By adopting formal machinery you would not only organize the wrong people in, but you would organize the right people out. New York City is full of men whose passion for educating can find no vent in politics, because politics are corrupt, and who run civic leagues, night-schools, lyceums, and people’s institutes. They are at work in your cause although they call it by different names. All this zeal is at your disposal if you will only leave your office doors open and do something to deserve its support. Do not adopt a scheme that excludes these men. You cannot impress them into your army, but you do not need to impress them,—only to know them personally. You cannot make them district captains, but they are district captains already.
“But,” you say, “are not the votes of your twenty friends as valuable as your own? Whence this egoism?” It is not egoism. I am ready to follow any one who wants to do this particular thing, that is, make an appeal to absolute unselfishness, at no point to conciliate any one. “But this is anarchy: every man his own party.” On the contrary, it is consolidation; for should two men arise, proposing this course, they would coalesce at once.
“But,” you say, “who is to do all the work? How are you to get men to come forward unless you give them tangible, formulated doctrines, papers to sign, and words to mumble?” The answer is that the men who do the work in reform campaigns do not need these things. Literature and doctrines you will undoubtedly produce. It is not necessary for the effective distribution of them, that you should adopt the parade of American party discipline.
Organization, head-quarters, and a distribution of labor you must develop. But you must not have them on paper faster than they exist in reality. “But,” you say, “this is not representative government. Where are your convention, your argument, your vote, your majority, your loyalty? Our people must have these things.”
The answer is that, in spite of their views on representative government, our people still remain human beings. As fast as they find themselves spiritually represented by some person or body, they follow that influence. It is representative government, but it represents only the positive and aspiring part of the community,—the part which never gets represented under your system, because that system insists upon alloying it with other elements and ruining its power. It is educational activity in the purest form. By what other means can you speak to the whole people at once in the language of action? By what other means can you reach the conscience of the unknown man, who has not touched politics for twenty years because he could take no part in it, because he did not understand it,—the disfranchised, scattered, and dumb men on whose voice the future waits?
Consider what you are trying to do. A party under control of a machine is held together by an appeal to self-interest. Its caucuses, affiliations, resources, methods are constructed on that principle. Your body, whose aim is to increase the unselfishness and intellect of your fellow-citizens, must be held together at every point by self-sacrifice.
If the reform body shall blindly do just the opposite of what a party does, it will pursue practical politics. The regular party is in theory representative of enrolled voters. You represent the sentiment of undiscovered people. The party appeals to old forces and extant conditions. You appeal to new feelings and new voters. The party offers a gift to every adherent. You must offer him nothing but labor. That is your protection against traitors. The party accords every man the weight of his vote in its counsels. You must give him nothing but the influence of his mind.
“But,” you shout, “this is not politics. You can never hold men together without bonds.” The fact is otherwise. There is some force at work in this town which, year after year, brings forward groups of men who proclaim a new dispensation. They are, in so far as they have any cohesion, held together without bonds now. All formal bonds will chain them to the past. For electrical force you must adopt electrical machinery; for moral force, moral bonds. All this political system is the harness for the wrong passion. Every scrap of it imprisons your power. The average American citizen is slow to see that you can exercise political influence without the current machinery. This is a part of The Machine in his brain. He cannot see the operation of law by which virtue always tells. But his ignorance does not affect the operation of that law, even upon himself.
This elaborate analysis of just how the force of feeling in yourself can best be used politically, is, after all, only an instance of a general law. The shortest path between two points always turns out to be a straight line. People who believe in the complexity of life, and have theories about crooked lines, want something else beside moral influence. They want influence through office, or influence toward special ends, or influence with particular persons. “Can’t you see you are destroying your influence?” they cry, while every stroke is telling. “A thinks you are a lunatic.” Praise God. “B has withdrawn his subscription.” I had not hoped for this so soon. “But he has joined Platt.” You misstate the case. He was always with Platt, but now he has revealed it. These refractory molecules are breaking up. See the lines of force begin to show a clean cleavage. Ten thousand intelligences now see the man for what he is.
At what point in the progress of this movement will people begin to see that it is practical politics of the most effective kind? Some people see it now. The first people to feel the strain are the men whose livelihood depends on the outcome. The last illustration of this was given in Roosevelt’s campaign against Van Wyck in New York State. In this case, as generally happens, the real battle was fought in committee rooms before the forces were in the field. It was the struggle for position. Roosevelt was to be Republican candidate for governor, and was sure of election. The fight came over the minor offices. Our New York form of ballot practically forces a man to vote for a “straight” ticket, and half a dozen independents put up a complete ticket with Roosevelt at the head of it. Their purpose was to prevent the Republicans from using Roosevelt’s military popularity to sweep into office a lot of henchmen. Within ten days the Republican henchmen all over the State were taken with convulsions. Every crank of the Machine trembled. It turned its awful power upon Roosevelt and ordered him to get off the Independent ticket. He obeyed and protected the henchmen. The episode illustrates the practical power of a few independents who can act quickly. The panic in the Republican camp was entirely justified. If three tickets had remained in the field with Roosevelt at the head of two of them, thousands of Democrats and thousands of Republicans would have voted for the Reform ticket. The Republican ticket would have polled merely the dyed-in-the-wool machine Republicans.