibboleths. Hence these non-partisan movements. Every election, local or national, which causes a body of men to desert their party is a blow at the boss system. These movements multiply annually. They are emancipating the small towns throughout the Union, even as commerce was once disfranchising them. As party feeling dies out in a man’s mind, it leaves him with a clearer vision. His conscience begins to affect his conduct very seriously, when he sees that a certain course is indefensible. It is from this source that the reform will come.
The voter will see that it is wrong to support the subsidized boss, just as the capitalist has already begun to recoil from the monster which he created. He sees that it is wrong at the very moment when he is beginning to find it unprofitable. The old trademark has lost its value.
The citizens’ movement is, then, a purge to take the money out of politics. The stronger the doses, the quicker the cure. If the citizens maintain absolute standards, the old parties can regain their popular support only by adopting those standards. All citizens’ movements are destined to be temporary; they will vanish, to leave our politics purified. But the work they do is as broad as the nation.