Part 2
Let us take another case. You think that what is needed is to raise a standard. You call your twenty friends about you. They are not corrupt. Nevertheless, let us see who they will be. We are not dealing with an imaginary community, but with American citizens as they exist, with men every one of whom trusts his instincts to a different extent. Each man believes in principle in the abstract, but thinks it is sometimes hopeless to be severely virtuous in politics. This “sometimes” is the _crux_. “Is it the time? Is this the year? Can you do it this way?” Now, of course, it is always the year. It is never hopeless. Absolute honesty is always the way. But an age of corruption destroys faith. This is the essential injury. This is the disease. You yourself have a little stronger belief, a little more political enterprise than your twenty friends. Otherwise it would be they who were summoning you to a conference. It is certain that their joint wisdom will result in action less radical than you believe in. They outvote you in council. The standard they set up is not absolute. But this outcome will prevent you from making your point at all. If you are to back your friends up publicly and are honest yourself, all you can say will be, “Here’s a makeshift.” Now, the public instinct understands this very well already. Ten per cent of your own faith you have compromised. It has cost you ninety per cent of your educational power; for the heart of man will respond only to a true thing.
What is it that has led you to compromise? Why, the age you live in. You yourself, being afraid to stand alone, have dipped your flag, with the best intentions, because you cannot see that any other course is practicable. Yet you yourself can keep your own intellectual integrity only at the price of destroying your own handiwork. If you do not destroy it, you are a hypocrite. Here in the room with you were twenty men, the very flower of the idealism of the town, not chosen by accident, but coming together by natural selection. Twenty more like them do not exist in the community, for their activity would have revealed them. And yet there was not found faith enough among these to set up an absolute standard. Nay, they hang on your arms and prevent you from raising one. If you are to do it, you must do it alone. Then these men will be the first to denounce you; for your act damns them. You can only be true to the public conscience by rebuking your friends. If you fail to do this, your banner is submerged.
Let us consider the cause of this weakness in Reform organizations. You wish to appeal to the people with as good a show of names as you can. And so you get a lot of well-known men to indorse you. This is considered practical. Let us see if it is.
We are fighting Tammany Hall. But no one will for an instant admit that every Tammany man is dishonest. The corruption we started out to correct was a corruption of the intelligence, a bad habit, a defect of vision. The same defect keeps Republicans in line for Platt, because he is the Party, a recognized agent of the community. The same defect prevents a just man from joining a new movement unless Banker Jones is leading it. The habit of the community is to rely on some one else to govern them. No man trusts himself. The Machine, upon analysis, turns out to be a lack of self-reliance. Wherever you see a man who gives some one else’s corruption, some one else’s prejudice as a reason for not taking action himself, you see a cog in The Machine that governs us. The proof of it is that he will dissuade you from striking the iniquity. He will explain that you can’t try it without doing more harm than good. You will find that at every point of defence, from the arguments of Mr. Croker himself to the arguments of some sainted college president, the reasons given are identical. I cannot find any one who defends stealing. They only deprecate action as being inexpedient. Now, then, if I ask a voter to join my organization, and use as a bait an appeal to this very weakness--his reliance upon other men’s opinion--can I hope to make much headway? I am taking in just so much of Tammany Hall. My whole body becomes an adjunct of Tammany, in the same sense that Mr. Platt’s machine is an adjunct. I am Croker’s last outpost. I stand there calling myself reform, and yet I do not act. Some one else must now come forward and try his hand.
This process of ebullition, and thereupon stagnation, has happened again and again. I suppose there are a dozen extant wrecks of reform political organizations in the city. Many people have despaired altogether. They think it is a law of God that political organizations become corrupt in the second year. The experience is entirely due to the persistent putting of new wine into old bottles. In their names and hopes these bodies have stood for purity, but in their membership they have, even in their inception, stood for prejudice. Then, too, the bottles bore good labels, and bad wine was soon poured into them. A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful.
The short lesson that comes out of long experience in political agitation is something like this: _all_ the motive power in all of these movements is the instinct of religious feeling. All the obstruction comes from attempting to rely on anything else. Conciliation is the enemy. It is just as impossible to help reform by conciliating prejudice as it is by buying votes. Prejudice is the enemy. Whoever is not for you is against you.
What, then, must the enthusiast do in the way of organization? Let him go ahead and do some particular thing, and ask the public to help him do it. He will thus get behind him whatever force exists at that especial time for that especial purpose. It may not be much; but no amount of letterheads and great seals will increase it. Let him abandon written constitutions. Let him not be bound by a vote nor seek to bind others by a vote. If you have formal procedure, you are tied up, for you will then have to convert six tailors into apostles before you can get at the public. Content yourself more modestly. See a friend or two and tell them what you intend to do. If they won’t help you, do it alone. Do not think you are wasting your time, even if no one joins you. The prejudice against the individual is part of the evil you are fighting. If you keep on in a consistent line of action, people will come to you one by one, and your group will grow into a sort of centre of influence. There will result a unity of method as well as of aim, which, as your purposes become understood, will enable you to act with the speed of thought and the force of an avalanche. One great merit of this method will be that your whole policy will remain an enigma to every one except those who really want what you want, namely, to raise the general standards. Only such men will seek you out. Any one else is a danger. Thus your organization will grow slowly, but will remain uncapturable, un-get-at-able, an influence, a menace, a standard. As fast as adherents appear, you can set up centre after centre of enlightenment, preparatory to your campaigns; debates, pamphlets, correspondence, the battery of agitation. And in the mean time the benefit done to the workers themselves is worth all the pains.
By adopting formal machinery you would not only organize the wrong people in, but you would organize the right people out. New York City is full of men whose passion for educating can find no vent in politics, because politics are corrupt, and who run civic leagues, night-schools, lyceums, and people’s institutes. They are at work in your cause although they call it by different names. All this zeal is at your disposal if you will only leave your office doors open and do something to deserve its support. Do not adopt a scheme that excludes these men. You cannot impress them into your army, but you do not need to impress them,--only to know them personally. You cannot make them district captains, but they are district captains already.
“But,” you say, “are not the votes of your twenty friends as valuable as your own? Whence this egoism?” It is not egoism. I am ready to follow any one who wants to do this particular thing, that is, make an appeal to absolute unselfishness, at no point to conciliate any one. “But this is anarchy: every man his own party.” On the contrary, it is consolidation; for should two men arise, proposing this course, they would coalesce at once.
“But,” you say, “who is to do all the work? How are you to get men to come forward unless you give them tangible, formulated doctrines, papers to sign, and words to mumble?” The answer is that the men who do the work in reform campaigns do not need these things. Literature and doctrines you will undoubtedly produce. It is not necessary for the effective distribution of them, that you should adopt the parade of American party discipline.
Organization, head-quarters, and a distribution of labor you must develop. But you must not have them on paper faster than they exist in reality. “But,” you say, “this is not representative government. Where are your convention, your argument, your vote, your majority, your loyalty? Our people must have these things.”
The answer is that, in spite of their views on representative government, our people still remain human beings. As fast as they find themselves spiritually represented by some person or body, they follow that influence. It is representative government, but it represents only the positive and aspiring part of the community,--the part which never gets represented under your system, because that system insists upon alloying it with other elements and ruining its power. It is educational activity in the purest form. By what other means can you speak to the whole people at once in the language of action? By what other means can you reach the conscience of the unknown man, who has not touched politics for twenty years because he could take no part in it, because he did not understand it,--the disfranchised, scattered, and dumb men on whose voice the future waits?
Consider what you are trying to do. A party under control of a machine is held together by an appeal to self-interest. Its caucuses, affiliations, resources, methods are constructed on that principle. Your body, whose aim is to increase the unselfishness and intellect of your fellow-citizens, must be held together at every point by self-sacrifice.
If the reform body shall blindly do just the opposite of what a party does, it will pursue practical politics. The regular party is in theory representative of enrolled voters. You represent the sentiment of undiscovered people. The party appeals to old forces and extant conditions. You appeal to new feelings and new voters. The party offers a gift to every adherent. You must offer him nothing but labor. That is your protection against traitors. The party accords every man the weight of his vote in its counsels. You must give him nothing but the influence of his mind.
“But,” you shout, “this is not politics. You can never hold men together without bonds.” The fact is otherwise. There is some force at work in this town which, year after year, brings forward groups of men who proclaim a new dispensation. They are, in so far as they have any cohesion, held together without bonds now. All formal bonds will chain them to the past. For electrical force you must adopt electrical machinery; for moral force, moral bonds. All this political system is the harness for the wrong passion. Every scrap of it imprisons your power. The average American citizen is slow to see that you can exercise political influence without the current machinery. This is a part of The Machine in his brain. He cannot see the operation of law by which virtue always tells. But his ignorance does not affect the operation of that law, even upon himself.
This elaborate analysis of just how the force of feeling in yourself can best be used politically, is, after all, only an instance of a general law. The shortest path between two points always turns out to be a straight line. People who believe in the complexity of life, and have theories about crooked lines, want something else beside moral influence. They want influence through office, or influence toward special ends, or influence with particular persons. “Can’t you see you are destroying your influence?” they cry, while every stroke is telling. “A thinks you are a lunatic.” Praise God. “B has withdrawn his subscription.” I had not hoped for this so soon. “But he has joined Platt.” You misstate the case. He was always with Platt, but now he has revealed it. These refractory molecules are breaking up. See the lines of force begin to show a clean cleavage. Ten thousand intelligences now see the man for what he is.
At what point in the progress of this movement will people begin to see that it is practical politics of the most effective kind? Some people see it now. The first people to feel the strain are the men whose livelihood depends on the outcome. The last illustration of this was given in Roosevelt’s campaign against Van Wyck in New York State. In this case, as generally happens, the real battle was fought in committee rooms before the forces were in the field. It was the struggle for position. Roosevelt was to be Republican candidate for governor, and was sure of election. The fight came over the minor offices. Our New York form of ballot practically forces a man to vote for a “straight” ticket, and half a dozen independents put up a complete ticket with Roosevelt at the head of it. Their purpose was to prevent the Republicans from using Roosevelt’s military popularity to sweep into office a lot of henchmen. Within ten days the Republican henchmen all over the State were taken with convulsions. Every crank of the Machine trembled. It turned its awful power upon Roosevelt and ordered him to get off the Independent ticket. He obeyed and protected the henchmen. The episode illustrates the practical power of a few independents who can act quickly. The panic in the Republican camp was entirely justified. If three tickets had remained in the field with Roosevelt at the head of two of them, thousands of Democrats and thousands of Republicans would have voted for the Reform ticket. The Republican ticket would have polled merely the dyed-in-the-wool machine Republicans.
The rumpus among the Republican heelers--following so slight a cause as the action of five or six citizens who took the field with a ticket of their own--resembled the action of a geyser when a cake of soap is thrown into it--rumbling--followed by terrific vomiting.
A little practical discipline among the reformers is all that is required to make them formidable,--the discipline of experience, of acting together, of personal trust. This is to be acquired only in the field of action.
It is encouraging to find how small a body of men it takes--even at the present moment--to upset the calculations of the politicians. The force that made the Republicans afraid did not lie in the parcel of men who threw in the soap. It came from the great public. The episode showed that the Republicans were afraid to appeal to the country. They knew that their cabal was almost as much hated as Tammany Hall.
There is always great difficulty in this world as to who shall bell the cat; but conventions of mice do not further the matter. The way to do it is for a parcel of mice to take their political lives in their hands and proceed to do it.
* * * * *
The real meaning of all these movements will not be perceived till their work has been done. As history, the cause and course of them will be so plain that a word will suffice to explain them. In the light of history it will be clear that the improvement in the personnel of our public life was due to the demands of the public--expressed in citizen’s movements. We have already reached a point where neither party dares appeal to the public--as they did ten years ago--on purely party grounds. Roosevelt and Van Wyck both claimed to be men superior to the average partisan. The advance of political thought has already made the dullest man perceive the Machine within his own party, and every day spreads the news that there is only a single machine in all our politics. The destruction of this machine will not be like the destruction of the monasteries by Henry VIII., but it will consist in the substitution of new timber for old in the parties themselves.
Any one who looks for an expulsion of Tammany Hall like the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, will be disappointed. There will always be a Tammany Hall. But it will be run by respectable men, who will look back with wonder and disgust upon this period, and who will give the public an honest administration because the public has demanded it.
II
BETWEEN ELECTIONS
An election is like a flash of lightning at midnight. You get an instantaneous photograph of what every man is doing. You see his real relation toward his government. But an election happens only once a year. Government goes on day and night.
It is hard breaking down the popular fallacy that there is such a thing as “politics,” governed by peculiar conditions, which must be understood and respected; that the whole thing is a mystic avocation, run as a trade by high priests and low priests, and is remote from our daily life. Our system of party government has been developed with the aim of keeping the control in the hands of professionals. Technicalities have been multiplied, and the rules of the game have become more and more complex. There exists, consequently, an unformulated belief that the corruption of politics is something by itself. Yet there probably never was a civilization where the mesh of all powers and interests was so close. It is like the interlocking of roots in a swamp. Such density and cohesion were never seen in any epoch, such a mat and tangle of personalities, where every man is tied up with the fibres of every other. If you take an axe or a saw, and cut a clean piece out of it anywhere, you will maim every member of society. How idle, then, even to think of politics as a subject by itself, or of the corruptions of the times as localized!
Politics gives what the chemists call a “mirror,” and shows the ingredients in the average man’s composition. But you must take your mind off politics if you want to understand America. You must take up the lives of individuals and follow them out, as they play against each other in counterpoint. As soon as you do this you will not be able to determine where politics begins and where it stops. It is all politics: it is all social intercourse: it is all business. Any square foot of this soil will give you the whole fauna and flora of the land. Where will you put in your wedge of reform? There is not a cranny anywhere. The mass is like crude copper ore that cannot be blasted. It blows out the charge.
We think that political agitation must show political results. This is like trying to alter the shape of a shadow without touching its object. The hope is not only mistaken, it is absurd. The results to be obtained from reform movements cannot show in the political field till they have passed through the social world.
“But, after all, what you want is votes, is it not?” “It would be so encouraging to see virtue win, that everybody would vote for you thereafter. Why don’t you manage it somehow?” This sort of talk is the best record of incompetence which corruption has imprinted. Enlighten this class and you have saved the Republic. Why, my friend, you are so lost, you are so much a mere product of tyranny that you do not know what a vote is. True, we want votes, but the votes we want must be cast spontaneously. We do not want them so badly as to buy them. A vote is only important because it is an opinion. Even a dictator cannot force opinions upon his subjects by six months of rule; and yet the complaint is that decency gets few votes after a year of effort by a handful of radicals who are despised by the community. We only enter the field of politics because we can there get a hearing. The candidates in reform movements are tools. They are like crowbars that break open the mind of the age. They cannot be dodged, concealed, or laughed away. Every one is aroused from his lethargy by seeing a real man walk on the scene, amid all the stage properties and marionettes of conventional politics. “No fair!” the people cry. They do not vote for him, of course, but they talk about the portent with a vigor no mere doctrine could call forth, and the discussion blossoms at a later date into a new public spirit, a new and genuine demand for better things.
It is apparent that between the initial political activity of reformers and their ultimate political accomplishments, there must intervene the real agitation, the part that does the work, which goes on in the brains and souls of individual men, and which can only be observed in social life, in manners and conversation.
Now let us take up the steps by which, in practical life, the reaction is set going. Enter the nearest coterie of radicals and listen to the quarrel. Reformers proverbially disagree, and ‘their sects mince themselves almost to atoms.’ With us the quarrel always arises over the same point. “Can we afford, under these particular circumstances, to tell the exact truth?” I have never known a reform movement in which this discussion did not rage from start to finish, nor have I known one where any other point was involved. You are a citizens’ committee. The parties offer to give you half a loaf. Well and good. But this is not their main object. They want you to call it a whole loaf. They want to dissipate your agitation by getting you to tell the public that you are satisfied. What they hate is the standard. The war between you and them is a spiritual game of chess. They must get you to say they are right. It is their only means of retaining their power.
Thus the apple of discord falls into the Reform camp. Half its members take the bait. In New York City our politics have been so picturesque, the pleas of the politician so shallow, the lies demanded from the reformers so obvious, that the eternal principles of the situation have been revealed in their elemental simplicity. It is just because the impulse towards better things carries no material content--we do not want any particular thing, but we want an improvement in everything--it is just because the whole movement is purely moral, that the same questions always arise.
We ought not to grieve over the discussion, over the heart-burn and heated argument that start from a knot of radicals and run through the community, setting men against each other. The quarrel in the executive committee of this reform body is the initiative of much wholesome life. They are no more responsible for it, they can no more avoid it, the community can no more advance to higher standards before they have had it, than a child can skate before it can walk.
The executive committee is discussing the schools. In consequence of a recent agitation, the politicians have put up a candidate who will give new plumbing, even if he does steal the books, and the question is whether the School Association shall indorse this candidate. If it does, he wins. If it does not, both plumbing and books are likely to remain the prey of the other party, and the Lord knows how bad that is. The fight rages in the committee, and some sincere old gentleman is prophesying typhoid.