“But we have reform movements all the time, led by good men. Why aren’t these men elected?”
“Who are as absolutely inexperienced and blind as to the way to influence votes, as well can be. Look at it, as a contest, without regard to the merit of the cause. On one side we have bosses, who know and understand the men in their wards, have usually made themselves popular, are in politics for a living, have made it a life-study, and by dear experience have learned that they must surrender their own opinions in order to produce harmony and a solid vote. The reformer, on the contrary, is usually a man who has other occupations, and, if I may say so, has usually met with only partial success in them. By that I mean that the really successful merchant, or banker, or professional man cannot take time to work in politics, and so only the less successful try. Each reformer, too, is sure that he himself is right, and as his bread and butter is not in the issue, he quarrels to his heart’s content with his associates, so that they rarely can unite all their force. Most of the reform movements in this city have been attempted in a way that is simply laughable. What should we say if a hundred busy men were to get together to-morrow, and decide that they would open a great bank, to fight the clearing-house banks of New York? Yet this, in effect, is what the reformers have done over and over again in politics. They say to the men who have been kept in power for years by the people, ‘You are scoundrels. The people who elected you are ignorant We know how to do it better. Now we’ll turn you out.’ In short, they tell the majority they are fools, but ask their votes. The average reformer endorses thoroughly the theory ‘that every man is as good as another, and a little better.’ And he himself always is the better man. The people won’t stand that. The ‘holier than thou’ will defeat a man quicker in this country than will any rascality he may have done.”
“But don’t you think the reformer is right in principle?”
“In nine cases out of ten. But politics does not consist in being right. It’s in making other people think you are. Men don’t like to be told that they are ignorant and wrong, and this assumption is the basis of most of the so-called educational campaigns. To give impetus to a new movement takes immense experience, shrewdness, tact, and many other qualities. The people are obstructive—that is conservative—in most things, and need plenty of time.”
“Unless you tell them what they are to do,” laughed Watts. “Then they know quick enough.”
“Well, that has taken them fifteen years to learn. Don’t you see how absurd it is to suppose that the people are going to take the opinions of the better element off-hand? At the end of a three months’ campaign? Men have come into my ward and spoken to empty halls; they’ve flooded it with campaign literature, which has served to light fires; their papers have argued, and nobody read them. But the ward knows me. There’s hardly a voter who doesn’t. They’ve tested me. Most of them like me. I’ve lived among them for years. I’ve gone on their summer excursions. I’ve talked with them all over the district. I have helped them in their troubles. I have said a kind word over their dead. I’m godfather to many. With others I’ve stood shoulder to shoulder when the bullets were flying. Why, the voters who were children when I first came here, with whom I use to sit in the angle, are almost numerous enough now to carry an election as I advise. Do you suppose, because speakers, unknown to them, say I’m wrong, and because the three-cent papers, which they never see, abuse me, that they are going to turn from me unless I make them? That is the true secret of the failure of reformers. A logical argument is all right in a court of appeals, but when it comes to swaying five thousand votes, give me five thousand loving hearts rather than five thousand logical reasons.”
“Yet you have carried reforms.”
“I have tried, but always in a practical way. That is, by not antagonizing the popular men in politics, but by becoming one of them and making them help me. I have gained political power by recognizing that I could only have my own way by making it suit the voters. You see there are a great many methods of doing about the same thing. And the boss who does the most things that the people want, can do the most things that the people don’t want. Every time I have surrendered my own wishes, and done about what the people desire, I have added to my power, and so have been able to do something that the people or politicians do not care about or did not like.”
“And as a result you are called all sorts of names.”
“Yes. The papers call me a boss. If the voters didn’t agree with me, they would call me a reformer.”