The man in the street: Papers on American topics

by Meredith Nicholson

In recent years our periodical literature has devoted much space to discussions of problems of efficiency. We have heard repeatedly of the demand, not for two-thousand-dollar men, but for ten, twenty, and fifty thousand dollar men, in the great industries. The efficiency engineer has sprung into being; in my own city several hundred employees of an automobile company are organized into a class, of which a professor of psychology is the leader, the purpose being the promotion of individual and corporate efficiency. The first-rate man is in demand as a buyer, a salesman, a foreman, a manager. One of the largest corporations in America pays its employees bonuses apportioned on a basis of their value as demonstrated by actual performances from month to month. The minutest economies are a matter of daily study in every manufacturing and commercial house; the hunt for the first-rate man is unceasing. Executive ability, a special genius for buying and selling, need never go unrecognized. Recently a New York bank spent months searching for a bond-seller and finally chose an obscure young man from a Western town who fell by chance under the eye of a “scout” sent out to look for talent. But this eager search for the first-rate man, so marked in commerce and industry, only rarely touches our politics. It is only in politics that the second-rate man finds the broadest field for the exercise of his talents.

A President is beset by many embarrassments in the exercise of the appointing power. Our feudal system, by which senators and representatives are the custodians of post-office, district attorneyships, marshalships, and countless other positions, does not make for the recognition of the fit. While the power to appoint is vested in the executive, his choice must be approved by the senators or representatives. As the system operates, it is not really the President who appoints but the senators or representatives, and the President is expected to meet their wishes. To question their recommendations is to arouse animosity, and where the fate of important legislation hangs in the balance a President is under strong temptation to accept the recommendation of second-rate men in order to keep the members of the law-making bodies in good humor.

In the professions and industries, in commercial houses, even on the farm, the second-rate man is not wanted; but political jobs, high and low, are everywhere open to him. Everything but the public service is standardized; politics alone puts a premium upon inferiority. The greatest emphasis is laid upon the word service in every field but government. The average American “wants what he wants when he wants it,” and is proud of his ability to get it. “If it isn’t right, we make it right,” is a popular business slogan. Hotels whose indifferent service wins the displeasure of the travelling public are execrated and blacklisted. On the other hand, I have listened for hours to the laudation of good hotels, of the efficiency of railroads, of automobile manufacturers who “give good service.” We have a pride in these things; we like to relate incidents of our successful “kick” when the berth that we had reserved by telegraph wasn’t forthcoming and how we “took it up” with the railroad authorities, and how quickly our wounded feelings were poulticed. “I guess that won’t happen again on that road!” we chortle. Conversely we make our errands to a city hall or court-house as few as possible, knowing that the “service,” offered at the people’s expense is of a different order, and public officials may not be approached in that confident spirit with which we carry our needs or complaints to the heads of a private business.

Or, if some favor is to be asked, we brag that we have seen “Jim” or “Bob” and that he “fixed” it for us. It happens not infrequently that we want something “fixed” from purely selfish motives—something that should not be “fixed”—and it gives us a pleasurable sense of our “influence” to know that, as we have always treated “Jim” or “Bob” all right, “Jim” or “Bob” cheerfully assists us. We chuckle over the ease with which he accomplished the fixing where it would have been impossible for us to effect it through a direct legitimate appeal. Thus in hundreds of ways a boss, great or small, is able to grant favors that cost him nothing, thereby blurring the vision of those he places under obligations to the means by which he gains his power.

In municipal government the second and the third rate man, on down to a point where differentiations fade to the vanishing point, finds his greatest hope and security. As first-rate men are not available for the offices, they fall naturally to the inferior, the incompetent, or the corrupt. In few cities of a hundred thousand population is a man of trained ability and recognized fitness ever seriously considered for the mayoralty. Modern city government, with the broad powers conferred upon mayors, requires intelligence of the highest order. Usually without experience in large affairs, and crippled by a well-established tradition that he must reward party workers and personal friends, the incumbent surrounds himself with second and third rate men, for whose blunders the taxpayer meekly pays the bills.

The mayor’s office is hardly second to the presidency in the variety of its perplexities. A man of the best intentions will fail to satisfy a whole community. There is in every city a group of reformers who believe that a mayor should be able to effect the moral regeneration of the human race in one term of office. The first-rate man is aware of this, and the knowledge diminishes his anxiety to seek the place. A common indictment against the capable man who volunteers for municipal service is that his ignorance of political methods would make him “impractical” if he were elected. This sentiment is expressed frequently—often by large taxpayers. The insinuation is that a man of character and ideals would be unable to deal with the powers that prey by indirection. This is quite true: the fit man, the first-rate man, who would undertake the office untrammelled by political obligations, would not know the “good fellows” who must be dealt with in a spirit of leniency. This delicate duty is more safely intrusted to one who brings a certain sympathy to bear upon the task.

Whatever may be the merits of party government in its national application, there is no sound argument for its continuance in municipal affairs. Its effect is to discourage utterly, in most communities, any effort the first-rate man may be absurd enough to make to win enough of the franchises of his fellow citizens to land him in the mayoralty. On one occasion a Republican United States senator, speaking for his party’s candidate for the mayoralty at the last rally of a campaign in my own city, declared that his party must win, as defeat would have a discouraging effect on Republicans elsewhere. A few years ago both parties chose, in the Indianapolis primaries, mayoralty candidates of conspicuous unfitness. The Republican candidate was an auctioneer, whose ready tongue and drolleries on the stump made him the central figure in a highly picturesque campaign. He was elected and the affairs of a city of a quarter of a million people were cheerfully turned over to him. Ignorant of the very terminology in which municipal affairs are discussed, he avoided embarrassment by remaining away from his office as much as possible. In the last year of his administration—if so dignified a term may be applied to his incumbency—he resigned, to avoid the responsibility of dealing with disorders consequent upon a serious strike, and took refuge on the vaudeville stage. He was no more unfit on the day he resigned than on the day of his nomination or election—a fact of which the electorate had ample knowledge. He was chosen merely because he was a vote-getter. Republicans voted for him to preserve their regularity.[A]

I am prolonging these comments on municipal government for the reason that the city as a political factor is of so great influence in the State and nation, and because the domination of the unfit in the smaller unit offers more tangible instances for study. The impediments encountered by the fit who offer themselves for public service are many, and often ludicrous. Twice, in Indianapolis, men of the best standing have yielded under pressure to a demand that they offer themselves for the Republican mayoralty nomination. Neither had the slightest intention of using the mayoralty as a stepping-stone to higher office; the motives animating both were the highest. One of them was quickly disposed of by the report sent “down the line” that he had not been as regular as he might be, and by this token was an undesirable candidate. The other was subjected to a crushing defeat in the primary. There was nothing against him except that he was unknown to the “boys in the trenches.”

From the window by which I write I can see the chimneys of the flourishing industry conducted by the first of these gentlemen. He has constantly shown his public spirit in the most generous fashion; he is an admirable citizen. I dare say there is not an incompetent man or woman on his pay-roll. If he were out of employment and penniless to-morrow, scores of responsible positions would be open to him. But the public would not employ him; his own party would not even permit its membership to express its opinion of him; and had he gone before the electorate he would in all likelihood have been defeated by an invincible combination of every element of incompetence and venality in the city.

The other gentleman, who began life as a bank clerk, made a success of a commercial business, and is now president of one of the largest banks in the State. Such men are ineligible for municipal office; they are first-rate men; the very fact that they are men of character and ability who could be trusted to manage public affairs as they conduct their private business, removes them at once from consideration.