What other method is there? The men who fought the Tweed Ring did what passed for “politics” in their day. “Votes must be paid for, of course; but let the people vote right.”
The philosophy of the Strong movement in 1894 showed an advance. “The plunder must be divided, of course; but let us have it because we are virtuous.”
The Low movement in 1897 appealed to voters on the ground of self-interest. Labor had to be conciliated, local politicians of the worst sort subsidized; $150,000 was spent, four-fifths of it in ways that did more harm than good. But the methods were delicate.
The battle of the standards goes forward ceaselessly; but all standards are going up. What the half-way reformer calls “politics,” the idealist calls chicanery; what the idealist calls politics, the half-way reformer calls Utopia. But in 1871 they are discussing whether or not the reformers shall falsify the returns; in 1894 they are discussing whether or not they shall expose fraud in their own camp.
The men engaged in all these struggles are in perfect ignorance that they are really leading a religious reaction. They think that since they are in politics the doctrines of compromise apply. They are drawn into politics by conscience, but once there, they have only their business training to guide them,—a training in the art of subserving material interests. Now if a piece of your land has an uncertain boundary, you have a right to compromise on any theory you like, because you own the land. But if you start out with the sole and avowed purpose of upholding honesty in politics, and you uphold anything else or subserve any other interest whatever, you are a deceiver. When you began you did not say “I stand for a readjustment of political interests. There will be a continuation of many abuses under my administration, to be sure; but I hope they will not be quite so bad as heretofore. I shall not insist on the absolutely unselfish conduct of my office. It is not practical.” If you had said this, you might have got the friendly support of a few doctrinaires. But you would never have got the support and approval of the great public. You would not have been elected. And therefore you did not say it. On the contrary, what our reformers do is this: They begin, before election, by promising an absolutely pure administration. They make proclamations of a new era, and after they have secured a certain following they proceed to chaffer over how much honesty they will demand and how much take, as if they were rescuing property.
These men are, then, in their desires a part of the future, and in their practices of the past. Their desires move society forward, their practices set it back; and so we have moved forward by jolts, until, like a people emerging from the deep sea, the water looks clearer above our heads and we can almost see the sky.
Every advance has cost great effort. It took as much courage for a Mugwump to renounce his party allegiance in 1884 as it does now for a man to denounce both national parties as dens of thieves. It took as much hard thinking some years ago for the leaders of the Reform Democrats to cut loose from Tammany Hall as it does now for the Independent to see that there is in all our politics only one machine, held together by all the bosses and their heelers, and that the whole thing must be attacked at once.
How gradual has been the process of emancipation from intellectual bondage! How inevitably people are limited by the terms in which they think! A generation of men has been consumed by the shibboleth “reform within the party,”—a generation of educated and right-minded men, who accomplished in their day much good, and left the country better than they found it, but are floating to-day like hulks in the trough of the sea of politics, because all their mind and all their energy were exhausted in discovering certain superficial evils and in fighting them. Their analysis of political elements left the deeper causes mysterious. They did not see mere human nature. They still treated Republicanism and Democracy—empty superstitions—as ideas, and they handled with reverence the bones of bogus saints, and the whole apparatus of clap-trap by which they had been governed.
And yet it is owing to the activity of these men that the deeper political conditions became visible. Men cannot transcend their own analysis and see themselves under the microscope. The work we do transforms us into social factors. We are a part of the changes we bring in. Before we know it, we ourselves are the problem.
The Mugwumps revolt and defeat Blaine. They strengthen the Democratic party. They again revolt and defeat Bryan, and strengthen the Republican party. So in the little towns all over the country, on local issues the Democrats are put out for being dishonest, or the Republicans are put out for being dishonest. Through this process the younger generation has been led to note one fact: both parties are dishonest. “Ah! but,” says the parent, “I am a good Democrat. My party is not dishonest all the time. It needs discipline.” It is too late: the young man hates both parties equally. He now looks at his father, and sees in him a sample of corrupted intelligence, a man able to repeat meaningless phrases, and he draws hope from the conclusion. It was natural that the father should have been boss-ridden all his life, because he could be whistled back to support iniquity by an appeal to party loyalty. He belonged to a race that had lost the power of political initiative. They could not act alone. They must daub themselves with party names or they would catch cold. They had not the stomach to be merely men.