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Title: The Boss and the Machine
Author: Samuel P. Orth
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THIS BOOK, VOLUME 43 IN THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES, ALLEN
JOHNSON, EDITOR, WAS DONATED TO PROJECT GUTENBERG BY THE JAMES
J. KELLY LIBRARY OF ST. GREGORY'S UNIVERSITY; THANKS TO ALEV AKMAN.
THE BOSS AND THE MACHINE, A CHRONICLE OF THE POLITICIANS
AND PARTY ORGANIZATION
BY SAMUEL P. ORTH
CONTENTS
I. THE RISE OF THE PARTY
II. THE RISE OF THE MACHINE
III. THE TIDE OF MATERIALISM
IV. THE POLITICIAN AND THE CITY
V. TAMMANY HALL
VI. LESSER OLIGARCHIES
VII. LEGISLATIVE OMNIPOTENCE
VIII. THE NATIONAL HIERARCHY
IX. THE AWAKENING
X. PARTY REFORM
XI. THE EXPERT AT LAST
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
THE BOSS AND THE MACHINE
CHAPTER I. THE RISE OF THE PARTY
The party system is an essential instrument of Democracy.
Wherever government rests upon the popular will, there the party
is the organ of expression and the agency of the ultimate power.
The party is, moreover, a forerunner of Democracy, for parties
have everywhere preceded free government. Long before Democracy
as now understood was anywhere established, long before the
American colonies became the United States, England was divided
between Tory and Whig. And it was only after centuries of bitter
political strife, during which a change of ministry would not
infrequently be accompanied by bloodshed or voluntary exile, that
England finally emerged with a government deriving its powers
from the consent of the governed.
The functions of the party, both as a forerunner and as a
necessary organ of Democracy, are well exemplified in American
experience. Before the Revolution, Tory and Whig were party names
used in the colonies to designate in a rough way two ideals of
political doctrine. The Tories believed in the supremacy of the
Executive, or the King; the Whigs in the supremacy of Parliament.
The Tories, by their rigorous and ruthless acts giving effect to
the will of an un-English King, soon drove the Whigs in the
colonies to revolt, and by the time of the Stamp Act (1765) a
well-knit party of colonial patriots was organized through
committees of correspondence and under the stimulus of local
clubs called "Sons of Liberty." Within a few years, these
patriots became the Revolutionists, and the Tories became the
Loyalists. As always happens in a successful revolution, the
party of opposition vanished, and when the peace of 1783 finally
put the stamp of reality upon the Declaration of 1776, the
patriot party had won its cause and had served its day.
Immediately thereafter a new issue, and a very significant one,
began to divide the thought of the people. The Articles of
Confederation, adopted as a form of government by the States
during a lull in the nationalistic fervor, had utterly failed to
perform the functions of a national government. Financially the
Confederation was a beggar at the doors of the States;
commercially it was impotent; politically it was bankrupt. The
new issue was the formation of a national government that should
in reality represent a federal nation, not a collection of touchy
States. Washington in his farewell letter to the American people
at the close of the war (1783) urged four considerations: a
strong central government, the payment of the national debt, a
well-organized militia, and the surrender by each State of
certain local privileges for the good of the whole. His "legacy,"
as this letter came to be called, thus bequeathed to us
Nationalism, fortified on the one hand by Honor and on the other
by Preparedness.
The Confederation floundered in the slough of inadequacy for
several years, however, before the people were sufficiently
impressed with the necessity of a federal government. When,
finally, through the adroit maneuver of Alexander Hamilton and
James Madison, the Constitutional Convention was called in 1787,
the people were in a somewhat chastened mood, and delegates were
sent to the Convention from all the States except Rhode Island.
No sooner had the delegates convened and chosen George Washington
as presiding officer, than the two opposing sides of opinion were
revealed, the nationalist and the particularist, represented by
the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, as they later termed
themselves. The Convention, however, was formed of the
conservative leaders of the States, and its completed work
contained in a large measure, in spite of the great compromises,
the ideas of the Federalists. This achievement was made possible
by the absence from the Convention of the two types of men who
were to prove the greatest enemy of the new document when it was
presented for popular approval, namely, the office-holder or
politician, who feared that the establishment of a central
government would deprive him of his influence, and the popular
demagogue, who viewed with suspicion all evidence of organized
authority. It was these two types, joined by a third--the
conscientious objector--who formed the AntiFederalist party to
oppose the adoption of the new Constitution. Had this opposition
been well-organized, it could unquestionably have defeated the
Constitution, even against its brilliant protagonists, Hamilton,
Madison, Jay, and a score of other masterly men.
The unanimous choice of Washington for President gave the new
Government a non-partizan initiation. In every way Washington
attempted to foster the spirit of an undivided household. He
warned his countrymen against partizanship and sinister political
societies. But he called around his council board talents which
represented incompatible ideals of government. Thomas Jefferson,
the first Secretary of State, and Alexander Hamilton, the first
Secretary of the Treasury, might for a time unite their energies
under the wise chieftainship of Washington, but their political
principles could never be merged. And when, finally, Jefferson
resigned, he became forthwith the leader of the opposition--not
to Washington, but to Federalism as interpreted by Hamilton, John
Adams, and Jay.
The name Anti-Federalist lost its aptness after the inauguration
of the Government. Jefferson and his school were not opposed to a
federal government. They were opposed only to its pretensions, to
its assumption of centralized power. Their deep faith in popular
control is revealed in the name they assumed,
Democratic-Republican. They were eager to limit the federal power
to the glorification of the States; the Federalists were
ambitious to expand the federal power at the expense of localism.
This is what Jefferson meant when he wrote to Washington as early
as 1792, "The Republican party wish to preserve the Government in
its present form." Now this is a very definite and fundamental
distinction. It involves the political difference between
government by the people and government by the representatives of
the people, and the practical difference between a government by
law and a government by mass-meeting.
Jefferson was a master organizer. At letter-writing, the one
means of communication in those days, he was a Hercules. His pen
never wearied. He soon had a compact party. It included not only
most of the Anti-Federalists, but the small politicians, the
tradesmen and artisans, who had worked themselves into a
ridiculous frenzy over the French Revolution and who despised
Washington for his noble neutrality. But more than these,
Jefferson won over a number of distinguished men who had worked
for the adoption of the Constitution, the ablest of whom was
James Madison, often called "the Father of the Constitution."
The Jeffersonians, thus representing largely the debtor and
farmer class, led by men of conspicuous abilities, proceeded to
batter down the prestige of the Federalists. They declared
themselves opposed to large expenditures of public funds, to
eager exploitation of government ventures, to the Bank, and to
the Navy, which they termed "the great beast with the great
belly." The Federalists included the commercial and creditor
class and that fine element in American life composed of leading
families with whom domination was an instinct, all led,
fortunately, by a few idealists of rare intellectual attainments.
And, with the political stupidity often characteristic of their
class, they stumbled from blunder to blunder. In 1800 Thomas
Jefferson, who adroitly coined the mistakes of his opponents into
political currency for himself, was elected President. He had
received no more electoral votes than Aaron Burr, that mysterious
character in our early politics, but the election was decided by
the House of Representatives, where, after seven days' balloting,
several Federalists, choosing what to them was the lesser of two
evils, cast the deciding votes for Jefferson. When the
Jeffersonians came to power, they no longer opposed federal
pretensions; they now, by one of those strange veerings often
found in American politics, began to give a liberal
interpretation to the Constitution, while the Federalists with
equal inconsistency became strict constructionists. Even
Jefferson was ready to sacrifice his theory of strict
construction in order to acquire the province of Louisiana.
The Jeffersonians now made several concessions to the
manufacturers, and with their support linked to that of the
agriculturists Jeffersonian democracy flourished without any
potent opposition. The second war with England lent it a doubtful
luster but the years immediately following the war restored
public confidence. Trade flourished on the sea. The frontier was
rapidly pushed to the Mississippi and beyond into the vast empire
which Jefferson had purchased. When everyone is busy, no one
cares for political issues, especially those based upon
philosophical differences. So Madison and Monroe succeeded to the
political regency which is known as the Virginia Dynasty.
This complacent epoch culminated in Monroe's "Era of Good
Feeling," which proved to be only the hush before the tornado.
The election of 1824 was indecisive, and the House of
Representatives was for a second time called upon to decide the
national choice. The candidates were John Quincy Adams, Andrew
Jackson, Henry Clay, and William H. Crawford. Clay threw his
votes to Adams, who was elected, thereby arousing the wrath of
Jackson and of the stalwart and irreconcilable frontiersmen who
hailed him as their leader. The Adams term merely marked a
transition from the old order to the new, from Jeffersonian to
Jacksonian democracy. Then was the word Republican dropped from
the party name, and Democrat became an appellation of definite
and practical significance.
By this time many of the older States had removed the early
restrictions upon voting, and the new States carved out of the
West had written manhood suffrage into their constitutions. This
new democracy flocked to its imperator; and Jackson entered his
capital in triumph, followed by a motley crowd of frontiersmen in
coonskin caps, farmers in butternut-dyed homespun, and hungry
henchmen eager for the spoils. For Jackson had let it be known
that he considered his election a mandate by the people to fill
the offices with his political adherents.
So the Democrats began their new lease of life with an orgy of
spoils. "Anybody is good enough for any job" was the favorite
watchword. But underneath this turmoil of desire for office,
significant party differences were shaping themselves. Henry
Clay, the alluring orator and master of compromise, brought
together a coalition of opposing fragments. He and his following
objected to Jackson's assumption of vast executive prerogatives,
and in a brilliant speech in the Senate Clay espoused the name
Whig. Having explained the origin of the term in English and
colonial politics, he cried: "And what is the present but the
same contest in another form? The partizans of the present
Executive sustain his favor in the most boundless extent. The
Whigs are opposing executive encroachment and a most alarming
extension of executive power and prerogative. They are contending
for the rights of the people, for free institutions, for the
supremacy of the Constitution and the laws."
There soon appeared three practical issues which forced the new
alignment. The first was the Bank. The charter of the United
States Bank was about to expire, and its friends sought a
renewal. Jackson believed the Bank an enemy of the Republic, as
its officers were anti-Jacksonians, and he promptly vetoed the
bill extending the charter. The second issue was the tariff.
Protection was not new; but Clay adroitly renamed it, calling it
"the American system." It was popular in the manufacturing towns
and in portions of the agricultural communities, but was bitterly
opposed by the slave-owning States.
A third issue dealt with internal improvements. All parts of the
country were feeling the need of better means of communication,
especially between the West and the East. Canals and turnpikes
were projected in every direction. Clay, whose imagination was
fervid, advocated a vast system of canals and roads financed by
national aid. But the doctrine of states-rights answered that the
Federal Government had no power to enter a State, even to spend
money on improvements, without the consent of that State. And, at
all events, for Clay to espouse was for Jackson to oppose.
These were the more important immediate issues of the conflict
between Clay's Whigs and Jackson's Democrats, though it must be
acknowledged that the personalities of the leaders were quite as
much an issue as any of the policies which they espoused. The
Whigs, however, proved unequal to the task of unhorsing their
foes; and, with two exceptions, the Democrats elected every
President from Jackson to Lincoln. The exceptions were William
Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, both of whom were elected on
their war records and both of whom died soon after their
inauguration. Tyler, who as Vice-President succeeded General
Harrison, soon estranged the Whigs, so that the Democratic
triumph was in effect continuous over a period of thirty years.
Meanwhile, however, another issue was shaping the destiny of
parties and of the nation. It was an issue that politicians
dodged and candidates evaded, that all parties avoided, that
publicists feared, and that presidents and congressmen tried to
hide under the tenuous fabric of their compromises. But
it was an issue that persisted in keeping alive and that would
not down, for it was an issue between right and wrong. Three
times the great Clay maneuvered to outflank his opponents over
the smoldering fires of the slavery issue, but he died before the
repeal of the Missouri Compromise gave the death-blow to his
loosely gathered coalition. Webster, too, and Calhoun, the other
members of that brilliant trinity which represented the genius of
Constitutional Unionism, of States Rights, and of Conciliation,
passed away before the issue was squarely faced by a new party
organized for the purpose of opposing the further expansion of
slavery.
This new organization, the Republican party, rapidly assumed form
and solidarity. It was composed of Northern Whigs, of
anti-slavery Democrats, and of members of several minor groups,
such as the Know-Nothing or American party, the Liberty party,
and included as well some of the despised Abolitionists. The vote
for Fremont, its first presidential candidate, in 1856, showed it
to be a sectional party, confined to the North. But the definite
recognition of slavery as an issue by an opposition party had a
profound effect upon the Democrats. Their Southern wing now
promptly assumed an uncompromising attitude, which, in 1860,
split the party into factions. The Southern wing named
Breckinridge; the Northern wing named Stephen A. Douglas; while
many Democrats as well as Whigs took refuge in a third party,
calling itself the Constitutional Union, which named John Bell.
This division cost the Democrats the election, for, under the
unique and inspiring leadership of Abraham Lincoln, the
Republicans rallied the anti-slavery forces of the North and won.
Slavery not only racked the parties and caused new alignments; it
racked and split the Union. It is one of the remarkable phenomena
of our political history that the Civil War did not destroy the
Democratic party, though the Southern chieftains of that party
utterly lost their cause. The reason is that the party never was
as purely a Southern as the Republican was a Northern party.
Moreover, the arrogance and blunders of the Republican leaders
during the days of Reconstruction helped to keep it alive. A
baneful political heritage has been handed down to us from the
Civil War--the solid South. It overturns the national balance of
parties, perpetuates a pernicious sectionalism, and deprives the
South of that bipartizan rivalry which keeps open the currents of
political life.
Since the Civil War the struggle between the two dominant parties
has been largely a struggle between the Ins and the Outs. The
issues that have divided them have been more apparent than real.
The tariff, the civil service, the trusts, and the long list of
other "issues" do not denote fundamental differences, but only
variations of degree. Never in any election during this long
interval has there been definitely at stake a great national
principle, save for the currency issue of 1896 and the colonial
question following the War with Spain. The revolt of the
Progressives in 1912 had a character of its own; but neither of
the old parties squarely joined issue with the Progressives in
the contest which followed. The presidential campaign of 1916
afforded an opportunity to place on trial before the people a
great cause, for there undoubtedly existed then in the country
two great and opposing sides of public opinion--one for and the
other against war with Germany. Here again, however, the issue
was not joined but was adroitly evaded by both the candidates.
None the less there has been a difference between the two great
parties. The Republican party has been avowedly nationalistic,
imperialistic, and in favor of a vigorous constructive foreign
policy. The Democratic party has generally accepted the lukewarm
international policy of Jefferson and the exaltation of the
locality and the plain individual as championed by Jackson. Thus,
though in a somewhat intangible and variable form, the doctrinal
distinctions between Hamilton and Jefferson have survived.
In the emergence of new issues, new parties are born. But it is
one of the singular characteristics of the American party system
that third parties are abortive. Their adherents serve mainly as
evangelists, crying their social and economic gospel in the
political wilderness. If the issues are vital, they are gradually
absorbed by the older parties.
Before the Civil War several sporadic parties were formed. The
most unique was the Anti-Masonic party. It flourished on the
hysteria caused by the abduction of William Morgan of Batavia, in
western New York, in 1826. Morgan had written a book purporting
to lay bare the secrets of Freemasonry. His mysterious
disappearance was laid at the doors of leading Freemasons; and it
was alleged that members of this order placed their secret
obligations above their duties as citizens and were hence unfit
for public office. The movement became impressive in
Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, Ohio, and New York. It
served to introduce Seward and Fillmore into politics. Even a
national party was organized, and William Wirt, of Maryland, a
distinguished lawyer, was nominated for President. He received,
however, only the electoral votes of Vermont. The excitement soon
cooled, and the party disappeared.
The American or Know-Nothing party had for its slogan "America
for Americans," and was a considerable factor in certain
localities, especially in New York and the Middle States, from
1853 to 1856. The Free Soil party, espousing the cause of slavery
restriction, named Martin Van Buren as its presidential candidate
and polled enough votes in the election of 1848 to defeat Cass,
the Democratic candidate. It did not survive the election of
1852, but its essential principle was adopted by the Republican
party.
Since the Civil War, the currency question has twice given life
to third-party movements. The Greenbacks of 1876-1884 and the
Populists of the 90's were both of the West. Both carried on for
a few years a vigorous crusade, and both were absorbed by the
older parties as the currency question assumed concrete form and
became a commanding political issue. Since 1872, the
Prohibitionists have named national tickets. Their question,
which was always dodged by the dominant parties, is now rapidly
nearing a solution.
The one apparently unreconcilable element in our political life
is the socialistic or labor party. Never of great importance in
any national election, the various labor parties have been of
considerable influence in local politics. Because of its
magnitude, the labor vote has always been courted by Democrats
and Republicans with equal ardor but with varying success.
CHAPTER II. THE RISE OF THE MACHINE
Ideas or principles alone, however eloquently and insistently
proclaimed, will not make a party. There must be organization.
Thus we have two distinct practical phases of American party
politics: one regards the party as an agency of the electorate, a
necessary organ of democracy; the other, the party as an
organization, an army determined to achieve certain conquests.
Every party has, therefore, two aspects, each attracting a
different kind of person: one kind allured by the principles
espoused; the other, by the opportunities of place and personal
gain in the organization. The one kind typifies the body of
voters; the other the dominant minority of the party.
When one speaks, then, of a party in America, he embraces in that
term: first, the tenets or platform for which the party assumes
to stand (i.e., principles that may have been wrought out of
experience, may have been created by public opinion, or were
perhaps merely made out of hand by manipulators); secondly, the
voters who profess attachment to these principles; and thirdly,
the political expert, the politician with his organization or
machine. Between the expert and the great following are many
gradations of party activity, from the occasional volunteer to
the chieftain who devotes all his time to "politics."
It was discovered very early in American experience that without
organization issues would disintegrate and principles remain but
scintillating axioms. Thus necessity enlisted executive talent
and produced the politician, who, having once achieved an
organization, remained at his post to keep it intact between
elections and used it for purposes not always prompted by the
public welfare.
In colonial days, when the struggle began between Crown and
Colonist, the colonial patriots formed clubs to designate their
candidates for public office. In Massachusetts these clubs were
known as "caucuses," a word whose derivation is unknown, but
which has now become fixed in our political vocabulary. These
early caucuses in Boston have been described as follows: "Mr.
Samuel Adams' father and twenty others, one or two from the north
end of the town, where all the ship business is carried on, used
to meet, make a caucus, and lay their plans for introducing
certain persons into places of trust and power. When they had
settled it, they separated, and used each their particular
influence within his own circle. He and his friends would furnish
themselves with ballots, including the names of the parties fixed
upon, which they distributed on the day of election. By acting in
concert together with a careful and extensive distribution of
ballots they generally carried the elections to their own mind."
As the revolutionary propaganda increased in momentum, caucuses
assumed a more open character. They were a sort of informal town
meeting, where neighbors met and agreed on candidates and the
means of electing them. After the adoption of the Constitution,
the same methods were continued, though modified to suit the
needs of the new party alignments. In this informal manner, local
and even congressional candidates were named.
Washington was the unanimous choice of the nation. In the third
presidential election, John Adams was the tacitly accepted
candidate of the Federalists and Jefferson of the
Democratic-Republicans, and no formal nominations seem to have
been made. But from 1800 to 1824 the presidential candidates were
designated by members of Congress in caucus. It was by this means
that the Virginia Dynasty fastened itself upon the country. The
congressional caucus, which was one of the most arrogant and
compact political machines that our politics has produced,
discredited itself by nominating William H. Crawford (1824), a
machine politician, whom the public never believed to be of
presidential caliber. In the bitter fight that placed John Quincy
Adams in the White House and made Jackson the eternal enemy of
Clay, the congressional caucus met its doom. For several years,
presidential candidates were nominated by various informal
methods. In 1828 a number of state legislatures formally
nominated Jackson. In several States the party members of the
legislatures in caucus nominated presidential candidates. DeWitt
Clinton was so designated by the New York legislature in 1812 and
Henry Clay by the Kentucky legislature in 1822. Great mass
meetings, often garnished with barbecues, were held in many parts
of the country in 1824 for indorsing the informal nominations of
the various candidates.
But none of these methods served the purpose. The President was a
national officer, backed by a national party, and chosen by a
national electorate. A national system of nominating the
presidential candidates was demanded. On September 26, 1831, 113
delegates of the Anti-Masonic party, representing thirteen
States, met in a national convention in Baltimore. This was the
first national nominating convention held in America.
In February, 1831, the Whig members of the Maryland legislature
issued a call for a national Whig convention. This was held in
Baltimore the following December. Eighteen States were
represented by delegates, each according to the number of
presidential electoral votes it cast. Clay was named for
President. The first national Democratic convention met in
Baltimore on May 21, 1832, and nominated Jackson.
Since that time, presidential candidates have been named in
national conventions. There have been surprisingly few changes in
procedure since the first convention. It opened with a temporary
organization, examined the credentials of delegates, and
appointed a committee on permanent organization, which reported a
roster of permanent officers. It appointed a committee on
platform--then called an address to the people; it listened to
eulogistic nominating speeches, balloted for candidates, and
selected a committee to notify the nominees of their designation.
This is practically the order of procedure today. The national
convention is at once the supreme court and the supreme
legislature of the national party. It makes its own rules,
designates its committees, formulates their procedure and defines
their power, writes the platform, and appoints the national
executive committee.
Two rules that have played a significant part in these
conventions deserve special mention. The first Democratic
convention, in order to insure the nomination of Van Buren for
Vice-President--the nomination of Jackson for President was
uncontested--adopted the rule that "two-thirds of the whole
number of the votes in the convention shall be necessary to
constitute a choice." This "two-thirds" rule, so undemocratic in
its nature, remains the practice of the Democratic party today.
The Whigs and Republicans always adhered to the majority rule.
The early Democratic conventions also adopted the practice of
allowing the majority of the delegates from any State to cast the
vote of the entire delegation from that State, a rule which is
still adhered to by the Democrats. But the Republicans have since
1876 adhered to the policy of allowing each individual delegate
to cast his vote as he chooses.
The convention was by no means novel when accepted as a national
organ for a national party. As early as 1789 an informal
convention was held in the Philadelphia State House for
nominating Federalist candidates for the legislature. The
practice spread to many Pennsylvania counties and to other
States, and soon this informality of self-appointed delegates
gave way to delegates appointed according to accepted rules. When
the legislative caucus as a means for nominating state officers
fell into disrepute, state nominating conventions took its place.
In 1812 one of the earliest movements for a state convention was
started by Tammany Hall, because it feared that the legislative
caucus would nominate DeWitt Clinton, its bitterest foe. The
caucus, however, did not name Clinton, and the convention was not
assembled. The first state nominating convention was held in
Utica, New York, in 1824 by that faction of the Democratic party
calling itself the People's party. The custom soon spread to
every State, so that by 1835 it was firmly established. County
and city conventions also took the place of the caucus for naming
local candidates.
But nominations are only the beginning of the contest, and
obviously caucuses and conventions cannot conduct campaigns. So
from the beginning these nominating bodies appointed campaign
committees. With the increase in population came the increased
complexity of the committee system. By 1830 many of the States
had perfected a series of state, district, and county committees.
There remained the necessity of knitting these committees into a
national unity. The national convention which nominated Clay in
1831 appointed a "Central State Corresponding Committee" in each
State where none existed, and it recommended "to the several
States to organize subordinate corresponding committees in each
county and town." This was the beginning of what soon was to
evolve into a complete national hierarchy of committees. In 1848
the Democratic convention appointed a permanent national
committee, composed of one member from each State. This committee
was given the power to call the next national convention, and
from the start became the national executive body of the party.
It is a common notion that the politician and his machine are of
comparatively recent origin. But the American politician arose
contemporaneously with the party, and with such singular
fecundity of ways and means that it is doubtful if his modern
successors could teach him anything. McMaster declares: "A very
little study of long-forgotten politics will suffice to show that
in filibustering and gerrymandering, in stealing governorships
and legislatures, in using force at the polls, in colonizing and
in distributing patronage to whom patronage is due, in all the
frauds and tricks that go to make up the worst form of practical
politics, the men who founded our state and national governments
were always our equals, and often our masters." And this at a
time when only propertied persons could vote in any of the States
and when only professed Christians could either vote or hold
office in two of them!
While Washington was President, Tammany Hall, the first municipal
machine, began its career; and presently George Clinton, Governor
of New York, and his nephew, DeWitt Clinton, were busy organizing
the first state machine. The Clintons achieved their purpose
through the agency of a Council of Appointment, prescribed by the
first Constitution of the State, consisting of the Governor and
four senators chosen by the legislature. This council had the
appointment of nearly all the civil officers of the State from
Secretary of State to justices of the peace and auctioneers,
making a total of 8287 military and 6663 civil offices. As the
emoluments of some of these offices were relatively high, the
disposal of such patronage was a plum-tree for the politician.
The Clintons had been Anti-Federalists and had opposed the
adoption of the Constitution. In 1801 DeWitt Clinton became a
member of the Council of Appointment and soon dictated its
action. The head of every Federalist office-holder fell.
Sheriffs, county clerks, surrogates, recorders, justices by the
dozen, auctioneers by the score, were proscribed for the benefit
of the Clintons. De Witt was sent to the United States Senate in
1802, and at the age of thirty-three he found himself on the
highroad to political eminence. But he resigned almost at once to
become Mayor of New York City, a position he occupied for about
ten years, years filled with the most venomous fights between
Burrites and Bucktails. Clinton organized a compact machine in
the city. A biased contemporary description of this machine has
come down to us. "You [Clinton] are encircled by a mercenary
band, who, while they offer adulation to your system of error,
are ready at the first favorable moment to forsake and desert
you. A portion of them are needy young men, who without maturely
investigating the consequence, have sacrificed principle to
self-aggrandizement. Others are mere parasites, that well know
the tenure on which they hold their offices, and will ever pay
implicit obedience to those who administer to their wants. Many
of your followers are among the most profligate of the community.
They are the bane of social and domestic happiness, senile and
dependent panderers."
In 1812 Clinton became a candidate for President and polled 89
electoral votes against Madison's 128. Subsequently he became
Governor of New York on the Erie Canal issue; but his political
cunning seems to have forsaken him; and his perennial quarrels
with every other faction in his State made him the object of a
constant fire of vituperation. He had, however, taught all his
enemies the value of spoils, and he adhered to the end to the
political action he early advised a friend to adopt: "In a
political warfare, the defensive side will eventually lose. The
meekness of Quakerism will do in religion but not in politics. I
repeat it, everything will answer to energy and decision."
Martin Van Buren was an early disciple of Clinton. Though he
broke with his political chief in 1813, he had remained long
enough in the Clinton school to learn every trick; and he
possessed such native talent for intrigue, so smooth a manner,
and such a wonderful memory for names, that he soon found himself
at the head of a much more perfect and far-reaching machine than
Clinton had ever dreamed of. The Empire State has never produced
the equal of Van Buren as a manipulator of legislatures. No
modern politician would wish to face publicity if he resorted to
the petty tricks that Van Buren used in legislative politics. And
when, in 1821, he was elected to the Senate of the United States,
he became one of the organizers of the first national machine.
The state machine of Van Buren was long known as the "Albany
Regency." It included several very able politicians: William L.
Marcy, who became United States Senator in 1831; Silas Wright,
elected Senator in 1833; John A. Dix, who became Senator in 1845;
Benjamin F. Butler, who was United States Attorney-General under
President Van Buren, besides a score or more of prominent state
officials. It had an influential organ in the Albany Argus,
lieutenants in every county, and captains in every town. Its
confidential agents kept the leaders constantly informed of the
political situation in every locality; and its discipline made
the wish of Van Buren and his colleagues a command. Federal and
local patronage and a sagacious distribution of state contracts
sustained this combination. When the practice of nominating by
conventions began, the Regency at once discerned the strategic
value of controlling delegates, and, until the break in the
Democratic party in 1848, it literally reigned in the State.
With the disintegration of the Federalist party came the loss of
concentrated power by the colonial families of New England and
New York. The old aristocracy of the South was more fortunate in
the maintenance of its power. Jefferson's party was not only well
disciplined; it gave its confidence to a people still accustomed
to class rule and in turn was supported by them. In a strict
sense the Virginia Dynasty was not a machine like Van Buren's
Albany Regency. It was the effect of the concentrated influence
of men of great ability rather than a definite organization. The
congressional caucus was the instrument through which their
influence was made practical. In 1816, however, a considerable
movement was started to end the Virginia monopoly. It spread to
the Jeffersonians of the North. William H. Crawford, of Georgia,
and Daniel Tompkins, of New York, came forward as competitors
with Monroe for the caucus nomination. The knowledge of this
intrigue fostered the rising revolt against the caucus.
Twenty-two Republicans, many of whom were known to be opposed to
the caucus system, absented themselves. Monroe was nominated by
the narrow margin of eleven votes over Crawford. By the time
Monroe had served his second term the discrediting of the caucus
was made complete by the nomination of Crawford by a thinly
attended gathering of his adherents, who presumed to act for the
party. The Virginia Dynasty had no further favorites to foster,
and a new political force swept into power behind the dominating
personality of Andrew Jackson.
The new Democracy, however, did not remove the aristocratic power
of the slaveholder; and from Jackson's day to Buchanan's this
became an increasing force in the party councils. The slavery
question illustrates how a compact group of capable and
determined men, dominated by an economic motive, can exercise for
years in the political arena a preponderating influence, even
though they represent an actual minority of the nation. This
untoward condition was made possible by the political sagacity
and persistence of the party managers and by the unwillingness of
a large portion of the people to bring the real issue to a head.
Before the Civil War, then, party organization had become a fixed
and necessary incident in American politics. The war changed the
face of our national affairs. The changes wrought multiplied the
opportunities of the professional politician, and in these
opportunities, as well as in the transfused energies and ideals
of the people, we must seek the causes for those perversions of
party and party machinery which have characterized our modern
epoch.
CHAPTER III. THE TIDE OF MATERIALISM
The Civil War, which shocked the country into a new national
consciousness and rearranged the elements of its economic life,
also brought about a new era in political activity and
management. The United States after Appomattox was a very
different country from the United States before Sumter was fired
upon. The war was a continental upheaval, like the Appalachian
uplift in our geological history, producing sharp and profound
readjustments.
Despite the fact that in 1864 Lincoln had been elected on a Union
ticket supported by War Democrats, the Republicans claimed the
triumphs of the war as their own. They emerged from the struggle
with the enormous prestige of a party triumphant and with
"Saviors of the Union" inscribed on their banners.
The death of their wise and great leader opened the door to a
violent partizan orgy. President Andrew Johnson could not check
the fury of the radical reconstructionists; and a new political
era began in a riot of dogmatic and insolent dictatorship, which
was intensified by the mob of carpetbaggers, scalawags, and
freedmen in the South, and not abated by the lawless promptings
of the Ku-Klux to regain patrician leadership in the home of
secession nor by the baneful resentment of the North. The soldier
was made a political asset. For a generation the "bloody shirt"
was waved before the eyes of the Northern voter; and the evils,
both grotesque and gruesome, of an unnatural reconstruction are
not yet forgotten in the South.
A second opportunity of the politician was found in the rapid
economic expansion that followed the war. The feeling of security
in the North caused by the success of the Union arms buoyed an
unbounded optimism which made it easy to enlist capital in new
enterprises, and the protective tariff and liberal banking law
stimulated industry. Exports of raw material and food products
stimulated mining, grazing, and farming. European capital sought
investments in American railroads, mines, and industrial under-
takings. In the decade following the war the output of pig iron
doubled, that of coal multiplied by five, and that of steel by
one hundred. Superior iron and copper, Pennsylvania coal and oil,
Nevada and California gold and silver, all yielded their enormous
values to this new call of enterprise. Inventions and
manufactures of all kinds flourished. During 1850-60
manufacturing establishments had increased by fourteen per cent.
During 1860-70 they increased seventy-nine per cent.
The Homestead Act of May 20, 1862, opened vast areas of public
lands to a new immigration. The flow of population was westward,
and the West called for communication with the East. The Union
Pacific and Central Pacific railways, the pioneer
transcontinental lines, fostered on generous grants of land, were
the tokens of the new transportation movement. Railroads were
pushing forward everywhere with unheard-of rapidity. Short lines
were being merged into far-reaching systems. In the early
seventies the Pennsylvania system was organized and the
Vanderbilts acquired control of lines as far west as Chicago.
Soon the Baltimore and Ohio system extended its empire of trade
to the Mississippi. Half a dozen ambitious trans-Mississippi
systems, connecting with four new transcontinental projects, were
put into operation.
Prosperity is always the opportunity of the politician. What is
of greatest significance to the student of politics is that
prosperity at this time was organized on a new basis. Before the
war business had been conducted largely by individuals or
partnerships. The unit was small; the amount of capital needed
was limited. But now the unit was expanding so rapidly, the need
for capital was so lavish, the empire of trade so extensive, that
a new mechanism of ownership was necessary. This device, of
course, was the corporation. It had, indeed, existed as a trading
unit for many years. But the corporation before 1860 was
comparatively small and was generally based upon charters granted
by special act of the legislature.
No other event has had so practical a bearing on our politics and
our economic and social life as the advent of the corporate
device for owning and manipulating private business. For it links
the omnipotence of the State to the limitations of private
ownership; it thrusts the interests of private business into
every legislature that grants charters or passes regulating acts;
it diminishes, on the other hand, that stimulus to honesty and
correct dealing which a private individual discerns to be his
greatest asset in trade, for it replaces individual
responsibility with group responsibility and scatters ownership
among so large a number of persons that sinister manipulation is
possible.
But if the private corporation, through its interest in broad
charter privileges and liberal corporation laws and its devotion
to the tariff and to conservative financial policies, found it
convenient to do business with the politician and his
organization, the quasi-public corporations, especially the steam
railroads and street railways, found it almost essential to their
existence. They received not only their franchises but frequently
large bonuses from the public treasury. The Pacific roads alone
were endowed with an empire of 145,000,000 acres of public land.
States, counties, and cities freely loaned their credit and gave
ample charters to new railway lines which were to stimulate
prosperity.
City councils, legislatures, mayors, governors, Congress, and
presidents were drawn into the maelstrom of commercialism. It is
not surprising that side by side with the new business
organization there grew up a new political organization, and that
the new business magnate was accompanied by a new political
magnate. The party machine and the party boss were the natural
product of the time, which was a time of gain and greed. It was a
sordid reaction, indeed, from the high principles that sought
victory on the field of battle and that found their noblest
embodiment in the character of Abraham Lincoln.
The dominant and domineering party chose the leading soldier of
the North as its candidate for President. General Grant, elected
as a popular idol because of his military genius, possessed
neither the experience nor the skill to countermove the
machinations of designing politicians and their business allies.
On the other hand, he soon displayed an admiration for business
success that placed him at once in accord with the spirit of the
hour. He exalted men who could make money rather than men who
could command ideas. He chose Alexander T. Stewart, the New York
merchant prince, one of the three richest men of his day, for
Secretary of the Treasury. The law, however, forbade the
appointment to this office of any one who should "directly or
indirectly be concerned or interested in carrying on the business
of trade or commerce," and Stewart was disqualified. Adolph E.
Borie of Philadelphia, whose qualifications were the possession
of great wealth and the friendship of the President, was named
Secretary of the Navy. Another personal friend, John A. Rawlins,
was named Secretary of War. A third friend, Elihu B. Washburne of
Illinois, was made Secretary of State. Washburne soon resigned,
and Hamilton Fish of New York was appointed in his place. Fish,
together with General Jacob D. Cox of Ohio, Secretary of the
Interior, and Judge E. Rockwood Hoar of Massachusetts,
Attorney-General, formed a strong triumvirate of ability and
character in the Cabinet. But, while Grant displayed pleasure in
the companionship of these eminent men, they never possessed his
complete confidence. When the machinations for place and favor
began, Hoar and Cox were in the way. Hoar had offended the Senate
in his recommendations for federal circuit judges (the circuit
court was then newly established), and when the President named
him for Justice of the Supreme Court, Hoar was rejected. Senator
Cameron, one of the chief spoils politicians of the time, told
Hoar frankly why: "What could you expect for a man who had
snubbed seventy Senators!" A few months later (June, 1870), the
President bluntly asked for Hoar's resignation, a sacrifice to
the gods of the Senate, to purchase their favor for the Santo
Domingo treaty.
Cox resigned in the autumn. As Secretary of the Interior he had
charge of the Patent Office, Census Bureau, and Indian Service,
all of them requiring many appointments. He had attempted to
introduce a sort of civil service examination for applicants and
had vehemently protested against political assessments levied on
clerks in his department. He especially offended Senators Cameron
and Chandler, party chieftains who had the ear of the President.
General Cox stated the matter plainly: "My views of the necessity
of reform in the civil service had brought me more or less into
collision with the plans of our active political managers and my
sense of duty has obliged me to oppose some of their methods of
action." These instances reveal how the party chieftains insisted
inexorably upon their demands. To them the public service was
principally a means to satisfy party ends, and the chief duty of
the President and his Cabinet was to satisfy the claims of party
necessity. General Cox said that distributing offices occupied
"the larger part of the time of the President and all his
Cabinet." General Garfield wrote (1877): "One-third of the
working hours of Senators and Representatives is hardly
sufficient to meet the demands made upon them in reference to
appointments to office."
By the side of the partizan motives stalked the desire for gain.
There were those to whom parties meant but the opportunity for
sudden wealth. The President's admiration for commercial success
and his inability to read the motives of sycophants multiplied
their opportunities, and in the eight years of his administration
there was consummated the baneful union of business and politics.
During the second Grant campaign (1872), when Horace Greeley was
making his astounding run for President, the New York Sun hinted
at gross and wholesale briberies of Congressmen by Oakes Ames and
his associates who had built the Union Pacific Railroad, an
enterprise which the United States had generously aided with
loans and gifts.
Three committees of Congress, two in the House and one in the
Senate (the Poland Committee, the Wilson Committee, and the
Senate Committee), subsequently investigated the charges. Their
investigations disclosed the fact that Ames, then a member of the
House of Representatives, the principal stockholder in the Union
Pacific, and the soul of the enterprise, had organized, under an
existing Pennsylvania charter, a construction company called the
Credit Mobilier, whose shares were issued to Ames and his
associates. To the Credit Mobilier were issued the bonds and
stock of the Union Pacific, which had been paid for "at not more
than thirty cents on the dollar in road-making."* As the United
States, in addition to princely gifts of land, had in effect
guaranteed the cost of construction by authorizing the issue of
Government bonds, dollar for dollar and side by side with the
bonds of the road, the motive of the magnificent shuffle, which
gave the road into the hands of a construction company, was
clear. Now it was alleged that stock of the Credit Mobilier,
paying dividends of three hundred and forty per cent, had been
distributed by Ames among many of his fellow-Congressmen, in
order to forestall a threatened investigation. It was disclosed
that some of the members had refused point blank to have anything
to do with the stock; others had refused after deliberation;
others had purchased some of it outright; others, alas!, had
"purchased" it, to be paid for out of its own dividends.
* Testimony before the Wilson Committee.
The majority of the members involved in the nasty affair were
absolved by the Poland Committee from "any corrupt motive or
purpose." But Oakes Ames of Massachusetts and James Brooks of New
York were recommended for expulsion from the House and Patterson
of New Hampshire from the Senate. The House, however, was content
with censuring Ames and Brooks, and the Senate permitted
Patterson's term to expire, since only five days of it remained.
Whatever may have been the opinion of Congress, and whatever a
careful reading of the testimony discloses to an impartial mind
at this remote day, upon the voters of that time the revelations
came as a shock. Some of the most trusted Congressmen were drawn
into the miasma of suspicion, among them Garfield; Dawes;
Scofield; Wilson, the newly elected Vice-President; Colfax, the
outgoing Vice-President. Colfax had been a popular idol, with the
Presidency in his vision; now bowed and disgraced, he left the
national capital never to return with a public commission.
In 1874 came the disclosures of the Whiskey Ring. They involved
United States Internal Revenue officers and distillers in the
revenue district of St. Louis and a number of officials at
Washington. Benjamin H. Bristow, on becoming Secretary of the
Treasury in June of that year, immediately scented corruption. He
discovered that during 1871-74 only about one-third of the
whiskey shipped from St. Louis had paid the tax and that the
Government had been defrauded of nearly $3,000,000. "If a
distiller was honest," says James Ford Rhodes, the eminent
historian, "he was entrapped into some technical violation of the
law by the officials, who by virtue of their authority seized his
distillery, giving him the choice of bankruptcy or a partnership
in their operations; and generally he succumbed."
McDonald, the supervisor of the St. Louis revenue district, was
the leader of the Whiskey Ring. He lavished gifts upon President
Grant, who, with an amazing indifference and innocence, accepted
such favors from all kinds of sources. Orville E. Babcock, the
President's private secretary, who possessed the complete
confidence of the guileless general, was soon enmeshed in the net
of investigation. Grant at first declared, "If Babcock is guilty,
there is no man who wants him so much proven guilty as I do, for
it is the greatest piece of traitorism to me that a man could
possibly practice." When Babcock was indicted, however, for
complicity to defraud the Government, the President did not
hesitate to say on oath that he had never seen anything in
Babcock's behavior which indicated that he was in any way
interested in the Whiskey Ring and that he had always had "great
confidence in his integrity and efficiency." In other ways the
President displayed his eagerness to defend his private
secretary. The jury acquitted Babcock, but the public did not. He
was compelled to resign under pressure of public condemnation,
and was afterwards indicted for conspiracy to rob a safe of
documents of an incriminating character. But Grant seems never to
have lost faith in him. Three of the men sent to prison for their
complicity in the whiskey fraud were pardoned after six months.
McDonald, the chieftain of the gang, served but one year of his
term.
The exposure of the Whiskey Ring was followed by an even more
startling humiliation. The House Committee on Expenditures in the
War Department recommended that General William W. Belknap,
Secretary of War, be impeached for "high crimes and misdemeanors
while in office," and the House unanimously adopted the
recommendation. The evidence upon which the committee based its
drastic recommendation disclosed the most sordid division of
spoils between the Secretary and his wife and two rascals who
held in succession the valuable post of trader at Fort Sill in
the Indian Territory.
The committee's report was read about three o'clock in the
afternoon of March 2, 1876. In the forenoon of the same day
Belknap had sent his resignation to the President, who had
accepted it immediately. The President and Belknap were personal
friends. But the certainty of Belknap's perfidy was not removed
by the attitude of the President, nor by the vote of the Senate
on the article of impeachment--37 guilty, 25 not guilty-for the
evidence was too convincing. The public knew by this time Grant's
childlike failing in sticking to his friends; and 93 of the 25
Senators who voted not guilty had publicly declared they did so,
not because they believed him innocent, but because they believed
they had no jurisdiction over an official who had resigned.
There were many minor indications of the harvest which gross
materialism was reaping in the political field. State and city
governments were surrendered to political brigands. In 1871 the
Governor of Nebraska was removed for embezzlement. Kansas was
startled by revelations of brazen bribery in her senatorial
elections (1872-1873). General Schenck, representing the United
States at the Court of St. James, humiliated his country by
dabbling in a fraudulent mining scheme.
In a speech before the Senate, then trying General Belknap,
Senator George F. Hoar, on May 6, 1876, summed up the greater
abominations:
"My own public life has been a very brief and insignificant one,
extending little beyond the duration of a single term of
senatorial office. But in that brief period I have seen five
judges of a high court of the United States driven from office by
threats of impeachment for corruption or maladministration. I
have heard the taunt from friendliest lips, that when the United
States presented herself in the East to take part with the
civilized world in generous competition in the arts of life, the
only products of her institutions in which she surpassed all
others beyond question was her corruption. I have seen in the
State in the Union foremost in power and wealth four judges of
her courts impeached for corruption, and the political
administration of her chief city become a disgrace and a byword
throughout the world. I have seen the chairman of the Committee
on Military Affairs in the House rise in his place and demand the
expulsion of four of his associates for making sale of their
official privilege of selecting the youths to be educated at our
great military schools. When the greatest railroad of the world,
binding together the continent and uniting the two great seas
which wash our shores, was finished, I have seen our national
triumph and exaltation turned to bitterness and shame by the
unanimous reports of three committees of Congress--two in the
House and one here--that every step of that mighty enterprise had
been taken in fraud. I have heard in highest places the shameless
doctrine avowed by men grown old in public office that the true
way by which power should be gained in the Republic is to bribe
the people with the offices created for their service, and the
true end for which it should be used when gained is the promotion
of selfish ambition and the gratification of personal revenge. I
have heard that suspicions haunt the footsteps of the trusted
companions of the President."
These startling facts did not shatter the prestige of the
Republicans, the "Saviors of the Union," nor humble their
leaders. One of them, Senator Foraker, says*: "The campaign
(1876) on the part of the Democrats gave emphasis to the reform
idea and exploited Tilden as the great reform governor of New
York and the best fitted man in the country to bring about
reforms in the Government of the United States. No reforms were
needed: but a fact like that never interfered with a reform
campaign." The orthodoxy of the politician remained unshaken.
Foraker's reasons were the creed of thousands: "The Republican
party had prosecuted the war successfully; had reconstructed the
States; had rehabilitated our finances, and brought on specie
redemption." The memoirs of politicians and statesmen of this
period, such as Cullom, Foraker, Platt, even Hoar, are imbued
with an inflexible faith in the party and colored by the
conviction that it is a function of Government to aid business.
Platt, for instance, alluding to Blaine's attitude as Speaker, in
the seventies, said: "What I liked about him was his frank and
persistent contention that the citizen who best loved his party
and was loyal to it, was loyal to and best loved his country."
And many years afterwards, when a new type of leader appeared
representing a new era of conviction, Platt was deeply concerned.
His famous letter to Roosevelt, when the Rough Rider was being
mentioned for Governor of New York (1899), shows the reluctance
of the old man to see the signs of the times: "The thing that
really did bother me was this: I had heard from a great many
sources that you were a little loose on the relations of capital
and labor, on trusts and combinations, and indeed on the numerous
questions which have recently arisen in politics affecting the
security of earnings and the right of a man to run his own
business in his own way, with due respect of course to the Ten
Commandments and the Penal Code."
* "Notes from a Busy Life", vol. I., 98.
The leaders of both the great parties firmly and honestly
believed that it was the duty of the Government to aid private
enterprise, and that by stimulating business everybody is helped.
This article of faith, with the doctrine of the sanctity of the
party, was a natural product of the conditions outlined in the
beginning of this chapter--the war and the remarkable economic
expansion following the war. It was the cause of the alliance
between business and politics. It made the machine and the boss
the sinister and ever present shadows of legitimate organization
and leadership.
CHAPTER IV. THE POLITICIAN AND THE CITY
The gigantic national machine that was erected during Grant's
administration would have been ineffectual without local sources
of power. These sources of power were found in the cities, now
thriving on the new-born commerce and industry, increasing
marvelously in numbers and in size, and offering to the political
manipulator opportunities that have rarely been paralleled.*
* Between 1860 and 1890 the number of cities of 8000 or more
inhabitants increased from 141 to 448, standing at 226 in 1870.
In 1865 less than 20% of our people lived in the cities; in 1890,
over 30%; in 1900, 40%; in 1910, 46.3%. By 1890 there were six
cities with more than half a million inhabitants, fifteen with
more than 200,000, and twenty-eight with more than 100,000. In
1910 there were twenty-eight cities with a population over
200,000, fifty cities over 100,000, and ninety-eight over 50,000.
It was no uncommon occurrence for a city to double its population
in a decade. In ten years Birmingham gained 245%, Los Angeles,
211%, Seattle, 194%, Spokane, 183%, Dallas, 116%, Schenectady,
129%.
The governmental framework of the American city is based on the
English system as exemplified in the towns of Colonial America.
Their charters were received from the Crown and their business
was conducted by a mayor and a council composed of aldermen and
councilmen. The mayor was usually appointed; the council elected
by a property-holding electorate. In New England the glorified
town meeting was an important agency of local government.
After the Revolution, mayors as well as councilmen were elected,
and the charters of the towns were granted by the legislature,
not by the executive, of the State. In colonial days charters had
been granted by the King. They had fixed for the city certain
immunities and well-defined spheres of autonomy. But when the
legislatures were given the power to grant charters, they reduced
the charter to the level of a statutory enactment, which could be
amended or repealed by any successive legislature, thereby
opening up a convenient field for political maneuvering. The
courts have, moreover, construed these charters strictly, holding
the cities closely bound to those powers which the legislatures
conferred upon them.
The task of governing the early American town was simple enough.
In 1790 New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Charleston
were the only towns in the United States of over 8000
inhabitants; all together they numbered scarcely 130,000. Their
populations were homogeneous; their wants were few; and they were
still in that happy childhood when every voter knew nearly every
other voter and when everybody knew his neighbor's business as
well as his own, and perhaps better.
Gradually the towns awoke to their newer needs and demanded
public service--lighting, street cleaning, fire protection,
public education. All these matters, however, could be easily
looked after by the mayor and the council committees. But when
these towns began to spread rapidly into cities, they quickly
outgrew their colonial garments. Yet the legislatures were loath
to cast the old garments aside. One may say that from 1840 to
1901, when the Galveston plan of commission government was
inaugurated, American municipal government was nothing but a
series of contests between a small body of alert citizens
attempting to fix responsibility on public officers and a few
adroit politicians attempting to elude responsibility; both sides
appealing to an electorate which was habitually somnolent but
subject to intermittent awakenings through spasms of
righteousness.
During this epoch no important city remained immune from ruthless
legislative interference. Year after year the legislature shifted
officers and responsibilities at the behest of the boss. "Ripper
bills" were passed, tearing up the entire administrative systems
of important municipalities. The city was made the plaything of
the boss and the machine.
Throughout the constant shifts that our city governments have
undergone one may, however, discern three general plans of
government.
The first was the centering of power in the city council, whether
composed of two chambers--a board of aldermen and a common
council--as in New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago, or of one
council, as in many lesser cities. It soon became apparent that a
large body, whose chief function is legislation, is utterly unfit
to look after administrative details. Such a body, in order to do
business, must act through committees. Responsibility is
scattered. Favoritism is possible in letting contracts, in making
appointments, in depositing city funds, in making public
improvements, in purchasing supplies and real estate, and in a
thousand other ways. So, by controlling the appointment of
committees, a shrewd manipulator could virtually control all the
municipal activities and make himself overlord of the city.
The second plan of government attempted to make the mayor the
controlling force. It reduced the council to a legislative body
and exalted the mayor into a real executive with power to appoint
and to remove heads of departments, thereby making him
responsible for the city administration. Brooklyn under Mayor
Seth Low was an encouraging example of this type of government.
But the type was rarely found in a pure form. The politician
succeeded either in electing a subservient mayor or in curtailing
the mayor's authority by having the heads of departments elected
or appointed by the council or made subject to the approval of
the council. If the council held the key to the city treasury,
the boss reigned, for councilmen from properly gerrymandered
wards could usually be trusted to execute his will.
The third form of government was government by boards. Here it
was attempted to place the administration of various municipal
activities in the hands of independent boards. Thus a board had
charge of the police, another of the fire department, another of
public works, and so on. Often there were a dozen of these boards
and not infrequently over thirty in a single city, as in
Philadelphia. Sometimes these boards were elected by the people;
sometimes they were appointed by the council; sometimes they were
appointed by the mayor; in one or two instances they were
appointed by the Governor. Often their powers were shared with
committees of the council; a committee on police, for instance,
shared with the Board of Police Commissioners the direction of
police affairs. Usually these boards were responsible to no one
but the electorate (and that remotely) and were entirely without
coordination, a mere agglomeration of independent creations
generally with ill-defined powers.
Sometimes the laws provided that not all the members of the
appointive boards should "belong to the same political party" or
"be of the same political opinion in state and national issues."
It was clearly the intention to wipe out the partizan complexion
of such boards. But this device was no stumbling-block to the
boss. Whatever might be the "opinions" on national matters of the
men appointed, they usually had a perfect understanding with the
appointing authorities as to local matters. As late as 1898, a
Democratic mayor of New York (Van Wyck) summarily removed the two
Republican members of the Board of Police Commissioners and
replaced them by Republicans after his own heart. In truth, the
bipartizan board fitted snugly into the dual party regime that
existed in many cities, whereby the county offices were
apportioned to one party, the city offices to the other, and the
spoils to both. It is doubtful if any device was ever more
deceiving and less satisfactory than the bipartizan board.
The reader must not be led to think that any one of these plans
of municipal government prevailed at any one time. They all still
exist, contemporaneously with the newer commission plan and the
city manager plan.
Hand in hand with these experiments in governmental mechanisms
for the growing cities went a rapidly increasing expenditure of
public funds. Streets had to be laid out, paved, and lighted;
sewers extended; firefighting facilities increased; schools
built; parks, boulevards, and playgrounds acquired, and scores of
new activities undertaken by the municipality. All these brought
grist to the politician's mill. So did his control of the police
force and the police courts. And finally, with the city reaching
its eager streets far out into the country, came the necessity
for rapid transportation, which opened up for the municipal
politician a new El Dorado.
Under our laws the right of a public service corporation to
occupy the public streets is based upon a franchise from the
city. Before the days of the referendum the franchise was granted
by the city council, usually as a monopoly, sometimes in
perpetuity; and, until comparatively recent years, the
corporation paid nothing to the city for the rights it acquired.
When we reflect that within a few decades of the discovery of
electric power, every city, large and small, had its street-car
and electric-light service, and that most of these cities,
through their councils, gave away these monopoly rights for long
periods of time, we can imagine the princely aggregate of the
gifts which public service corporations have received at the
hands of our municipal governments, and the nature of the
temptations these corporations were able to spread before the
greedy gaze of those whose gesture would seal the grant.
But it was not only at the granting of the franchise that the
boss and his machine sought for spoils. A public service
corporation, being constantly asked for favors, is a continuing
opportunity for the political manipulator. Public service
corporations could share their patronage with the politician in
exchange for favors. Through their control of many jobs, and
through their influence with banks, they could show a wide
assortment of favors to the politician in return for his
influence; for instance, in the matter of traffic regulations,
permission to tear up the streets, inspection laws, rate
schedules, tax assessments, coroners' reports, or juries.
When the politician went to the voters, he adroitly concealed his
designs under the name of one of the national parties. Voters
were asked to vote for a Republican or a Democrat, not for a
policy of municipal administration or other local policies. The
system of committees, caucuses, conventions, built up in every
city, was linked to the national organization. A citizen of New
York, for instance, was not asked to vote for the Broadway
Franchise, which raised such a scandal in the eighties, but to
vote for aldermen running on a national tariff ticket!
The electorate was somnolent and permitted the politician to have
his way. The multitudes of the city came principally from two
sources, from Europe and from the rural districts of our own
country. Those who came to the city from the country were
prompted by industrial motives; they sought wider opportunities;
they soon became immersed in their tasks and paid little
attention to public questions. The foreign immigrants who
congested our cities were alien to American institutions. They
formed a heterogeneous population to whom a common ideal of
government was unknown and democracy a word without meaning.
These foreigners were easily influenced and easily led. Under the
old naturalization laws, they were herded into the courts just
before election and admitted to citizenship. In New York they
were naturalized under the guidance of wardheelers, not
infrequently at the rate of one a minute! And, before the days of
registration laws, ballots were distributed to them and they were
led to the polls, as charity children are given excursion tickets
and are led to their annual summer's day picnic.
The slipshod methods of naturalization have been revealed since
the new law (1906) has been in force. Tens of thousands of voters
who thought they were citizens found that their papers were only
declarations of intentions, or "first papers." Other tens of
thousands had lost even these papers and could not designate the
courts that had issued them; and other thousands found that the
courts that had naturalized them were without jurisdiction in the
matter.
It was not merely among these newcomers that the boss found his
opportunities for carrying elections. The dense city blocks were
convenient lodging places for "floaters." Just before elections,
the population of the downtown wards in the larger cities
increased surprisingly. The boss fully availed himself of the
psychological and social reactions of the city upon the
individual, knowing instinctively how much more easily men are
corrupted when they are merged in the crowd and have lost their
sense of personal responsibility.
It was in the city, then, that industrial politics found their
natural habitat. We shall now scrutinize more closely some of the
developments which arose out of such an environment.
CHAPTER V. TAMMANY HALL
Before the Revolutionary War numerous societies were organized to
aid the cause of Independence. These were sometimes called "Sons
of Liberty" and not infrequently "Sons of St. Tammany," after an
Indian brave whom tradition had shrouded in virtue. The name was
probably adopted to burlesque the royalist societies named after
St. George, St. David, or St. Andrew. After the war these
societies vanished. But, in New York City, William Mooney, an
upholsterer, reorganized the local society as "Tammany Society or
Columbian Order," devoted ostensibly to goodfellowship and
charity. Its officers bore Indian titles and its ceremonies were
more or less borrowed from the red man, not merely because of
their unique and picturesque character, but to emphasize the
truly American and anti-British convictions of its members. The
society attracted that element of the town's population which
delighted in the crude ceremonials and the stimulating potions
that always accompanied them, mostly small shopkeepers and
mechanics. It was among this class that the spirit of discontent
against the power of Federalism was strongest--a spirit that has
often become decisive in our political fortunes.
This was still the day of the "gentleman," of small clothes,
silver shoe-buckles, powdered wigs, and lace ruffles. Only
taxpayers and propertied persons could vote, and public office
was still invested with certain prerogatives and privileges.
Democracy was little more than a name. There was, however, a
distinct division of sentiment, and the drift towards democracy
was accelerated by immigration. The newcomers were largely of the
humble classes, among whom the doctrines of democratic discontent
were welcome.
Tammany soon became partizan. The Federalist members withdrew,
probably influenced by Washington's warning against secret
political societies. By 1798 it was a Republican club meeting in
various taverns, finally selecting Martling's "Long Room" for its
nightly carousals. Soon after this a new constitution was adopted
which adroitly transformed the society into a compact political
machine, every member subscribing to the oath that he would
resist the encroachments of centralized power over the State.
Tradition has it that the transformer of Tammany into the first
compact and effective political machine was Aaron Burr. There is
no direct evidence that he wrote the new constitution. But there
is collateral evidence. Indeed, it would not have been Burrian
had he left any written evidence of his connection with the
organization. For Burr was one of those intriguers who revel in
mystery, who always hide their designs, and never bind themselves
in writing without leaving a dozen loopholes for escape. He was
by this time a prominent figure in American politics. His skill
had been displayed in Albany, both in the passing of legislation
and in out-maneuvering Hamilton and having himself elected United
States Senator against the powerful combination of the
Livingstons and the Schuylers. He was plotting for the Presidency
as the campaign of 1800 approached, and Tammany was to be the
fulcrum to lift him to this conspicuous place.
Under the ostensible leadership of Matthew L. Davis, Burr's chief
lieutenant, every ward of the city was carefully organized, a
polling list was made, scores of new members were pledged to
Tammany, and during the three days of voting (in New York State
until 1840 elections lasted three days), while Hamilton was
making eloquent speeches for the Federalists, Burr was secretly
manipulating the wires of his machine. Burr and Tammany won in
New York City, though Burr failed to win the Presidency. The
political career of this remarkable organization, which has
survived over one hundred and twenty years of stormy history, was
now well launched.
From that time to the present the history of Tammany Hall is a
tale of victories, followed by occasional disclosures of
corruption and favoritism; of quarrels with governors and
presidents; of party fights between "up-state" and "city"; of
skulking when its sachems were unwelcome in the White House; of
periodical displays of patriotism for cloaking its grosser
crimes; of perennial charities for fastening itself more firmly
on the poorer populace which has always been the source of its
power; of colossal municipal enterprise for profit-sharing; and
of a continuous political efficiency due to sagacious leadership,
a remarkable adaptability to the necessities of the hour, and a
patience that outlasts every "reform."
It early displayed all the traits that have made it successful.
In 1801, for the purpose of carrying city elections, it provided
thirty-nine men with money to purchase houses and lots in one
ward, and seventy men with money for the same purpose in another
ward, thus manufacturing freeholders for polling purposes. In
1806 Benjamin Romaine, a grand sachem, was removed from the
office of city controller by his own party for acquiring land
from the city without paying for it. In 1807 several
superintendents of city institutions were dismissed for frauds.
The inspector of bread, a sachem, resigned because his threat to
extort one-third of the fees from his subordinates had become
public. Several assessment collectors, all prominent in Tammany,
were compelled to reimburse the city for deficits in their
accounts. One of the leading aldermen used his influence to
induce the city to sell land to his brother-in-law at a low
price, and then bade the city buy it back for many times its
value. Mooney, the founder of the society, now superintendent of
the almshouse, was caught in a characteristic fraud. His salary
was $1000 a year, with $500 for family expenses. But it was
discovered that his "expenses" amounted to $4000 a year, and that
he had credited to himself on the books $1000 worth of supplies
and numerous sums for "trifles for Mrs. Mooney."
In September, 1826, the Grand Jury entered an indictment against
Matthew L. Davis and a number of other Tammany men for defrauding
several banks and insurance companies of over $2,000,000. This
created a tremendous sensation. Political influence was at once
set in motion, and only the minor defendants were sent to the
penitentiary.
In 1829 Samuel Swartwout, one of the Tammany leaders, was
appointed Collector of the Port of New York. His downfall came in
1838, and he fled to Europe. His defalcations in the Custom House
were found to be over $1,222,700; and "to Swartwout" became a
useful phrase until Tweed's day. He was succeeded by Jesse Hoyt,
another sachem and notorious politician, against whom several
judgments for default were recorded in the Superior Court, which
were satisfied very soon after his appointment. At this time
another Tammany chieftain, W. M. Price, United States District
Attorney for Southern New York, defaulted for $75,000.
It was in 1851 that the council commonly known as "The Forty
Thieves" was elected. In it William M. Tweed served his
apprenticeship. Some of the maneuvers of this council and of
other officials were divulged by a Grand Jury in its presentment
of February 23, 1853. The presentment states: "It was clearly
shown that enormous sums of money were spent for the procurement
of railroad grants in the city, and that towards the decision and
procurement of the Eighth Avenue railway grant, a sum so large
that would startle the most credulous was expended; but in
consequence of the voluntary absence of important witnesses, the
Grand Jury was left without direct testimony of the particular
recipients of the different amounts."
These and other exposures brought on a number of amendments to
the city charter, surrounding with greater safeguards the sale or
lease of city property and the letting of contracts; and a reform
council was elected. Immediately upon the heels of this reform
movement followed the shameful regime of Fernando Wood, an able,
crafty, unscrupulous politician, who began by announcing himself
a reformer, but who soon became a boss in the most offensive
sense of that term--not, however, in Tammany Hall, for he was
ousted from that organization after his reelection as mayor in
1856. He immediately organized a machine of his own, Mozart Hall.
The intense struggle between the two machines cost the city a
great sum, for the taxpayers were mulcted to pay the bills.
Through the anxious days of the Civil War, when the minds of
thoughtful citizens were occupied with national issues, the tide
of reform ebbed and flowed. A reform candidate was elected mayor
in 1863, but Tammany returned to power two years later by
securing the election and then the reelection of John T. Hoffman.
Hoffman possessed considerable ability and an attractive
personality. His zeal for high office, however, made him easily
amenable to the manipulators. Tammany made him Governor and
planned to name him for President. Behind his popularity, which
was considerable, and screened by the greater excitements of the
war, reconstruction, and the impeachment of Andrew Johnson,
lurked the Ring, whose exposures and confessions were soon to
amaze everyone.
The chief ringster was William M. Tweed, and his name will always
be associated in the public mind with political bossdom. This is
his immortality. He was a chairmaker by trade, a vulgar good
fellow by nature, a politician by circumstances, a boss by
evolution, and a grafter by choice. He became grand sachem of
Tammany and chairman of the general committee. This committee he
ruled with blunt directness. When he wanted a question carried,
he failed to ask for the negative votes; and soon he was called
"the Boss," a title he never resented, and which usage has since
fixed in our politics. So he ruled Tammany with a high hand; made
nominations arbitrarily; bullied, bought, and traded; became
President of the Board of Supervisors, thus holding the key to
the city's financial policies; and was elected State Senator,
thereby directing the granting of legislative favors to his city
and to his corporations.
In 1868 Tammany carried Hoffman into the Governor's chair, and in
the following year the Democrats carried the State legislature.
Tweed now had a new charter passed which virtually put New York
City into his pocket by placing the finances of the metropolis
entirely in the hands of a Board of Apportionment which he
dominated. Of this Board, the mayor of the city was the chairman,
with the power to appoint the other members. He promptly named
Tweed, Connolly, and P. B. Sweeny. This was the famous Ring. The
mayor was A. Oakey Hall, dubbed "Elegant Oakey" by his pals
because of his fondness for clubs, society, puns, and poems; but
Nast called him "O. K. Haul." Sweeny, commonly known as "Pete,"
was a lawyer of ability, and was generally believed to be the
plotter of the quartet. Nast transformed his middle initial B.
into "Brains." Connolly was just a coarse gangster.
There was some reason for the Ring's faith in its
invulnerability. It controlled Governor and legislature, was
formidable in the national councils of the Democratic party, and
its Governor was widely mentioned for the presidential
nomination. It possessed complete power over the city council,
the mayor, and many of the judges. It was in partnership with
Gould and Fiske of the Erie, then reaping great harvests in Wall
Street, and with street railway and other public service
corporations. Through untold largess it silenced rivalry from
within and criticism from without. And, when suspicion first
raised its voice, it adroitly invited a committee of prominent
and wealthy citizens, headed by John Jacob Astor, to examine the
controller's accounts. After six hours spent in the City Hall
these respectable gentlemen signed an acquitment, saying that
"the affairs of the city under the charge of the controller are
administered in a correct and faithful manner."
Thus intrenched, the Ring levied tribute on every municipal
activity. Everyone who had a charge against the city, either for
work done or materials furnished, was told to add to the amount
of his bill, at first 10%, later 66%, and finally 85%. One man
testified that he was told to raise to $55,000 his claim of
$5000. He got his $5000; the Ring got $50,000. The building of
the Court House, still known as "Tweed's Court House," was
estimated to cost $3,000,000, but it cost many times that sum.
The item "repairing fixtures" amounted to $1,149,874.50, before
the building was completed. Forty chairs and three tables cost
$179,729.60; thermometers cost $7500. G. S. Miller, a carpenter,
received $360,747.61, and a plasterer named Gray, $2,870,464.06
for nine months' "work." The Times dubbed him the "Prince of
Plasterers." "A plasterer who can earn $138,187 in two days
[December 20 and 21] and that in the depths of winter, need not
be poor." Carpets cost $350,000, most of the Brussels and
Axminster going to the New Metropolitan Hotel just opened by
Tweed's son.
The Ring's hold upon the legislature was through bribery, not
through partizan adhesion. Tweed himself confessed that he gave
one man in Albany $600,000 for buying votes to pass his charter;
and Samuel J. Tilden estimated the total cost for this purpose at
over one million dollars. Tweed said he bought five Republican
senators for $40,000 apiece. The vote on the charter was 30 to 2
in the Senate, 116 to 5 in the Assembly. Similar sums were spent
in Albany in securing corporate favors. The Viaduct Railway Bill
is an example. This bill empowered a company, practically owned
by the Ring, to build a railway on or above any street in the
city. It provided that the city should subscribe for $5,000,000
of the stock; and it exempted the company from taxation.
Collateral bills were introduced enabling the company to widen
and grade any streets, the favorite "job" of a Tammany grafter.
Fortunately for the city, exposure came before this monstrous
scheme could be put in motion.
Newspapers in the city were heavily subsidized. Newspapers in
Albany were paid munificently for printing. One of the Albany
papers received $207,900 for one year's work which was worth less
than $10,000. Half a dozen reporters of the leading dailies were
put on the city payroll at from $2000 to $2500 a year for
"services."
The Himalayan size of these swindles and their monumental
effrontery led the New York Sun humorously to suggest the
erection of a statue to the principal Robber Baron, "in
commemoration of his services to the commonwealth." A letter was
sent out asking for funds. There were a great many men in New
York, the Sun thought, who would not be unwilling to refuse a
contribution. But Tweed declined the honor. In its issue of March
14, 1871, the Sun has this headline:
"A GREAT MAN'S MODESTY"
"THE HON. WILLIAM M. TWEED DECLINES THE SUN'S STATUE.
CHARACTERISTIC LETTER FROM THE GREAT NEW YORK PHILANTHROPIST. HE
THINKS THAT VIRTUE SHOULD BE ITS OWN REWARD. THE MOST REMARKABLE
LETTER EVER WRITTEN BY THE NOBLE BENEFACTOR OF THE PEOPLE."
Another kind of memorial to his genius for absorbing the people's
money was awaiting this philanthropic buccaneer. Vulgar
ostentation was the outward badge of these civic burglaries.
Tweed moved into a Fifth Avenue mansion and gave his daughter a
wedding at which she received $100,000 worth of gifts; her
wedding dress was a $5000 creation. At Greenwich he built a
country estate where the stables were framed of choice mahogany.
Sweeny hobnobbed with Jim Fiske of the Erie, the Tweed of Wall
Street, who went about town dressed in loud checks and lived with
his harem in his Opera House on Eighth Avenue.
Thoughtful citizens saw these things going on and believed the
city was being robbed, but they could not prove it. There were
two attacking parties, however, who did not wait for proofs--
Thomas Nast, the brilliant cartoonist of Harper's Weekly, and the
New York Times. The incisive cartoons of Nast appealed to the
imaginations of all classes; even Tweed complained that his
illiterate following could "look at the damn pictures." The
trenchant editorials of Louis L. Jennings in the Times reached a
thoughtful circle of readers. In one of these editorials,
February 24, 1871, before the exposure, he said: "There is
absolutely nothing--nothing in the city--which is beyond the
reach of the insatiable gang who have obtained possession of it.
They can get a grand jury dismissed at any time, and, as we have
seen, the legislature is completely at their disposal."
Finally proof did come and, as is usual in such cases, it came
from the inside. James O'Brien, an ex-sheriff and the leader in a
Democratic "reform movement" calling itself "Young Democracy,"
secured the appointment of one of his friends as clerk in the
controller's office. Transcripts of the accounts were made, and
these O'Brien brought to the Times, which began their
publication, July 8, 1871. The Ring was in consternation. It
offered George Jones, the proprietor of the Times, $5,000,000 for
his silence and sent a well-known banker to Nast with an
invitation to go to Europe "to study art," with $100,000 for
"expenses."
"Do you think I could get $200,000?" innocently asked Nast.
"I believe from what I have heard in the bank that you might get
it."
After some reflection, the cartoonist asked: "Don't you think I
could get $500,000 to make that trip?"
"You can; you can get $500,000 in gold to drop this Ring business
and get out of the country."
"Well, I don't think I'll do it," laughed the artist. "I made up
my mind not long ago to put some of those fellows behind the
bars, and I am going to put them there."
"Only be careful, Mr. Nast, that you do not first put yourself in
a coffin," said the banker as he left.
A public meeting in Cooper Institute, April 6, 1871, was
addressed by William E. Dodge, Henry Ward Beecher, William M.
Evarts, and William F. Havemeyer. They vehemently denounced Tweed
and his gang. Tweed smiled and asked, "Well, what are you going
to do about it?" On the 4th of September, the same year, a second
mass meeting held in the same place answered the question by
appointing a committee of seventy. Tweed, Sweeny, and Hall, now
alarmed by the disclosures in the Times, decided to make Connolly
the scapegoat, and asked the aldermen and supervisors to appoint
a committee to examine his accounts. By the time the committee
appeared for the examination--its purpose had been well
announced--the vouchers for 1869 and 1870 had disappeared. Mayor
Hall then asked for Connolly's resignation. But instead, Connolly
consulted Samuel J. Tilden, who advised him to appoint Andrew H.
Green, a well-known and respected citizen, as his deputy. This
turned the tables on the three other members of the Ring, whose
efforts to oust both Connolly and Green were unavailing. In this
manner the citizens got control of the treasury books, and the
Grand Jury began its inquisitions. Sweeny and Connolly soon fled
to Europe. Sweeny afterwards settled for $400,000 and returned.
Hall's case was presented to a grand jury which proved to be
packed. A new panel was ordered but failed to return an
indictment because of lack of evidence. Hall was subsequently
indicted, but his trial resulted in a disagreement.
Tweed was indicted for felony. He remained at large on bail and
was twice tried in 1873. The first trial resulted in a
disagreement, the second in a conviction. His sentence was a fine
of $12,000 and twelve years' imprisonment. When he arrived at the
penitentiary, he answered the customary questions. "What
occupation?" "Statesman." "What religion?" "None." He served one
year and was then released on a flimsy technicality by the Court
of Appeals. Civil suits were now brought, and, unable to obtain
the $3,000,000 bail demanded, the fallen boss was sent to jail.
He escaped to Cuba, and finally to Spain, but he was again
arrested, returned to New York on a man-of-war, and put into
Ludlow Street jail, where he died April 12, 1878, apparently
without money or friends.
The exact amount of the plunder was never ascertained. An expert
accountant employed by the housecleaners estimated that for three
years, 1868-71, the frauds totaled between $45,000,000 and
$50,000,000. The estimate of the aldermen's committee was
$60,000,000. Tweed never gave any figures; he probably had never
counted his gains, but merely spent them as they came. O'Rourke,
one of the gang, estimated that the Ring stole about $75,000,000
during 1865-71, and that, "counting vast issues of fraudulent
bonds," the looting "probably amounted to $200,000,000."
The story of these disclosures circled the earth and still
affects the popular judgment of the American metropolis. It
seemed as though Tammany were forever discredited. But, to the
despair of reformers, in 1874 Tammany returned to power, electing
its candidate for mayor by over 9000 majority. The new boss who
maneuvered this rapid resurrection was John Kelly, a stone-mason,
known among his Irish followers as "Honest John." Besides the
political probity which the occasion demanded, he possessed a
capacity for knowing men and sensing public opinion. This enabled
him to lift the prostrate organization. He persuaded such men as
Samuel J. Tilden, the distinguished lawyer, August Belmont, a
leading financier, Horatio Seymour, who had been governor, and
Charles O'Conor, the famous advocate, to become sachems under
him. This was evidence of reform from within. Cooperation with
the Bar Association, the Taxpayers' Association, and other
similar organizations evidenced a desire of reform from without.
Kelly "bossed" the Hall until his death, June 1, 1886.
He was succeeded by Richard Croker, a machinist, prizefighter,
and gang-leader. Croker began his official career as a court
attendant under the notorious Judge Barnard and later was an
engineer in the service of the city. These places he held by
Tammany favor, and he was so useful that in 1868 he was made
alderman. A quarrel with Tweed lost him the place, but a
reconciliation soon landed him in the lucrative office of
Superintendent of Market Fees and Rents, under Connolly. In 1873
he was elected coroner and ten years later was appointed fire
commissioner. His career as boss was marked by much political
cleverness and caution and by an equal degree of moral
obtuseness.
The triumph of Tammany in 1892 was followed by such ill-disguised
corruption that the citizens of New York were again roused from
their apathy. The investigations of the Fassett Committee of the
State Senate two years previously had shown how deep the
tentacles of Tammany were thrust into the administrative
departments of the city. The Senate now appointed another
investigating committee, of which Clarence Lexow was the chairman
and John W. Goff the counsel. The Police Department came under
its special scrutiny. The disclosures revealed the connivance of
the police in stupendous election frauds. The President of the
Police Board himself had distributed at the polls the policemen
who committed these frauds. It was further revealed that vice and
crime under police protection had been capitalized on a great
scale. It was worth money to be a policeman. One police captain
testified he had paid $15,000 for his promotions; another paid
$12,000. It cost $300 to be appointed patrolman. Over six hundred
policy-shops were open, each paying $1500 a month for protection;
pool rooms paid $300 a month; bawdy-houses, from $25 to $50 per
month per inmate. And their patrons paid whatever they could be
blackmailed out of; streetwalkers, whatever they could be
wheedled out of; saloons, $20 per month; pawnbrokers, thieves,
and thugs shared with the police their profits, as did
corporations and others seeking not only favors but their rights.
The committee in its statement to the Grand Jury (March, 1892)
estimated that the annual plunder from these sources was over
$7,000,000.
During the committee's sessions Croker was in Europe on important
business. But he found time to order the closing of disreputable
resorts, and, though he was only a private citizen and three
thousand miles away, his orders were promptly obeyed.
Aroused by these disclosures and stimulated by the lashing
sermons of the Rev. Charles H. Parkhurst, the citizens of New
York, in 1894, elected a reform government, with William L.
Strong as Mayor. His administration set up for the metropolis a
new standard of city management. Colonel George E. Waring
organized, for the first time in the city's history, an efficient
streetcleaning department. Theodore Roosevelt was appointed
Police Commissioner. These men and their associates gave to New
York a period of thrifty municipal housekeeping.
But the city returned to its filth. After the incorporation of
Greater New York and the election of Robert A. Van Wyck as its
mayor, the great beast of Tammany arose and extended its eager
claws over the vast area of the new city.
The Mazet Committee was appointed by the legislature in 1899 to
investigate rumors of renewed corruption. But the inquiry which
followed was not as penetrating nor as free from partizan bias as
thoughtful citizens wished. The principal exposure was of the Ice
Trust, an attempt to monopolize the city's ice supply, in which
city officials were stockholders, the mayor to the extent of 5000
shares, valued at $500,000. It was shown, too, that Tammany
leaders were stockholders in corporations which received favors
from the city. Governor Roosevelt, however, refused to remove
Mayor Van Wyck because the evidence against him was insufficient.
The most significant testimony before the Mazet Committee was
that given by Boss Croker himself. His last public office had
been that of City Chamberlain, 1889-90, at a salary of $25,000.
Two years later he purchased for $250,000 an interest in a
stock-farm and paid over $100,000 for some noted race-horses. He
spent over half a million dollars on the English racetrack in
three years and was reputed a millionaire, owning large blocks of
city real estate. He told the committee that he virtually
determined all city nominations; and that all candidates were
assessed, even judicial candidates, from $10,000 to $25,000 for
their nominations. "We try to have a pretty effective
organization--that's what we are there for," he explained. "We
are giving the people pure organization government," even though
the organizing took "a lot of time" and was "very hard work."
Tammany members stood by one another and helped each other, not
only in politics but in business. "We want the whole business
[city business] if we can get it." If "we win, we expect everyone
to stand by us." Then he uttered what must have been to every
citizen of understanding a self-evident truth, "I am working for
my pockets all the time."
Soon afterwards Croker retired to his Irish castle, relinquishing
the leadership to Charles Murphy, the present boss. The growing
alertness of the voters, however, makes Murphy's task a more
difficult one than that of any of his predecessors. It is
doubtful if the nature of the machine has changed during all the
years of its history. Tweed and Croker were only natural products
of the system. They typify the vulgar climax of organized
looting.
In 1913 the Independent Democrats, Republicans, and Progressives
united in a fusion movement. They nominated and, after a most
spirited campaign, elected John Purroy Mitchel as mayor. He was a
young man, not yet forty, had held important city offices, and
President Wilson had appointed him Collector of the Port of New
York. His experience, his vigor, ability, and straightdealing
commended him to the friends of good government, and they were
not disappointed. The Mitchel regime set a new record for clean
and efficient municipal administration. Men of high character and
ability were enlisted in public service, and the Police
Department, under Commissioner Woods, achieved a new usefulness.
The decent citizens, not alone in the metropolis, but throughout
the country, believed with Theodore Roosevelt that Mr. Mitchel
was "the best mayor New York ever had." But neither the
effectiveness of his administration nor the combined efforts of
the friends of good government could save him from the designs of
Tammany Hall when, in 1917, he was a candidate for reelection.
Through a tactical blunder of the Fusionists, a small Republican
group was permitted to control the party primaries and nominate a
candidate of its own; the Socialists, greatly augmented by
various pacifist groups, made heavy inroads among the
foreign-born voters. And, while the whole power and finesse of
Tammany were assiduously undermining the mayor's strength,
ethnic, religious, partizan, and geographical prejudices combined
to elect the machine candidate, Judge Hylan, a comparatively
unknown Brooklyn magistrate.
How could Tammany regain its power, and that usually within two
years, after such disclosures as we have seen? The main reason is
the scientific efficiency of the organization. The victory of
Burr in New York in 1800 was the first triumph of the first ward
machine in America, and Tammany has forgotten neither this
victory nor the methods by which it was achieved. The
organization which was then set in motion has simply been
enlarged to keep easy pace with the city's growth. There are, in
fact, two organizations, Tammany Hall, the political machine, and
Tammany Society, the "Columbian Order" organized by Mooney, which
is ruled by sachems elected by the members. Both organizations,
however, are one in spirit. We need concern ourselves only with
the organization of Tammany Hall.
The framework of Tammany Hall's machinery has always been the
general committee, still known, in the phraseology of Burr's day,
as "the Democratic-Republican General Committee." It is a very
democratic body composed of representatives from every assembly
district, apportioned according to the number of voters in the
district. The present apportionment is one committeeman for every
fifteen votes. This makes a committee of over 9000, an unwieldy
number. It is justified, however, on two very practical grounds:
first, that it is large enough to keep close to the voters; and
second, that its assessment of ten dollars a member brings in
$90,000 a year to the war chest. This general committee holds
stated meetings and appoints subcommittees. The executive
committee, composed of the leaders of the assembly districts and
the chairman and treasurer of the county committee, is the real
working body of the great committee. It attends to all important
routine matters, selects candidates for office, and conducts
their campaigns. It is customary for the members of the general
committee to designate the district leaders for the executive
committee, but they are elected by their own districts
respectively at the annual primary elections. The district leader
is a very important wheel in the machine. He not only leads his
district but represents it on the executive committee; and this
brotherhood of leaders forms the potent oligarchy of Tammany. Its
sanction crowns the high chieftain, the boss, who, in turn, must
be constantly on the alert that his throne is not undermined;
that is to say, he and his district leaders must "play politics"
within their own bailiwicks to keep their heads on their own
shoulders. After their enfranchisement in New York (1917) women
were made eligible to the general and executive committees.
Thirty-seven were at once elected to the executive committee, and
plans were made to give them one-half of the representation on
the general committee.
Each of the twenty-three assembly districts is in turn divided
into election districts of about 400 voters, each with a
precinct captain who is acquainted with every voter in his
precinct and keeps track, as far as possible, of his affairs. In
every assembly district there are headquarters and a club house,
where the voters can go in the evening and enjoy a smoke, a
bottle, and a more or less quiet game.
This organization is never dormant. And this is the key to its
vitality. There is no mystery about it. Tammany is as vigilant
between elections as it is on election day. It has always been
solicitous for the poor and the humble, who most need and best
appreciate help and attention. Every poor immigrant is welcomed,
introduced to the district headquarters, given work, or food, or
shelter. Tammany is his practical friend; and in return he is
merely to become naturalized as quickly as possible under the
wardship of a Tammany captain and by the grace of a Tammany
judge, and then to vote the Tammany ticket. The new citizen's
lessons in political science are all flavored with highly
practical notions.
Tammany's machinery enables a house-to-house canvass to be made
in one day. But this machinery must be oiled. There are three
sources of the necessary lubricant: offices, jobs, the sale of
favors; these are dependent on winning the elections. From its
very earliest days, fraud at the polls has been a Tammany
practice. As long as property qualifications were required, money
was furnished for buying houses which could harbor a whole
settlement of voters. It was not, however, until the adoption of
universal suffrage that wholesale frauds became possible or
useful; for with a limited suffrage it was necessary to sway only
a few score votes to carry an ordinary election.
Fernando Wood set a new pace in this race for votes. It has been
estimated that in 1854 there "were about 40,000 shiftless,
unprincipled persons who lived by their wits and the labor of
others. The trade of a part of these was turning primary
elections, packing nominating conventions, repeating, and
breaking up meetings." Wood also systematized naturalization. A
card bearing the following legend was the open sesame to American
citizenship:
"Common Pleas:
Please naturalize the bearer.
N. Seagrist, Chairman."
Seagrist was one of the men charged by an aldermanic committee
"with robbing the funeral pall of Henry Clay when his sacred
person passed through this city."
When Hoffman was first elected mayor, over 15,000 persons were
registered who could not be found at the places indicated. The
naturalization machinery was then running at high speed. In 1868,
from 25,000 to 30,000 foreigners were naturalized in New York in
six weeks. Of 156,288 votes cast in the city, 25,000 were
afterwards shown to be fraudulent. It was about this time that an
official whose duty it was to swear in the election inspectors,
not finding a Bible at hand, used a volume of Ollendorf's "New
Method of Learning to Read, Write, and Speak French." The courts
sustained this substitution on the ground that it could not
possibly have vitiated the election!
A new federal naturalization law and rigid election laws have
made wholesale frauds impossible; and the genius of Tammany is
now attempting to adjust itself to the new immigration, the new
political spirit, and the new communal vigilance. Its power is
believed by some optimistic observers to be waning. But the
evidences are not wanting that its vitality and internal
discipline are still persistent.
CHAPTER VI. LESSER OLIGARCHIES
New York City is not unique in its experience with political
bossdom. Nearly every American city, in a greater or less degree,
for longer or shorter periods, has been dominated by oligarchies.
Around Philadelphia, American sentiment has woven the memories of
great events. It still remains, of all our large cities, the most
"American." It has fewer aliens than any other, a larger
percentage of home owners, a larger number of small tradespeople
and skilled artisans--the sort of population which democracy
exalts, and who in turn are presumed to be the bulwark of
democracy. These good citizens, busied with the anxieties and
excitements of their private concerns, discovered, in the decade
following the Civil War, that their city had slipped unawares
into the control of a compact oligarchy, the notorious Gas Ring.
The city government at this time was composed of thirty-two
independent boards and departments, responsible to the council,
but responsible to the council in name only and through the
medium of a council committee. The coordinating force, the
political gravitation which impelled all these diverse boards and
council committees to act in unison, was the Gas Department. This
department was controlled by a few designing and capable
individuals under the captaincy of James McManes. They had
reduced to political servitude all the employees of the
department, numbering about two thousand. Then they had extended
their sway over other city departments, especially the police
department. Through the connivance of the police and control over
the registration of voters, they soon dominated the primaries and
the nominating conventions. They carried the banner of the
Republican party, the dominant party in Philadelphia and in the
State, under which they more easily controlled elections, for the
people voted "regular." Then every one of the city's servants was
made to pay to the Gas Ring money as well as obeisance.
Tradespeople who sold supplies to the city, contractors who did
its work, saloon-keepers and dive-owners who wanted
protection--all paid. The city's debt increased at the rate of
$3,000,000 a year, without visible evidence of the application of
money to the city's growing needs.
In 1883 the citizens finally aroused themselves and petitioned
the legislature for a new charter. They confessed: "Philadelphia
is now recognized as the worst paved and worst cleaned city in
the civilized world. The water supply is so bad that during many
weeks of the last winter it was not only distasteful and
unwholesome for drinking, but offensive for bathing purposes. The
effort to clean the streets was abandoned for months and no
attempt was made to that end until some public-spirited citizens,
at their own expense, cleaned a number of the principal
thoroughfares . . . . The physical condition of the sewers" is
"dangerous to the health and most offensive to the comfort of our
people. Public work has been done so badly that structures have
to be renewed almost as soon as finished. Others have been in
part constructed at enormous expense and then permitted to fall
to decay without completion." This is a graphic and faithful
description of the result which follows government of the Ring,
for the Ring, with the people's money. The legislature in 1885
granted Philadelphia a new charter, called the Bullitt Law, which
went into effect in 1887, and which greatly simplified the
structure of the government and centered responsibility in the
mayor. It was then necessary for the Ring to control primaries
and win elections in order to keep the city within its clutches.
So began in Philadelphia the practice of fraudulent registering
and voting on a scale that has probably never been equaled
elsewhere in America. Names taken from tombstones in the
cemeteries and from the register of births found their way to the
polling registers. Dogs, cats, horses, anything living or dead,
with a name, served the purpose.
The exposure of these frauds was undertaken in 1900 by the
Municipal League. In two wards, where the population had
decreased one per cent in ten years (1890-1900), it was found
that the registered voters had increased one hundred per cent.
From one house sixty-two voters were registered, of sundry
occupations as follows: "Professors, bricklayers, gentlemen,
moulders, cashiers, barbers, ministers, bakers, doctors, drivers,
bartenders, plumbers, clerks, cooks, merchants, stevedores,
bookkeepers, waiters, florists, boilermakers, salesmen, soldiers,
electricians, printers, book agents, and restaurant keepers." One
hundred and twenty-two voters, according to the register, lived
at another house, including nine agents, nine machinists, nine
gentlemen, nine waiters, nine salesmen, four barbers, four
bakers, fourteen clerks, three laborers, two bartenders, a
milkman, an optician, a piano-mover, a window-cleaner, a nurse,
and so on.
On the day before the election the Municipal League sent
registered letters to all the registered voters of certain
precincts. Sixty-three per cent were returned, marked by the
postman, "not at," "deceased," "removed," "not known." Of
forty-four letters addressed to names registered from one
four-story house, eighteen were returned. From another house,
supposed to be sheltering forty-eight voters, forty-one were
returned; from another, to which sixty-two were sent, sixty-one
came back. The league reported that "two hundred and fifty-two
votes were returned in a division that had less than one hundred
legal voters within its boundaries." Repeating and ballot-box
stuffing were common. Election officers would place fifty or more
ballots in the box before the polls opened or would hand out a
handful of ballots to the recognized repeaters. The high-water
mark of boss rule was reached under Mayor Ashbridge,
"Stars-and-Stripes Sam," who had been elected in 1899. The
moderation of Martin, who had succeeded McManes as boss, was cast
aside; the mayor was himself a member of the Ring. When Ashbridge
retired, the Municipal League reported: "The four years of the
Ashbridge administration have passed into history leaving behind
them a scar on the fame and reputation of our city which will be
a long time healing. Never before, and let us hope never again,
will there be such brazen defiance of public opinion, such
flagrant disregard of public interest, such abuse of power and
responsibility for private ends."
Since that time the fortunes of the Philadelphia Ring have
fluctuated. Its hold upon the city, however, is not broken, but
is still strong enough to justify Owen Wister's observation: "Not
a Dickens, only a Zola, would have the face (and the stomach) to
tell the whole truth about Philadelphia."
St. Louis was one of the first cities of America to possess the
much-coveted home rule. The Missouri State Constitution of 1875
granted the city the power to frame its own charter, under
certain limitations. The new charter provided for a mayor elected
for four years with the power of appointing certain heads of
departments; others, however, were to be elected directly by the
people. It provided for a Municipal Assembly composed of two
houses: the Council, with thirteen members, elected at large for
four years, and the House of Delegates, with twenty-eight
members, one from each ward, elected for two years. These two
houses were given coordinate powers; one was presumed to be a
check on the other. The Assembly fixed the tax rate, granted
franchises, and passed upon all public improvements. The Police
Department was, however, under the control of the mayor and four
commissioners, the latter appointed by the Governor. The city was
usually Republican by about 8000 majority; the State was safely
Democratic. The city, until a few years ago, had few tenements
and a small floating population.
Outwardly, all seemed well with the city until 1901, when the
inside workings of its government were revealed to the public
gaze through the vengeance of a disappointed franchise-seeker.
The Suburban Railway Company sought an extension of its
franchises. It had approached the man known as the dispenser of
such favors, but, thinking his price ($145,000) too high, had
sought to deal directly with the Municipal Assembly. The price
agreed upon for the House of Delegates was $75,000; for the
Council, $60,000. These sums were placed in safety vaults
controlled by a dual lock. The representative of the Company held
one of the keys; the representative of the Assembly, the other;
so that neither party could take the money without the presence
of both. The Assembly duly granted the franchises; but property
owners along the line of the proposed extension secured an
injunction, which delayed the proceedings until the term of the
venal House of Delegates had expired. The Assemblymen, having
delivered the goods, demanded their pay. The Company, held up by
the courts, refused. Mutterings of the disappointed conspirators
reached the ear of an enterprising newspaper reporter. Thereby
the Circuit Attorney, Joseph W. Folk, struck the trail of the
gang. Both the president of the railway company and the "agent"
of the rogues of the Assembly turned state's evidence; the
safe-deposit boxes were opened, disclosing the packages
containing one hundred and thirty-five $1000 bills.
This exposure led to others--the "Central Traction Conspiracy,"
the "Lighting Deal," the "Garbage Deal." In the cleaning-up
process, thirty-nine persons were indicted, twenty-four for
bribery and fifteen for perjury.
The evidence which Folk presented in the prosecution of these
scoundrels merely confirmed what had long been an unsavory rumor:
that franchises and contracts were bought and sold like
merchandise; that the buyers were men of eminence in the city's
business affairs; and that the sellers were the people's
representatives in the Assembly. The Grand Jury reported: "Our
investigation, covering more or less fully a period of ten years
shows that, with few exceptions, no ordinance has been passed
wherein valuable privileges or franchises are granted until those
interested have paid the legislators the money demanded for
action in the particular case . . . . So long has this practice
existed that such members have come to regard the receipt of
money for action on pending measures as a legitimate perquisite
of a legislator."
These legislators, it appeared from the testimony, had formed a
water-tight ring or "combine" in 1899, for the purpose of
systematizing this traffic. A regular scale of prices was
adopted: so much for an excavation, so much per foot for a
railway switch, so much for a street pavement, so much for a
grain elevator. Edward R. Butler was the master under whose
commands for many years this trafficking was reduced to
systematic perfection. He had come to St. Louis when a young man,
had opened a blacksmith shop, had built up a good trade in
horseshoeing, and also a pliant political following in his ward.
His attempt to defeat the home rule charter in 1876 had given him
wider prominence, and he soon became the boss of the Democratic
machine. His energy, shrewdness, liberality, and capacity for
friendship gave him sway over both Republican and Democratic
votes in certain portions of the city. A prominent St. Louis
attorney says that for over twenty years "he named candidates on
both tickets, fixed, collected, and disbursed campaign
assessments, determined the results in elections, and in fine,
practically controlled the public affairs of St. Louis." He was
the agent usually sought by franchise-seekers, and he said that
had the Suburban Company dealt with him instead of with the
members of the Assembly, they might have avoided exposure. He was
indicted four times in the upheaval, twice for attempting to
bribe the Board of Health in the garbage deal--he was a
stockholder in the company seeking the contract--and twice for
bribery in the lighting contract.
Cincinnati inherited from the Civil War the domestic excitements
and political antagonisms of a border city. Its large German
population gave it a conservative political demeanor, slow to
accept changes, loyal to the Republican party as it was to the
Union. This reduced partizan opposition to a docile minority,
willing to dicker for public spoils with the intrenched majority.
George B. Cox was for thirty years the boss of this city. Events
had prepared the way for him. Following closely upon the war, Tom
Campbell, a crafty criminal lawyer, was the local leader of the
Republicans, and John R. McLean, owner of the Cincinnati
Enquirer, a very rich man, of the Democrats. These two men were
cronies: they bartered the votes of their followers. For some
years crime ran its repulsive course: brawlers, thieves,
cutthroats escaped conviction through the defensive influence of
the lawyer-boss. In 1880, Cox, who had served an apprenticeship
in his brother-in-law's gambling house, was elected to the city
council. Thence he was promoted to the decennial board of
equalization which appraised all real estate every ten years.
There followed a great decrease in the valuation of some of the
choicest holdings in the city. In 1884 there were riots in
Cincinnati. After the acquittal of two brutes who had murdered a
man for a trifling sum of money, exasperated citizens burned the
criminal court house. The barter in justice stopped, but the
barter in offices and in votes continued. The Blaine campaign
then in progress was in great danger. Cox, already a master of
the political game, promised the Republican leaders that if they
would give him a campaign fund he would turn in a Republican
majority from Cincinnati. He did; and for many years thereafter
the returns from Hamilton County, in which Cincinnati is
situated, brought cheer to Republican State headquarters on
election night.
Cox was an unostentatious, silent man, giving one the impression
of sullenness, and almost entirely lacking in those qualities of
comradeship which one usually seeks in the "Boss" type. From a
barren little room over the "Mecca" saloon, with the help of a
telephone, he managed his machine. He never obtruded himself upon
the public. He always remained in the background. Nor did he ever
take vast sums. Moderation was the rule of his loot.
By 1905 a movement set in to rid the city of machine rule. Cox
saw this movement growing in strength. So he imported boatloads
of floaters from Kentucky. These floaters registered "from dives,
and doggeries, from coal bins and water closets; no space was too
small to harbor a man." For once he threw prudence to the winds.
Exposure followed; over 2800 illegal voters were found. The
newspapers, so long docile, now provided the necessary publicity.
A little paper, the Citizen's Bulletin, which had started as a
handbill of reform, when all the dailies seemed closed to the
facts, now grew into a sturdy weekly. And, to add the capstone to
Cox's undoing, William H. Taft, the most distinguished son of
Cincinnati, then Secretary of War in President Roosevelt's
cabinet, in a campaign speech in Akron, Ohio, advised the
Republicans to repudiate him. This confounded the "regulars," and
Cox was partially beaten. The reformers elected their candidate
for mayor, but the boss retained his hold on the county and the
city council. And, in spite of all that was done, Cox remained an
influence in politics until his death, May 20, 1916.
San Francisco has had a varied and impressive political
experience. The first legislature of California incorporated the
mining town into the city of San Francisco, April 15, 1850. Its
government from the outset was corrupt and inefficient.
Lawlessness culminated in the murder of the editor of the
Bulletin, J. King of William, on May 14, 1856, and a vigilance
committee was organized to clean up the city, and watch the
ballot-box on election day.
Soon the legislature was petitioned to change the charter. The
petition recites: "Without a change in the city government which
shall diminish the weight of taxation, the city will neither be
able to discharge the interest on debts already contracted, nor
to meet the demands for current disbursements . . . . The present
condition of the streets and public improvements of the city
abundantly attest the total inefficiency of the present system."
The legislature passed the "Consolidation Act," and from 1856 to
1900 county and city were governed as a political unit. At first
the hopes for more frugal government seemed to be fulfilled. But
all encouraging symptoms soon vanished. Partizan rule followed,
encouraged by the tinkering of the legislature, which imposed on
the charter layer upon layer of amendments, dictated by partizan
craft, not by local needs. The administrative departments were
managed by Boards of Commissioners, under the dictation of "Blind
Boss Buckley," who governed his kingdom for many years with the
despotic benevolence characteristic of his kind. The citizens saw
their money squandered and their public improvements lagging. It
took twenty-five years to complete the City Hall, at a cost of
$5,500,000. An official of the Citizens' Non-partizan party, in
1895, said: "There is no city in the Union with a quarter of a
million people, which would not be the better for a little
judicious hanging."
The repeated attempts made by citizens of San Francisco to get a
new charter finally succeeded, and in 1900 the city hopefully
entered a new epoch under a charter of its own making which
contained several radical changes. Executive responsibility was
centered in the mayor, fortified by a comprehensive civil
service. The foundations were laid for municipal ownership of
public utilities, and the initiative and referendum were adopted
for all public franchises. The legislative power was vested in a
board of eighteen supervisors elected at large.
No other American city so dramatically represents the futility of
basing political optimism on a mere plan. It was only a step from
the mediocrity enthroned by the first election under the new
charter to the gross inefficiency and corruption of a new ring,
under a new boss. A Grand Jury (called the "Andrews Jury") made a
report indicating that the administration was trafficking in
favors sold to gamblers, prize-fighters, criminals, and the whole
gamut of the underworld; that illegal profits were being reaped
from illegal contracts, and that every branch of the executive
department was honeycombed with corruption. The Grand Jury
believed and said all this, but it lacked the legal proof upon
which Mayor Schmitz and his accomplices could be indicted. In
spite of this report, Schmitz was reelected in 1905 as the
candidate of the Labor-Union party.
Now graft in San Francisco became simply universal. George
Kennan, summarizing the practices of the looters, says they "took
toll everywhere from everybody and in almost every imaginable
way: they went into partnership with dishonest contractors; sold
privileges and permits to business men; extorted money from
restaurants and saloons; levied assessments on municipal
employees; shared the profits of houses of prostitution; forced
beer, whiskey, champagne, and cigars on restaurants and saloons
on commission; blackmailed gamblers, pool-sellers, and promoters
of prize-fights; sold franchises to wealthy corporations; created
such municipal bureaus as the commissary department and the city
commercial company in order to make robbery of the city more
easy; leased rooms and buildings for municipal offices at
exorbitant rates, and compelled the lessees to share profits;
held up milkmen, kite-advertisers, junk-dealers, and even
street-sweepers; and took bribes from everybody who wanted an
illegal privilege and was willing to pay for it. The motto of the
administration seemed to be 'Encourage dishonesty, and then let
no dishonest dollar escape.'"
The machinery through which this was effected was simple: the
mayor had vast appointing powers and by this means directly
controlled all the city departments. But the mayor was only an
automaton. Back of him was Abe Ruef, the Boss, an unscrupulous
lawyer who had wormed his way into the labor party, and
manipulated the "leaders" like puppets. Ruef's game also was
elementary. He sold his omnipotence for cash, either under the
respectable cloak of "retainer" or under the more common device
of commissions and dividends, so that thugs retained him for
their freedom, contractors for the favors they expected, and
public service corporations for their franchises.
Finally, through the persistence of a few private citizens, a
Grand Jury was summoned. Under the foremanship of B. P. Oliver it
made a thorough investigation. Francis J. Heney was employed as
special prosecutor and William J. Burns as detective. Heney and
Burns formed an aggressive team. The Ring proved as vulnerable as
it was rotten. Over three hundred indictments were returned,
involving persons in every walk of life. Ruef was sentenced to
fourteen years in the penitentiary. Schmitz was freed on a
technicality, after being found guilty and sentenced to five
years. Most of the other indictments were not tried, the
prosecutor's attention having been diverted to the trail of the
franchise-seekers, who have thus far eluded conviction.
Minneapolis, a city blending New England traditions with
Scandinavian thrift, illustrates, in its experiences with "Doc"
Ames, the maneuvers of the peripatetic boss. Ames was four times
mayor of the city, but never his own successor. Each succeeding
experience with him grew more lurid of indecency, until his third
term was crystallized in Minneapolis tradition as "the notorious
Ames administration." Domestic scandal made him a social outcast,
political corruption a byword, and Ames disappeared from public
view for ten years.
In 1900 a new primary law provided the opportunity to return him
to power for the fourth time. Ames, who had been a Democrat, now
found it convenient to become a Republican. The new law, like
most of the early primary laws, permitted members of one party to
vote in the primaries of the other party. So Ames's following,
estimated at about fifteen hundred, voted in the Republican
primaries, and he became a regular candidate of that party in a
presidential year, when citizens felt the special urge to vote
for the party.
Ames was the type of boss with whom discipline is secondary to
personal aggrandizement. He had a passion for popularity; was
imposing of presence; possessed considerable professional skill;
and played constantly for the support of the poor. The attacks
upon him he turned into political capital by saying that he was
made a victim by the rich because he championed the poor.
Susceptible to flattery and fond of display, he lacked the power
to command. He had followers, not henchmen. His following was
composed of the lowly, who were duped by his phrases, and of
criminals, who knew his bent; and they followed him into any
party whither he found it convenient to go, Republican,
Democratic, or Populist.
The charter of Minneapolis gave the mayor considerable appointing
power. He was virtually the dictator of the Police Department.
This was the great opportunity of Ames and his floating vote. His
own brother, a weak individual with a dubious record, was made
Chief of Police. Within a few weeks about one-half of the police
force was discharged, and the places filled with men who could be
trusted by the gang. The number of detectives was increased and
an ex-gambler placed at their head. A medical student from Ames's
office was commissioned a special policeman to gather loot from
the women of the street.
Through a telepathy of their own, the criminal classes all over
the country soon learned of the favorable conditions in
Minneapolis, under which every form of gambling and low vice
flourished; and burglars, pickpockets, safe-blowers, and harlots
made their way thither. Mr. W. A. Frisbie, the editor of a
leading Minneapolis paper, described the situation in the
following words: "It is no exaggeration to say that in this
period fully 99% of the police department's efficiency was
devoted to the devising and enforcing of blackmail. Ordinary
patrolmen on beats feared to arrest known criminals for fear the
prisoners would prove to be 'protected'. . . .The horde of
detective favorites hung lazily about police headquarters,
waiting for some citizen to make complaint of property stolen,
only that they might enforce additional blackmail against the
thief, or possibly secure the booty for themselves. One detective
is now [1903] serving time in the state prison for retaining a
stolen diamond pin."
The mayor thought he had a machine for grinding blackmail from
every criminal operation in his city, but he had only a gang,
without discipline or coordinating power, and weakened by
jealousy and suspicion. The wonder is that it lasted fifteen
months. Then came the "April Grand Jury," under the foremanship
of a courageous and resourceful business man. The regime of
criminals crumbled; forty-nine indictments, involving twelve
persons, were returned.
The Grand Jury, however, at first stood alone in its
investigations. The crowd of politicians and vultures were
against it, and no appropriations were granted for getting
evidence. So its members paid expenses out of their own pockets,
and its foreman himself interviewed prisoners and discovered the
trail that led to the Ring's undoing. Ames's brother was
convicted on second trial and sentenced to six and a half years
in the penitentiary, while two of his accomplices received
shorter terms. Mayor Ames, under indictment and heavy bonds, fled
to Indiana.
The President of the City Council, a business man of education,
tact, and sincerity, became mayor, for an interim of four months;
enough time, as it proved, for him to return the city to its
normal political life.
These examples are sufficient to illustrate the organization and
working of the municipal machine. It must not be imagined by the
reader that these cities alone, and a few others made notorious
by the magazine muck-rakers, are the only American cities that
have developed oligarchies. In truth, not a single American city,
great or small, has entirely escaped, for a greater or lesser
period, the sway of a coterie of politicians. It has not always
been a corrupt sway; but it has rarely, if ever, given efficient
administration.
Happily there are not wanting signs that the general conditions
which have fostered the Ring are disappearing. The period of
reform set in about 1890, when people began to be interested in
the study of municipal government. It was not long afterwards
that the first authoritative books on the subject appeared. Then
colleges began to give courses in municipal government; editors
began to realize the public's concern in local questions and to
discuss neighborhood politics as well as national politics. By
1900 a new era broke--the era of the Grand Jury. Nothing so
hopeful in local politics had occurred in our history as the
disclosures which followed. They provoked the residuum of
conscience in the citizenry and the determination that honesty
should rule in public business and politics as well as in private
transactions. The Grand Jury inquisitions, however, demonstrated
clearly that the criminal law was no remedy for municipal
misrule. The great majority of floaters and illegal voters who
were indicted never faced a trial jury. The results of the
prosecutions for bribery and grosser political crimes were
scarcely more encouraging. It is true that one Abe Ruef in a
California penitentiary is worth untold sermons, editorials, and
platform admonitions, and serves as a potent warning to all
public malefactors. Yet the example is soon forgotten; and the
people return to their former political habits.
But out of this decade of gang-hunting and its impressive
experiences with the shortcomings of our criminal laws came the
new municipal era which we have now fully entered, the era of
enlightened administration. This new era calls for a
reconstruction of the city government. Its principal feature is
the rapid spread of the Galveston or Commission form of
government and of its modification, the City Manager plan, the
aim of which is to centralize governmental authority and to
entice able men into municipal office. And there are many other
manifestations of the new civic spirit. The mesmeric influence of
national party names in civic politics is waning; the rise of
home rule for the city is severing the unholy alliance between
the legislature and the local Ring; the power to grant franchises
is being taken away from legislative bodies and placed directly
with the people; nominations are passing out of the hands of
cliques and are being made the gift of the voters through
petitions and primaries; efficient reforms in the taxing and
budgetary machinery have been instituted, and the development of
the merit system in the civil service is creating a class of
municipal experts beyond the reach of political gangsters.
There have sprung up all sorts of collateral organizations to
help the officials: societies for municipal research, municipal
reference libraries, citizens' unions, municipal leagues, and
municipal parties. These are further supplemented by
organizations which indirectly add to the momentum of practical,
enlightened municipal sentiment: boards of commerce, associations
of business and professional men of every variety, women's clubs,
men's clubs, children's clubs, recreation clubs, social clubs,
every one with its own peculiar vigilance upon some corner of the
city's affairs. So every important city is guarded by a network
of voluntary organizations.
All these changes in city government, in municipal laws and
political mechanisms, and in the people's attitude toward their
cities, have tended to dignify municipal service. The city job
has been lifted to a higher plane. Lord Rosebery, the brilliant
chairman of the first London County Council, the governing body
of the world's largest city, said many years ago: "I wish that my
voice could extend to every municipality in the kingdom, and
impress upon every man, however high his position, however great
his wealth, however consummate his talents may be, the importance
and nobility of municipal work." It is such a spirit as this that
has made the government of Glasgow a model of democratic
efficiency; and it is the beginnings of this spirit that the
municipal historian finds developing in the last twenty years of
American life. It is indeed difficult to see how our cities can
slip back again into the clutches of bosses and rings and repeat
the shameful history of the last decades of the nineteenth
century.
CHAPTER VII. LEGISLATIVE OMNIPOTENCE
The American people, when they wrote their first state
constitutions, were filled with a profound distrust of executive
authority, the offspring of their experience with the arbitrary
King George. So they saw to it that the executive authority in
their own government was reduced to its lowest terms, and that
the legislative authority, which was presumed to represent the
people, was exalted to legal omnipotence. In the original States,
the legislature appointed many of the judicial and administrative
officers; it was above the executive veto; it had political
supremacy; it determined the form of local governments and
divided the State into election precincts; it appointed the
delegates to the Continental Congress, towards which it displayed
the attitude of a sovereign. It was altogether the most important
arm of the state government; in fact it virtually was the state
government. The Federal Constitution created a government of
specified powers, reserving to the States all authority not
expressly given to the central government. Congress can legislate
only on subjects permitted by the Constitution; on the other
hand, a state legislature can legislate on any subject not
expressly forbidden. The state legislature possesses authority
over a far wider range of subjects than Congress--subjects,
moreover, which press much nearer to the daily activities of the
citizens, such as the wide realm of private law, personal
relations, local government, and property.
In the earlier days, men of first-class ability, such as
Alexander Hamilton, Samuel Adams, and James Madison, did not
disdain membership in the state legislatures. But the development
of party spirit and machine politics brought with it a great
change. Then came the legislative caucus; and party politics soon
reigned in every capital. As the legislature was ruled by the
majority, the dominant party elected presiding officers,
designated committees, appointed subordinates, and controlled
lawmaking. The party was therefore in a position to pay its
political debts and bestow upon its supporters valuable favors.
Further, as the legislature apportioned the various electoral
districts, the dominant party could, by means of the gerrymander,
entrench itself even in unfriendly localities. And, to crown its
political power, it elected United States Senators. But, as the
power of the party increased, unfortunately the personnel of the
legislature deteriorated. Able men, as a rule, shunned a service
that not only took them from their private affairs for a number
of months, but also involved them in partizan rivalries and
trickeries. Gradually the people came to lose confidence in the
legislative body and to put their trust more in the Executive or
else reserved governmental powers to themselves. It was about
1835 that the decline of the legislature's powers set in, when
new state constitutions began to clip its prerogatives, one after
another.
The bulky constitutions now adopted by most of the States are
eloquent testimony to the complete collapse of the legislature as
an administrative body and to the people's general distrust of
their chosen representatives. The initiative, referendum, recall,
and the withholding of important subjects from the legislature's
power, are among the devices intended to free the people from the
machinations of their wilful representatives.
Now, most of the evils which these heroic measures have sought to
remedy can be traced directly to the partizan ownership of the
state legislature. The boss controlling the members of the
legislature could not only dole out his favors to the privilege
seekers; he could assuage the greed of the municipal ring; and
could, to a lesser degree, command federal patronage by an
entente cordiale with congressmen and senators; and through his
power in presidential conventions and elections he had a direct
connection with the presidential office itself.
It was in the days before the legislature was prohibited from
granting, by special act, franchises and charters, when banks,
turnpike companies, railroads, and all sorts of corporations came
asking for charters, that the figure of the lobbyist first
appeared. He acted as a middleman between the seeker and the
giver. The preeminent figure of this type in state and
legislative politics for several decades preceding the Civil War
was Thurlow Weed of New York. As an influencer of legislatures,
he stands easily first in ability and achievement. His great
personal attractions won him willing followers whom he knew how
to use. He was party manager, as well as lobbyist and boss in a
real sense long before that term was coined. His capacity for
politics amounted to genius. He never sought office; and his
memory has been left singularly free from taint. He became the
editor of the Albany Journal and made it the leading Whig
"up-state" paper. His friend Seward, whom he had lifted into the
Governor's chair, passed on to the United States Senate; and when
Horace Greeley with the New York Tribune joined their forces,
this potent triumvirate ruled the Empire State. Greeley was its
spokesman, Seward its leader, but Weed was its designer. From his
room No. 11 in the old Astor House, he beckoned to forces that
made or unmade presidents, governors, ambassadors, congressmen,
judges, and legislators.
With the tremendous increase of business after the Civil War, New
York City became the central office of the nation's business, and
many of the interests centered there found it wise to have
permanent representatives at Albany to scrutinize every bill that
even remotely touched their welfare, to promote legislation that
was frankly in their favor, and to prevent "strikes"--the bills
designed for blackmail. After a time, however, the number of
"strikes" decreased, as well as the number of lobbyists attending
the session. The corporate interests had learned efficiency.
Instead of dealing with legislators individually, they arranged
with the boss the price of peace or of desirable legislation. The
boss transmitted his wishes to his puppets. This form of
government depends upon a machine that controls the legislature.
In New York both parties were moved by machines. "Tom" Platt was
the "easy boss" of the Republicans; and Tammany and its
"up-state" affiliations controlled the Democrats. "Right here,"
says Platt in his Autobiography (1910), "it may be appropriate to
say that I have had more or less to do with the organization of
the New York legislature since 1873." He had. For forty years he
practically named the Speaker and committees when his party won,
and he named the price when his party lost. All that an
"interest" had to do, under the new plan, was to "see the boss,"
and the powers of government were delivered into its lap.
Some of this legislative bargaining was revealed in the insurance
investigation of 1905, conducted by the Armstrong Committee with
Charles E. Hughes as counsel. Officers of the New York Life
Insurance Company testified that their company had given $50,000
to the Republican campaign of 1904. An item of $235,000,
innocently charged to "Home office annex account," was traced to
the hands of a notorious lobbyist at Albany. Three insurance
companies had paid regularly $50,000 each to the Republican
campaign fund. Boss Platt himself was compelled reluctantly to
relate how he had for fifteen years received ten one thousand
dollar bundles of greenbacks from the Equitable Life as
"consideration" for party goods delivered. John A. McCall,
President of the New York Life, said: "I don't care about the
Republican side of it or the Democratic side of it. It doesn't
count at all with me. What is best for the New York Life moves
and actuates me."
In another investigation Mr. H. O. Havemeyer of the Sugar Trust
said: "We have large interests in this State; we need police
protection and fire protection; we need everything that the city
furnishes and gives, and we have to support these things. Every
individual and corporation and firm--trust or whatever you call
it--does these things and we do them." No distinction is made,
then, between the government that ought to furnish this
"protection" and the machine that sells it!
No episode in recent political history shows better the relations
of the legislature to the political machine and the great power
of invisible government than the impeachment and removal of
Governor William Sulzer in 1913. Sulzer had been four times
elected to the legislature. He served as Speaker in 1893. He was
sent to Congress by an East Side district in New York City in
1895 and served continuously until his nomination for Governor of
New York in 1912. All these years he was known as a Tammany man.
During his campaign for Governor he made many promises for
reform, and after his election he issued a bombastic declaration
of independence. His words were discounted in the light of his
previous record. Immediately after his inauguration, however, he
began a house-cleaning. He set to work an economy and efficiency
commission; he removed a Tammany superintendent of prisons; made
unusually good appointments without paying any attention to the
machine; and urged upon the legislature vigorous and vital laws.
But the Tammany party had a large working majority in both
houses, and the changed Sulzer was given no support. The crucial
moment came when an emasculated primary law was handed to him for
his signature. An effective primary law had been a leading
campaign issue, all the parties being pledged to such an
enactment. The one which the Governor was now requested to sign
had been framed by the machine to suit its pleasure. The Governor
vetoed it. The legislature adjourned on the 3rd of May. The
Governor promptly reconvened it in extra session (June 7th) for
the purpose of passing an adequate primary law. Threats that had
been made against him by the machine now took form. An
investigating committee, appointed by the Senate to examine the
Governor's record, largely by chance happened upon "pay dirt,"
and early on the morning of the 13th of August, after an
all-night session, the Assembly passed a motion made by its
Tammany floor leader to impeach the Governor.
The articles of impeachment charged: first, that the Governor had
filed a false report of his campaign expenses; second, that since
he had made such statement under oath he was guilty of perjury;
third, that he had bribed witnesses to withhold testimony from
the investigating committee; fourth, that he had used threats in
suppression of evidence before the same tribunal; fifth, that he
had persuaded a witness from responding to the committee's
subpoena; sixth, that he had used campaign contributions for
private speculation in the stock market; seventh, that he had
used his power as Governor to influence the political action of
certain officials; lastly, that he had used this power for
affecting the stock market to his gain.
Unfortunately for the Governor, the first, second, and sixth
charges had a background of facts, although the rest were
ridiculous and trivial. By a vote of 43 to 12 he was removed from
the governorship. The proceeding was not merely an impeachment of
New York's Governor. It was an impeachment of its government.
Every citizen knew that if Sulzer had obeyed Murphy, his
shortcomings would never have been his undoing.
The great commonwealth of Pennsylvania was for sixty years under
the domination of the House of Cameron and the House of Quay.
Simon Cameron's entry into public notoriety was symbolic of his
whole career. In 1838, he was one of a commission of two to
disburse to the Winnebago Indians at Prairie du Chien $100,000 in
gold. But, instead of receiving gold, the poor Indians received
only a few thousand dollars in the notes of a bank of which
Cameron was the cashier. Cameron was for this reason called "the
Great Winnebago." He built a large fortune by canal and railway
contracts, and later by rolling-mills and furnaces. He was one
of the first men in American politics to purchase political power
by the lavish use of cash, and to use political power for the
gratification of financial greed. In 1857 he was elected to the
United States Senate as a Republican by a legislature in which
the Democrats had a majority. Three Democrats voted for him, and
so bitter was the feeling against the renegade trio that no hotel
in Harrisburg would shelter them.
In 1860 he was a candidate for the Republican presidential
nomination. President Lincoln made him Secretary of War. But his
management was so ill-savored that a committee of leading
business men from the largest cities of the country told the
President that it was impossible to transact business with such a
man. These complaints coupled with other considerations moved
Lincoln to dismiss Cameron. He did so in characteristic fashion.
On January 11, 1862, he sent Cameron a curt note saying that he
proposed to appoint him minister to Russia. And thither into
exile Cameron went. A few months later, the House of
Representatives passed a resolution of censure, citing Cameron's
employment of irresponsible persons and his purchase of supplies
by private contract instead of competitive bidding. The
resolution, however, was later expunged from the records; and
Cameron, on his return from Russia, again entered the Senate
under circumstances so suspicious that only the political
influence of the boss thwarted an action for bribery. In 1877 he
resigned, naming as his successor his son "Don," who was promptly
elected.
In the meantime another personage had appeared on the scene.
"Cameron made the use of money an essential to success in
politics, but Quay made politics expensive beyond the most
extravagant dreams." From the time he arrived of age until his
death, with the exception of three or four years, Matthew S. Quay
held public office. When the Civil War broke out, he had been for
some time prothonotary of Beaver County, and during the war he
served as Governor Curtin's private secretary. In 1865 he was
elected to the legislature. In 1877 he induced the legislature to
resurrect the discarded office of Recorder of Philadelphia, and
for two years he collected the annual fees of $40,000. In 1887 he
was elected to the United States Senate, in which he remained
except for a brief interval until his death.
In 1899 came revelations of Quay's substantial interests in state
moneys. The suicide of the cashier of the People's Bank of
Philadelphia, which was largely owned by politicians and was a
favorite depository of state funds, led to an investigation of
the bank's affairs, and disclosed the fact that Quay and some of
his associates had used state funds for speculation. Quay's
famous telegram to the cashier was found among the dead
official's papers, "If you can buy and carry a thousand Met. for
me I will shake the plum tree."
Quay was indicted, but escaped trial by pleading the statute of
limitations as preventing the introduction of necessary evidence
against him. A great crowd of shouting henchmen accosted him as a
hero when he left the courtroom, and escorted him to his hotel.
And the legislature soon thereafter elected him to his third term
in the Senate.
Pittsburgh, as well as Philadelphia, had its machine which was
carefully geared to Quay's state machine. The connection was made
clear by the testimony of William Flinn, a contractor boss,
before a committee of the United States Senate. Flinn explained
the reason for a written agreement between Quay on the one hand
and Flinn and one Brown in behalf of Chris Magee, the Big Boss,
on the other, for the division of the sovereignty of western
Pennsylvania. "Senator Quay told me," said Flinn, "that he would
not permit us to elect the Republican candidate for mayor in
Pittsburgh unless we adjust the politics to suit him." The
people evidently had nothing to say about it.
The experiences of New York and Pennsylvania are by no means
isolated; they are illustrative. Very few States have escaped a
legislative scandal. In particular, Rhode Island, Delaware,
Illinois, Colorado, Montana, California, Ohio, Mississippi, Texas
can give pertinent testimony to the willingness of legislatures
to prostitute their great powers to the will of the boss or the
machine.
CHAPTER VIII. THE NATIONAL HIERARCHY
American political maneuver culminates at Washington. The
Presidency and membership in the Senate and the House of
Representatives are the great stakes. By a venerable tradition,
scrupulously followed, the judicial department is kept beyond the
reach of party greed.
The framers of the Constitution believed that they had contrived
a method of electing the President and Vice-President which would
preserve the choice from partizan taint. Each State should choose
a number of electors "equal to the whole number of Senators and
Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the
Congress." These electors were to form an independent body, to
meet in their respective States and "ballot for two persons," and
send the result of their balloting to the Capitol, where the
President of the Senate, in the presence of the Senate and the
House of Representatives, opened the certificates and counted the
votes. The one receiving the greatest number of votes was to be
declared elected President, the one receiving the next highest
number of votes, Vice-President. George Washington was the only
President elected by such an autonomous group. The election of
John Adams was bitterly contested, and the voters knew, when they
were casting their ballots in 1796, whether they were voting for
a Federalist or a Jeffersonian. From that day forward this
greatest of political prizes has been awarded through partizan
competition. In 1804 the method of selecting the Vice-President
was changed by the twelfth constitutional amendment. The electors
since that time ballot for President and Vice-President. Whatever
may be the legal privileges of the members of the Electoral
College, they are considered, by the voters, as agents of the
party upon whose tickets their names appear, and to abuse this
relationship would universally be deemed an act of perfidy.
The Constitution permits the legislatures of the States to
determine how the electors shall be chosen. In the earlier
period, the legislatures elected them; later they were elected by
the people; sometimes they were elected at large, but usually
they were chosen by districts. And this is now the general
custom. Since the development of direct nominations, there has
been a strong movement towards the abolition of the Electoral
College and the election of the President by direct vote.
The President is the most powerful official in our government and
in many respects he is the most powerful ruler in the world. He
is Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy. His is virtually the
sole responsibility in conducting international relations. He is
at the head of the civil administration and all the important
administrative departments are answerable to him. He possesses a
vast power of appointment through which he dispenses political
favors. His wish is potent in shaping legislation and his veto is
rarely overridden. With Congress he must be in daily contact; for
the Senate has the power of ratifying or discarding his
appointments and of sanctioning or rejecting his treaties with
foreign countries; and the House of Representatives originates
all money bills and thus possesses a formidable check upon
executive usurpation.
The Constitution originally reposed the choice of United States
Senators with the state legislatures. A great deal of virtue was
to flow from such an indirect election. The members of the
legislature were presumed to act with calm judgment and to choose
only the wise and experienced for the dignity of the toga. And
until the period following the Civil War the great majority of
the States delighted to send their ablest statesmen to the
Senate. Upon its roll we find the names of many of our
illustrious orators and jurists. After the Civil War, when the
spirit of commercialism invaded every activity, men who were
merely rich began to aspire to senatorial honors. The debauch of
the state legislatures which was revealed in the closing year of
the nineteenth century and the opening days of the twentieth so
revolted the people that the seventeenth constitutional amendment
was adopted (1913) providing for the election of senators by
direct vote.
The House of Representatives was designed to be the "popular
house." Its election from small districts, by direct vote, every
two years is a guarantee of its popular character. From this
characteristic it has never departed. It is the People's House.
It originates all revenue measures. On its floor, in the rough
and tumble of debate, partizan motives are rarely absent.
Upon this national tripod, the Presidency, the Senate, and the
House, is builded the vast national party machine. Every citizen
is familiar with the outer aspect of these great national parties
as they strive in placid times to create a real issue of the
tariff, or imperialism, or what not, so as to establish at least
an ostensible difference between them; or as they, in critical
times, make the party name synonymous with national security. The
high-sounding platforms, the frenzied orators, the parades, mass
meetings, special trains, pamphlets, books, editorials,
lithographs, posters--all these paraphernalia are conjured up in
the voter's mind when he reads the words Democratic and
Republican.
But, from the standpoint of the professional politician, all this
that the voter sees is a mask, the patriotic veneer to hide the
machine, that complex hierarchy of committees ranging from
Washington to every cross-roads in the Republic. The committee
system, described in a former chapter, was perfected by the
Republican party during the days of the Civil War, under the
stress of national necessity. The great party leaders were then
in Congress. When the assassination of Lincoln placed Andrew
Johnson in power, the bitter quarrel between Congress and the
President firmly united the Republicans; and in order to carry
the mid-election in 1866, they organized a Congressional Campaign
Committee to conduct the canvass. This practice has been
continued by both parties, and in "off" years it plays a very
prominent part in the party campaign. Congress alone, however,
was only half the conquest. It was only through control of the
Administration that access was gained to the succulent herbage of
federal pasturage and that vast political prestige with the voter
was achieved.
The President is nominally the head of his party. In reality he
may not be; he may be only the President. That depends upon his
personality, his desires, his hold upon Congress and upon the
people, and upon the circumstances of the hour. During the Grant
Administration, as already described, there existed, in every
sense of the term, a federal machine. It held Congress, the
Executive, and the vast federal patronage in its power. All the
federal office-holders, all the postmasters and their assistants,
revenue collectors, inspectors, clerks, marshals, deputies,
consuls, and ambassadors were a part of the organization,
contributing to its maintenance. We often hear today of the
"Federal Crowd," a term used to describe such appointees as still
subsist on presidential and senatorial favor. In Grant's time,
this "crowd" was a genuine machine, constructed, unlike some of
its successors, from the center outward. But the "boss" of this
machine was not the President. It was controlled by a group of
leading Congressmen, who used their power for dictating
appointments and framing "desirable" legislation. Grant, in the
imagination of the people, symbolized the cause their sacrifices
had won; and thus his moral prestige became the cloak of the
political plotters.
A number of the ablest men in the Republican party, however,
stood aloof; and by 1876 a movement against the manipulators had
set in. Civil service reform had become a real issue. Hayes, the
"dark horse" who was nominated in that year, declared, in
accepting the nomination, that "reform should be thorough,
radical, and complete." He promised not to be a candidate for a
second term, thus avoiding the temptation, to which almost every
President has succumbed, of using the patronage to secure his
reelection. The party managers pretended not to hear these
promises. And when Hayes, after his inauguration, actually began
to put them into force, they set the whole machinery of the party
against the President. Matters came to a head when the President
issued an order commanding federal office-holders to refrain from
political activity. This order was generally defied, especially
in New York City in the post-office and customs rings. Two
notorious offenders, Cornell and Arthur, were dismissed from
office by the President. But the Senate, influenced by Roscoe
Conkling's power, refused to confirm the President's new
appointees; and under the Tenure of Office Act, which had been
passed to tie President Johnson's hands, the offenders remained
in office over a year. The fight disciplined the President and
the machine in about equal proportions. The President became more
amenable and the machine less arbitrary.
President Garfield attempted the impossible feat of obliging both
the politicians and the reformers. He was persuaded to make
nominations to federal offices in New York without consulting
either of the senators from that State, Conkling and Platt.
Conkling appealed to the Senate to reject the New York appointees
sent in by the President. The Senate failed to sustain him.
Conkling and his colleague Platt resigned from the Senate and
appealed to the New York legislature, which also refused to
sustain them.
While this absurd farce was going on, a more serious ferment was
brewing. On July 2, 1881, President Garfield was assassinated by
a disappointed office-seeker named Guiteau. The attention of the
people was suddenly turned from the ridiculous diversion of the
Conkling incident to the tragedy and its cause. They saw the
chief office in their gift a mere pawn in the game of
place-seekers, the time and energy of their President wasted in
bickerings with congressmen over petty appointments, and the
machinery of their Government dominated by the machinery of the
party for ignoble or selfish ends.
At last the advocates of reform found their opportunity. In 1883
the Civil Service Act was passed, taking from the President about
14,000 appointments. Since then nearly every President, towards
the end of his term, especially his second term, has added to the
numbers, until nearly two-thirds of the federal offices are now
filled by examination. President Cleveland during his second term
made sweeping additions. President Roosevelt found about 100,000
in the classified service and left 200,000. President Taft,
before his retirement, placed in the classified service assistant
postmasters and clerks in first and second-class postoffices,
about 42,000 rural delivery carriers, and over 20,000 skilled
workers in the navy yards.
The appointing power of the President, however, still remains the
principal point of his contact with the machine. He has, of
course, other means of showing partizan favors. Tariff laws, laws
regulating interstate commerce, reciprocity treaties, "pork
barrels," pensions, financial policies, are all pregnant with
political possibilities.
The second official unit in the national political hierarchy is
the House of Representatives, controlling the pursestrings, which
have been the deadly noose of many executive measures. The House
is elected every two years, so that it may ever be "near to the
people"! This produces a reflex not anticipated by the Fathers of
the Constitution. It gives the representative brief respite from
the necessities of politics, and hence little time for the
necessities of the State.
The House attained the zenith of its power when it arraigned
President Johnson at the bar of the Senate for high crimes and
misdemeanors in office. It had shackled his appointing power by
the Tenure of Office Act; it had forced its plan of
reconstruction over his veto; and now it led him, dogged and
defiant, to a political trial. Within a few years the character
of the House changed. A new generation interested in the issues
of prosperity, rather than those of the war, entered public life.
The House grew unwieldy in size and its business increased
alarmingly. The minority, meanwhile, retained the power, through
filibustering, to hold up the business of the country.
It was under such conditions that Speaker Reed, in 1890, crowned
himself "Czar" by compelling a quorum. This he did by counting as
actually present all members whom the clerk reported as "present
but not voting." The minority fought desperately for its last
privilege and even took a case to the Supreme Court to test the
constitutionality of a law passed by a Reed-made quorum. The
court concurred with the sensible opinion of the country that
"when the quorum is present, it is there for the purpose of doing
business," an opinion that was completely vindicated when the
Democratic minority became a majority and adopted the rule for
its own advantage.
By this ruling, the Speakership was lifted to a new eminence. The
party caucus, which nominated the Speaker, and to which momentous
party questions were referred, gave solidarity to the party. But
the influence of the Speaker, through his power of appointing
committees, of referring bills, of recognizing members who wished
to participate in debate, insured that discipline and centralized
authority which makes mass action effective. The power of the
Speaker was further enlarged by the creation of the Rules
Committee, composed of the Speaker and two members from each
party designated by him. This committee formed a triumvirate (the
minority members were merely formal members) which set the limits
of debate, proposed special rules for such occasions as the
committee thought proper, and virtually determined the destiny of
bills. So it came about, as Bryce remarks, that the choice of the
Speaker was "a political event of the highest significance."
It was under the regency of Speaker Cannon that the power of the
Speaker's office attained its climax. The Republicans had a large
majority in the House and the old war-horses felt like colts.
They assumed their leadership, however, with that obliviousness
to youth which usually characterizes old age. The gifted and
attractive Reed had ruled often by aphorism and wit, but the
unimaginative Cannon ruled by the gavel alone; and in the course
of time he and his clique of veterans forgot entirely the
difference between power and leadership.
Even party regularity could not long endure such tyranny. It was
not against party organization that the insurgents finally raised
their lances, but against the arbitrary use of the machinery of
the organization by a small group of intrenched "standpatters."
The revolt began during the debate on the Payne-Aldrich tariff,
and in the campaign of 1908 "Cannonism" was denounced from the
stump in every part of the country. By March, 1910, the
insurgents were able, with the aid of the Democrats, to amend the
rules, increasing the Committee on Rules to ten to be elected by
the House and making the Speaker ineligible for membership. When
the Democrats secured control of the House in the following year,
the rules were revised, and the selection of all committees is
now determined by a Committee on Committees chosen in party
caucus. This change shifts arbitrary power from the shoulders of
the Speaker to the shoulders of the party chieftains. The power
of the Speaker has been lessened but by no means destroyed. He is
still the party chanticleer.
The political power of the House, however, cannot be calculated
without admitting to the equation the Senate, the third official
unit, and, indeed, the most powerful factor in the national
hierarchy. The Senate shares equally with the House the
responsibility of lawmaking, and shares with the President the
responsibility of appointments and of treaty-making. It has been
the scene of many memorable contests with the President for
political control. The senators are elder statesmen, who have
passed through the refining fires of experience, either in law,
business, or politics. A senator is elected for six years; so
that he has a period of rest between elections, in which he may
forget his constituents in the ardor of his duties.
Within the last few decades a great change has come over the
Senate, over its membership, its attitude towards public
questions, and its relation to the electorate. This has been
brought about through disclosures tending to show the relations
on the part of some senators towards "big business." As early as
the Granger revelations of railway machinations in politics, in
the seventies, a popular distrust of the Senate became
pronounced. No suggestion of corruption was implied, but certain
senators were known as "railway senators," and were believed to
use their partizan influence in their friends' behalf. This
feeling increased from year to year, until what was long
suspected came suddenly to light, through an entirely unexpected
agency. William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper owner who had in
vain attempted to secure a nomination for President by the
Democrats and to get himself elected Governor of New York, had
organized and financed a party of his own, the Independence
League. While speaking in behalf of his party, in the fall of
1908, he read extracts from letters written by an official of the
Standard Oil Company to various senators. The letters, it later
appeared, had been purloined from the Company's files by a
faithless employee. They caused a tremendous sensation. The
public mind had become so sensitive that the mere fact that an
intimacy existed between the most notorious of trusts and some
few United States senators--the correspondents called each other
"Dear John," "Dear Senator," etc.--was sufficient to arouse the
general wrath. The letters disclosed a keen interest on the part
of the corporation in the details of legislation, and the public
promptly took the Standard Oil Company as a type. They believed,
without demanding tangible proof, that other great corporations
were, in some sinister manner, influencing legislation.
Railroads, insurance companies, great banking concerns, vast
industrial corporations, were associated in the public mind as
"the Interests." And the United States Senate was deemed the
stronghold of the interests. A saturnalia of senatorial
muckraking now laid bare the "oligarchy," as the small group of
powerful veteran Senators who controlled the senatorial machinery
was called. It was disclosed that the centralization of
leadership in the Senate coincided with the centralization of
power in the Democratic and Republican national machines. In 1911
and 1912 a "money trust" investigation was conducted by the
Senate and a comfortable entente was revealed between a group of
bankers, insurance companies, manufacturers, and other interests,
carried on through an elaborate system of interlocking
directorates. Finally, in 1912, the Senate ordered its Committee
on Privileges and Elections to investigate campaign contributions
paid to the national campaign committees in 1904, 1908, and 1912.
The testimony taken before this committee supplied the country
with authentic data of the interrelations of Big Business and Big
Politics.
The revolt against "Cannonism" in the House had its counterpart
in the Senate. By the time the Aldrich tariff bill came to a vote
(1909), about ten Republican senators rebelled. The revolt
gathered momentum and culminated in 1912 in the organization of
the National Progressive party with Theodore Roosevelt as its
candidate for President and Hiram Johnson of California for Vice-
President. The majority of the Progressives returned to the
Republican fold in 1916. But the rupture was not healed, and the
Democrats reelected Woodrow Wilson.
CHAPTER IX. THE AWAKENING
In the early days a ballot was simply a piece of paper with the
names of the candidates written or printed on it. As party
organizations became more ambitious, the party printed its own
ballots, and "scratching" was done by pasting gummed stickers,
with the names of the substitutes printed on them, over the
regular ballot, or by simply striking out a name and writing
another one in its place. It was customary to print the different
party tickets on different colored paper, so that the judges in
charge of the ballot boxes could tell how the men voted. When
later laws required all ballots to be printed on white paper and
of the same size, the parties used paper of different texture.
Election officials could then tell by the "feel" which ticket was
voted. Finally paper of the same color and quality was enjoined
by some States. But it was not until the State itself undertook
to print the ballots that uniformity was secured.
In the meantime the peddling of tickets was a regular occupation
on election day. Canvassers invaded homes and places of business,
and even surrounded the voting place. It was the custom in many
parts of the country for the voters to prepare the ballots before
reaching the voting place and carry them in the vest pocket, with
a margin showing. This was a sort of signal that the voter's mind
had been made up and that he should be let alone, yet even with
this signal showing, in hotly contested elections the voter ran a
noisy gauntlet of eager solicitors, harassing him on his way to
vote as cab drivers assail the traveler when he alights from the
train. This free and easy method, tolerable in sparsely settled
pioneer districts, failed miserably in the cities. It was
necessary to pass rigorous laws against vote buying and selling,
and to clear the polling-place of all partizan soliciting. Penal
provisions were enacted against intimidation, violence,
repeating, false swearing when challenged, ballot-box stuffing,
and the more patent forms of partizan vices. In order to stop the
practice of "repeating," New York early passed laws requiring
voters to be duly registered. But the early laws were defective,
and the rolls were easily padded. In most of the cities poll
lists were made by the party workers, and the name of each voter
was checked off as he voted. It was still impossible for the
voter to keep secret his ballot. The buyer of votes could tell
whether he got what he paid for; the employer, so disposed, could
bully those dependent on him into voting as he wished, and the
way was open to all manner of tricks in the printing of ballots
with misleading emblems, or with certain names omitted, or with a
mixture of candidates from various parties--tricks that were
later forbidden by law but were none the less common.
Rather suddenly a great change came over election day. In 1888
Kentucky adopted the Australian ballot for the city of
Louisville, and Massachusetts adopted it for all state and local
elections. The Massachusetts statute provided that before an
election each political party should certify its nominees to the
Secretary of the Commonwealth. The State then printed the
ballots. All the nominees of all the parties were printed on one
sheet. Each office was placed in a separate column, the
candidates in alphabetical order, with the names of the parties
following. Blank spaces were left for those who wished to vote
for others than the regular nominees. This form of ballot
prevented "voting straight" with a single mark. The voter, in the
seclusion of a booth at the polling-place, had to pick his
party's candidates from the numerous columns.
Indiana, in 1889, adopted a similar statute but the ballot had
certain modifications to suit the needs of party orthodoxy. Here
the columns represented parties, not offices. Each party had a
column. Each column was headed by the party name and its device,
so that those who could not read could vote for the Rooster or
the Eagle or the Fountain. There was a circle placed under the
device, and by making his mark in this circle the voter voted
straight.
Within eight years thirty-eight States and two Territories had
adopted the Australian or blanket ballot in some modified form.
It was but a step to the state control of the election machinery.
Some state officer, usually the Secretary of State, was
designated to see that the election laws were enforced. In New
York a State Commissioner of Elections was appointed. The
appointment of local inspectors and judges remained for a time in
the hands of the parties. But soon in several States even this
power was taken from them, and the trend now is towards
appointing all election officers by the central authority. These
officers also have complete charge of the registration of voters.
In some States, like New York, registration has become a rather
solemn procedure, requiring the answering of many questions and
the signing of the voter's name, all under the threat of perjury
if a wilful misrepresentation is made.
So passed out of the control of the party the preparation of the
ballot and the use of the ballot on election day. Innumerable
rules have been laid down by the State for the conduct of
elections. The distribution of the ballots, their custody before
election, the order of electional procedure, the counting of the
ballots, the making of returns, the custody of the ballot-boxes,
and all other necessary details, are regulated by law under
official state supervision. The parties are allowed watchers at
the polls, but these have no official standing.
If a Revolutionary Father could visit his old haunts on election
day, he would be astonished at the sober decorum. In his time
elections lasted three days, days filled with harangue, with
drinking, betting, raillery, and occasional encounters. Even
those whose memory goes back to the Civil War can contrast the
ballot peddling, the soliciting, the crowded noisy
polling-places, with the calm and quiet with which men deposit
their ballots today. For now every ballot is numbered and no one
is permitted to take a single copy from the room. Every voter
must prepare his ballot in the booth. And every polling-place is
an island of immunity in the sea of political excitement.
While the people were thus assuming control of the ballot, they
were proceeding to gain control of their legislatures. In 1890
Massachusetts enacted one of the first anti-lobby laws. It has
served as a model for many other States. It provided that the
sergeant-at-arms should keep dockets in which were enrolled the
names of all persons employed as counsel or agents before
legislative committees. Each counsel or agent was further
compelled to state the length of his engagement, the subjects or
bills for which he was employed, and the name and address of his
employer.
The first session after the passage of this law, many of the
professional lobbyists refused to enroll, and the most notorious
ones were seen no more in the State House. The regular counsel of
railroads, insurance companies, and other interests signed the
proper docket and appeared for their clients in open committee
meetings.
The law made it the duty of the Secretary of the Commonwealth to
report to the law officers of the State, for prosecution, all
those who failed to comply with the act. Sixty-seven such
delinquents were reported the first year. The Grand Jury refused
to indict them, but the number of recalcitrants has gradually
diminished.
The experience of Massachusetts is not unique. Other States
passed more or less rigorous anti-lobby laws, and today, in no
state Capitol, will the visitor see the disgusting sights that
were usual thirty years ago--arrogant and coarse professional
"agents" mingling on the floor of the legislature with members,
even suggesting procedure to presiding officers, and not
infrequently commandeering a majority. Such influences, where
they persist, have been driven under cover.
With the decline of the professional lobbyist came the rise of
the volunteer lobbyist. Important bills are now considered in
formal committee hearings which are well advertised so that
interested parties may be present. Publicity and information have
taken the place of secrecy in legislative procedure. The
gathering of expert testimony by special legislative commissions
of inquiry is now a frequent practice in respect to subjects of
wide social import, such as workmen's compensation, widows'
pensions, and factory conditions.
A number of States have resorted to the initiative and referendum
as applied to ordinary legislation. By means of this method a
small percentage of the voters, from eight to ten per cent, may
initiate proposals and impose upon the voters the function of
legislation. South Dakota, in 1898, made constitutional provision
for direct legislation. Utah followed in 1900, Oregon in 1902,
Nevada in 1904, Montana in 1906, and Oklahoma in 1907. East of
the Mississippi, several States have adopted a modified form of
the initiative and referendum. In Oregon, where this device of
direct government has been most assiduously applied, the voters
in 1908 voted upon nineteen different bills and constitutional
amendments; in 1910 the number increased to thirty-two; in 1912,
to thirty-seven; in 1914 it fell to twenty-nine. The vote cast
for these measures rarely exceeded eighty per cent of those
voting at the election and frequently fell below sixty.
The electorate that attempts to rid itself of the evils of the
state legislature by these heroic methods assumes a heavy
responsibility. When the burden of direct legislation is added to
the task of choosing from the long list of elective officers
which is placed before the voter at every local and state
election, it is not surprising that there should set in a
reaction in favor of simplified government. The mere separation
of state and local elections does not solve the problem. It
somewhat minimizes the chances of partizan influence over the
voter in local elections; but the voter is still confronted with
the long lists of candidates for elective offices. Ballots not
infrequently contain two hundred names, sometimes even three
hundred or more, covering candidates of four or five parties for
scores of offices. These blanket ballots are sometimes three feet
long. After an election in Chicago in 1916, one of the leading
dailies expressed sympathy "for the voter emerging from the
polling-booth, clutching a handful of papers, one of them about
half as large as a bed sheet." Probably most voters were able to
express a real preference among the national candidates. It is
almost equally certain that most voters were not able to express
a real preference among important local administrative officials.
A huge ballot, all printed over with names, supplemented by a
series of smaller ballots, can never be a manageable instrument
even for an electorate as intelligent as ours.
Simplification is the prophetic watchword in state government
today. For cities, the City Manager and the Commission have
offered salvation. A few officers only are elected and these are
held strictly responsible, sometimes under the constant threat of
the recall, for the entire administration. Over four hundred
cities have adopted the form of government by Commission. But
nothing has been done to simplify our state governments, which
are surrounded by a maze of heterogeneous and undirected boards
and authorities. Every time the legislature found itself
confronted by a new function to be cared for, it simply created a
new board. New York has a hodgepodge of over 116 such
authorities; Minnesota, 75; Illinois, 100. Iowa in 1913 and
Illinois and Minnesota in 1914, indeed, perfected elaborate
proposals for simplifying their state governments. But these
suggestions remain dormant. And the New York State Constitutional
Convention in 1915 prepared a new Constitution for the State,
with the same end in view, but their work was not accepted by the
people. It may be said, however, that in our attempt to rid
ourselves of boss rule we have swung through the arc of direct
government and are now on the returning curve toward
representative government, a more intensified representative
government that makes evasion of responsibility and duty
impossible by fixing it upon one or two men.
CHAPTER X. PARTY REFORM
The State, at first, had paid little attention to the party,
which was regarded as a purely voluntary aggregation of
like-minded citizens. Evidently the State could not dictate that
you should be a Democrat or a Republican or force you to be an
Independent. With the adoption of the Australian ballot, however,
came the legal recognition of the party; for as soon as the State
recognized the party's designated nominees in the preparation of
the official ballot, it recognized the party. It was then
discovered that, unless some restrictions were imposed, groups of
interested persons in the old parties would manage the
nominations of both to their mutual satisfaction. Thus a handful
of Democrats would visit Republican caucuses or primaries and a
handful of Republicans would return the favor to the Democrats.
In other words, the bosses of both parties would cooperate in
order to secure nominations satisfactory to themselves.
Massachusetts began the reform by defining a party as a group of
persons who had cast a certain percentage of the votes at the
preceding election. This definition has been widely accepted; and
the number of votes has been variously fixed at from two to
twenty-five per cent. Other States have followed the New York
plan of fixing definitely the number of voters necessary to form
a party. In New York no fewer than 10,000 voters can secure
recognition as a state party, exception being made in favor of
municipal or purely local parties. But merely fixing the
numerical minimum of the party was not enough. The State took
another step forward in depriving the manipulator of his liberty
when it undertook to determine who was entitled to membership in
the party and privileged to take part in its nominations and
other party procedure. Otherwise the virile minority in each
party would control both the membership and the nominations.
An Oregon statute declares: "Every political party and every
volunteer political organization has the same right to be
protected from the interference of persons who are not identified
with it, as its known and publicly avowed members, that the
government of the State has to protect itself from the
interference of persons who are not known and registered as its
electors. It is as great a wrong to the people, as well as to
members of a political party, for anyone who is not known to be
one of its members to vote or take any part at any election, or
other proceedings of such political party, as it is for one who
is not a qualified and registered elector to vote at any state
election or to take part in the business of the State." It is a
far reach from the democratic laissez faire of Jackson's day to
this state dogmatism which threatens the independent or detached
voter with ultimate extinction.
A variety of methods have been adopted for initiating the citizen
into party membership. In the Southern States, where the dual
party system does not exist, the legislature has left the matter
in the hands of the duly appointed party officials. They can,
with canonical rigor, determine the party standing of voters at
the primaries. But where there is party competition, such a
generous endowment of power would be dangerous.
Many States permit the voter to make his declaration of party
allegiance when he goes to the primary. He asks for the ticket of
the party whose nominees he wishes to help select. He is then
handed the party's ballot, which he marks and places in the
ballot-box of that party. Now, if he is challenged, he must
declare upon oath that he is a member of that party, that he has
generally supported its tickets and its principles, and that at
the coming election he intends to support at least a majority of
its nominees. In this method little freedom is left to the voter
who wishes to participate as an independent both in the primaries
and in the general election.
The New York plan is more rigorous. Here, in all cities, the
voter enrolls his name on his party's lists when he goes to
register for the coming election. He receives a ballot upon which
are the following words: "I am in general sympathy with the
principles of the party which I have designated by my mark
hereunder; it is my intention to support generally at the next
general election, state and national, the nominees of such party
for state and national offices; and I have not enrolled with or
participated in any primary election or convention of any other
party since the first day of last year." On this enrollment blank
he indicates the party of his choice, and the election officials
deposit all the ballots, after sealing them in envelopes, in a
special box. At a time designated by law, these seals are broken
and the party enrollment is compiled from them. These party
enrollment books are public records. Everyone who cares may
consult the lists. The advantages of secrecy--such as they
are--are thus not secured.
It remained for Wisconsin, the experimenting State, to find a way
of insuring secrecy. Here, when the voter goes to the primary, he
is handed a large ballot, upon which all the party nominations
are printed. The different party tickets are separated by
perforations, so that the voter simply tears out the party ticket
he wishes to vote, marks it, and puts it in the box. The rejected
tickets he deposits in a large waste basket provided for the
discards.
While the party was being fenced in by legal definition, its
machinery, the intricate hierarchy of committees, was subjected
to state scrutiny with the avowed object of ridding the party of
ring rule. The State Central Committee is the key to the
situation. To democratize this committee is a task that has
severely tested the ingenuity of the State, for the inventive
capacity of the professional politician is prodigious. The
devices to circumvent the politician are so numerous and various
that only a few types can be selected to illustrate how the State
is carrying out its determination. Illinois has provided perhaps
the most democratic method. In each congressional district, the
voters, at the regular party primaries, choose the member of the
state committee for the district, who serves for a term of two
years. The law says that "no other person or persons whomsoever"
than those so chosen by the voters shall serve on the committee,
so that members by courtesy or by proxy, who might represent the
boss, are apparently shut off. The law stipulates the time within
which the committee must meet and organize. Under this plan, if
the ring controls the committee, the fault lies wholly with the
majority of the party; it is a self-imposed thraldom.
Iowa likewise stipulates that the Central Committee shall be
composed of one member from each congressional district. But the
members are chosen in a state convention, organized under strict
and minute regulations imposed by law. It permits considerable
freedom to the committee, however, stating that it "may organize
at pleasure for political work as is usual and customary with
such committees."
In Wisconsin another plan was adopted in 1907. Here the
candidates for the various state offices and for both branches of
the legislature and the senators whose terms have not expired
meet in the state capital at noon on a day specified by law and
elect by ballot a central committee consisting of at least two
members from each congressional district. A chairman is chosen in
the same manner.
Most States, however, leave some leeway in the choice of the
state committee, permitting their election usually by the regular
primaries but controlling their action in many details. The
lesser committees--county, city, district, judicial, senatorial,
congressional, and others--are even more rigorously controlled by
law.
So the issuing of the party platform, the principles on which it
must stand or fall, has been touched by this process of
ossification. Few States retain the state convention in its
original vigor. In all States where primaries are held for state
nominations, the emasculated and subdued convention is permitted
to write the party platform. But not so in some States. Wisconsin
permits the candidates and the hold-over members of the Senate,
assembled according to law in a state meeting, to issue the
platform. In other States, the Central Committee and the various
candidates for state office form a party council and frame the
platform. Oregon, in 1901, tried a novel method of providing
platforms by referendum. But the courts declared the law
unconstitutional. So Oregon now permits each candidate to write
his own platform in not over one hundred words and file it with
his nominating petition, and to present a statement of not over
twelve words to be printed on the ballot.
The convention system provided many opportunities for the
manipulator and was inherently imperfect for nominating more than
one or two candidates for office. It has survived as the method
of nominating candidates for President of the United States
because it is adapted to the wide geographical range of the
nation and because in the national convention only a President
and a Vice-President are nominated. In state and county
conventions, where often candidates for a dozen or more offices
are to be nominated, it was often subject to demoralizing
bartering.
The larger the number of nominations to be made, the more
complete was the jobbery, and this was the death warrant of the
local convention. These evils were recognized as early as June
20, 1860, when the Republican county convention of Crawford
County, Pennsylvania, adopted the following resolutions:
"Whereas, in nominating candidates for the several county
offices, it clearly is, or ought to be, the object to arrive as
nearly as possible at the wishes of the majority, or at least a
plurality of the Republican voters; and
Whereas the present system of nominating by delegates, who
virtually represent territory rather than votes, and who almost
necessarily are wholly unacquainted with the wishes and feelings
of their constituents in regard to various candidates for office,
is undemocratic, because the people have no voice in it, and
objectionable, because men are often placed in nomination because
of their location who are decidedly unpopular, even in their own
districts, and because it affords too great an opportunity for
scheming and designing men to accomplish their own purposes;
therefore
Resolved, that we are in favor of submitting nominations directly
to the people--the Republican voters--and that delegate
conventions for nominating county officers be abolished, and we
hereby request and instruct the county committee to issue their
call in 1861, in accordance with the spirit of this resolution."
Upon the basis of this indictment of the county convention
system, the Republican voters of Crawford County, a rural
community, whose largest town is Meadville, the county seat,
proceeded to nominate their candidates by direct vote, under
rules prepared by the county committee. These rules have been but
slightly changed. The informality of a hat or open table drawer
has been replaced by an official ballotbox, and an official
ballot has taken the place of the tickets furnished by each
candidate.
The "Crawford County plan," as it was generally called, was
adopted by various localities in many States. In 1866 California
and New York enacted laws to protect primaries and nominating
caucuses from fraud. In 1871 Ohio and Pennsylvania enacted
similar laws, followed by Missouri in 1875 and New Jersey in
1878. By 1890 over a dozen States had passed laws attempting to
eliminate the grosser frauds attendant upon making nominations.
In many instances it was made optional with the party whether the
direct plan should supersede the delegate plan. Only in certain
cities, however, was the primary made mandatory in these States.
By far the larger areas retained the convention.
There is noticeable in these years a gradual increase in the
amount of legislation concerning the nominating machinery--
prescribing the days and hours for holding elections of
delegates, the size of the polling-place, the nature of the
ballotbox, the poll-list, who might participate in the choice of
delegates, how the returns were to be made, and so on. By the
time, then, that the Australian ballot came, with its profound
changes, nearly all the States had attempted to remove the
glaring abuses of the nominating system; and several of them
officially recognized the direct primary. The State was reluctant
to abolish the convention system entirely; and the Crawford
County plan long remained merely optional. But in 1901 Minnesota
enacted a state-wide, mandatory primary law. Mississippi followed
in 1902, Wisconsin in 1903, and Oregon in 1904. This movement has
swept the country.
Few States retain the nominating convention, and where it remains
it is shackled by legal restrictions. The boss, however, has
devised adequate means for controlling primaries, and a return to
a modified convention system is being earnestly discussed in many
States to circumvent the further ingenuity of the boss. A further
step towards the state control of parties was taken when laws
began to busy themselves with the conduct of the campaign.
Corrupt Practices Acts began to assume bulk in the early
nineties, to limit the expenditure of candidates, and to
enumerate the objects for which campaign committees might
legitimately spend money. These are usually personal traveling
expenses of the candidates, rental of rooms for committees and
halls for meetings, payment of musicians and speakers and their
traveling expenses, printing campaign material, postage for
distribution of letters, newspapers and printed matter, telephone
and telegraph charges, political advertising, employing
challengers at the polls, necessary clerk hire, and conveyances
for bringing aged or infirm voters to the polls. The maximum
amount that can be spent by candidates is fixed, and they are
required to make under oath a detailed statement of their
expenses in both primary and general elections. The various
committees, also, must make detailed reports of the funds they
handle, the amount, the contributors, and the expenditures.
Corporations are forbidden to contribute, and the amount that
candidates themselves may give is limited in many States. These
exactions are reinforced by stringent laws against bribery.
Persons found guilty of either receiving or soliciting a bribe
are generally disfranchised or declared ineligible for public
office for a term of years. Illinois, for the second offense,
forever disfranchises.
It is not surprising that these restrictions have led the State
to face the question whether it should not itself bear some of
the expenses of the campaign. It has, of course, already assumed
an enormous burden formerly borne entirely by the party. The cost
of primary and general elections nowadays is tremendous. A few
Western States print a campaign pamphlet and distribute it to
every voter. The pamphlet contains usually the photographs of the
candidates, a brief biography, and a statement of principles.
These are the principal encroachments made by the Government upon
the autonomy of the party. The details are endless. The election
laws of New York fill 330 printed pages. It is little wonder that
American parties are beginning to study the organization of
European parties, such as the labor parties and the social
democratic parties, which have enlisted a rather fervent party
fealty. These are propagandist parties and require to be active
all the year round. So they demand annual dues of their members
and have permanent salaried officials and official party organs.
Such a permanent organization was suggested for the National
Progressive party. But the early disintegration of the party made
impossible what would have been an interesting experiment. After
the election of 1916, Governor Whitman of New York suggested that
the Republican party choose a manager and pay him $10,000 a year
and have a lien on all his time and energy. The plan was widely
discussed and its severest critics were the politicians who would
suffer from it. The wide-spread comment with which it was
received revealed the change that has come over the popular idea
of a political party since the State began forty years ago to
bring the party under its control.
But flexibility is absolutely essential to a party system that
adequately serves a growing democracy. And under a two-party
system, as ours is probably bound to remain, the independent
voter usually holds the balance of power. He may be merely a
disgruntled voter seeking for revenge, or an overpleased voter
seeking to maintain a profitable status quo, or he may belong to
that class of super-citizens from which mugwumps arise. In any
case, the majorities at elections are usually determined by him.
And party orthodoxy made by the State is almost as distasteful to
him as the rigor of the boss. He relishes neither the one nor the
other.
In the larger cities the citizens' tickets and fusion movements
are types of independent activities. In some cities they are
merely temporary associations, formed for a single, thorough
housecleaning. The Philadelphia Committee of One Hundred, which
was organized in 1880 to fight the Gas Ring, is an example. It
issued a Declaration of Principles, demanding the promotion of
public service rather than private greed, and the prosecution of
"those who have been guilty of election frauds, maladministration
of office, or misappropriation of public funds." Announcing that
it would endorse only candidates who signed this declaration, the
committee supported the Democratic candidates, and nominated for
Receiver of Taxes a candidate of its own, who became also the
Democratic nominee when the regular Democratic candidate
withdrew. Philadelphia was overwhelmingly Republican. But the
committee's aid was powerful enough to elect the Democratic
candidate for mayor by 6000 majority and the independent
candidate for Receiver of Taxes by 20,000. This gave the
Committee access to the records of the doings of the Gas Ring. In
1884, however, the candidate which it endorsed was defeated, and
it disbanded.
Similar in experience was the famous New York Committee of
Seventy, organized in 1894 after Dr. Parkhurst's lurid
disclosures of police connivance with every degrading vice. A
call was issued by thirty-three well-known citizens for a
non-partizan mass meeting, and at this meeting a committee of
seventy was appointed "with full power to confer with other
anti-Tammany organizations, and to take such actions as may be
necessary to further the objects of this meeting as set forth in
the call therefor, and the address adopted by this meeting." The
committee adopted a platform, appointed an executive and a
finance committee, and nominated a full ticket, distributing the
candidates among both parties. All other anti-Tammany
organizations endorsed this ticket, and it was elected by large
majorities. The committee dissolved after having secured certain
charter amendments for the city and seeing its roster of officers
inaugurated.
The Municipal Voters' League of Chicago is an important example
of the permanent type of citizens' organization. The league is
composed of voters in every ward, who, acting through committees
and alert officers, scrutinize every candidate for city office
from the Mayor down. It does not aim to nominate a ticket of its
own, but to exercise such vigilance, enforced by so effective an
organization and such wide-reaching publicity, that the various
parties will, of their own volition, nominate men whom the league
can endorse. By thus putting on the hydraulic pressure of
organized public opinion, it has had a considerable influence on
the parties and a very stimulating effect on the citizenry.
Finally, there has developed in recent years the fusion movement,
whereby the opponents of boss rule in all parties unite and back
an independent or municipal ticket. The election of Mayor Mitchel
of New York in 1913 was thus accomplished. In Milwaukee, a fusion
has been successful against the Socialists. And in many lesser
cities this has brought at least temporary relief from the
oppression of the local oligarchy.
CHAPTER XI. THE EXPERT AT LAST
The administrative weakness of a democracy, namely, the tendency
towards a government by job-hunters, was disclosed even in the
early days of the United States, when the official machinery was
simple and the number of offices few. Washington at once foresaw
both the difficulties and the duties that the appointing power
imposed. Soon after his inauguration he wrote to Rutledge: "I
anticipate that one of the most difficult and delicate parts of
the duty of any office will be that which relates to nominations
for appointments." And he was most scrupulous and painstaking in
his appointments. Fitness for duty was paramount with him, though
he recognized geographical necessity and distributed the offices
with that precision which characterized all his acts.
John Adams made very few appointments. After his term had
expired, he wrote: "Washington appointed a multitude of Democrats
and Jacobins of the deepest die. I have been more cautious in
this respect."
The test of partizan loyalty, however, was not applied generally
until after the election of Jefferson. The ludicrous
apprehensions of the Federalists as to what would follow upon his
election were not allayed by his declared intentions. "I have
given," he wrote to Monroe, "and will give only to Republicans
under existing circumstances." Jefferson was too good a
politician to overlook his opportunity to annihilate the
Federalists. He hoped to absorb them in his own party, "to unite
the names of Federalists and Republicans." Moderate Federalists,
who possessed sufficient gifts of grace for conversion, he
sedulously nursed. But he removed all officers for whose removal
any special reason could be discovered. The "midnight
appointments" of John Adams he refused to acknowledge, and he
paid no heed to John Marshall's dicta in Marbury versus Madison.
He was zealous in discovering plausible excuses for making
vacancies. The New York Evening Post described him as "gazing
round, with wild anxiety furiously inquiring, 'how are vacancies
to be obtained?'" Directly and indirectly, Jefferson effected,
during his first term, 164 changes in the offices at his
disposal, a large number for those days. This he did so craftily,
with such delicate regard for geographical sensitiveness and with
such a nice balance between fitness for office and the desire for
office, that by the end of his second term he had not only
consolidated our first disciplined and eager political party, but
had quieted the storm against his policy of partizan
proscription.
During the long regime of the Jeffersonian Republicans there were
three significant movements. In January, 1811, Nathaniel Macon
introduced his amendment to the Constitution providing that no
member of Congress should receive a civil appointment "under the
authority of the United States until the expiration of the
presidential term in which such person shall have served as
senator or representative." An amendment was offered by Josiah
Quincy, making ineligible to appointment the relations by blood
or marriage of any senator or representative. Nepotism was
considered the curse of the civil service, and for twenty years
similar amendments were discussed at almost every session of
Congress. John Quincy Adams said that half of the members wanted
office, and the other half wanted office for their relatives.
In 1820 the Four Years' Act substituted a four-year tenure of
office, in place of a term at the pleasure of the President, for
most of the federal appointments. The principal argument urged in
favor of the law was that unsatisfactory civil servants could
easily be dropped without reflection on their character.
Defalcations had been discovered to the amount of nearly a
million dollars, due mainly to carelessness and gross
inefficiency. It was further argued that any efficient incumbent
need not be disquieted, for he would be reappointed. The law,
however, fulfilled Jefferson's prophecy: it kept "in constant
excitement all the hungry cormorants for office."
What Jefferson began, Jackson consummated. The stage was now set
for Democracy. Public office had been marshaled as a force in
party maneuver. In his first annual message, Jackson announced
his philosophy:
"There are perhaps few men who can for any great length of time
enjoy office and power without being more or less under the
influence of feelings unfavorable to the faithful discharge of
their public duties .... Office is considered as a species of
property, and government rather as a means of promoting
individual interests than as an instrument created solely for the
service of the people. Corruption in some, and in others a
perversion of correct feelings and principles, divert government
from its legitimate ends and make it an engine for the support of
the few at the expense of the many. The duties of all public
offices are, or at least admit of being made, so plain, so simple
that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their
performance . . . . In a country where offices are created solely
for the benefit of the people, no one man has any more intrinsic
right to official station than another."
The Senate refused Jackson's request for an extension of the Four
Years' law to cover all positions in the civil service. It also
refused to confirm some of his appointments, notably that of Van
Buren as minister to Great Britain. The debate upon this
appointment gave the spoilsman an epigram. Clay with directness
pointed to Van Buren as the introducer "of the odious system of
proscription for the exercise of the elective franchise in the
government of the United States." He continued: "I understand it
is the system on which the party in his own State, of which he is
the reputed head, constantly acts. He was among the first of the
secretaries to apply that system to the dismission of clerks of
his department . . . known to me to be highly meritorious . . .
It is a detestable system."
And Webster thundered: "I pronounce my rebuke as solemnly and as
decisively as I can upon this first instance in which an American
minister has been sent abroad as the representative of his party
and not as the representative of his country."
To these and other challenges, Senator Marcy of New York made his
well-remembered retort that "the politicians of the United States
are not so fastidious . . . . They see nothing wrong in the rule
that to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy."
Jackson, with all his bluster and the noise of his followers,
made his proscriptions relatively fewer than those of Jefferson.
He removed only 252 of about 612 presidential appointees.* It
should, however, be remembered that those who were not removed
had assured Jackson's agents of their loyalty to the new
Democracy.
* This does not include deputy postmasters, who numbered about
8000 and were not placed in the presidential list until 1836.
If Jackson did not inaugurate the spoils system, he at least gave
it a mission. It was to save the country from the curse of
officialdom. His successor, Van Buren, brought the system to a
perfection that only the experienced politician could achieve.
Van Buren required of all appointees partizan service; and his
own nomination, at Baltimore, was made a foregone conclusion by
the host of federal job-holders who were delegates. Van Buren
simply introduced at Washington the methods of the Albany
Regency.
The Whigs blustered bravely against this proscription. But their
own President, General Harrison, "Old Tippecanoe," was helpless
against the saturnalia of office-seekers that engulfed him.
Harrison, when he came to power, removed about one-half of the
officials in the service. And, although the partizan color of the
President changed with Harrison's death, after a few weeks in
office,--Tyler was merely a Whig of convenience--there was no
change in the President's attitude towards the spoils system.
Presidential inaugurations became orgies of office-seekers, and
the first weeks of every new term were given over to distributing
the jobs, ordinary business having to wait. President Polk, who
removed the usual quota, is complimented by Webster for making
"rather good selections from his own friends." The practice, now
firmly established, was continued by Taylor, Pierce, and
Buchanan.
Lincoln found himself surrounded by circumstances that made
caution necessary in every appointment. His party was new and
composed of many diverse elements. He had to transform their
jealousies into enthusiasm, for the approach of civil war
demanded supreme loyalty and unity of action. To this greater
cause of saving the Union he bent every effort and used every
instrumentality at his command. No one before him had made so
complete a change in the official personnel of the capital as the
change which he was constrained to make. No one before him or
since used the appointing power with such consummate skill or
displayed such rare tact and knowledge of human nature in seeking
the advice of those who deemed their advice valuable. The war
greatly increased the number of appointments, and it also imposed
obligations that made merit sometimes a secondary consideration.
With the statesman's vision, Lincoln recognized both the use and
the abuse of the patronage system. He declined to gratify the
office-seekers who thronged the capital at the beginning of his
second term; and they returned home disappointed. The twenty
years following the Civil War were years of agitation for reform.
People were at last recognizing the folly of using the
multiplying public offices for party spoils. The quarrel between
Congress and President Johnson over removals, and the Tenure of
Office Act, focused popular attention on the constitutional
question of appointment and removal, and the recklessness of the
political manager during Grant's two terms disgusted the
thoughtful citizen.
The first attempts to apply efficiency to the civil service had
been made when pass examinations were used for sifting candidates
for clerkships in the Treasury Department in 1853, when such
tests were prescribed by law for the lowest grade of clerkships.
The head of the department was given complete control over the
examinations, and they were not exacting. In 1864 Senator Sumner
introduced a bill "to provide for the greater efficiency of the
civil service." It was considered chimerical and dropped.
Meanwhile, a steadfast and able champion of reform appeared in
the House, Thomas A. Jenckes, a prominent lawyer of Rhode Island.
A bill which he introduced in December, 1865, received no
hearing. But in the following year a select joint committee was
charged to examine the whole question of appointments,
dismissals, and patronage. Mr. Jenckes presented an elaborate
report in May, 1868, explaining the civil service of other
countries. This report, which is the corner stone of American
civil service reform, provided the material for congressional
debate and threw the whole subject into the public arena. Jenckes
in the House and Carl Schurz in the Senate saw to it that ardent
and convincing defense of reform was not wanting. In compliance
with President Grant's request for a law to "govern not the
tenure, but the manner of making all appointments," a rider was
attached to the appropriation bill in 1870, asking the President
"to prescribe such rules and regulations" as he saw fit, and "to
employ suitable persons to conduct" inquiries into the best
method for admitting persons into the civil service. A commission
of which George William Curtis was chairman made recommendations,
but they were not adopted and Curtis resigned. The New York Civil
Service Reform Association was organized in 1877; and the
National League, organized in 1881, soon had flourishing branches
in most of the large cities. The battle was largely between the
President and Congress. Each succeeding President signified his
adherence to reform, but neutralized his words by sanctioning
vast changes in the service. Finally, under circumstances already
described, on January 16, 1883, the Civil Service Act was passed.
This law had a stimulating effect upon state and municipal civil
service. New York passed a law the same year, patterned after the
federal act. Massachusetts followed in 1884, and within a few
years many of the States had adopted some sort of civil service
reform, and the large cities were experimenting with the merit
system. It was not, however, until the rapid expansion of the
functions of government and the consequent transformation in the
nature of public duties that civil service reform made notable
headway. When the Government assumed the duties of health
officer, forester, statistician, and numerous other highly
specialized functions, the presence of the scientific expert
became imperative; and vast undertakings, like the building of
the Panama Canal and the enormous irrigation projects of the
West, could not be entrusted to the spoilsman and his minions.
The war has accustomed us to the commandeering of utilities, of
science, and of skill upon a colossal scale. From this height of
public devotion it is improbable that we shall decline, after the
national peril has passed, into the depths of administrative
incompetency which our Republic, and all its parts, occupied for
so many years. The need for an efficient and highly complex State
has been driven home to the consciousness of the average citizen.
And this foretokens the permanent enlistment of talent in the
public service to the end that democracy may provide that
effective nationalism imposed by the new era of world
competition.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
There is no collected material of the literature of exposure. It
is found in the official reports of investigating committees;
such as the Lexow, Mazet, and Fassett committees in New York, and
the report on campaign contributions by the Senate Committee on
Privileges and Elections (1913). The muckraker has scattered such
indiscriminate charges that great caution is necessary to
discover the truth. Only testimony taken under oath can be relied
upon. And for local exposes the official court records must be
sought.
The annual proceedings of the National Municipal League contain a
great deal of useful material on municipal politics. The reports
of local organizations, such as the New York Bureau of Municipal
Research and the Pittsburgh Voters' League, are invaluable, as
are the reports of occasional bodies, like the Philadelphia
Committee of Fifty.
Personal touches can be gleaned from the autobiographies of such
public men as Platt, Foraker, Weed, La Follette, and in such
biographies as Croly's "M. A. Hanna."
On Municipal Conditions:
W. B. Munro, "The Government of American Cities" (1913). An
authoritative and concise account of the development of American
city government. Chapter VII deals with municipal politics.
J. J. Hamilton, "Dethronement of the City Boss" (1910). A
description of the operation of commission government.
E. S. Bradford, "Commission Government in American Cities"
(1911). A careful study of the commission plan.
H. Bruere, "New City Government" (1912). An interesting account
of the new municipal regime.
Lincoln Steffens, "The Shame of the Cities" and "The Struggle for
Self-Government" (1906). The Prince of the Muckrakers'
contribution to the literature of awakening.
On State Conditions:
There is an oppressive barrenness of material on this subject.
P. S. Reinsch, "American Legislatures and Legislative Methods"
(1907). A brilliant exposition of the legislatures' activities.
E. L. Godkin, "Unforeseen Tendencies in Democracy" contains a
thoughtful essay on "The Decline of Legislatures."
On Political Parties and Machines:
M. Ostrogorski, "Democracy and the Organization of Political
Parties," 2 vols. (1902). The second volume contains a
comprehensive and able survey of the American party system. It
has been abridged into a single volume edition called "Democracy
and the Party System in the United States" (1910).
James Bryce, "The American Commonwealth," 2 vols. Volume II
contains a noteworthy account of our political system.
Jesse Macy, "Party Organization and Machinery" (1912). A succinct
account of party machinery.
J. A. Woodburn, "Political Parties and Party Problems" (1906). A
sane account of our political task.
P. O. Ray, "An Introduction to Political Parties and Practical
Politics" (1913). Valuable for its copious references to current
literature on political subjects.
Theodore Roosevelt, "Essays on Practical Politics" (1888).
Vigorous description of machine methods.
G. M. Gregory, "The Corrupt Use of Money in Politics and Laws for
its Prevention" (1893). Written before the later exposes, it
nevertheless gives a clear view of the problem.
W. M. Ivins, "Machine Politics" (1897). In New York City--by a
keen observer.
George Vickers, "The Fall of Bossism" (1883). On the overthrow of
the Philadelphia Gas Ring.
Gustavus Myers, "History of Tammany Hall" (1901; revised 1917).
The best book on the subject.
E. C. Griffith, "The Rise and Development of the Gerrymander"
(1907).
Historical:
H. J. Ford, "Rise and Growth of American Politics" (1898). One of
the earliest and one of the best accounts of the development of
American politics.
Alexander Johnston and J. A. Woodburn, "American Political
History," 2 vols. (1905). A brilliant recital of American party
history. The most satisfactory book on the subject.
W. M. Sloane, "Party Government in the United States" (1914). A
concise and convenient recital. Brings our party history to date.
J. B. McMaster, "With the Fathers" (1896). A volume of delightful
historical essays, including one on "The Political Depravity of
the Fathers."
On Nominations:
F. W. Dallinger, "Nominations for Elective Office in the United
States" (1897). The most thorough work on the subject, describing
the development of our nominating systems.
C. E. Merriam, "Primary Elections" (1908). A concise description
of the primary and its history.
R. S. Childs, "Short Ballot Principles" (1911). A splendid
account by the father of the short ballot movement.
C. E. Meyer, "Nominating Systems" (1902). Good on the caucus.
On the Presidency:
J. B. Bishop, "Our Political Drama" (1904). A readable account of
national conventions and presidential campaigns.
A. K. McClure, "Our Presidents and How We Make Them" (1903).
Edward Stanwood, "A History of the Presidency" (1898). Gives
party platforms and describes each presidential campaign.
On Congress:
G. H. Haynes, "The Election of United States Senators" (1906).
H. J. Ford, "The Cost of Our National Government" (1910). A fine
account of congressional bad housekeeping.
MARY C. Follett, "The Speaker of the House of Representatives"
(1896).
Woodrow Wilson, "Congressional Government" (1885). Most
interesting reading in the light of the Wilson Administration.
L. G. McConachie, "Congressional Committees" (1898).
On Special Topics:
C. R. Fish, "Civil Service and the Patronage" (1905). The best
work on the subject.
J. D. Barnett, "The Operation of the Initiative, Referendum, and
Recall in Oregon" (1915). A helpful, intensive study of these
important questions.
E. P. Oberholtzer, The Referendum in America (1912). The most
satisfactory and comprehensive work on the subject. Also
discusses the initiative.
J. R. Commons, "Proportional Representation" (1907). The standard
American book on the subject.
R. C. Brooks, "Corruption in American Politics and Life" (1910).
A survey of our political pathology.
End of Project Gutenberg Etext The Boss and the Machine, by Samual P. Orth