Belford's Magazine, Vol II, No. 10, March 1889

by Various

We are a nation of phrase-eaters. As we have said before, all the fruit of the tree of knowledge has been canned—duly labelled and stowed away for winter use. There is no people on the face of the earth so given to a reliance on an abiding faith in dogmas. Our safety on earth and our salvation hereafter rest on a belief in dogmas. As a man may be guilty of every crime known to the criminal code and yet save his election through an avowal of belief in certain articles of faith, so we may consider ourselves safe if we abide by certain declarations of political principles. The theological and political avowals of faith may be violated with impunity in practice, yet there is a saving grace in words we fail to appreciate.

The origin of this strange condition is not difficult to find. Our continent was settled from Europe by two classes. One of these, the Puritans, fled from England to escape religious persecution. This persecution consisted in forbidding the theological rebels from openly expressing in prayer, hymn, or pulpit certain dogmas. They braved the perils of the seas and the privations of a howling wilderness that they might open their pious mouths and expand their pious lungs in a vociferous announcement of what they believed of abstract theology. The other class was made up of pirates who sought our continent, mainly south, in search of gold-mines and mythical riches in the hands of barbarians. And so between the two we became a race of phrase-eaters. As the theological dogma was considered good for the soul, a like political dogma was, and is, enough for the body politic. And how this is acted on we learn from the beginning. The Puritans, whose peculiar civilization dominated our nation, fled from persecution, not to establish toleration—for they went to hanging Quakers and Dissenters as soon as they landed in New England. Under this sort of government the lawless spirit of the pirates had full sway, and to-day, if we have a national characteristic, it is that we have more law and less order than any people on earth.

This condition makes us capable of the most extraordinary contradictions. We have, for example, a so-called republic at Washington that is practically a despotism. It is not the despotism of one man or of an oligarchy of men. It is a singularly contrived despotism of office—a bureaucracy that is not only of an irresponsible routine without brains, but enforced by fines, penalties, and heavy taxation. It is so removed from popular control that self-government terminates at the boundary-line of the District of Columbia. The people living under the very shadow of the Capitol are deprived of even the form of government; but practically they are in no worse condition than the citizens of the States. The so-called republic is a heavy, dull, cast-iron, unimpressive concern, slowly moved by public opinion, but utterly insensible to popular political control. We have a President elected every four years. After he is inaugurated he cannot be disturbed for four years except by office-seekers or assassination. We have a Senate representing States, where Delaware or Rhode Island has as much power as New York or Pennsylvania, and its members are returned every six years. The House of Representatives is the one popular body, but its members, returned every two years, are no match for the Senate and Executive, that hold the political patronage which makes and unmakes members of the House.

This, in brief, is our condition politically. There is another significant feature that escapes both native and foreign attention. It is the theory that underlies the foundation of all, and teaches that the sovereignty from which there is no appeal rests in the people. This is a very loose, uncertain, and really helpless affair. The old adage tells us that what is every man's affair is no man's business. We have so multiplied elections that they are almost continuous. This forms party organization, to which the business is intrusted, and again creates a class of professional politicians whose one business in life is politics. It is human nature that they should seek to make their vocation profitable. Here is where money enters; and we have seen the government pass from a mere political structure to a commercial machine dominated by money. The taxes for the support of the government have become enormous, but they make but a trifle to the indirect extortion, based on a pretence of encouraging home industries, which selects such certain unprofitable investments, and taxes the entire population for not only their support but their enrichment. The amount thus collected for the benefit of the few is enormous. It would support the standing armies of all Europe.

One searches in vain through the Constitution to find in letter or spirit any authority for such abuse.

This absurd system of government might work in a small, compact community where all the citizens were known to each other, their offices few, and their interests identical. But with sixty-odd millions scattered over a continent that reaches from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Lakes to the Gulf, and with these millions isolated from each other in agricultural pursuits, the system is impossible of practical operation.

This is the philosophy of American politics that Professor Bryce fails to grasp. He devotes his first volume to a consideration of the political structure as given us by its framers, as if such were in power and daily practice. He cannot see that it has gone out of existence as a constitutional government. We have in its stead a government of corporations, with the political machine as an annex and aid.

To understand this we must remember that a government is that active organization which directly affects the citizens' rights to life, liberty, and the uses and benefits of their labor, called property by some, and "the pursuit of happiness" by the Declaration of Independence. How the corporations have come to usurp this power a few statistical facts teach us. We have, for example, a hundred-and-sixty thousand miles of operating railroads. These network the entire land, and have the almost exclusive distribution of all our products. This vast instrument, possessed of sovereignty through the franchise, enters every man's business and pleasure. It is under the control and virtual ownership of less than sixty families.

We have the telegraph, which science gave us as the poor man's post-office, consisting as it does of a pole, a wire, a battery, and a boy, made a luxury for the rich in the monopoly that gives it to one man.

All that one eats, wears, and finds shelter under are, through this same process of corporation monopoly, enhanced in cost for the benefit of the few privileged men who grow rapidly into millionaires, while the masses suffer.