“But, Peter,” said Le Grand, “would you not like to see such a type of man as George William Curtis in office?”
“Mr. Curtis probably stood for the noblest political ideas this country has ever produced. But he held a beacon only to a small class. A man who writes from an easy-chair, will only sway easy-chair people. And easy-chair people never carried an election in this country, and never will. This country cannot have a government of the best. It will always be a government of the average. Mr. Curtis was only a leader to his own grade, just as Tim Sullivan is the leader of his. Mr. Curtis, in his editorials, spoke the feelings of one element in America. Sullivan, in Germania Hall, voices another. Each is representative, the one of five per cent. of New York; the other of ninety-five per cent. If the American people have decided one thing, it is that they will not be taken care of, nor coercively ruled, by their better element, or minorities.”
“Yet you will acknowledge that Curtis ought to rule, rather than Sullivan?”
“Not if our government is to be representative. I need not say that I wish such a type as Mr. Curtis was representative.”
“I suppose if he had tried to be a boss he would have failed?”
“I think so. For it requires as unusual a combination of qualities to be a successful boss, as to be a successful merchant or banker. Yet one cannot tell. I myself have never been able to say what elements make a boss, except that he must be in sympathy with the men whom he tries to guide, and that he must be meeting them. Mr. Curtis had a broad, loving nature and sympathies, and if the people had discovered them, they would have liked him. But the reserve which comes with culture makes one largely conceal one’s true feelings. Super-refinement puts a man out of sympathy with much that is basic in humanity, and it needs a great love, or a great sacrifice of feeling, to condone it. It is hard work for what Watts calls a tough, and such a man, to understand and admire one another.”
“But don’t you think,” said Mrs. D’Alloi, “that the people of our class are better and finer?”
“The expression ‘noblesse oblige’ shows that,” said madame.
“My experience has led me to think otherwise,” said Peter. “Of course there is a difference of standards, of ideals, and of education, in people, and therefore there are differences in conduct. But for their knowledge of what is right and wrong, I do not think the so-called better classes, which should, in truth, be called the prosperous classes, live up to their own standards of right any more than do the poor.”
“Oh, I say, draw it mild. At least exclude the criminal classes,” cried Watts. “They know better.”