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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Boss and the Machine, by Samuel P. Orth
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Boss and the Machine
+
+Author: Samuel P. Orth
+
+Editor: Allen Johnson
+
+Posting Date: January 17, 2009 [EBook #3040]
+Release Date: January, 2002
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOSS AND THE MACHINE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by The James J. Kelly Library of St. Gregory's
+University, and 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 straight-dealing 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's The Boss and the Machine, by Samuel P. Orth
+
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