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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
REFLECTIONS AND COMMENTS, 1865–1895.
12mo, $2.00.
PROBLEMS OF
MODERN DEMOCRACY
- PROBLEMS OF
MODERN DEMOCRACY
*…tº,
$3. . 2 "...º.º.
&" ºr... }
***** - . . . . . *** 'tºº , sº
!! " " re. . . . .
ESSAYS
BY
EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
SECOZVD EDITION
NEW YORK
CELARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1897 -
COPYRIGHT, 1896, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK
CONTENTS
\ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMocracy, . .
[North American Review, January, 1865.]
IPOPULAR GovIRNMENT, . gº c º tº
[Nineteenth Century, February, 1886.]
SOME POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF,
[New Princeton Review, March, 1887.]
CRIMINAL Politics, . © & tº e * >
[North American Review, June, 1890.]
“THE EconoMIG MAN,” . tº © © e
[North American Review, October, 1891.]
IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY, . © © ſº
[Forum, May, 1892.]
THE DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY,
[Forum, March, 1894.]
WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM 2 .
[Forum, June, 1894.]
THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN 1896, . & &
[Forum, May, 1896.]
THE REAL PROBLEMs of DEMOCRACY, . ſº
[Atlantic Monthly, July, 1896.]
THE ExPENDITURE OF RICII MEN, . e ©
[Scribner's Magazine, October, 1896.]
PAGE
($8
98
123
156
180
199
311
ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF
DEMOCRACY
THE controversy between the supporters of oli-
garchy and those of democracy, which has raged
with greater or less heat ever since the middle of
the last century, has drawn fresh vigor from the
spectacle of the American war. Both sides have
found in this great struggle, not only, to use the
pulpit phrase, “an occasion to improve,” but an
endless supply of illustrations for the enforcement
or elevation of their respective theories. The one
sees, both in the causes of the struggle and in the
manner in which it has been conducted, a series
of conclusive proofs of the failure of popular gov-
ernment; the other finds in the incidents of each
hour some new justification of its confidence in
popular fortitude, honesty, and Sagacity.
And the discussion has been exacerbated by the
fact, that neither party has been a disinterested
spectator of the contest. By the friends of de-
mocracy abroad, the convulsion through which the
American commonwealth is passing is felt to be a
2 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
crucial test of the soundness of those political
opinions of which they have long been the cham-
pions, and with which their political fortunes are
inseparably linked. To its friends in America it
has come home as a personal calamity. It has
either wasted their substance, or made their hearths
desolate, or, which is often as hard to bear as
either, it has inflicted lasting wounds on their
pride. In the eyes of the party of aristocracy, too,
it is not simply the political unity of the North
American continent which is debated on Southern
battle-fields, but the stability of their own order,
the continuance of that form of social organization
in which they have been bred, and with the se-
curity and perpetuation of which all that they hold
precious in life is indissolubly connected. To them
the defeat of the South signifies the triumph of
that “principle of equality” from the spread of
which they look not only for their own degrada-
tion, but, often honestly enough, for great danger
to national liberty, and even to civilization itself.
And to appreciate thoroughly the intensity of
the interest which this conflict of ours excites, we
must keep in mind the width of the area over
which its material consequences have been felt.
There is no shore so distant that the waves of this
great tempest have not broken on it. The term
orbis terrarum perturbatio, which, as applied by
A RISTO CRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 3
Cicero to the great civil war of his day, was but a
rhetorical exaggeration, may be bestowed on this
one with literal accuracy. The course of the great
tides of commerce has been turned by it ; the in-
dustry of whole nations has been revolutionized by
it. From John O'Groat's to the base of the Great
Snowy Range, there is no country to which its
probable results, and probable duration, are not
questions of tremendous moment.
One result, for which students of political phi-
losophy will be thankful, has flowed from the in-
creased sharpness which the events of the day
have lent to the discussion, and that is the clear-
ness and frankness with which the opposing par-
ties have been led to enunciate their views. We
doubt if the enemies of democracy ever before re-
vealed their objections to it, and their anticipations
as to its effects, with as much candor as since our
war broke out. We now know, with a tolerable
approach to exactness, what we did not know be-
fore, the kind of thing they believe it to be, and
the kind and amount of evil they expect to pro-
ceed from its unchecked working. Excitement
caused by the vicissitudes of the armed struggle
has loosened the tongues of a great many men
who were previously kept silent by caution or in-
dolence, or from never having taken the trouble to
put their conclusions into shape. When democ-
4 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
racy was prosperous, many only shook their heads
when it was mentioned who now make a clean
breast of it, and tell the world in good Set phrases
what they have been thinking about it for years.
And, on the other hand, its friends have been
roused by the same causes into more vigorous
defence of it than they ever ventured on before.
There are many persons in America to-day who
five years ago looked grave over universal suffrage,
or expressed private doubts of its success, but who
are now to be found in the ranks of its most
enthusiastic defenders, breathing defiance of aris-
tocrats and aristocracy from every pore, and con-
signing every form of political Organization in which
power does not flow directly from the people, in
yearly or biennial driblets, to unutterable failure
and confusion.
There has, however, in our opinion, been one
great mistake made by Some advocates of the dem-
ocratic cause in their manner of conducting the
controversy. It consists in ascribing all the at-
tacks which have been recently made on demo-
cratic institutions to aristocratic malignity, to a
blind, perverse pride of caste, or to stupid, over-
reasoning prejudice against Our political and social
Organization simply because it is different from
something else. There is no doubt, in England
especially, a vast amount of ignorant depreciation
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 5
of democracy by persons who have no better rea-
sons for objecting to it than a vague notion that
it is vulgar, and a vast deal by others who hate it
from the purely selfish consideration of the proba-
ble effect of its spread on their own social position
or that of their families, or from the apprehension
that it would introduce changes in manners which
their temperament and education lead them to re-
gard as obnoxious.
But, in addition to these, democracy has had in
this controversy a number of opponents—a small
number, we admit — against whom we must em-
ploy better weapons than railing, whose character
and arguments are both unquestionably respecta-
ble, and whose hostility to it is based on con-
clusions carefully formed, which are enunciated,
not certainly without feeling, but without rancor
or irritation. They are thinkers who look On
politics—Ours as well as their own—in the clear
white light of reason, and who, while differing
from us as to the means of promoting it, share
all our solicitude for the welfare of the human
race. Nobody who has been familiar with the
political literature of Europe for some years back,
can have failed to perceive the struggle between
their hopes and fears which shows itself whenever
these men speak of democracy, the ill-disguised
apprehension with which they concede that its
6 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
march is now irresistible, and the nervous industry
with which they occupy themselves in providing
breaks and buffers to restrain or direct its course.
The opinions of this class of persons about de-
mocracy may, we think, be fairly summed up as
follows. They think the spread of democracy
(meaning thereby the ascendancy of “the principle
of equality,” to use M. de Tocqueville's phrase,
both in politics and in society) over every Chris-
tian country, at least, to be certain at no very dis-
tant day. They believe that no precaution can be
taken and no barrier created which will do
more than postpone this result, and then for a
very brief period. They think that this seems to
be the remedy decreed by Providence for the re-
moval of the great blot on our civilization, the
physical misery and moral degradation of the lower
classes. And they admit that the establishment of
democracy, whether it take the shape of a republic
or of a Caesarean despotism, would doubtless be
largely instrumental in securing for the bulk of the
population a certain amount of coarse enjoyments,
such as good shelter, good food, and good clothing,
and a limited amount of education. But they hold
that every democracy, however free at the period
of its establishment, gravitates strongly toward
subjection to a single absolute ruler, after a period
of great corruption and disorder, and that it derives
ARISTOCRATIO, OIPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 7
this tendency from certain inherent defects; and
what these defects are, they fancy they are able to
point out by an examination of what they see, or
think they see, in the United States.
What they believe they learn about democracy
from what they see here is, that it is fatal in the
long run to any high degree of excellence. in the
arts, science, literature, or statesmanship; that it is
hostile to every form of distinction, and thus tends
to extinguish the nobler kinds of ambition, to .
create and perpetuate mediocrity, to offer a serious
bar to progress, and even to threaten civilization
with stagnation; that, by making equality of con-
ditions the highest political good, it makes civil
liberty appear valuable only so long or so far as
its existence is compatible with equality; that it
converts the ideal of the worst trained and most
unthinking portion of the community into the na-
tional standard of capacity, and thus drives the
ablest men out of public life; that it sets up mere
success in the accumulation of money as the proof
and test of national prosperity, and elevates ma-
terial luxury into the great end of social progress;
that it takes from manners all their grace and pol-
ish and dignity, makes literature feeble and tawdry,
and Oratory bombastic and violent; that it infuses
bitterness into party struggles, while removing the
barriers which in aristocratic Societies soften and
_*
8 POLITICA D AND ECONOMIC ES S.A. YS
restrain its expression; and, finally, that, by the
pains it takes to preserve the equality of condi-
tions, it forces every member of the community to
engage as soon as he reaches manhood in an eager
scramble for wealth, thus rendering impossible the
existence of a class with sufficient leisure to devote
themselves to the cultivation of the arts and
sciences, or to speculative inquiry in any field of
knowledge.
We do not mean to say that all of the foregoing
charges are brought against democracy by any one
of its enemies, but the whole of them may be
found in a very small number of the speeches,
articles, and treatises of one sort or other, which
the political movements of the last fifteen years
have called forth both in England and on the
Continent; and it will be confessed by any candid
American observer, that there are various phe-
nomena, both social and political, to be witnessed
in the United States which do give color to a large
proportion of them. There is hardly one of them
for which some foundation, or something like
foundation, may not be found in Some phase or
other of American society or government.
If we asked an American of conservative tastes
and opinions to say frankly what he thought of
this picture, he would probably take exception to
a very large portion of it ; he would accuse it of
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 9
!
gross exaggeration at least ; and if asked to sketch
the changes for the worse which, in his opinion,
had taken place in American society within the
last fifty or sixty years, he would present us with
something different, but different rather in degree
than in kind. He would say that there had been
since the beginning of the century a great deteri-
oration in the character, attainments, and Social
standing of the men sent by the Free States to fill
the various offices of government. (For the pur-
pose of this discussion, we leave the Slave States
out of the argument, and for obvious reasons.)
The men who now occupy the judicial bench, fill
the national and State legislatures, and sit at the
council boards and in the mayoral chairs of the
great cities, are inferior in training, ability, edu-
cation, and social position to those who filled the
same positions fifty or sixty years ago. Forensic
eloquence has, he would say, consequently under-
gone a corresponding change for the worse. It is
neither so chaste, so simple, nor so forcible as it
was at the time of the foundation of the govern-
ment, and for many years after. The art of debat-
ing has all but died out, for it is an art which
needs acute and ready intellect, saturated with
reading and experience and trained in fence, to
Sustain it. Speeches in Congress and in the legis-
latures on important questions are now, for the
10 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
most part, long essays, written out previously,
often full of irrelevancy and commonplace, and re-
peated altogether, or in a great degree, from mem-
ory, to inattentive audiences. If the orator is
forced by circumstances to depart from his pre-
pared course, and defend himself and his opinions
extemporaneously against an extemporaneous at-
tack, his scanty mental resources force him in the
great majority of cases to fall back on personal
vituperation. And the Small amount of previous
thought or culture which is revealed in the legis-
lative discussions is, he would add, very remark-
able. Hardly any subject seems important enough
or exciting enough to call out anything much bet-
ter than the philosophy of hotel parlors or the
logic of newspaper articles. What is worse than
all this, legislation is confessedly more hasty,
more reckless, and more ill-digested than formerly.
None of these things can be ascribed to any dimi-
mution in the number of men of culture and
ability produced by the country in our day as
compared with a former one. Their number bears,
there is little doubt, a very much larger proportion
to the population than it ever did. But they are
unceremoniously thrust aside from public life, and
are generally found either toiling in commerce or
in the professions, or else killing time and ambi-
tion in Social trifling or in foreign travel.
AAISTOCAPATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 11
Of the present as compared with the former
condition of the bar, too, he would say, that not
only has etiquette disappeared from it, but in a
large number of the States the relations of judge
and counsel are marked by a familiarity which, on
one side at least, is mingled with a good deal of
contempt. Admission to the profession has come
to be, not a proof of fitness, but a political right;
and the result is, that its ranks are crowded by
needy aspirants, not after forensic distinction, but
after money, whose want of learning and prepara-
tion for their duties, and entire exemption from
the once powerful restraints of professional opin-
ion, are fast destroying the reputation for lore,
ability, and integrity which a former generation
achieved for the American bar.
If you direct his attention to the social condi-
tion of the country, he will tell you that, while
the habits of the American population are much
more luxurious than they were half a century
ago, while there is far more money in circulation,
and while most of the pleasures of life are placed
within the reach of a much larger class than in the
earlier days of the Republic, the manners are not
only less ceremonious, but less dignified and re-
fined; that there is not only less punctiliousness,
but less courtesy and grace in Social intercourse;
that the family bond is not so strong as it used to
12 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
be ; that there is less respect for authority, not
Only in the household, but in the state; that both
the father and the judge find themselves much
less important and less respected personages than
they Once were ; that dress and manners have less
Weight and importance than formerly, and that
there has grown up within thirty years a sort of
affectation of carelessness in attire, in demeanor,
and even in language; that the English of the
bulk of the population is not so pure, nor their
accent so refined, as those of the fathers; that
more is now read, but less is digested, than in the
last generation; and that in short, on the whole,
there is both in externals and in mental charac-
teristics less finish to be found amongst Americans
of the present day than amongst those of half a
century ago. -
It matters not for our present purpose which of
these pictures of American society is the more
faithful. We are content to accept either of them
as true, since the explanation which we propose to
offer for the phenomena which they bring before
us will, if it be of any value whatever, be as appli-
cable to the first as to the last. But the moment
we address inquiries ass to the cause of these phe-
nomena to any of the political sects of the present
day, who are fairly entitled to the credit of either ob-
Serving or thinking, we find ourselves launched on
ARISTOCAEATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 13
a sea of contradiction. If we apply to a “conser-
vative,” he will, if advanced in years, probably
acknowledge the occurrence of the changes we
have enumerated above, and will, in nine cases
out of ten, assure us that it is foreign immigration
that has done it all; that, if no Irish or Germans
had ever come to the country, no changes for the
worse, either in government or Society, would ever
have taken place. If we ask an Englishman of
any but the radical School, or any of those native
political philosophers who import their opinions
with their gloves and pomatum, and study science
in Sir Archibald Alison and the Quarterly Review,
they will tell us that whatever of decay or dete-
rioration is visible in anything American is the
direct and palpable consequence of universal suf-
frage; that democracy has ruined the country, and
that the only road to improvement lies through
revolution.
When we come to inquire to what extent the
social or political condition of the Northern States
has been influenced or modified by foreign immi-
gration, we find ourselves dealing with a subject
on which all those writers whose opinions are
largely affected by their taste are agreed; and
most of those who in America venture on political
speculation belong to this class. If we take up
the hundred laments over the degeneracy of our
14 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
political condition, which issue from them every
year in books, newspapers, speeches, and sermons,
we shall find that in nine cases out of ten it is
ascribed to the great influx of ignorant foreigners
which has been going on for the last thirty years.
In many, perhaps most, of the controversies which
are carried on with European critics touching the
state and prospects of the republic, this argument
is put very prominently forward. Any coarseness,
corruption, or recklessness, either of conduct or
language, which shows itself in the management
of our public affairs, and attracts the attention of
foreign critics, is apt to be ascribed by the native
advocate to the malign influence of the human
drift, which the convulsions and misfortunes of
European Society have cast on our shores.
We suspect that much of the prevalence of this
theory is due to the fact, that those who most fre-
quently put it forward in print live in the great
cities, where foreigners are most numerous, where
they are in the habit of acting in masses, and where
their influence is most easily seen and felt. It
is there that the evils which flow from their pres-
ence are most palpable; and those who have un-
der their eyes its effects on the local government
are apt to draw from the spectacle the most lugu-
brious inferences as to the condition of the rest
of the country. But the estimate of the weight
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 15
and extent of foreign influence upon politics and
Society, based on the impressions thus formed, is
not confirmed by a careful consideration of the
facts.
The whole number of foreigners who have entered
the country between 1790 and 1860 is 5,296,414;
and of these, 5,062,000 entered since the year 1820,
or an average of 126,500 a year during forty years,
being of course a mere driblet when compared to
the native population. The immigration since
1860 has been very large; and the number actually
resident in the whole of the United States in
that year was about 4,000,000, or less than one-
Seventh of the entire population. But it is not
since 1860 that the political or social deterio-
ration which we are discussing has shown itself.
One might imagine, on listening to some of the
accounts one hears of the extent to which for-
eigners are responsible for the vices of American
politics, that at least half the inhabitants of the
E’ree States had for many years been persons of
European birth, and that the intelligent and
educated natives of the country had had a severe
struggle, under universal suffrage, to retain any
share in the government, and had been long
threatened with seeing the management of a politi-
cal system, which requires a large amount of virtue
and knowledge on the part of those whe live under
16 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
it to enable it to work successfully, pass into
the hands of a class of men bred in ignorance and
degraded by oppression. But when it is taken
into account that the foreign immigration has
flowed slowly during a great number of years, that
a large proportion of it has, of course, been com-
posed of women and children, and that the small
number of voters which it in any one year has con-
tributed to the electoral body, have been Scattered
over the Union from Maine to California, and have
been divided into different camps by difference of
language, religion, and nationality, and have been
generally too ignorant and helpless to devise or
pursue a common policy, it is easy to see that the
current notion of the extent of their influence on
national politics and on political life, has been
greatly exaggerated.
The only instance, we believe, in which the
foreigners can be said to have combined to make
their influence felt at the elections, occurred dur-
ing the “Rnow Nothing” movement; but this was
the result of a direct attack on their own privileges
and standing. On all other occasions, we find them
serving under American leaders, and assailing Or
defending purely American ideas; and so far from
seeking position or influence by banding together,
their great aim and desire are, as is well known, to
efface all marks of their foreign origin, and secure
AZISTOCRATIC OPINION'S OF DEMOCRACY 17
complete absorption in the American population.
And how do they accomplish this 2 Not by im-
posing their ideas on the natives, or dragging them
down to their level, but by adopting native ideas
and manners and customs, educating their children
in American habits, or, in other words, raising
themselves to the American level. In fact, there
is nothing they resent So keenly as any attempt to
place them in a different category, or ascribe to
them different interests or motives, from those of
Americans. If they were conscious of the power
of making themselves felt as a separate body, this
would hardly be the case. So far from seeking to
obliterate the distinction between themselves and
Americans, they would endeavor to maintain and
perpetuate it.
It may be said, however, that, although the for-
eign element in the population may not influence
American politics in a way sufficient to account for
the political changes of the last half-century di-
rectly by its votes, it does influence them indirectly
by the modifications it effects in the national char-
acter through intermarriage and social intercourse.
The effect upon temperament of intermixture of
blood is very much too obscure a subject, in our
opinion, to be safely made the basis of any theory
of national progress or decline, even by those who
attach most importance to it, and profess to know
18 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
most about it. But even if we accord it all the
force they claim for it, time enough has not yet
elapsed to enable us to judge of its effects in this
country. This much is certain, that the great feat-
ures of the American character do not seem to
have undergone any Sensible change since the Rev-
olution. The American of to-day, as an individual,
presents very much the same great traits, moral
and intellectual, which his father and grandfather
presented before him ; the main difference between
the three generations being, that the present one
displays its idiosyncrasies on a very much wider
field. A chemical analysis (as it has been termed)
of natural character is, however, something from
which no sound thinker will ever hope to arrive at
conclusions of much value for any purposes not
purely speculative.
As regards the influence exercised on American
life by foreigners through the medium of social in-
tercourse, we doubt very much if anybody has ever
attached much importance to it, who has given the
matter any serious consideration. All that seems
Inecessary to remove the idea that it has been in-
strumental in modifying either American opinions
Or manners, is to call attention to the class of so-
ciety from which the immigrants are generally
drawn, and to the social position which they oc-
cupy in this country. If we except a few lawyers,
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 19
a few doctors, a few professors and teachers, and a
few merchants in the large cities, eager to make
money enough to enable them to return with fort-
unes to their native country, it may be said that
ninety-nine out of every hundred foreigners who
come to the United States with the intention of set-
tling here, are drawn from the ranks of the Euro-
pean peasantry—Germans, entirely ignorant of
the English language; and Irish, who, as well as
the Germans, are separated from even the poorest
of the native population by an entirely different
standard of living, and a wide difference of habits
and of religion. There is between them and even
the lower grades of American society a barrier,
which is none the less formidable for not being
recognized by law. They fill, all but exclusively,
the menial callings, and intermarriage between
them and pure-blooded Americans is very rare.
And, as we have said, so far from acting as propa-
gators of foreign opinions or manners, the whole
energy of the new-comers is spent, for years after
their arrival, not in diffusing their own ways of
thinking and feeling, but in strenuous and gener-
ally successful efforts to get rid of them, and adopt
those of their American neighbors.
When we come to consider the European ex-
planation of the defects which show themselves
in the political and social system of the United
20 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
States—and it is an explanation which large num-
bers of Americans belonging to the wealthier
classes have of late years been disposed to accept
as the true one—that they are the direct and all
but inevitable result of the spread of democracy,
we are met on the threshold by the authority of a
great name, of which we desire to speak with all
possible respect. That theory of the cause of the
decline in the character and ability of public men in
America, and the consequent increasing corruption
which marks our public life, of the decrease of re-
spect for law and authority, and of the growing
absorption in the pursuit of money, which, before
the war at least, were so generally observed and
deplored, undoubtedly owes to M. de Tocqueville
most of its weight and authority. His “Democ-
racy in America” was and is perhaps the most
remarkable contribution to the philosophy of poli-
tics in modern times. It solves some of the most
puzzling problems of a novel condition of society,
and one of which the European world, prior to the
appearance of his book, knew very little, with an
ease and dexterity which it is impossible, even for
those who mistrust many of his conclusions, not to
admire. And the book is throughout evidently
the product of laborious thinking and conscientious
and painstaking observation, controlled by a sound
philosophic method. Probably no one, and cer-
AAEISTOCRATIO. OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 21
tainly no foreigner, was ever so successful in
sketching American character, in catching the
spirit of American life, and in revealing the nature
and tendency of American ideas.
He has framed a theory of the influences and
tendencies of democracy, partly a priori by de-
ductions from the principles of human nature, and
partly from his observations of social phenomena
in France and America; and this is, we believe,
the process now recognized as the only one that is
trustworthy in the conduct of inquiries in social
science. But the conclusions thus drawn depend
inevitably for their soundness on the accuracy of
the observations on which they are partly based,
and by which alone their accuracy can, at present,
be tested. If the peculiar state of opinions, feel-
ings, and manners, and peculiar tone of thought,
which M. de Tocqueville found in America, be not
really altogether the result of equality of conditions,
or of democratic institutions, that portion of his
speculations which is dependent on the correctness
of this assumption of course falls to the ground ;
and a very large portion of them is dependent
upon it. ,”
Nevertheless, to assume that those social pher
nomena which are peculiar to America are solely
the result of democracy, is to attempt the solu-
tion of social problems by what Mr. Mill calls the
22 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
“chemical method,” the imperfection of which we
cannot do better than describe in his own words.
“If so little can be done by the experimental method to
determine the conditions of an effect of many combined
causes in the case of medical Science, still less is this
method applicable to a class of phenomena more compli-
cated than even those of physiology—the phenomena of
politics and history. There the plurality of causes exists
in almost boundless excess, and the effects are for the
most part inextricably interwoven with one another. To
add to the embarrassment, most of the inquiries in politi-
cal science relate to the production of effects of the most
comprehensive description, such as the public wealth,
public security, public morality, and the like—results
liable to be affected directly or indirectly, either in plus
or in minus, by nearly every fact which exists or event
which occurs in human Society. The vulgar notion that
the safe methods on political subjects are those of Baco-
nian induction, that the true guide is not generally rea-
soning but specific experience, will one day be quoted as
among the most unequivocal marks of a low state of the
speculative faculties in any age in which it is accredited.
Nothing can be more ludicrous than the sort of parodies
on experimental reasoning which one is accustomed to
meet with, not in popular discussions only, but in grave
treatises, when affairs of nations are the theme. ‘How,’
it is asked, ‘ can an institution be bad, when the country
has prospered under it 2' ‘How can such or such causes
have contributed to the prosperity of One country, when
another has prospered without them 2' Whoever makes
use of an argument of this sort, not intending to deceive,
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 23
should be sent back to learn the elements of some one of
the more easy physical sciences. Such reasoners ignore
the fact of a plurality of causes in the very case which af-
fords the most signal example of it.”—Logic, Vol. II, pp.
489, 490, Eng. ed.
To make American society what it is, no one ,
cause has sufficed, and what number or combina-
tion of causes has been instrumental in creating
the phenomena which attract so much of the at-
tention of political philosophers, it is impossible
in the existing state of political science to deter-
mine.
It would be very unjust to M. de Tocqueville to
leave it to be understood that he himself was not
fully aware of all this. In fact, he expressly ac-
knowledges in more than one place the existence
of a plurality of causes for all the phenomena of
American society, as well as that of other countries.
Eſe recognizes the immense influence “which the
nature of the country, the Origin of its inhabitants,
the religion of the early settlers, their acquired
knowledge, their previous habits, have exercised
and do exercise independently of democracy upon
their mode of thought and feeling.” (Vol. II., p.
iv, Bowen's ed.) And he in various places warns
his readers that the phenomena he is discussing
are either due to other causes than “the principle
of equality,” or are rather American than demo-
24 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS
cratic. But he seems frequently to forget this in
the course of his reasoning, and on almost every
page draws conclusions as to the probable condi-
tion of democratic Society in general from what
he describes as American society, or else draws
these conclusions from general principles, and
verifies them by an examination of American in-
stitutions or manners. The effect of either of
these processes on the mind of the ordinary reader
is, of course, very similar. We have not space to
quote as fully as would be necessary, if we quoted
at all, in Support of these comments; but anyone
who consults the chapters entitled, respectively,
“Why Americans are more addicted to Practical
than to Theoretical Science,” “The Literary Char-
acteristics of Democratic Times,” “Why American
Writers and Orators often use an Inflated Style,”
“Of Parliamentary Eloquence in the United States,”
“Why the Americans are so Restless in the midst
of their Prosperity,” as well as most of the sub-
sequent ones, will find the remarks we have made
on the author's method of reasoning fully borne
out. And the discussions of the nature and ten-
dencies of democratic institutions which have been
created in Europe by the war prove, we think, all
but conclusively, that, whatever may have been his
own state of mind in writing, De Tocqueville's in-
fluence on European opinion has been to a certain
A RISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 25
extent misleading. Hardly one book or article in
newspaper cr magazine has appeared on Ameri-
can affairs, in which any attempt is made to ex-
tract lessons from our condition for English guid-
ance, which does not take it for granted, not only ~
that democracy has produced everything that is
considered objectionable in American Society, but
that democratic institutions transferred to any
other country would give rise to precisely the
same phenomena. A very large portion of the in-
tense hostility of the upper classes to the United
States is due to the prevalence amongst them of
this delusion.
We cannot, for our part, help believing that any
speculation as to the causes of the peculiar phe-
nomena of American society, in which its outward
circumstances during the last eighty years do not
occupy the leading position, must lead to conclu-
sions radically erroneous, and calculated to do
great injustice not only to the American people,
but to democracy itself. At these, nevertheless,
M. de Tocqueville has only glanced, and most of
those who have followed him in discussing demo-
cratic tendencies have overlooked them altogether.
If we inquire what are those phenomena of
American Society which it is generally agreed dis-
tinguish it from that of older countries, we shall
find, we are satisfied, that by far the larger num-
26 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS
ber of them may be attributed in a great measure
to what, for want of a better name, we shall call
“the frontier life” led by a large proportion of the
inhabitants, and to the influence of this portion on
manners and legislation, rather than to political
institutions, or even to the equality of conditions.
In fact, we think that these phenomena, and par-
ticularly those of them which excite most odium
in Europe, instead of being the effect of democ-
racy, are partly its cause, and that it has been to
their agency more than to aught else, that the dem-
ocratic tide in America has owed most of its force
and violence.
If we examine closely the history of the North-
ern Colonies, we shall find that, just as their
founders left England in Search of religious liberty,
but were careful not to suffer it within their juris-
diction, so also, although they were most of them
animated by republican Sentiments, and although
a commonwealth was doubtless their ideal polity,
“the principle of equality” never obtained any
recognition, either in fact or in theory, amongst
them or their descendants, down to the time of the
Revolution. The distinction between the gentle-
man and the common man not only existed in
New England till the end of the last century, but
it was recognized in forms of address, a mode
of making it peculiarly repugnant to democratic
ARISTOCAA TIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 27
feeling. Nor, so far as we can learn, was “the
principle of authority” much weaker in the Colo-
nies, at any period of their history, than in Eng-
land. The civil functionaries in Boston and Ply-
mouth were held in a respect very little, if at all,
short of that which was rendered to such digni-
taries in London. The clergy exercised an influ-
ence over both manners and politics which, it is
very certain, they never secured in the mother
country. And the family bond, in spite of the
very different conditions by which it was surround-
ed in the New World, was not, we believe, weaker
than in the Old. Down to the time of the Revolu-
tion the paterfamilias was still a power in Society,
and exercised an amount of control over the life
and conduct of his children, and received from
them an amount of homage, which are no longer
seen. Etiquette, both public and private, was still
an object of attention and respect. Members
of the Colonial legislatures were really represen-
tatives, and not, as now, delegates; and to sit
amongst them was an honor to which persons
without an established social position did not
readily aspire. Tlegislation, too, though it might
be based on erroneous principles, was rarely SO
reckless or so hasty as at present. And, though
last not least, the religious Organizations subjected
nearly every member of the community to a dis-
28 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA. YS
cipline so rigid and exacting, that it has left marks
on the New England mind and character which will
probably not be effaced as long as the race lasts.
How was it that this state of things lasted SO
long? How was it that the ideas brought by the
Colonists from the Old World retained their force
for a century and a half, in spite of the facts that
communication with the mother country was rare,
slow, and difficult, that she exercised little or no
influence at that time through her literature, for
literature had not then been popularized, that the
life led by the Colonists was such as to bring the
idea of equality into the fullest prominence, that
hereditary wealth was almost unknown amongst
them, and that their social condition necessarily
fostered individualism 2 How was it that that
democratic tide which, within the last fifty years,
has overwhelmed everything, during the previous
hundred and fifty gave so few signs of its rising?
The Saturday Review, in an attempt it made
about a year ago to answer these questions, as-
cribed the rapid progress of democracy in America
since the Revolution to the stoppage at that
period of the supply of younger sons of gentle-
men, which, according to the writer, was then be-
ginning to flow into the country, and would, if the
Separation had not taken place, have continued
to flow in ever since. Another explanation fre-
A RISTOCAEATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 29
quently offered by speculators of the same school
is, that the change was due to the removal of the
social influence of the monarchy, which, as long as
the connection with the mother country lasted,
prevented the republican form of government,
which in reality already existed, from producing
its natural effect On manners and ideas.
Both of these theories, however, receive a severe
blow from the course of events in Australia. This
colony was established on a thoroughly aristocratic
basis. It received and continues to receive a large
contribution of “younger sons ° than has fallen to
the lot of any other, and great numbers of them
went out with sufficient capital to enable them to
maintain their social position. The land-laws, too,
encouraged the appropriation of large tracts of
country to their exclusive use as sheep pastures,
and for a long while rendered capital almost as
essential to success in life there as in England.
The colony had that which we are now taught
to consider the essential basis of aristocratic so-
ciety, a servile class, in the convicts, and, more
than this, it has remained up to the present in so-
cial and political dependence on England; yet in
spite of all these things the progress of democracy
there has been steady and rapid. Universal suf-
frage has been established throughout the island;
the property qualification for members of the
30 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
legislatures has been abolished ; the vote is taken
by ballot, and the press and public life are almost
exact counterparts of those of the United States,
and all this within eighty years of the first settle-
ment of the country. i f
We are far from asserting that the idea of the
equality of men, which, according to Professor
Maine, was extracted from the Roman juridical
maxim that “men were born equal,” converted, by
a not uncommon transformation, by the French
literary men of the eighteenth century into a po-
litical dogma, and by them transmitted to the Vir-
ginian lawyers, had nothing to do, after its ma-
nipulation by the Jeffersonian school, with the
spread of democracy in the United States. But
it could, after all, amongst a people so intensely
practical as the Americans, and so averse from
speculation in politics, have effected very little, if
the field had not been prepared for it by other
causes. It could never have embodied itself either
in political or social movements of the popular
mind, had it not been made ready for its recep-
tion by influences of vastly more potency than a
foreign dogma can ever have amongst a people of
Anglo-Saxon Origin.
The agency which, in our opinion, gave democ-
racy its first great impulse in the United States,
which has promoted its spread ever since, and
A RISTOOZ2A TTO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 31
has contributed most powerfully to the produc-
tion of those phenomena in American Society
which hostile critics set down as peculiarly demo-
cratic, was neither the origin of the Colonists, nor
the circumstances under which they came to the
country, nor their religious belief; but the great
change in the distribution of the population, which
began soon after the Revolution, and which con-
tinues its operation up to the present time.
Population during the first hundred years of
Colonial history was kept from spreading widely
by its smallness, by the Indians, and by the at-
traction of the sea-coast, which furnished a ready
means of intercommunication. The very feeble-
ness of the Colonists in point of numbers consti-
tuted a strong motive for keeping close together.
The aborigines, who still held the forests all
around them, were a standing menace to their Se-
curity, and could only be kept in check by con-
stant and watchful co-operation. Moreover, labor
was too scarce to make the opening of roads into
the interior an easy task; and even when opened
they furnished but sorry facilities for traffic. The
weight of this consideration can be better appre-
ciated by remembering that until the present
century America was completely dependent on
Europe, not only for the luxuries, but for most of
the comforts and conveniences and many of the
32 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSA. YS
necessaries of life. During the Colonial period,
and especially during the early part of it, most
of the clothing and tools of the inhabitants were
brought from England ; which fact, of course, in
itself furnished a strong reason for not wandering
far from the coast. Accordingly we find that, at
the outbreak of the Revolution, the Colonists con-
sisted of a string of settlements along the shore,
lying a few miles apart, and carrying on most of
their intercourse by water. Even the pioneers had
rarely penetrated inland more than fifty or a hun-
dred miles, and generally along the rivers only.
Now these obstacles to expansion performed for
the Colonists precisely the same office which is
performed in older countries by want of Space,
and exercised much the same influence on their
Social progress. It produced comparative density
of population; and the effects of density of popu-
lation, wherever it is not accompanied by very
great numbers, as in large cities, are well known.
It strengthens public opinion, represses individ-
ualism, tightens the social relations, and thus gives
fixity to old customs and ideas, and stability to
authority. It did all this and more for the early
settlers. They landed from Europe in companies,
with a Social organization already formed ; and
the difficulty of scattering enabled them to pre-
serve it, and preserve the ideas on which it was
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 33
based, for over a century, in spite of the fact that
their daily life was one which tended powerfully
to develop the spirit of independence and self-
reliance—more so, in fact, than that of our back-
woodsmen at the present day, for most of the ap-
pliances by which modern invention mitigates the
hardships of pioneering were then wanting. The
Church retained its hold on the young and on the
old; the opinion of the community kept even the
strongest natures in subjection, and all the more
readily, because in those days the community to
each of its members was the world. It was dif-
ficult to leave it, and there was no appeal from its
judgments.
The history of colonization in all ages and climes
tells much the same story. Wherever the colonists
are prevented by any cause from Scattering, and
congregate from the outset in communities, the
colony remains a tolerably faithful reflection of life
and manners in the mother country.
The completeness with which the individual in
the Greek republics was merged in the state or
city, rendered the notion of individual action or
individual existence, apart from the community to
which he belonged, abhorrent to him. He never
thought of himself in any character but that of a
citizen. Consequently, we find that Greek coloni-
zation meant simply the production on a foreign
34 POLITICAL AND E('ONOMIC ESSA YS
shore of as faithful an image of the metropolis as
circumstances would permit. The Colonists, far
from scattering in search of fortune, massed them-
selves together in towns; and the result was that
the Greek ideas and traditions and customs, both,
political and religious, were preserved with the
most extraordinary fidelity ; and this is rendered
all the more remarkable from the fact that the ele-
ments of which ancient colonies were composed
were at least as heterogeneous as those of the col-
Onies of modern times.” The Roman colonies, ex-
cept the military Ones of later days, were founded
under the influence of the same feeling, and re-
mained, however far removed from the great city,
her living images—“effigies parva, simulacraque
populi Romani.”
* Seneca's account of the causes which led to emigration in
ancient times is curious, from its applicability to the emigration
of our own day. “Nec omnibus eadem causa relinquendi,
quaerendique patriam fuit. Alios excidia urbium suarum, hos-
tilibus armis elapsos, in aliena, Spoliatos suis, expulerunt; alios
domestica seditio submovit; alios nimia superfluentis populi fre-
quentia, ad exonerandas vires, emisit; alios pestilentia, aut fre-
quens terrarum hiatus, aut aliqua intoleranda infelicis soli vitia
ejecerunt; quosdam fertilis orae et in majus laudatae, fama cor-
rupit; alios alia causa excivit domibus suis.”—Consol. ad Hel-
via'm., Cap. 6.
War, revolution, over-population, pestilence,
earthquakes, poverty of soil, and a vague desire of bettering
their condition, are the causes *} Send men forth in quest)
of “fresh fields and pastures new.” "




ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 35. V
In those modern colonies which have, for any
reason, been prevented from Scattering widely, we
witness much the same phenomena. The South
American, who is gregarious by temperament, and
who is cooped up on the edge of his great rivers
by the impenetrability of tropical forests, remains
to this day simply an indolent Spaniard, as con-
servative, as hostile to novelties or movement, as
any peasant or shop-keeper in Aragon. And if
we travel through Lower Canada, we find that the
habitans, whose French horror of solitude, as well
as the conquest of the country by the British, has
kept them congregated in the old settlements, have
preserved until very recently the social Organi-
zation under which the first emigrants left their
country. They continued to be the only faithful
picture of the France which the Revolution de-
stroyed, and even yet any one who wishes to get
an accurate knowledge of the feelings, relations,
and ideas which formed the basis of the old régime,
would find them in far better preservation on the
banks of the St. Lawrence than on those of the
Loire or the Garonne.
The Revolutionary struggle in America pro-
duced the usual effect of great civil commotions.
It unsettled industry, broke up families, reduced
large numbers to poverty, and diminished produc-
tion; and, by habituating large bodies of men to
36 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
the change and license of camp life, rendered the
even tenor of the way which they had previously
pursued in their homes no longer tolerable. Then
came the usual sequelae of a long war. When peace
was concluded, a spirit of restlessness was diffused,
through the country, and an eagerness for adven-
ture, which the fama fertilis orde that them be-
gan to be wafted from the West intensified from
day to day. The emigration westward set in with
a vigor which had never before been witnessed;
and thenceforward, for a short period, new States
were rapidly added to the confederation. Ken-
tucky came in in 1792; Tennessee, in 1796; Ohio,
in 1802; but here there was a pause. The move-
ment was checked evidently by the material diffi-
culties which attended any further advance. Either
it had reached a point at which remoteness from
civilization became inconvenient or disagreeable,
or else the drain on the population of the Eastern
States had exhausted all that portion of it which
was fit for pioneering. During the next fourteen
years there was no new State added to the Union,
except Louisiana, which was admitted in 1812;
but in 1816 the stream appears to have again begun
to flow into the wilderness. Indiana was admitted
that year; Mississippi followed in 1817; Illinois,
in 1818; Alabama, in 1819; and Missouri, in
1821. Now, as this increase was contemporaneous
ARISTO CRATIO, OI’IWIO.WS OF DEMOCRACY 37
with the spread of steam navigation on the great
rivers, it is fair to presume that it was in a large
degree due to it. There was then another pause of
fifteen years, at the close of which the influence of
the railroads which were then getting into opera-
tion began to show itself; and from this time for-
ward, the movement of population into the West-
ern wilds has steadily increased from year to year,
being swelled by the affluent from abroad which
has poured into the United States between the
years 1820 and 1860 the enormous number of
5,062,414 persons. Arkansas, Michigan, Texas,
Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Ransas have
thus been added to the Union in rapid succession.
We onlit from consideration the Pacific States,
California, Oregon, and Nevada.
It must be constantly borne in mind that
this wonderful diffusion of population over the
wilderness which seventy years ago lay between
the seaboard States and the Mississippi Valley,
could not have taken place without the application
of Steam to locomotion. In the absence of this
invention, the number of new settlements must
always have borne a small proportion to the old
Ones. The portion of the community in which
habits and modes of thought were tolerably fixed,
in which experience was highly valued, traditions
were held in reverence, and on which the past had
38 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
left traces of greater or less depth, would have so
largely exceeded the portion engaged in the work
of actually reclaiming the wilderness, that it would
either have held the latter in political and moral
subjection, and have imposed its ideas and man-
ners on it, or would, at all events, have remained
impervious to its influence. The West, instead of
creating, as it has done, a Social type in many re-
spects distinct, would have remained completely
under Eastern influence, and have simply repro-
duced the Society from which it had sprung, its
manners, ideas, and aspirations.
But with the assistance of steamboats and rail-
ways, and of immigration from Europe, the pio-
neering element in the population, the class devot-
ed to the task of creating new political and Social
organizations as distinguished from that engaged
in perfecting Old Ones, assumed a great prepon-
derance. It spread itself thinly over a vast area
of soil, of such extraordinary fertility that a very
slight amount of toil expended on it affords returns
that might have satisfied even the dreams of Span-
ish avarice. The result has been very much what
we might have concluded, a priori, that it would
be. A society composed at the period of its for-
mation mainly of young men, coming from all parts
of the world in quest of fortune, released from the
Ordinary restraints of family, church, and public
ARISTO CRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 39
opinion, even of the civil law, naturally and inevit-
ably acquires a certain contempt for authority and
impatience of it, and individualism among them
develops itself very rapidly. If you place this
Society, thus constituted, in the midst of a wilder-
ness, where each member of it has to contend, tools
in hand, with Nature herself for wealth, or even sub-
sistence, the ties which bind him to his fellows will
for a while at least be rarely anything stronger than
that of simple contiguity. The only mutual ob-
ligation which this relation suggests strongly is
that of rendering assistance occasionally in over-
coming material difficulties—in other words, the
simplest bond which can unite human beings. Each
person is, from the necessity of the case, so ab-
sorbed in his own struggle for existence, that he has
seldom occasion or time for the consideration and
cultivation of his social relations. He knows noth-
ing of the antecedents of his neighbors, nor they of
his. They are not drawn together, in all proba-
bility, by a single memory or association. They
have drifted into the same locality, it is true, under
the guidance of a common impulse, and this a selfish
one. So that the settler gets into the habit of look-
ing at himself as an individual, of contemplating
himself and his career separate and apart from the
social organization. We do not say that this breeds
Selfishness—far from it; but it breeds individualism.
40 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSA YS
If the members of such a society are compelled
to work hard for the gratification of their desires,
to meet and overcome great difficulties and hard-
ships and dangers, the result is naturally the pro-
duction of great energy, of great audacity, and of a
Self-confidence that rises into conceit. In this
Self-confidence is almost always contained a pro-
digious contempt for experience and for theory.
The ends which such men have had in view having
all been attained without the aid of either, they
cannot see the use of them. They have found
their own wits sufficient for the solution of every
problem that has presented itself to them, so that
deference to the authority of general maxims
framed by persons who never found themselves
placed in similar circumstances, wears an air of
weakness or absurdity.
The devotion to material pursuits, which is
necessary at the outset, is made absorbing in a
country like the West, by the richness of the
prizes which are offered to shrewd speculation and
successful industry. Where probable or even pos-
sible gains are so great, the whole community gives
itself up to the chase of them with an eagerness
which is not democratic, but human. It would not,
we think, be difficult to show that the existence in
old countries of an idle class, content with moder-
ate and secured fortunes, and devoted solely to
A RISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 41
amusement and the cultivation of art or literature,
is largely due to the immense difficulty of making
profitable investments. In those countries the
capital accumulated by past generations is so great,
and every field of industry is so thronged, that a
very large number of those who find themselves
possessed of a sum of money are forced to relin-
quish all hope of increasing it. For we know that
whenever, as during “the railway mania” in Eng-
land, or Law’s Mississippi scheme in France, the
chance, real or imaginary, is offered of drawing
such prizes as every day fall to the lot of hundreds
in America, men of every grade and calling rush
after them with an ardor which no training or
tastes or antecedents seem sufficient to restrain.
The desire for wealth is one of the constant forces
of human Society, and if it seems to assert its sway
more imperiously here than in Europe, it is not
because it is fostered by the equality of conditions,
but because its gratification is surrounded by fewer
obstacles.
If to strong individualism, contempt for experi-
ence, and eagerness in pursuit of material gain, we
add want of respect for training, and profound
faith in natural qualities, great indifference as to
the future, the absence of a strong sense of social
or national continuity, and of taste in art and liter-
ature and Oratory, we have, we believe, enumer-
42 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
ated the leading defects which European writers
consider inherent in democratic Society. But these,
too, are marked peculiarities of all Societies newly
organized in a new country. We know them to be
so by actual observation, for which modern coloni-
zation has afforded us abundant facilities; while it
is safe to say that trustworthy illustrations of them
have never been discovered in any Society which
was simply democratic and not new. There is no
feature of life in new States in America, more
marked than the general belief of the people in
their own originality, and their respect for this
quality. The kind of man they most admire is one
who has evolved rules for the conduct of life out
of his own brain by the help of his own observa-
tion ; and they entertain a strong distrust of men
who have learned what they know by a fixed
course of study, mainly because persons who have
passed the early part of their lives in learning Out
of books or from teachers are generally found less
fitted to grapple with the kind of difficulties which
usually present themselves in Western life, than
those who were compelled to learn to conquer them
by actual contact with them. So that the “self-
made man,” as he is called, meaning the man who
has surmounted, with little or no aid from educa-
tion, those obstacles by which the larger portion
of the community find themselves hampered and
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 43
harassed, is looked on as a sort of type of merit
and ability.
The process by which the ideas that govern pri-
vate life are transferred to the conduct of public
affairs, is not difficult to understand. In a new
community, in which there is not much time for
either study or reflection, it would be difficult al-
ways to convince the public, even if any other
kind of man were to be had, that the kind of man
who displays most ability in the conduct of his
own business is not the fittest to take charge of
that of the public. That other qualities than those
necessary for success in the career in which every-
body else is running should be needed for legisla-
tion, is an idea which meets with no acceptance
until enforced by experience. And in a really fron-
tier village, in which no disturbing influences are in
operation, it will probably be found that the pros-
perous management of a dry-goods store will be
taken as strong indication of ability to fill the
post of Secretary of the Treasury, and deal with
the most intricate problems of national finance.
But the successful politician in a new country,
where deference for experience or culture has not
yet grown up, is, after all, the man who has most
facility in expressing the ideas which are filling
the heads of his neighbors.
It may be taken as a general rule, that those
44 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
who cannot look very far back do not look very far
forward. Experience is the nurse of forethought.
Youth is rarely troubled about to-morrow. Age is
far-seeing, because it remembers so much. And
communities made of the materials we are describ-
ing, as they have no past, are apt to be very care-
less about the future. The Sense of political con-
tinuity, of the identity, for political purposes, of
each generation with the one which has preceded
it and the one which is to follow it, and of the
consequent responsibility of each for the acts and
promises of the other, is rarely deeply rooted in
a state which has no past to dwell on. We are
therefore not surprised to find that the doctrine of
the absence of all right on the part of one genera-
tion to enter into any obligations that would bind
its successor—a doctrine utterly subversive of what
is called “public faith,” and which, if carried out
to its full extent, would reduce the intercourse
of civilized nations to the mere interchange of
compliments or abuse—was first openly preached
and acted on in Mississippi, the person who now
represents Southern statesmanship to the world
being its author. But it is a doctrine which grows
naturally in a new society. The reverse of it con-
flicts strongly with the notions of the proper limits
of accountability, which are derived from the rela-
tions of individuals. There is little in the analo-
AAPISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 45
gies presented by the relations of a man either
with his family or his fellows, in such a so-
ciety, to suggest the expediency or propriety of
his helping, as a citizen, to repay money which
was borrowed before he was born. We think
it will generally be found that, when a state formed
by colonization, as Carried on in modern times,
displays a proper disposition with regard to the
public liabilities, it is rather owing to the feeling
of local pride than to a deep sense of responsi-
bility. When a loan contracted by the govern-
ment of California, a few years ago, was declared
unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the peo-
ple, when the question was submitted to them, at
once shouldered the debt. But it was spoken of
in their newspapers as a very remarkable display
of virtue, as something of which the State might
fairly be proud. There was evidently at the bot-
tom of these congratulations an opinion that, in
the absence of any legal obligation, the moral one
was not sufficiently strong to be imperative.
The belief that the production of an inflated,
bombastic style of speaking and writing is one of
the necessary results of democracy is very wide-
spread, and is supported by M. de Tocqueville
with more than usual confidence. He says:
‘‘I have frequently remarked that the Americans, who
generally treat of business in clear, plain language, devoid
46 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
of all ornament, and so extremely simple as to be often
coarse, are apt to become inflated as soon as they attempt
a more poetical diction. They then vent their pomposity
from one end of a harangue to the other; and to hear
them lavish imagery on every occasion, one might fancy
that they never spoke of anything with simplicity.
“The English less frequently commit a similar fault.
The cause of this may be pointed out without much diffi-
culty. In democratic communities, each citizen is habitu-
ally engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object,
namely, himself. If he ever raises his looks higher, he
perceives only the immense form of Society at large, or
the still more imposing aspect of Imankind. His ideas are
all either extremely minute and clear, or extremely general
and vague ; what lies between is a void. When he has
been drawn out of his own sphere, therefore, he always
expects that some amazing object will be offered to his
attention ; and it is on these terms alone that he consents
to tear himself for a moment from the petty, complicated
cares which form the charm and the excitement of his
life.”—Vol. II., p. 94.
But democracy produces this effect only in so
far as it deprives writers and speakers of a high
Order of education, or draws them from a class
which cannot or do not receive it. The unedu-
cated or half-educated in all countries, and under
every form of government, and in every condition of
Society, fall into an exaggerated and inflated style
Whenever they attempt to treat on paper or in pub-
lic of any question not purely personal in its nature.
A / IS TO CRATIO, OI’INIONS OF DEMOCRACY 47
The uncultivated Englishman or Frenchman is
guilty of precisely the same rhetorical faults as
the uncultivated American ; and the Only reason
why American bombast makes more impression on
European observers than that of their own coun-
trymen is that there is more of it, as a class of
persons who in Europe are hardly ever called on
to address the public, are in America tempted or
obliged to do so very frequently. Rhetorical ex-
aggeration is, in fact, an indication, not of a cer-
tain political or social state, but of a certain state
of mental culture. How it is that taste is not a
natural gift, and what kind of training is necessary
for its acquisition, it is not necessary to discuss
here. It is enough to know that, without training,
no people, except perhaps the Greeks, has ever ex-
hibited it. America itself furnishes a very striking
illustration of the unsoundness of M. de Tocque-
ville's theory. A pure written and spoken style is
found only in the democratic States of the North-
east, because there the writers and speakers are
often either drawn from a cultivated class, or are
under their influence. The literature and oratory
of the aristocratic States of the South, on the con-
trary, are marked by an exaggeration, violence, and
affectation so barbarous, that it may safely be said
that no Orators or writers who have ever figured in
history have fallen to the same level. It is a
48 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSA YS
striking proof of the extent to which the European
public has been led astray on these subjects, that
an English legal periodical of high standing, com-
menting a few months ago on the absurdity of the
harangue delivered by Muller's counsel in New
York, assigned as one of the excuses for Southern
secession the natural disgust felt by “cultivated
gentlemen º' at the grotesqueness, absurdity, and
inflation which democracy infused into writing
and public speaking at the North. An assertion
displaying greater ignorance of the peculiar char-
acteristics of the North and of the South, it would
be hard to meet with.
It may be said, however, that if democracy either
deprives the highly educated class of all influence,
and thus prevents their establishing an authorita-
tive standard of taste, or if it places the half-edu-
cated in all the prominent positions in public life,
so that it is they who give the Oratory of the coun-
try its peculiar character, it is really as much re-
sponsible for the national tendency to bombast as
if it produced it by its direct action. But the an-
swer to this is, that nearly all the extravagance and
inflation of speech or composition which are now
to be met with in America are contributed either
by the South or West, both of which are just in
that stage of mental culture in which inflation of
language is produced as naturally as weeds on a
ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 49
rank soil. The intense and necessary absorption
of the West in the work of developing the material
resources of the country puts high cultivation out
of the question, but it does not do away with the
necessity of government. Members of Congress
have still to be elected; State Legislatures have
still to meet; and weighty questions have to be
discussed by Somebody—and, in default of people
of taste, they have to be discussed by people who
have no taste, by men who labor under the usual
weakness and delusion of the uneducated, that
simple and straightforward language is not fit for
use in dealing with great public affairs. If it be
asked how it is that this class so largely prepon-
derates in Congress, and in public life generally, as
to present itself to the world as a fair specimen of
the highest culture that democracy can produce,
we reply that the new States have now for many
years acquired a great preponderance over the
Older ones in population and wealth and resources,
and consequently political preponderance also.
Upon this great mass of powerful, energetic rus-
ticity—we do not use the word as a term of re-
proach—the cultivation of the East has so far been
able to make but very little impression. And this
preponderance has been so overwhelming, that the
West has succeeded to a certain extent in propa-
gating in the East its ideas and manners, both
50 JPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
political and social. It has succeeded in diffusing
to some degree, even in New England, its con-
tempt for and indifference to refinement or culture,
its mistrust of men who have made politics a
study, and its faith in the infallibility of majorities,
hot simply as a necessary political assumption, but
as an ethical fact. Its influence in Congress is of
course paramount, and its influence on the govern-
ment every year increases. It now supplies Our
Presidents, a large body of our legislators, and a
large portion of our army. It gives its tone to the
national thought, and its direction to the national
policy. As might be expected, it has, with its
rude, wild energy, its excess of animal life, com-
pletely overwhelmed the thinkers of the older
States, and driven most of them into private life,
and taken upon itself to represent American
democracy to the world. American democracy is
thus made answerable by Superficial observers for
faults which flow not from its own nature, but from
the outward circumstances of some of those who
live under it.
We need hardly say, that we are very far from
asserting that the state of society which we have
been describing as “Western " can be predicated
literally either of the whole West or of any part of
it. There is probably not a village in it of which
Our picture is true in every particular. There are
ARISTOCRATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 51
doubtless to be found in every district many de-
partures from the general type which we have
sketched, many modifications effected by the pres–
ence of cultivated people, or by the extraordinary
intelligence and unusually favorable antecedents
of the inhabitants. What we have endeavored to
portray is the general features of society in new
countries which have been subjected to the ordi-
nary agencies of frontier life, and exempted from
the disturbing influences of older and more fin-
ished Organizations. In so far as our sketch
is inaccurate as applied to the new States of the
Union, to the same extent will our description of
their influence on the East require modification.
The study of society is not one of the exact
Sciences; and the utmost that the most careful in-
quirer can hope for is an approximation to the
truth. This is all that we pretend to have achieved
in the present instance, but it is sufficient for our
purpose. -
In so far as the influence exercised by that por-
tion of the population which is immersed in the
cares and toils of frontier life on the national char-
acter, or manners, or politics, or literature, or Ora-
tory, has been deteriorating or obstructive, it is, of
course, fair matter for regret to all friends of ra-
tional progress. But those who are most dis-
heartened by the contemplation of its effects may
52 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
find abundant consolation in the consideration that
its action is but temporary, and that every day
that passes weakens its force and hastens its dis-
appearance. The greatest fault of new countries
is their newness, and for this the great remedy is
time. As soon as the population gets settled in its
seat, and its attention has ceased to be distracted
by a multiplicity of prizes, and its energies to be
absorbed in the mere struggle for shelter and food,
the polishing process begins. This struggle, if it
have hardened the hands, and tanned the foreheads,
and roughened the manners of those engaged in it,
has also most certainly developed qualities which,
if they do not themselves constitute national great-
ness, are its only sure and lasting foundation. No
friend of democracy who has watched the course of
the West in this war can help feeling his blood
stirred and his hopes strengthened by the vigor
with which it has thrown itself into the strife, and
the great richness of the blood and brain which it
has sent into the arena. All the great generals of
the war are Western men. No higher capacity for
Organization, for conceiving great enterprises, and
conducting them with courage and fortitude, ac-
curacy and punctuality, has been displayed than
in those mushroom communities which yesterday
were not. And if we turn from the military to the
political field, we find everywhere the most strik-
ARISTOCAA TIC OFIWIONS OF DEMOCAA. O.y 53
ing proofs of the Sagacity, foresight, patriotism,
and tenacity of their population. We wish we
could say there had been exhibited in the East so
general, profound, and just an appreciation of the
remoter bearings of this great contest, of its pos-
sible influence on Society and government, as has
been exhibited in the West.
There are no fundamental characteristics of “an
imperial race,” which the people of the new States
have not revealed ; and those who know them best
see in the progress they are now making every
reason to feel satisfied that the great material
strength which they are developing will be, ere-
long, controlled and directed by a very high order
of cultivation, both intellectual and aesthetic, and
perhaps richer, more varied, and more Original in
many of its manifestations than any that has been
seen in modern times. If the West should in fut-
ure answer all the demands made on it by civili-
Zation with the alacrity and success with which it
has answered those made on it by the political
crisis through which we are now passing, the hu-
man race would, in a very short time, be even more
indebted to it than the nation is already.
If, indeed, the defects which foreign observers
See, and many of which Americans acknowledge
and deplore, in the politics and society of the
United States were fairly chargeable to democracy
54 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSA YS
—if “the principle of equality” were necessarily
fatal to excellence in the arts, to finish in litera-
ture, to simplicity and force in oratory, to fruitful
exploration in the fields of Science, to statesman-
ship in the government, to discipline in the army,
to grace and dignity in social intercourse, to sub-
Ordination to lawful authority, and to self-re-
straint in the various relations of life—the future
of the world would be such as no friend of the race
would wish to contemplate : for the spread of de-
mocracy is on all sides acknowledged to be irre-
sistible. Even those who watch its advance with
most fear and foreboding confess that most civil-
ized nations must erelong succumb to its . Sway.
Its progress in some countries may be slower than
in others, but it is constant in all ; and it is accel-
erated by two powerful agencies—the Christian
religion and the study of political economy.
The Christian doctrine that men, however un-
equal in their condition or in their gifts on earth,
are of equal value in the eyes of their Creator, and
are entitled to respect and consideration, if for no
other reason, for the simple One that they are
human souls, long as it has been preached, has,
strange to say, only very lately begun to exercise
any perceptible influence on politics. It led a
troubled and precarious life for nearly eighteen
hundred years in conventicles and debating clubs,
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 55
in the romance of poets, in the dreams of philoso-
phers and the schemes of philanthropists. But it
is now found in the cabinets of kings and states-
men, on the floor of parliament-houses, and in the
most secret of diplomatic conferences. It gives
shape and foundation to nearly every great social
reform, and its voice is heard above the roar of
every revolution.
And it derives invaluable aid in keeping its
place and extending its influence in national coun-
cils from the rapid spread of the study of political
economy, a science which is based on the assump-
tion that men are free and independent. There is
hardly one of ūts principles which is applicable to
any state of society in which each individual is
not master of his own actions and sole guardian of
his own welfare. In a community in which the
relations of its members are regulated by status
and not by contract, it has no place and no value.
The natural result of the study and discussion
which the ablest thinkers have expended on it
during the last eighty years has been to place be-
fore the civilized world in the strongest light the
prodigious impulse which is given to human en-
ergy and forethought and industry, and the great
gain to society at large, by the recognition in
legislation of the capacity, as well as of the right,
of each human being to seek his own happiness
56 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
in his own way. Of course no political system
in which this principle has a place can long
avoid conceding to all who live under it equality
before the law ; and from equality before the
law to the possession of an equal share in the
making of the laws, there is, as everybody must
see who is familiar with modern history, but a
very short step.
If this spread of democracy, however, was sure,
as its enemies maintain, to render great attain-
ments and great excellence impossible or rare, to
make literary men Slovenly and inaccurate and
tasteless, artists mediocre, professors of science
dull and unenterprising, and statesmen conscience-
less and ignorant, it would threaten civilization
with such danger that no friend of progress could
wish to see it. But it is difficult to discover on
what it is, either in history or human nature, that
this apprehension is founded. M. de Tocqueville
and all his followers take it for granted that the
great incentive to excellence, in all countries in
which excellence is found, is the patronage and
encouragement of an aristocracy; that democracy
is generally content with mediocrity. But where
is the proof of this? The incentive to exertion
which is widest, most constant, and most power-
ful in its operation in all civilized countries, is
the desire of distinction; and this may be com-
A BISTOCEA 7"YO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 57
posed either of love of fame or love of wealth, or
of both. In literary and artistic and scientific pur-
suits, sometimes the strongest influence is exerted
by a love of the subject. But it may be safely said
that no man has ever yet labored in any of the
higher callings to whom the applause and appreci-
ation of his fellows was not one of the sweetest re-
wards of his exertions. There is probably not a
masterpiece in existence, either in literature or in
art, probably few discoveries in science have ever
been made, which we do not owe in a large meas-
ure to the love of distinction. Who paints pict-
ures, or has ever painted them, that they may de-
light no eye but his own 2 Who writes books
for the mere pleasure of Seeing his thoughts on
paper ? Who discovers or invents, and is willing,
provided the world is the better of his discover-
ies or inventions, that another should enjoy the
honor 2 Fame has, in short, been in all ages and
in all countries recognized as one of the strongest
springs of human action—
“The spur that doth the clear spirit raise
To scorn delight and live laborious days’—
Sweetening toil, robbing danger and poverty and
even death itself of their terrors.
What is there, we would ask, in the nature
of democratic institutions, that should render this
58 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS
great Spring of action powerless, that should de-
prive glory of all radiance, and put ambition to
sleep? Is it not notorious, on the contrary, that
One of the most marked peculiarities of democratic
Society, or of a Society drifting toward democracy,
is the fire of competition which rages in it, the
fevered anxiety which possesses all its members
to rise above the dead level to which the law is
ever seeking to confine them, and by some brill-
iant stroke become something higher and more
remarkable than their fellows? The Secret of
that great restlessness, which is one of the most
disagreeable accompaniments of life in democratic
countries, is in fact due to the eagerness of every-
body to grasp the prizes of which in aristocratic
countries Only the few have much chance. And
in no other Society is success more worshipped, is
distinction of any kind more widely flattered and
caressed. Where is the successful author, or ar-
tist, or discoverer, the subject of greater homage
than in France or America. 2 And yet in both the
principle of equality reigns supreme; and his ad-
vancement in the social scale has gone on pari
passu in every country with the spread of demo-
cratic ideas and manners. Grub Street was the
author's retreat in the aristocratic age; in this
democratic one, he is welcome at the King's table,
and sits at the national council-board. In demo-
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 59
cratic societies, in fact, excellence is the first title
to distinction; in aristocratic Ones, there are two
or three others which are far stronger, and which
must be stronger, or aristocracy could not exist.
The moment you acknowledge that the highest so-
cial position ought to be the reward of the man
who has the most talent, you make aristocratic in-
stitutions impossible. But to make the thirst for
distinction lose its power over the human heart,
you must do something more than establish equal-
ity of conditions; you must recast human nature
itself.
Nor does the view which M. de Tocqueville
takes, and which Mr. Mill in his “Dissertations
and Discussions” seems to share, of the character
of the literature which democratic societies are
likely to call for, or have supplied to them, derive
much support from experience. Mr. Mill says,
that in a democratic Society
“There is a greatly augmented number of moderate
successes, fewer great literary and scientific reputations.
Elementary and popular treatises are immensely multi-
plied ; superficial information far more widely diffused ;
but there are fewer who devote themselves to thought for
its own sake, and pursue in retirement those profounder
researches, the results of which can only be appreciated
by a few. Titerary productions are seldom highly fin-
ished ; they are got up to be read by many, and to be read
60 POLITICA, D, AND ECONOMIC ESSA. YS
but once. If the work sells for a day, the author's time
and pains will be better laid out in writing a second, than
in improving the first.”
There could scarcely be a better answer to this
than the immense Sale which the works of both
Mr. Mill himself and M. de Tocqueville meet with
here and in England. They are both philosophi-
cal and highly finished, and yet they are read and
studied by thousands in the two countries in
which democracy is either triumphant or rapidly
spreading. TIlustrations of the same kind might,
if we had space, be indefinitely multiplied. We
will mention only one other. If we take that
branch of literature, history, in which more than
most others accuracy and research are essential,
in which painstaking and industry and careful at-
tention to details are absolutely necessary to give
the result any real value, what do we find? Why,
that it is a field of inquiry which, until demo-
cratic times, was barely scratched over, and that it
is for the gratification and instruction of this much
despised democratic “many ” that it has been for
the first time deeply ploughed and carefully culti-
wated. There is, we believe, hardly a single his-
torical work composed prior to the end of the last
century, except perhaps Gibbon's, which, judged
by the standard that the criticism of our day has
set up, would not, though written for the “few,”
A / IS T'OCAA TIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 61
be pronounced careless, slipshod, Or Superficial.
Grote, Hallam, Motley, Prescott, Martin, Niebuhr,
Mommsen, the most laborious, accurate, and criti-
cal historical inquirers the world has yet seen, have
been produced by a democratic age, and have writ-
ten for a democratic public. Compare them as to
thoroughness and completeness with any of their
predecessors of any age, and you are astonished by
the contrast ; and yet millions read and admire
them. So also the first attempt to apply the his-
torical method to the study of the philosophy of
law has been made within two or three years, and
the result is a work of extraordinary profundity,
which is in everybody's hands. We might, by
looking into other branches of knowledge, pro-
duce innumerable examples of the same kind, all
going to show, in Our Opinion, that although there
is, and will always be in every democratic com-
munity, an immense mass of slipshod, careless
writing and speaking, the demand for accuracy,
for finish, perhaps not in form, but certainly in
substance, for completeness in all efforts to dis-
cover truth or enlighten mankind, so far from
diminishing, grows with the spread of knowledge
and the multiplication of readers.
There are some, however, who, while acknowl-
edging that the love of distinction will retain its
force under every form of social or political organ-
62 POJ, ZTICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
ization, yet maintain that to excel in the arts, sci-
ence, or literature requires leisure, and the posses-
sion of leisure implies the possession of fortune.
This men in a democratic society cannot have, be-
cause the absence of great hereditary wealth is nec-
essary to the perpetuation of democracy. Every
man, or nearly every man, must toil for a living;
and therefore it becomes impossible for him to
gratify the thirst for distinction, let him feel it ever
so strongly. The attention he can give to litera-
ture or art or science must be too desultory and
hasty, his mental training too defective, to allow
him to work out valuable results, or conduct im-
portant researches. To achieve great things in
these fields, it is said and insinuated, men must
be elevated, by the possession of fortune, above
the vulgar, petty cares of life; their material wants
must be provided for before they can concentrate
their thoughts with the requisite intensity on the
task before them. Therefore it is to aristocracy we
must look for any great advance in these pursuits.
The history of literature and art and philosophy
is, however, very far from lending confirmation to
this opinion. If it teaches us anything, it teaches
us that the possession of leisure, far from having
helped men in the pursuit of knowledge, seems to
have impeded them. Those who have pursued it
most successfully are all but invariably those who
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRA C Y 63
|
have pursued it under difficulties. The possession
of great wealth no doubt gives facilities for study
and cultivation which the mass of mankind do not
possess; but it at the same time exerts an influ-
ence on the character which, in a vast majority of
cases, renders the owner unwilling to avail himself
of them. We owe to the Roman aristocracy the
great fabric of Roman jurisprudence; but, since
their time, what has any aristocracy done for art
and literature, or law? They have for over a thou-
Sand years been in possession of nearly the whole
resources of every country in Europe. They have
had its wealth, its libraries, its archives, its teachers,
at their disposal; and yet was there ever a more
pitiful record than the list of “Royal and Noble
Authors.” One can hardly help being astonished,
too, at the smallness and paltriness of the legacies
which the aristocracy of the aristocratic age has
bequeathed to this democratic age which is suc-
ceeding it. It has, indeed, handed down to us
many glorious traditions, many noble and inspir-
ing examples of courage and fortitude and gener-
osity. The democratic world would certainly be
worse off than it is if it never heard of the Cid, or
Bayard, or Du Guesclin, of Montrose, or Hampden,
or Russell. But what has it left behind it for which
the lover of art may be thankful, by which litera-
ture has been made richer, philosophy more potent
64 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
or more fruitful? The painting and Sculpture of
modern Europe owe not only their glory, but their
very existence, to the labors of poor and obscure
men. The great architectural monuments by
which its soil is covered were hardly any of them
the product of aristocratic feeling or liberality. If
we accept a few palaces and a few fortresses, we
owe nearly all of them to the labor or the genius
or the piety of the democratic cities which grew up
in the midst of feudalism. If we take away from
the sum total of the monuments of Continental art
all that was created by the Italian republics, the
commercial towns of Germany and Flanders, and
the communes of France, and by the unaided efforts
of the illustrious obscure, the remainder would form
a result poor and pitiful indeed. We may say
much the same thing of every great work in litera-
ture, and every great discovery in science. Few of
them have been produced by men of leisure, nearly
all by those whose life was a long struggle to
escape from the vulgarest and most Sordid cares.
And what is perhaps most remarkable of all is, that
the Catholic Church, the greatest triumph of organ-
izing genius, the most impressive example of the
power of combination and of discipline which the
world has ever seen, was built up and has been
maintained by the labors of men drawn from the
humblest ranks of Society.
ARISTOCRATIO OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 65
Aristocracy applied itself exclusively for ages to
the profession of arms. If there was anything at
which it might have seemed hopeless for democ-
racy to compete with it, it was in the raising,
framing, and handling of armies. But the very
first time that a democratic Society found itself
compelled to wage war in defence of its own ideas,
it displayed a force, an Originality, a vigor and
rapidity of conception, in this, to it, new pursuit,
which speedily laid Europe at its feet. And the
great master of the art of war, be it ever remem-
bered, was born in obscurity and bred in poverty.
Nor, long as men of leisure have devoted them-
selves to the art of government, have they made
any contributions worth mentioning to political
science. They have displayed, indeed, consum-
mate skill and tenacity in pursuing any line of
policy on which they have once deliberately fixed;
but all the great political reforms have been,
though often carried into effect by aristocracies,
conceived, agitated, and forced on the acceptance
of the government by the middle and lower classes.
The idea of equality before the law was originated
in France by literary men. In England, the slave-
trade was abolished by the labors of the middle
classes. The measure met with the most vigor-
ous opposition in the House of Lords. The eman-
cipation of the negroes, Catholic emancipation,
66 I’OL 1TICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSAYS
Parliamentary reform, law reform, especially the
reform in the criminal law, free trade, and, in fact,
nearly every change which has had for its object
the increase of national happiness and prosperity,
has been conceived by men of low degree, and dis-
cussed and forced on the upper classes by men
busy about many other things. *
We are, however, very far from believing that
democratic Society has no dangers or defects.
What we have been endeavoring to show is, that
the inquiry into their nature and number has been
greatly impeded by the natural disposition of for-
eign observers to take the United States as a fair
Specimen of what democracy is under the most
favorable circumstances. The enormous extent of
unoccupied land at our disposal, which raises
every man in the community above want, by af-
fording a ready outlet for surplus population, is
constantly spoken of as a condition wholly favor-
able to the democratic experiment—more favor-
able than could possibly offer itself elsewhere. In
So far as it contributes to the general happiness
and comfort, it no doubt makes the work of gov-
ernment easy; but what we think no political
philosopher ought to forget is, that it also offers
Serious obstacles to the settlement of a new Society
on a firm basis, and produces a certain appearance
of confusion and instability, both in manners and
AEISTOCAEATIC OPINIONS OF DEMOCRACY 67
ideas, which unfit it to furnish a basis for any in-
ductions of much value as to the tendencies to
defects either of an equality of conditions or of
democratic institutions.
POPULAR GOVERNMENT
I HAVE been reading, with the respect due to
everything which Sir Henry Maine produces, his
last volume, and particularly that most interesting
chapter of it on “The Prospects of Popular Gov-
ernment.” I confess, however, to having laid it
down, after a careful perusal, without getting a
very clear idea of the lesson he undertakes to
teach. He says in his preface:
In the essay on the Prospects of Popular Government
I have shown that as a matter of fact Popular Government,
since its reintroduction into the modern world, has proved
itself to be extremely fragile. In the essay on the Nature
of Democracy I have given reasons for thinking that, in
the extreme form to which it tends, it is of all kinds of
government by far the most difficult. In the Age of
Progress I have argued that, in the perpetual change
which, as understood in modern times, it appears to de-
mand, it is not in harmony with the normal forces ruling
human nature, and is apt, therefore, to lead to cruel dis-
appointment or serious disaster.
Now the phrase “reintroduction into the modern
World” implies that Popular Government existed
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 69
in the ancient world, and, if so, an account of its
working in the ancient world would certainly be
a very important aid in judging whether it is
really as “fragile ” as Sir Henry Maine thinks it,
for the longer the period in which we watch the
working of an institution, the more we know about
its durability. But he disposes of what he calls
“the short-lived Athenian Democracy under
whose shelter Art, Science, and Philosophy shot
so wonderfully upward” by Saying that “it was
only an aristocracy which rose on the ruins of still
another.” In fact, he lays it down as a general
proposition “that the progress of mankind has
hitherto been effected by the rise and fall of
aristocracies, by the formation of One aristocracy
within another,” and that “there have been many
so-called democracies which have rendered ser-
vices beyond price to civilization, but they were
only peculiar forms of aristocracy.” It is fair, I
think, to conclude from this that there was no such
thing as Popular Government in the ancient world
at all, and that its appearance in the modern world
was its first appearance anywhere, and was there- *
fore not a “reintroduction.” Consequently all
that Sir Henry Maine, or any one else, knows
about its fragility, he knows from observation of
its working in the modern world. Whether a
thing is durable or not, we can Only tell from see-
70 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
ing it exposed, over a long period, to destructive
agencies. That this period should in the case of
a government be very long indeed, it is hardly
necessary to say. Nothing is more delusive in
the work of political speculation than short
periods of observation. The most durable gov-
ernment the modern world has seen was that of
the Venetian Republic, but there were in its his-
tory several periods of ten, twenty, or even fifty,
years in which its continuance must have seemed
to contemporaries something hardly to be looked
for.
Now what opportunities for observing the dura-
bility of Popular Government has Sir Henry Maine
had, on his own showing 2 The ancient world has
afforded him none : what has the modern world
afforded him 2 In other words, when did Popular
Government first reveal itself to the philosophic
eye 2 There is no doubt, he says, that Popular
Government is of purely English origin, and that
it made its first appearance in the triumph of the
doctrine that government is the Servant of the
community, over the doctrine that it is the master
of the community. The former, he says, after
“tremendous struggles,” was in spirit, if not in
words, “affirmed in 1689.” But that triumph was
Inot complete, for he adds: “It was long before
this doctrine was either fully carried out by the
2
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 71
nation, or fully accepted by its rulers.” In fact,
he gives us to understand that it has not yet
reached its final stage—that is, the stage at which
tests of durability can begin to be applied to it.
“What we are witnessing,” he says, “in West
European politics is not so much the establish-
ment of a definite system, as the continuance, at
various rates, of a process.”
I gather from all this that Popular Government,
as now known to us in the modern world, is a
process which began about two centuries ago in a
change of opinion on the part of the community in
England with regard to the relations of the rulers
and the ruled; that it did not, however, really in-
fluence English politics until about the beginning
of this century. Consequently, Popular Govern-
ment is, for the purposes of the philosophic ob-
server, about eighty years old, and no more, and
anything we desire to know about its durability
and its general prospects we must learn from its
history during that period. But the history of
these eighty years seems to furnish a very small
basis for induction on a matter so serious as the
nature and prospects of a form of government.
Sir Henry Maine, however, makes the most of it.
Curiously enough, England furnishes him, ap-
parently, with no materials at all. His reasons
for believing Popular Government to be fragile
72 POLITICA L AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
he finds in the experience of the French with it,
since 1789; of the Spaniards since 1812, and of
the South American Republics since 1820. Hav-
ing given some account of the frequent violent
political changes which have occurred in these
countries respectively within the above periods, he
says:—
The true reason why the extremely accessible facts which
I have noticed are so seldom observed and put together is
that the enthusiasts for Popular Government, particularly
when it reposes on a wide basis of Suffrage, are actuated
by much the same spirit as the Zealots of Tlegitimism.
They assumed their principle to have a Sanction antece-
dent to fact. It is not thought to be in any way invali-
dated by practical violations of it, which merely constitute
so many more sins against imprescriptible right (p. 20).
Now I am not an enthusiast for Popular Gov-
ernment, or for any other form of government. I
believe politics to be an extremely practical kind
of business, and that the communities which suc-
ceed best in it are those which bring least enthu-
siasm to the conduct of their affairs. Neverthe-
less, I think I may so far speak for the enthusiasts
as to suggest that the reason why they do not give
more attention to Sir Henry Maine's “extremely
accessible facts,” and are not more troubled by
them, is that they soberly and sincerely believe
that these facts are irrelevant : that is, that they
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 73
throw no light whatever on the nature or pros-
pects of Popular Government.
The facts are simply that in two or three coun-
tries which have within the present century set
up, or attempted to set up, representative institu-
tions, frequent changes in the executive power
have been wrought by violence. To make this
bear directly on the question of fragility we should
have to be sure that the state of mind which Sir
Henry makes the first condition of Popular Gov-
ernment—that is, the belief that the rulers are and
ought to be the servants of the ruled—prevailed in
the countries which he cites as examples; that, in
short, the setting up and casting down of govern-
ments which constitute his “extremely accessible
facts” were the efforts of a community to carry out
a political theory. We cannot judge of the work-
ing of any institution, whether monarchy, aristoc-
racy, or democracy, unless it has its roots in pop-
ular approval. How monarchy works can only be
known by seeing it in a community which believes
in kings. How aristocracy works can Only be
known by seeing it in a community which believes
in noblemen. How Popular Government works
can, in like manner, only be known by Seeing it in
a community in which the doctrine on which it is
based is fully and intelligently held by the bulk of
the people. “
74. POLITICAL AND ECO WOMIC ESSA. YS
To make France and Spain and the Spanish-
American Republics good examples of the insta-
bility of Popular Government, Sir Henry Maine
has to assume that the state of popular opinion
and feeling which produced and sustains this form
of government in England or America really exists,
or has existed during the last half-century, in the
Latin countries; and he does assume it tacitly,
but very tacitly indeed. He is almost out of sight
in his argument before one perceives what a mon-
strous assumption it is. There is neither in Spain
nor in Spanish America any dominating political
theory held by the mass of the people ; in fact,
there is nothing which a political philosopher can
call a people. There are great landed proprie-
tors; there is a powerful clergy; there is a stand-
ing army; there is an ignorant peasantry. There
arise naturally in this state of things frequent dis-
putes over the possession of the sovereignty, but
they are disputes like the War of the Roses, or the
Seven Years' War, between those who have and
those who have not. They illustrate human nat-
ure in certain conditions of culture, as do most of
the disorders of history, but they do not illustrate
any theory of government any more than a fight
Over a captive's ransom in the cave of Greek bri-
gands. In France, too, it is only since 1870 that
the view of relations of the government of the
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 75
people, on which Sir Henry Maine bases Popular
Government, can be said to have really existed
among the mass of the people. There have been
since 1789 disciples of Rousseau and believers in
the social contract—both of them great bugbears
to Sir Henry Maine—in Paris and the other great
cities, but until the present Republic was set up
the peasantry never thought of controlling the gov-
ernment, or of treating its members as their ser-
wants. No matter what its form was, whether
Constitutional Monarchy, Empire, or Republic, it
was, in the eyes of provincials, the master of
Trance, whose edicts, if they came from the proper
office, nobody thought of disputing.
Next let me say that in assuming that the insta-
bility of government in a given country has and
can have only one cause — namely, the view
which the ruled take of their relation to the rulers
—Sir Henry Maine seems to give countenance to
a fallacy which is one of the great difficulties of
modern politics, and which Mr. Mill has lucidly
exposed as the “Chemical Method” of reasoning
about political phenomena. Surely the following
has an important bearing on the value of Sir
Henry Maine's specific instances, or, as he calls
them, “extremely accessible facts : ” -
In social phenomena the Composition of Causes is the
Universal Law. Now, the method of philosophizing which
76 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSA YS
may be termed chemical overlooks this fact, and proceeds
as if the nature of man as an individual were not concerned
at all, or concerned in a very inferior degree, in the opera-
tions of human beings in society. All reasoning in poli-
tics or social affairs, grounded on principles of human nat-
ure, is objected to by reasoners of this sort, under such
names as “abstract theory.” For the direction of their
opinions and conduct, they profess to demand, in all cases
without exception, specific experience. This mode of
thinking is not only general with practitioners in politics,
and with that very numerous class who (on a subject which
no one, however ignorant, thinks himself incompetent to
discuss) profess to guide themselves by common sense
rather than by Science ; but is often countenanced by per-
sons with greater pretensions to instruction ; persons who,
having sufficient acquaintance with books and with the cur-
rent ideas to have heard that Bacon taught mankind to
follow experience, and to ground their conclusions on facts
instead of metaphysical dogmas, think that by treating
political facts in as directly experimental a method as
chemical facts, they are showing themselves true Baco-
nians, and proving their adversaries to be mere syllogizers
and schoolmen. As, however, the notion of the applica-
bility of experimental methods to political philosophy C&Il-
not coexist with any just conception of these methods
themselves, the kind of arguments from experience which
the chemical theory brings forth as its fruits (and which
form the staple, in this country especially, of Parliamen-
tary and hustings Oratory) are such as, at no time since
Bacon, would have been admitted to be valid in chemistry
itself, or in any other branch of experimental science.
They are such as these : that the prohibition of foreign
commodities must conduce to national wealth, because
POPULAR GO VERNMENT 77
England has flourished under it, or because countries in
general which have adopted it have flourished ; that our
laws, or our internal administration, or our constitution,
are excellent for a similar reason : and the eternal argu-
ments from historical examples, from Athens or Rome,
from the fires in Smithfield or the French Revolution. I
will not waste time in contending against modes of argu-
mentation which no person, with the smallest practice in
estimating evidence, could possibly be betrayed into ;
which draw conclusions of general appreciation from a
single unanalyzed instance, or arbitrarily refer an effect to
Some one among its antecedents, without any process of
elimination or comparison of instances.—Logic, pp. 458–59.
I call this fallacy one of the greatest difficulties
of modern politics because it is the readiest tool
of demagogues, and to the popular eye the most
attractive because the easiest solution of pending
troubles. The most effective argument of the
American protectionists is, that as the United
States have prospered under protection, the tariff
must be the one cause of the prosperity; that as
Ireland and Turkey are poor under free trade,
their condition shows the danger of throwing open
home markets to foreign producers. So, also, we
are now afflicted with tons of useless silver coin
owing to the popular belief that the slowness of
our recovery from the crisis of 1873 was simply
and solely the demonetization of silver in the same
year. France and Spain and the Spanish-Ameri-
78 POLITICAL AND FOONOMIC ESSA YS
can Republics, says Sir Henry Maine, have popu-
lar governments—that is, parliaments elected by a
widely extended suffrage. But they have also fre-
quent rebellions; therefore Popular Government
is both unstable, and the cause of its instability. It
may be that Popular Government in a given coun-
try is fragile, but surely we are not justified in as-
suming that the character, the religion, the culture,
the manners, the history, and the material Sur-
roundings of the people have nothing to do with
the security of their political institutions; or that,
in considering whether a new form of government
will suit them, we are not called upon to ask how
they got on under the old One ; whether, for instance,
the French were happy and content under abso-
lute monarchy, and the Spanish-Americans peace-
ful and industrious under the Viceroys and the
Bishops.
So completely does Sir Henry Maine commit
himself to the Chemical Method that he boldly de-
clares that “the inferences which might be drawn
from the stability of the government of the United
States are much weakened, if not destroyed, by the
remarkable spectacle furnished by the numerous
Republics set up from the Mexican border-line to
the Straits of Magellan.” He notices, it is true, the
objection to his theory drawn from the fact that
the inhabitants of the Spanish-American Repub-
I2OPULA JP (; O VERNMENT 79
lics are to a great extent of Indian blood and have
been trained in Roman Catholicism, but he gets
Over it by announcing that “such arguments would
be intelligible if they were used by persons who
maintain that a highly special and exceptional
political education is essential to the successful
practice of Popular Government; but they proceed
from those who believe that there is at least a
strong presumption in favor of democratic insti-
tutions everywhere.”
But why must this argument be used only by
persons who believe that a highly specialized and
exceptional political education is necessary for the
successful practice of Popular Government? Why
is it not good in the mouths of those who believe
simply that Indian blood and Roman Catholic
training are serious obstacles to the practice of
Popular Government? Why may it not be used
by those who believe that the United States Gov-
ernment is largely indebted for its stability, not
to the fact that the American people have had a
highly special and exceptional political education,
but to the fact that they are mainly of Anglo-Sax-
On blood, and have been trained in Protestantism 2
And why, in the name of Aristotle, is an argument
made unintelligible by the fact that some of those
who use it also use other arguments which are
feeble? Surely, if I sometimes reason d priori
80 POTITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS
about politics, that does not make my inductive
reasoning worthless.
Tor my part, I think the example of the United
States all important, even from Sir Henry Maine's
point of view, for they are the one country in the
world in which Popular Government, as he defines
it, really exists. They are the One country, that is
to say, governed by universal suffrage in which the
great mass of the voters have a realizing sense of
the fact that the government is their servant and
not their master, and that it exists simply to carry
out the ideas of the “plain people’’ who compose
the bulk of the community, and not those of a small
but more cultivated and more enlightened class; a
government, in short, as Lincoln expressed it, “ of
the people, by the people, for the people.” It may
be that their example is sometimes cited by dis-
putants whom consistency or some other obliga-
tion forbids to cite it. It may be, too, that infer-
ences drawn from it would not be good against
every assailant of Popular Government ; but as
against Sir Henry Maine they are, as it seems to
me, good in anybody's hands. He is, in fact,
estopped by his refusal to take into account any-
thing but the instability of the government in
France and Spain and the South American Repub-
lics, from taking into account anything but the sta-
bility of the government in the case of the United
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 81
States. If the Chemical Method be good for one,
it is good for the other.
Sir Henry Maine's manner of elucidating the
effects of universal suffrage controlled by wire-
pullers on social and intellectual progress is even
more remarkable than his manner of proving the
fragility of Popular Government. He says:
Such a suffrage (a widely extended and universal suffrage)
is commonly associated with Radicalism ; no doubt amid
its most certain effects would be the extensive destruction
of the existing institutions; but the chances are that in the
long run it would produce a mischievous form of Conser-
vatism, and drug society with a potion compared with which
Eldonine would be a salutary draught. For to what end,
toward what ideal state, is the process of stamping upon
law the average opinion of an entire community directed ?
The end arrived at is identical with that of the Roman
Catholic Church, which attributes a similar sacredness to
the average opinion of the Christian world. “Quod
Semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus ” was the canon of
Vincent of Lerins. “Securus judicat orbis terrarum” were
the words which rang in the ears of Newman, and produced
such marvellous effects on him. But did any one in his
senses ever suppose that these were maxims of progress?
The principles of legislation at which they point would put
an end to all social and political activities, and arrest
everything which has ever been associated with Liberal-
ism. A moment's reflection will satisfy any competently
instructed person that this is not too broad a proposition.
Let him turn over in his mind the great epochs of scientific
invention and social change during the last two centuries,
82 IPOZ, TTICA I, AND ECONOMIC J'SSA YS
and consider what would have occurred if universal suf-
frage had been established at any one of them. Universal
suffrage which to-day excludes free-trade from the United
States would certainly have prohibited the Spinning-jenny
and the power-loom. It would certainly have forbidden
the thrashing-machine. It would have forbidden the adop-
tion of the Gregorian Calendar, and would have restored
the Stuarts (p. 36).
A few sentences before this he has acknowledged
that the world has had only a very brief experience
of wide suffrage—that is, about fifty years in the
TJnited States and about twenty in France—but,
brief as it is, it ought to have furnished him with
specific instances in support of this very dark view
of the future of West European Society. He was
able to infer from the example of France and Spain
and the Spanish-American Republics that Popular
Government would be fragile. It seems to me
that he ought to have been able to infer from the
same source that it would be hostile to civilization.
Strange to say, however, on this point he does not
argue; he contents himself with prophesying, and
it is one of the commonplaces of rhetoric that you
cannot refute a prophet. Perhaps it would be
more accurate to say that he guesses, using the
word in its English rather than in its American
sense. For what other name can we give to an as-
sertion that “the chances are " that, if a certain
thing had happened long before it did happen, a
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 83
certain other thing would have happened, which,
as a matter of fact, has never happened at all? In
no place has universal suffrage “put an end to all
social and political activities or arrested everything
which has been associated with Liberalism.” In
no place has it ever shown a tendency to do so.
In no place has it ever done anything like prohib-
iting a spinning-jenny Or the power-loom or the
thrashing-machine, or preventing the adoption of
the Gregorian Calendar. Nevertheless, Sir Henry
Maine makes the extremely broad proposition that
it would have done so had it had the opportunity.
I have searched as carefully as I can for the basis
of these very extraordinary deductions. As well
as I can make Out, it consists simply in his opinion
that in a democratic community the embodiment
of public opinion in legislation would result in
giving the law the Sanctity which in the Catholic
Church is attributed to the consensus of the Chris-
tian world on points of doctrine. Admitting it to
be true that the general opinion embodied in a
statute would give the statute in democratic eyes
the Sacredness of a Catholic dogma, whence do we
draw the conclusion that it would also have the
permanence of a dogma”
There is, in fact, just enough evidence to show (Sir
Henry Maine Says) that even now there is a marked antag-
onism between democratic opinion and scientific truth ap-
84 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSA YS
plied to human societies. The central seat in all political
economy was from the first occupied by the Theory of
IPopulation. This theory has now been generalized by Mr.
Darwin and his followers, and, stated as the principle of
the survival of the fittest, it has become the central truth
of all biological science. Yet it is evidently disliked by
the multitude and thrust into the background by those
whom the multitude permits to lead it. It has long been
intensely unpopular in France and on the continent of
Europe, and among ourselves proposals for recognizing it
through the relief of distress by emigration are visibly
being Supplanted by Schemes founded on the assumption
that, through legislative experiments on Society, a given
space of land may always be made to support in comfort
the population which from historical causes has come to be
settled On it (p. 37).
. As “just enough evidence ’’ to show that there
\ is even now “a marked antagonism between dem-
Ocratic opinion and scientific truth as applied to
human societies,” the above is very remarkable.
I believe the doctrine of the survival of the fittest
has, as a matter of fact, met with even fiercer op-
position from the religious well-to-do middle class
and from the clergy than from the unfortunate
“multitude.” T3ut it is a doctrine which must
needs be unpopular—if unpopular means disagree-
able—with all but the very successful, that is, with
the great majority of the human race. The sur-
vival of the fittest has ever been and must ever be
an odious sight to the unfit or the less fit, who see
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 85
that they cannot survive. Sir Henry Maine's re-
proach, that they do not accept it cheerfully re-
minds one of Frederick the Great's Savage reproof
to his flying troops, “Hunde, wollte ihr ewig
leben 2° In asking the multitude to take to it
kindly, Sir Henry asks something which has
always been beyond human powers. There is no
doctrine with which the race is more familiar in
practice than the doctrine that the strongest must
have the best of it, which is really Darwin's doc-
trine expressed in terms of politics. The progress
of civilization under all forms of government has
consisted simply in making such changes in the
environment of the multitude as will increase the
number of the fittest. That it has been well to
strive for this end ; that it has been well to try to
make a country like England a place in which
twenty-eight millions can dwell in comfort on soil
which seventy years ago only supported ten mill-
ions in comparative misery, has been for ages the
opinion of the wisest and best men under the old
monarchies. Possibly they were wrong. Possibly
it ought to have been the policy of rulers not only
to see that the fittest survived, but that their
number was kept down. But is it not asking too
much of the multitude to ask them to take a totally
new view of the conditions of man's struggle with
nature?
86 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
The great aim of the political art has hither-
to been to protect man in some degree from the
remorseless working of the laws of the physical
universe, to save him from cold, from heat, from
savage beasts, from the unwillingness of the earth
to yield him her fruits and the sea its fish. All its
successes have to some extent increased the num-
ber of the fittest. It has filled West Europe with
a population which conservative observers like Sir
Henry Maine two centuries ago would certainly
have declared it incapable of maintaining. Can
we possibly expect Democracy to give up the game
as soon as it comes into power, and bid the weak-
lings of the race prepare for extinction? Emigra-
tion, which he treats as an acceptance of the Dar-
winian doctrine, is, of course, in reality simply a
transfer of the struggle for survival to another
arena. The law of population works everywhere,
and with increasing severity, other things being
equal, as the population increases. Sending the
unfit to New Zealand or Dakota is not a whit more
scientific than sending them to till English moors.
There is no escape for them anywhere from the
battle with the fittest ; but any abandonment of
the effort to protract their existence and make it
more tolerable would mean the stoppage of civil-
ization itself. Democracy may make mistakes in
this work, and may attempt more than it can ac-
POI2 ULAR G O VERNMENT 8?
complish, but energy in the work and devotion to
it is after all what distinguishes a civilized com-
munity from a Savage one. There is no more
reason why the bulk of the race should fold its
arms in the presence of the theory of population
than in the presence of the great fact of mortality.
How many people a given piece of land will main-
tain and comfort, whether only the number settled
On it by “historical causes” or a larger one, is
something which can be only ascertained by intel-
ligent experiment. All causes, too, which settle a
man on a farm become “historical” after a while;
but whether it is well for him to remain there is
something only to be learned by experience. The
theory of population does not necessarily prescribe
emigration when people begin to find it hard to get
a living off the land on which they were born, or
on which they have settled, but it does prescribe
better modes of cultivation and smaller families.
I am not prepared to argue that democratic
Societies will always accept the conclusions of
Science with meekness and submission. One
Sees, I admit, in our own time a good deal to war-
rant the fear that democratic ignorance will fight
unpleasant and inconvenient truths with the per-
tinacity with which monarchical and aristocratic
ignorance has always fought them ; and that they
will have to owe their triumph in the future, as
88 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
they have owed it in the past, not to any particu-
lar distribution of the political sovereignty, but to
the intellectual impulse which has carried the
race out of the woods and the caves, and given it
its great discoverers and inventors.
But I am very curious to know why Sir Henry
Maine should have overlooked the experience of
the only really democratic community now ex-
isting, that of the Northern States of the Ameri-
can Union, On this point. As a matter of fact,
there never has been any Society in which new
discoveries and inventions and new theories of the
art of living have been received with so much
readiness as in these States; and they are the
countries in which the dominating opinion is most
distinctly that of the multitude, in which legisla-
tion most distinctly embodies both the prejudices
and weakness of the multitude, and in which
there is least respect for authority. I think I
might safely appeal to American men of Science
to say whether they do not suffer in reputation
and influence with the people, for not making
more and greater calls on their faith or credulity;
or, in other words, for their slowness rather than
for their haste in making and accepting dis-
coveries. The fertility of Americans in inven-
tions—that is, in the production of new machines
and new processes—great as it is, is not so re-
POPULAR GO VERNMENT 89
markable as the eagerness with which the people
receive them and use them. The large number of
medical quacks who infest the country, and their
great success in the sale of their nostrums—the
like of which I think can be seen nowhere
else—is undoubtedly due to a sort of impa-
tience with the caution and want of enterprise
of the regular practitioners. The kind of fame
which came to Edison after he had made some
improvements in the electric light and invented
the phonograph, was a very good illustration of
the respect of American people for the novel
and the marvellous. For a good while he was
hailed as a man to whom any problem in physics
would be simple, and he was consulted on a variety
of subjects to which he had given no attention,
such as the means of diminishing the noise of the
trains on the elevated railroads in the streets of this
city. In fact, for a year or two, he held the posi-
tion — doubtless to his own amusement — of a
“medicine man,” to whom any mystery was easy.
Are there, then, no signs in this American
democracy of tendencies in the direction which
Sir Henry Maine predicts or guesses at-that is,
of the emancipation of the people from the con-
trol or influence of Science, or Scientific men, or
of a disposition to go back to the rule of thumb in
the art of living? As I am not posing here as a
90 JPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
champion of Popular Government, or indeed as
anything but a humble inquirer into the reasons
why Sir Henry Maine wrote his book, I can have
no difficulty in answering this question with can-
dor and explicitness.
No observer of American politics can deny that,
with regard to matters which can become the sub-
ject of legislation, the American voter listens with
extreme impatience to anything which has the air
of instruction ; but the reason is to be found not
in his dislike of instruction so much as his dislike
in the political field of anything which savors of
superiority. The passion for equality is one of
the very strongest influences in American politics.
This is so fully recognized now by politicians that
self-depreciation, even in the matter of knowl-
edge, has become One of the ways of commending
one's self to the multitude, which even the fore-
most men of both parties do not disdain. In
talking on such subjects as the currency, with a
view of enlightening the people, skilful orators
are very careful to repudiate all pretence of know-
ing anything more about the matter than their
hearers. The speech is made to wear as far as
possible the appearance of being simply a repro-
duction of things with which the audience is just
as familiar as the speaker. Nothing is more fatal
to a stump Orator than an air of Superior wisdom
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 91
on any subject. He has, if he means to persuade,
to keep carefully, in outward seeming at all
events, on the same intellectual level as those
whom he is addressing. Orators of a demagogic
turn, of course, push this caution to its extreme,
and often affect ignorance, and boast of the small-
ness of the educational opportunities enjoyed by
them in their youth, and of the extreme difficulty
they had in acquiring even the little they know.
There is nothing, in fact, people are less willing
to tolerate in a man who seeks office at their hands
than any sign that he does not consider himself as
belonging to the same class as the bulk of the
voters—that either birth, or fortune, or education
has taken him out of sympathy with them, or
caused him, in any sense, to look down on them.
That this has a tendency to make political
speaking in this country, especially of late years,
remarkably uninstructive, uninteresting, and a poor
educational agency, there is no denying. Anyone
who judged of the capacity and intelligence of
the American voters by the pabulum supplied to
them on the stump would certainly be excusable
in taking a dark view of the future of American
democracy.
The truth seems to be that with regard to all
matters within the field of politics the new democ-
racy is extremely sensitive about any doubts of
92 JPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSA YS
its competency. It will not suffer any question,
or sign of question, of its full capacity to deal
with any matter which calls for legislation. It is
ready enough to base legislation on investigations
and reports; but the investigations and reports
must be made in its name and by its authority
through what it calls “practical men” as distin-
guished from scientific or professorial men. By
practical men, it means men engaged in Some
industrial or money - making pursuit, like the
bulk of the community, and making no pretence
to book-learning or theoretical knowledge. What
men of this class, who have succeeded in busi-
ness, say on any subject calling for political ac-
tion, counts for much more in the United States
with the voters than what specialists or learned
men Say. There is, in fact, an inordinate re-
spect for the opinions on all subjects of “suc-
cessful business men’—that is, men who from
Small beginnings have made fortunes by their
own exertions. But this is not more wonderful in
an industrial community than the reverence in a
military community for a great soldier—than the
prolonged belief in England, for instance, in the
political wisdom of the Duke of Wellington for
many years after Waterloo.
With matters of a quasi-scientific kind, like the
tariff, for instance, or the currency, on which the
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 93
opinions of theorists are extremely important and
“practical men’’ very likely to be wrong, this
habit of excluding science from all say in the
political arena, is undoubtedly very unfortunate.
But it does not have the effect that Sir Henry
Maine would expect from it. It sometimes leads
to the embodiment in legislation of gross errors
and delusions, but it never leads to the conver-
sion of an error or delusion into a sacred
dogma. It leads to costly and useless experimen-
tation and to the trial of schemes which have
failed a hundred times before in other places and
ages. It is rare, indeed, that an economic or
other fallacy connected with legislation, which
has once taken hold of the popular mind in this
country, can be overthrown by the attacks of au-
thority or of historical experience. In fact, the
intervention of the professors to expose it, is very
apt to hasten its conversion into law, if only for
the purpose of showing the literary men that they
must not meddle in politics.
But the experiment once tried, there is nothing
anywhere like the readiness of the public here to
acknowledge failure in the frankest way. The
Orators and editors go through the process of
“owning up,” with extraordinary, and some might
say cynical, cheerfulness. Some of the most
furious newspaper advocates of Bland's Silver Bill
94 POJ, ITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
are now its most strenuous opponents. Every-
thing which the theorists predicted of its working
has come to pass, but it would never have done to
allow theorists to suppose that their talk would
turn the people from its purpose, or influence
law-making. In truth, that most marked charac-
teristic of the American commercial character—
its readiness to abandon things which do not pay,
and its unwillingness to spend any time crying
over spilt milk—shows itself just as prominently in
politics as in business. There is not the smallest
sign of the bigoted conservatism which Sir Henry
Maine looks for. The legislative history of every
State in the Union is full of illustrations of the
people's openness to conviction, provided the
conviction be wrought by processes which they
can understand. Nothing is sacred in America,
and nothing elicits so much ridicule as an attempt
to put anything or any person into the category of
the unchangeable or unapproachable.
But, outside of politics, authority occupies a
very different place. The scientific or literary
man who addresses the people without any design
of directly influencing their political action, or
making his opinions felt in legislation, nowhere
receives a more attentive hearing. The success of
instructive lectures in this country, though greater
Some years ago than now, is still greater than any-
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 95
where else in the world. Scientific men, working
in their own fields, are nowhere so widely known
and respected by the masses. I do not need to
speak of the wide diffusion in the United States
of the reading habit. A large proportion of it—
by far too large a portion of it perhaps—is de-
voted to newspapers, which have their bad side,
on which I will not dwell here. But they have
One effect which makes any growth of ignorant
conservatism, or any barbarous dislike of novelty,
simply impossible. They fill every corner of the
land with some knowledge of what is going on
everywhere else. They tell the people something
about every famous man in the world, and about
the things which have made him famous. They
familiarize them with every new idea or discovery.
They, in short, prevent mental stagnation. By
keeping people curious about the world outside
their village, they keep them in a state of mental
receptivity.
I might illustrate these things at considerable
length, if I had not taken up so much space. But
I shall, in closing, point out that one of Sir Henry
Maine's examples of popular bigotry—the hostility
of the United States to free trade—shows a sin-
gular ignorance of the exact nature of the tariff
controversy in this country. The tariff is not a
purely fiscal question here, and for that reason the
96 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSA YS
difficulty of getting Americans to take a scientific
view of it is greatly increased.
In the first place, the possession of a continent
containing nearly every variety of soil, climate,
and product greatly diminishes the force with
which the free-trade doctrine, that trade consists
in the interchange of the results of special natural
advantages, strikes the American mind. No other
country can say that it finds within its own bor-
ders the means, as far as Soil and climate are
concerned, of producing nearly everything it buys
from foreigners. In the next place, the prohibition
of customs duties between the States has given a
larger area to free trade here than exists anywhere
else, and has thus in a remarkable degree lessened
the pinch of protection. Lastly, the enormous im-
migration—nearly a million a year—of consumers
and producers, in the very prime of life, is con-
stantly making new markets, which for many years
postponed the glut which is now putting the high
tariff in so much peril. The effect of this, in im-
peding the free-trade agitation, has been very like
the effect of opening a small foreign State every
year to American goods. In short, anybody who
imagines that the free-trade argument presents
itself to the American voter in the neat compact
shape in which Cobden and Bright were able to
offer it to the British public in 1846, or in which
POPULAR G O VERNMENT 97
IFawcett was able to offer it in 1880, is greatly mis-
taken. The American voter, though much deluded
about the tariff, is not deluded to the same degree
or in the same way as the British fair-trader. He
has never had a notion that, as people say here,
he could lift himself by his own boot-straps, or
make money by swapping jack-knives. His vast
reserve of waste lands has always been in his ."
mind, something for a tariff to work on which no
other nation possessed.
g
SOME POLITICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS
OF THE TARIFE
A TARIFF, in so far as it is intended to be pro-
tective, is a tax levied on the community to indem-
nify a certain number of persons for their losses in
carrying on certain kinds of business; or, rather,
if any one likes it better, to furnish them with a
fair profit in certain kinds of business. There is,
perhaps, no tax which may not be properly sub-
mitted to the popular judgment, if it be submitted
in its true shape, without disguise. This requires
a distinct definition both of its object and of its
amount. This rule is rigidly applied to all taxes
except the protective tax. It is applied rigidly in
all appropriations for the expenses of the Govern-
ment, such as the salaries of its civil and military
servants, the cost of the navy, of fortifications, of
the river and harbor improvements, of the pub-
lic buildings, of subventions to railroads, and of
the redemption of the public debt. For none of
these things is an appropriation either left in-
definite in amount or hidden away in another for
SOME POLITICAI, ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 99
entirely different objects. But in voting funds for
the creation or promotion of certain branches of
industry, the rule is totally disregarded.
In the first place, the money levied on the tax-
payer for this purpose is mixed up with the money
levied for the general expenses of the Government.
How much of the taxes goes for the protection
of native industry is never known or specified,
and no pains are taken to find it out. One may
really approve of a protective tax, and yet be totally
unable to approve of any tax levied in this way
for any purpose whatever. Granting that it is ex-
pedient for the Government to spend money in the
maintenance or the promotion of the iron manu-
facture, for example, it must be expedient, also,
for the public to know the exact amount which it
costs annually; just as it is expedient that the pub-
lic should know exactly how much the army and
navy costs, or how much the annual improvement of
rivers and harbors costs. No view, however broad,
of the province of government can furnish an ex-
cuse for concealing the expense of any great
national undertaking. The question “how much,”
is a question which every taxpayer has a right to
ask as regards all branches of the public expendi-
ture, and which every Secretary of the Treasury
ought to be able to answer. There is not a single
good reason for concealing the national expenditure
100 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
in protection, any more than for concealing the na-
tional expenditure in anything else. But there is
no trace of this expenditure in the national accounts.
|Fverybody knows that it must be large, but nobody
knows how large. The only sources of information
on this subject are the guesses made in free-trade
books and pamphlets, which, of course, possess
but little authority in the popular eye. The de-
bates between free-traders and protectionists on
this point are the most bewildering part of the
controversy. Every now and then a free-trader,
home or foreign, undertakes to foot up the amount
of the contributions which American consumers,
and especially the farmers, make to the mainten-
ance of the various branches of domestic indus-
try. Such attempts always excite great indigna-
tion among protectionists. A pamphlet containing
calculations of this sort, by an Englishman named
Montgredien, was published in this country a few
years ago, and has been denounced by various pro-
tectionist writers with great bitterness, as if it
were a sort of impertinent prying into somebody's
private affairs. I dare say it was incorrect. I do
not, indeed, see how such calculations can come
anywhere near correctness. But what a curious
state of mind about the national finances that is,
which treats as illicit all efforts to discover the
exact amount of the national Outlay, on what is,
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF' 101
admittedly, an object of the highest national im-
portance.
Next, it must be said that any fund of large
amount, raised and distributed in this way, must
of necessity prove a corruption fund. By this, I
do not mean a fund distributed in bribes to indi-
viduals or organizations, but a fund the existence
of which must be constantly present to the mind
of the lazy, the improvident, or incompetent, as
something to fall back on if the worst come to the
worst. Suppose the national appropriations for
the purpose of protecting manufacturing industry
were made in the ordinary way by a distinct vote
of Congress; were made, for instance, as the appro-
priations for the promotion of the carrying trade—
the steamship Subsidies, as they are called—are
made, in the shape of an annual maximum sum.
Suppose this sum were paid over to the corpora-
tions, or individuals, engaged in each manufacture,
on their giving proof that they were carrying on a
bonā-fide business. Suppose that to each were
given as much as would meet the loss, as shown by
his books, incurred by him in competing with for-
eigners in the home markets. I am not advocating
this. Any one can see its difficulties. I acknowl-
edge how much less troublesome it is to protect by
levying duties on foreign goods at the port of entry.
But the political objections to the protective sys-
102 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMTIO. ESSA YS
tem, as now administered, cannot be made so clear
in any way as by inquiring how the plan of dis-
tributing the money directly by the public Treasury
would work.
The measure of each manufacturer's needs would,
of course, be the amount lost in his business
through foreign competition. It would hardly be
possible to restrict the number of participators
in the bounty, because One of its great objects
would be the multiplication of manufactures. We
should have to invite as many people as possible
to set up mills and furnaces, and then to come to us
for help. But see what an amount of inspection
we should need to prevent the distribution of the
fund becoming a gross job. It would be impossi-
ble, for instance, to pay the subsidy or indemnity
on a simple statement of the loss sustained. We
should have to inquire how the loss was sustained;
whether really by foreign competition, or by lax
or inefficient or dishonest methods of doing busi-
ness; whether by simple misfortune, or insuffi-
ciency of capital, or want of experience. We
would never consent that the Treasury should fur-
nish insurance against loss from any cause what-
ever; that the same measure should be dealt Out
to the idle, the improvident, and the slow, as to
the industrious, the energetic, and the ingenious.
No government would undertake to help in the
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 103
same degree, through direct subsidies, every one
who chose to go into the iron or cotton business. It
would investigate and discriminate. It would not
treat all men's complaints as equally respectable.
Indiscriminate protection, if it were given directly,
would speedily be felt to have all the evils of in-
discriminate charity. A manufacturer who said, “I
am not able to go on with my business and must
have more state aid,” would be met in the same
way as a man who said, “I must have relief, be-
cause I have got no money.” The latter, before
receiving relief, would surely be asked: “Why
have you no money? Is it because you are lazy,
or because you are unfortunate?” In like man-
ner, the manufacturer who demanded more protec-
tion, simply because the amount received was not
sufficient to save him from bankruptcy, would be
asked: “Why is the amount you receive insuffi-
cient 2 Is it the fault of the market, or your own
lack of fitness for the business in which you have
engaged? In the former case you are entitled
to relief. In the latter it would be a waste of the
taxpayers' money, and a waste of you? own life, to
start you again.”
That such a system could long prevail in any
country without damage to the moral constitution
of those who were benefited by it, all experience
of human nature forbids us to expect. The effect
104 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
of the possession of money, or of a rich father, on
a young professional man, is well known. It is
only the men of very strong character who make
their mark in spite of it. In all walks in life, in-
deed, it is generally those who have burnt their
bridges who make the stiffest fight. Manufacturers
would need to be more than human to make the
very best use of their faculties, while knowing
that they had in Congress a protector of boundless
wealth and indulgence, who, when the allowance
was exhausted, asked only one question, namely,
how much more was needed?
Looking at the protective system, as it now ex-
ists, from the side of legislation, the political ob-
jections to it under our form of government are
still stronger. The only governments fitted to
deal with votes of money of an indefinite amount,
for an ill-defined purpose, if any be fitted, are
governments of the parliamentary type, in which
the finances are managed by a responsible minister,
and all the appropriations collected in a systematic
whole called the budget. Even in such hands, the
support of industry, through indirect taxation, is
open to immense abuse. But such a minister, re-
sponsible to the public for the whole financial sys-
tem, can make some attempt to reconcile the con-
ficting claims of the great industries. Under our
System—the presidential system, as it is called—
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF TEIE TARIFF 105
nobody in particular is responsible for the financial
scheme of the year. There is, in fact, no official
scheme, in the strict sense of the term, submitted
to Congress. The Secretary of the Treasury puts
into his report a mass of multifarious information
about the public finances, but the recommendations
with which he follows it up are rarely heeded by
the Legislature. The real work of what is called
in other countries a Minister of Finance, is done
by a committee of the House of Representatives,
which makes the first draft of the appropriation
bills. But these bills, including the tariff bill,
never pass the House in the shape in which they
are drawn up, or in anything approaching to it.
Lach member feels himself fully entitled to pro-
pose, and, if he can, to carry, modifications in them;
So that when a bill is finally passed it is general-
ly impossible for any one, in or out of the House,
to say who its author is. So numerous are the
influences which are brought to bear on the fram-
ing of it, that the most powerful of them is hardly
ever known. The committee is beset by hundreds
of manufacturers from all parts of the country,
representing every variety of industry, and each
claiming to be the final authority on his own sub-
ject. Each, too, demands that Congress shall
either alter, or shall not alter, the duty on some
particular article of foreign importation, and sup-
106 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
ports his demand with an array of figures, the
correctness of which nobody attempts to dispute,
if for no other reason, for want of time. Failure
to influence the committee, too, rarely discourages
any tariff lobbyist. He transfers his labors to the
House, and attacks the bill through individual
members, who, being generally much more igno-
rant of the subject than the members of the com-
mittee, fall an easy prey to him. The general re-
sult is apt to be that the bill, as finally passed, has
but little, if any, resemblance to the bill as it is-
sued from the committee-room. It is often, when
examined, found to be something very different in
its operation, not only from what its first projec-
tors intended it to be, but from what everybody
else, at the end, thought that it really was. There
is hardly a more pitiable spectacle in politics than
the vexation and amazement of the country, after
a new tariff bill has been passed, over the dis-
covery that nobody can tell what its effect on in-
dustry is likely to prove.
There is, however, one other reason of the un-
fitness of Congress for the proper working of our
protective system besides the absence of a re-
sponsible ministry charged with the management
of the finances. It has been the American policy
from the beginning, and a wise policy, to provide,
by paying the members, that the legislatures of
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 107
the country shall be a fair representation of the
plain people who compose the bulk of the popula-
tion. The bulk of the population has but little
money, but is keenly alive to the use of money, and
eagerly engaged in the pursuit of it. We send to
the Legislature, both State and Federal, men who
are generally poor and generally honest when they
go there, but not unwilling to be rich if a respecta-
ble occasion offers, and are very apt to have their
imagination touched by the history and condition
of millionaires. In plain and simple communities,
such as two or three of the New England States still
remain, in which capital is scarce and great capi-
talists unknown, the relation of these legislators
to their constituency leaves little to be desired.
But in States in which great accumulations of
wealth have taken place, in which capitalists
frequently have great favors to ask of the State,
and in which legislators are constantly called on
to deal with measures which contain, or are thought
to contain, as Johnson said of the Thrale brew-
ery, “the potentiality of growing rich beyond the
dreams of avarice,” these relations leave a great
deal to be desired. The belief of the great capi-
talists in the venality of legislators in some
States, if not in many, is well known, and is one
of the most unpleasant political phenomena of the 2-
day. In fact, they make hardly an attempt to
108 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA. YS
conceal it. I have never talked with one who had
ever found himself in the power of a State Legis-
lature, or had to ask anything of it which seriously
affected his interests, who was afraid to avow his
belief that the members were venal, or who did
not pretend to hold proofs of their venality; who
had not stories to tell, either of his having to
pay in order to get what he sought, or of his hav-
ing to pay in Order to escape a tax on what he
possessed already. In the New York Legislature,
certainly, the practice of introducing bills simply
for the purpose of frightening rich men, or “strik-
ing them,” as it is called, is by no means uncom-
mon. Nor is the practice unknown of delaying
the passage of measures in which rich men are
interested, until they are forced to inquire what it
is that stops the way. One hears the same stories
for all States in which there are large corpora-
tions or great capitalists exposed in any manner
to legislative action. Doubtless there is in all this
much exaggeration, but any One who is determined
to gain his ends with the State government through
corruption, is pretty Sure, if he cannot succeed, at
all events to find many ways of spending money
in the attempt. -
All this is an illustration of the growth of a
political evil which is both novel and peculiar to
Our time. In all past states of Society with which
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 109
we have any acquaintance, the governing class has
been the wealthy class. The military or feudal
states were ruled by the men who had the most
land. The great commercial republics, like Venice
and Genoa, were ruled by the men who had the
most money. It is in our day and generation, and
in this country, that the Government has for the
first time, both in its legislative and administrative
branches, passed into the hands of the poor, in a
rich community. I say the poor in a rich com-
munity, for there have been states before now in
which poor men filled all the offices; but these
were states, such as some of the Swiss cantons, in
which the rulers and ruled were, as regards this
world’s goods, pretty much on a level, and in
which the absence of temptation made it easy for
everybody to be virtuous. Here, on the other hand,
we are trying the novel experiment of governing
a commercial community, during a period of
rapidly growing wealth, by the instrumentality of
men without fortunes. This will probably, here-
after, continue, for better, for worse, to be the
democratic way. No other way is possible. The
rule of the many must always be the rule of the
comparatively poor, and, in this age of the world,
the poor have ceased to be content with their pow-
erty. They seek wealth, and, in times when
Wealth is accumulating rapidly, they seek it
110 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
eagerly. We cannot change this state of things.
We must face the problem as it is presented to us.
That problem is, I do not hesitate to say, the great
problem of government in every civilized country
—how to keep wealth in subjection to law; how
to prevent its carrying elections, putting its creat-
ures on the judicial bench, or putting fleets and
armies in motion in order to push usurious bonds
up to par.
There is only one way of meeting this difficulty.
We cannot at will put down corruption by a sud-
den increase of human virtue. In other words,
we cannot protect legislators against wealthy spec-
ulators, by making them either suddenly purer, or
more contented. The way to arm them against
temptation is to leave them as little as possible to
sell of the things which capitalists are eager to buy.
I do not mean to say that the tariff has pro-
duced, or is producing, definite, ascertainable, or
provable corruption, in Congress; that is, that man-
ufacturers go down to Washington and pay mem-
bers for raising the duty on this, or not lowering
it on that. But I do say that the state of things
is vicious through which Congress has the chance
every year of increasing or lessening the incomes
of thousands of rich men, of threatening to ruin
great industrial enterprises or largely to increase
their profits, and this through changes in legisla-
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 111
tion so slight as not to be perceptible to the great
mass of the public, yet so intricate as to be com-
prehensible only to a small portion of it. Every
time the tariff comes under discussion—and it
comes under it every year—hundreds of wealthy
corporations or individuals either fear a loss or
expect a gain. This puts every member of Con-
gress in the position toward them of a possible
enemy or a possible benefactor; in the one case to
be bought off, in the other to be rewarded. The
lobby which looks after the tariff every win-
ter in the protectionists’ interest is not com-
posed of speculative economists, occupied with
the effect of legislation on the general weal. It is
composed of shrewd, practical business men, en-
gaged in procuring or hindering legislation which
will increase or diminish their bank account by an
amount which they can readily figure out, and
which, if called on, they freely submit to the com-
mittees. -
The protectionist answer to much of what is
said with regard to the changeableness of congres-
sional policy about the tariff is, chiefly, that if the
tariff were not attacked incessantly by free-traders
and their allies, in One disguise or another, these
changes would never take place. If, in short, the
people who are hostile to the protective system
would refrain from criticising the tariff in which it
112 IPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
is embodied, there would be as much stability in
the policy of the Government with regard to im-
port duties as any one could desire. Unfortu-
nately, however, tariffs have to be made for the
community, such as it is, and not as protectionists
would desire to see it. There has always been in
this country a considerable body of persons who
are opposed to any protection at all; there is an-
Other body, also considerable, opposed to high
protection. As long as speech is free they
will continue to exert an influence, more or less
pronounced, upon Congress and the voters. If
they do not always have their way in legislation,
they are always able, at every election, to diffuse
among manufacturers the fear that they will have
it. The effect of this fear on business is, manu-
facturers say, almost as prejudicial as active legis-
lation.
The problem which protectionists have to solve,
therefore, touching the relations of the Government
to industry in this country, would seem to be the
production of a tariff which nobody will attack—a
very difficult task, we must all admit, if it is to be
such a tariff as extreme protectionists really desire.
As long as there exists, about the amount of protec-
tion needed, the doubt and mystery which we now
witness; as long as the classes for whose protec-
tion the tariff is intended are as numerous and as
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 113
clamorous as they now are, it will be impossible
to satisfy them all by any protective tariff what-
ever. There is only one rule known to us by which
a tariff can really be measured and defended. If
the principle of raising duties for revenue only
were once adopted, every one would know at a
glance how high the tariff Ought to be. There
might be disputes about the distribution of its
burdens among different commodities, but there
would be none about the sum it ought to bring in.
If there were in any year a surplus, every one
would agree that the tariff Ought to be lowered.
If there were a deficit, every One would agree that
it ought to be raised. We should thus, at least, get
rid of the perennial contention about the weight of
the duties, and we should no longer be dependent
for stability on the wisdom of Congress.
Now, let me consider another, and, from a social
point of view, perhaps the most important, aspect
of the tariff question. Can any one find, in the
work of any American author, or in the speech of
any American Orator—I mean, of the free States
—prior to the civil war, any intimation that we
should have, fully developed on American soil,
within the present century, what has long been
known in Europe as “the labor question ?” Of
course, we can all recall that sometime famous let-
ter of Lord Macaulay's, in which he predicted the
8
114 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSAYS
speedy triumph in this country of poverty over
property, and the periodical division among the
have-nots of the goods and chattels of the haves.
But some of us can remember, too, the mocking
and proud incredulity with which that dismal pre-
diction was received. He was told, in hundreds of
newspaper articles, that European experience fur-
nished no proper materials for forecasting the
economical future of the United States; that no
such division of classes as he foresaw could take
place here. I do not need to say that his predic-
tions have not been fulfilled, and are never likely
to be. I am one of those, too, who believe firmly
that property will always, in every country, be
able to take care of itself. It will always have the
superiority in physical force, as well as in intelli-
gence on its side. The great bulk of the population
is, in every country, and above all, in this, composed
of those who have property or expect to have it ;
and so it will always be, as long as our civilization
lasts. But certainly, all the answers to Macaulay
have not stood the test of time and experience. In
1860 nobody here was seriously troubled by the
condition or expectations of the working classes.
In fact, Americans were not in the habit of think-
ing of working-men as a class at all. An American
citizen who wrought with his hands in any calling
was looked on, like other American citizens, as a
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TA/PIFF 115
man who had his fortunes in his own keeping, and
whose judgment alone decided in what manner
they could be improved. Nobody thought of him
as being in a special degree the protégé of the
State. In fact, the idea that he had a special and
peculiar claim on State protection was generally
treated as a piece of Gallic folly, over which Anglo-
Saxons could well afford to smile. There was no
mention of the free laborer in political platforms at
that day, except as an illustration to Southern
slave-holders of the blessings of which their pride
and folly deprived their own society.
We have changed all this very much. Under
the stimulation of the war tariff, not only has there
been an enormous amount of capital invested in
industrial enterprises of various sorts; not only
have mills and furnaces and mines and protected
interests of all sorts greatly multiplied, but there
has appeared in great force, and for the first time
on American soil, the dependent, State-managed
laborer of Europe, who declines to take care of
himself in the old American fashion. When he is
out of work, or does not like his work, he looks
about, and asks his fellow-citizens sullenly, if not
menacingly, what they are going to do about it. He
has brought with him, too, what is called “the labor
problem,” probably the most un-American of all
the problems which American society has to work
116 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSA YS
over to-day. The American pulpit and the Ameri-
can press are now hammering away at it steadily.
Commissions, both State and Federal, are nearly
every year appointed to collect facts bearing on it,
and working-men are invited to come before them
and explain it. Popular attention to it is stimulated
by occasional riots and huge strikes, in which thou-
sands take part, and which every now and then
strain to the uttermost the State powers of protect-
ing life and property. Its leading features are,
however, well known. The rate of wages paid in
the protective industries is seldom as high as work-
ing-men think they ought to have, and is often, if
not most of the time, greater than their employers
think they can afford to pay. And then employ-
ment in these industries is somewhat precarious.
Every now and then there is a reduction, or a lock-
Out, simply because the protected market is not
good enough. In fact, we have to-day before our
eyes, at all the great centres of industry, as they
are called—at the mills and mines and furnaces—
most of the phenomena which “the pauper labor
of Europe” now furnishes for the perplexity of Eu-
ropean statesmen and philanthropists. Nor must
I be told that this is an exceptional state of things,
arising out of a brief and transient depression of
industry. It has lasted from 1873, with a very
brief interval of two years, until the present year. |
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF' 117
Now, this labor problem, which so many states-
men and philanthropists and economists are try-
ing their teeth on, is every day made more diffi-
cult, every day further removed from solution,
by that fatal lesson of government responsibility
for the condition of a particular class of a com-
munity, which every believer in high tariffs, every
manufacturer who depends on the tariff, is com-
pelled to preach. Of all the novelties which the
last twenty-five years have introduced into Ameri-
can politics and Society, decidedly the most dan-
gerous is the practice of telling large bodies of
ignorant and excitable voters at every election that
their daily bread depends not on their own capac-
ity or industry or ingenuity, or on the capacity or
industry or ingenuity of their employers, but on
the good-will of the Legislature, or, worse still, on
the good-will of the Administration. In other
words, the “tariff issue,” as it is called in every
canvass, is an issue filled with the seeds of social
trouble and perplexity. Anything less American
and more imperialist than the regular quadrennial
proclamation that if the presidential election re-
suits in a certain way the foundations will be
knocked from under American industry, the fac-
tories closed, and the workers thrown out of em-
ployment, could hardly be conceived. And yet, as
long as a large number of industries exist through
118 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
the tariff, and could not exist without it, and men's
eyes are turned, whenever there is a depression in
business, not to the market of the world or to the
resources of their own ingenuity, but to the lobbies
of the Capitol, this announcement is inevitable.
Every canvass thus becomes a lesson in depend-
ence on the State. It becomes a sort of formal
acknowledgment by the leading men of both
political parties, that one class of the community,
at least, is composed of governmental protégés ;
for the party which denies that its coming into
power will derange industry makes this acknowl-
edgment, just as effectually as the party which
brings the charge.
The truth is, that the first field ever offered for
seeing what the freedom of the individual could
accomplish, in the art of growing rich and of diver-
sifying industry, was offered on this continent. It
was blessed with the greatest variety of Soil and
climate, with the finest ports and harbors, with the
greatest extent of inland navigation, with the rich-
est supply of minerals, of any country in the world.
The population was singularly daring, hardy, ingen-
ious, and self-reliant, and untrammelled by feudal
tradition. That opportunity has, under the protec-
tive system, been temporarily allowed to slip away.
The old European path has been entered on, under
the influence of the old European motives; the be-
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 119
lief that gold is the only wealth ; that, in trading
with a foreigner, unless you sell him more in specie
value than he sells you, you lose by the transac-
tion; that diversity of industry being necessary to
Sound progress, diversity of individual tastes, bent,
and capacity cannot be depended on to produce it ;
that manufactures being necessary to make the
nation independent of foreigners in time of war,
individual energy and sagacity cannot be trusted
to create them.
The result is that we have, during the last quar-
ter of a century, deliberately resorted to the pol-
icy of forcing capital into channels into which it
did not naturally flow. We thus have supplied
Ourselves with manufactures on a large scale, but
in doing so we have brought society in most of
the large towns, in the East, at least, back to the
old European model, divided largely into two
classes, the One great capitalists, the other day-
laborers, living from hand to mouth, and depend-
ent for their bread and butter on the constant
maintenance by the Government of artificial means
of Support. Agriculture has in this way been de-
stroyed in Some of the Eastern States, and, what
is worse, so has commerce.
Had individuals in America been left to their
own devices in the matter of building up manu-
factures, it is possible that the gross production of
\
120 Jº OLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSA YS
the country in many branches would have been
less than it is now ; but it is very certain that
American society would have been in a healthier
condition, and American industry would have been
“taken out of politics,” or, rather would never have
got into it. An agricultural population, such as that
of the Northern States sixty years ago, was sure not
to confine itself to one field of industry exclusively.
Enterprise and activity, love of work and love
of trying all kinds of work, were as marked feat-
ures of the national character then as they are
now. The American population could boast of
much greater superiority over the European popu-
lation than it can now. There was sure, therefore,
to have been a constant overflow from the farms
of the most quick-witted, sharp-sighted, and enter-
prising men of the community, for the creation of
new manufactures. They would have toiled, con-
trived, invented, copied, until they had brought
into requisition and turned to account—as, in fact,
they did to a considerable extent in colonial days
—one by one, all the resources of the country, all
its advantages over other countries in climate, soil,
water-power, in minerals, or mental or moral force.
Whatever manufactures were thus built up, too,
would have been built up forever. They would
have needed no hothouse legislation to Save them.
They would have flourished as naturally and could
SOME POLITICAL ASPECTS OF THE TARIFF 121
have been counted on with as much certainty as the
wheat crop or the corn crop. Instead of being a
constant source of uncertainty and anxiety and
legislative corruption, they would have been one
of the main-stays of our social and political sys-
tem. American manufactures would then, in
short, have been the legitimate outgrowth of Amer-
ican agriculture. They would have grown as it
grew, in just and true relations to it. They would
have absorbed steadily and comfortably its sur-
plus population, and the American ideas of man's
capacity, value, and needs would have reigned in
the regulation of the new industry.
The present state of things is one which no
thinking man can contemplate without concern.
If the protectionist policy is persisted in, the proc-
ess of assimilating American society to that of
Europe must go on. The accumulation of capital
in the hands of comparatively few individuals and
corporations must continue and increase. Larger
and larger masses of the population must every
day be reduced to the condition of day-laborers,
On fixed wages, contracting more and more the
habit of looking on their vote simply as a mode of
raising or lowering their wages, and, what is worse
than all, learning to consider themselves a class
apart, with rights and interests opposed to, or dif-
ferent from, those of the rest of the community.
122 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIG ESSA YS
What, then, is to be done by way of remedy?
Nothing can be done suddenly; much can be done
slowly. We must retrace our steps by degrees, by
taking the duties off raw materials, so as to enable
those manufactures which are nearly able to go
alone to get out of the habit of dependence on
legislation, and to go forth into all the markets of
the world without fear and with a manly heart.
We must deprive those manufactures which are
able to go alone already, of the protection which
they now receive, as the reward of log-rolling in
Congress in aid of those still weaker than them-
selves. And we must finally, if it be possible, by
a persistent progress in the direction of a truly
natural state of things, prepare both laborers and
employers for that realindependence of foreigners,
which is the result, simply and solely, of native
superiority, either in energy or industry or invent-
iveness, or in natural advantages.
CRIMINAL POLITICS
THE most serious question which faces the
modern world to-day is the question of the govern-
ment of great cities under universal Suffrage.
There is hardly any political or social puzzle the
solution of which has not to be worked out in the
streets of the great towns. The labor problem,
for instance, is almost exclusively a city problem.
It is in cities the great labor troubles occur. It is
in them that population is growing most rapidly.
The following table shows the increase in the
population in five great capitals during twenty
years, ending in the year of the latest census:
1861. 1871. 1881.
London. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2,803,989 . . . . . . . . . . 3,254,260 |.......... 3,814,571
1861. 1872. 1881.
Paris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,696,741 |.......... 1,851,792 |......... 2,269,023
1867. 1871. 1874. 1885.
Berlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 702,437 || 825,389 949,144 |.......... 1,315,297
1858. 1.......... 1870. 1872. 1881.
Rome . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180,859 216,000 || 244,484 300,467
1860. 1870. 1880.
New York............ 805,658 .......... 942,292 |.......... 1,206,299
124 I?OLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
Far from being dependent for their increase in
numbers, as the country districts are in the main,
on the majority of births over deaths, they grow
in size through immigration. On a great Scale. In
all the leading countries there is a steady stream
of men, women, and children into them. Men who
have made their fortunes move into them as the
places in which there are the most varied op-
portunities for such pleasures as wealth brings.
Men who have their fortunes still to make crowd
into them as the places in which there are the best
markets and the best opening for every variety of
talent.
But far more important than this is the fact that
nearly all the poor, the improvident, the disgraced,
the criminals, all the adventurers of both sexes,
are consumed with the passion for city life. There
is hardly any unsuccessful or unfortunate man in
the United States, in England, France, Germany,
Or Italy, possessed of any mental activity or
bodily strength, who does not think his condi-
tion would be bettered by getting to some great
capital. The laborers are even more eager for the
change than the other classes. A disgust with
country life has spread, or is spreading, among
Workingmen in all these countries. Farmers
in England and France complain that, in spite of
the aid of machinery, farming is becoming in-
CRIMINAL POLITICS 125
creasingly difficult through want of hands. The
new generation are unwilling to cultivate the earth
any longer, or endure the Solitude of farm life, if
they can possibly avoid it.
The cities themselves do everything to stimulate
this movement. Parks and gardens, cheap con-
certs, free museums and art galleries, cheap means
of conveyance, model lodging-houses, rich chari-
ties, such as every city is now offering in abun-
dance to all comers, are so many inducements to
country poor to try their luck in the streets. They
are the exact equivalents, as an invitation to the
lazy and the pleasure-loving, of the Roman circus
and free flour which we all use in explanation of
the decline and fall of the Empire. They are
luxuries which seem to be within every man's
reach gratis, and they act with tremendous force
on the rural imagination. Nor is there as yet the
slightest sign of reaction. The great transmigra-
tions of the world are, in the main, those of the
farmers from one farm to another; but there is no
sign among the poor of a return to the country of
those who have once tasted the sweets of city
life. That this aversion from the land among the
masses should be contemporaneous with the rapid
spread of Henry George's theory, that poverty is
due to the difficulty men have in getting hold of
ground to cultivate, is surely a very curious social
126 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMYO' ESSA YS
phenomenon. Its success, however, has been
mainly in the towns. He has had but few dis-
ciples among the agricultural population, and I
suspect that even in the towns, if it were possible
to analyze the grounds on which his followers have
taken up his gospel, it would be found, in nine
cases out of ten, that land, in their minds, simply
stood for wealth in general, and that they thought
of it as something that yielded ground-rent or
house-rent, rather than as something that grew
crops.
Though last, not least, the opportunities for con-
cealment, for escaping observation, or, in other
words, of securing Solitude, which great masses of
population afford, make the cities very attractive to
criminals. They are the chosen homes of every-
body inclined to, Or actually living, a life of crime
or a life bordering on crime. Gamblers, thieves,
receivers of stolen goods, brothel-keepers, and the
great army of those who shirk regular industry,
all throng to the city as the place which affords
the best opportunities for the exercise of their
peculiar talents. The last-named class forms in
every city a very large body of persons who,
though not, strictly speaking, part of the criminal
population, live on it or through it, and readily
descend into its ranks.
This tendency is aggravated in this country by
CAE IMINAL POLITICS - 127
immigration, especially in the case of New York,
which is the great receiving port for such additions
to our population as come from Europe. In spite
of frequent assertions to the contrary, and in spite
of appearances to the contrary created by such ex-
cesses as those of the Anarchists in Chicago and
elsewhere, the bulk of the European immigrants
to this country are Orderly, industrious people who,
have contributed much to its material prosperity,
and have made, by the sums of money they bring
with them, no less than by their labor, by no
means insignificant additions to its capital. They
have undoubtedly played a very large part in the
opening up and reclamation of the regions beyond
the Alleghanies known as the West. Without
them the creation of the manufacturing industries
which we are now so frantically trying to protect
through the tariff, would have been impossible.
So it will not do to throw on them all the responsi-
bility of our political disorders and shortcomings.
But nobody can deny that they have greatly in-
creased the difficulty of the problem of city gov-
ernment under universal Suffrage. º
Every ship-load of immigrants which lands in
New York contains a certain proportion of what
may, for political purposes, be called sediment—
that is, of persons with no fixed trade or calling or
any kind of industrial training, who started with
128 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
but little money beyond what was necessary to pay
their passage at sea. To some of these New York
is as far as they want to go; to most of them it is
as far as they can go, and they at Once recruit the
legion of what the French call “déclassés"—that is,
of social adventurers who are compelled to live
either by manual labor or by their wits; and there
is, of course, no one who has any wits who does
not prefer the latter. That they furnish constant
re-enforcements to the vicious and criminal ele-
ments of the population it is hardly necessary to
Say. More than this, they furnish the puzzle of
philosophers and the despair of statesmen.
It is impossible to discuss this subject, as far as
New York is concerned, without distinguishing
between the influence on politics of the different
nationalities which are represented in the voting
population of the city. The two which play the
leading part are the Germans and the Irish. At
the last census their numbers were about equal.
But there is a great difference in their political ac-
tivity, partly owing to difference of temperament,
partly to difference of training. The Germans are
a slow, plodding, somewhat phlegmatic, and very
serious people, who, as Dr. Von Holst, in a re-
view of Mr. Bryce's book, truly says, in a feverish
intensity of American activity, with their mod-
erate and Sober ideals, quiet and steady energy,
CRIMINAL POLITICS - 129
and modest self-confidence, act as a wholesome
leaven.
The Irish are quick, passionate, impetuous, im-
pressionable, easily influenced, and with a heredi-
tary disposition to personal loyalty to a leader of
some sort. Their immigration is a more ignorant
one than the German—indeed, I might say less
civilized. They have for the most part but little,
if any, industrial training, while the Germans have
a great deal. There are probably ten Germans
who come here with a trade of Some sort, for One
Irishman, and their trades are apt to be skilled
ones which no man can successfully follow without
having some sort of mental discipline and steadi-
ness of character. The Germans, too, come with
more or less affection for the government they have
left behind, and pride in its success. The Irish
come with hatred for their home government bred
in their very bones. What is, perhaps, as serious
a difference as any is that all classes of Germans,
except the military aristocracy, are represented in
the German immigration. It has always a mixture
of educated men and successful business men who
are on excellent terms with their humbler country-
men, and united to them by all the usual social
and political ties. It is the misfortune of the Irish
that their educated class and successful business
class have to a great extent been separated from
130 POLITICAL AND ECO WOMTO. ESSA YS
t
the bulk of the population at home by differences
of race and religion, which continue under the new
skies; and the religious differences occasionally
treat Americans to the, to them, astonishing phe-
nomena known as “Orange riots.” Consequently,
the bulk of the poor Irish who drop down into the
New York streets as a deposit from each succes-
sive wave of immigration, find themselves without
respectable natural leaders, and a ready prey to
sharp-witted political adventurers. They are sep-
arated from Americans, too, not only by difference
of habits, traditions, and ideals, but by difference
of religion—perhaps the most formidable barrier
of all. They have to contend against that dread of
Catholicism which has now become among all
classes of Anglo-Saxons, whether religious or scep-
tical, an integral part of their mental and moral
make-up. And the Irish soon learn to regard the
Americans, as they have learned through sorrowful
experience to regard the well-to-do class in their
own country, as in some sort lawful political prey,
whom it is not improper to tax, if they get a chance,
without mercy or compunction.
What makes this all the more formidable is that
they have familiarity with political machinery,
without having any political experience; that is,
they know all about voting and agitating and can-
Vassing, but they have never yet elected legislators
CRIMINA I, POLITICS - 131
who were responsible for the government under
which they lived, whom they could fairly call to
account if their affairs were mismanaged, or of
whose misconduct they felt the direct effects. In
other words, they have never had the only political
training which develops public spirit or a sense of
public morality—the strongest argument of all, to
my mind, for Irish home rule. Irish parliamen-
tary elections are, in fact, as a means of political
training, complete shams. Nor have the Irish had
any educating experience in the conduct of their
local affairs. The consequence is that a large body
of the Irish voters in our large cities enter on the
game of politics in what may be called a predatory
state of mind, without any sense of public duty, or
of community of interest with the rest of the tax-
payers. When we add to all this the fact that they
are the only large body of immigrants who land in
this country with a knowledge of the English lan-
guage, and therefore can at Once become acquainted
with the ims and outs of the spoils system as prac-
tised by the natives, and with the whole system of
“pulls” by which justice is denied or perverted,
the public money converted into “boodle,” and
places won by the incompetent, the part they play
in aggravating the puzzle of city government is not
surprising. As voters simply, the Bohemians and
Poles are just as manageable as they are. In what
132 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSA YS
is called “the banner Republican district ’’ in this
city, the Eighth, in which the late Johnny O’Brien
held sway, there are but few Irish. The bulk of
the voters are Slavs of One denomination or an-
other, and follow a leader with just such fidelity as
the Irish, but they do not know enough to get hold
of offices. They do not secure any of the prizes of
corruption; and the reason is that they are igno-
rant of the language and unfamiliar with the ma—
chinery by which a share in the electoral plunder
can be obtained.
Though last, not least, the temptation to immi-
grants who have no skilled trade and are averse to
manual labor, and yet have a little more push and
intelligence than the mass of their compatriots, to
go into the liquor business in New York, owing to
the ease with which licenses are obtained, is very
strong, and the Irish fall victims to it in larger
numbers than any other class of new-comers. But
very little capital is required; in fact, hardly any,
as credit for liquor is readily obtained from the
distillers and brewers by pushing fellows, and the
furniture and fixtures of a “rum-hole” involve but
little outlay. With a barrel of cheap whiskey,
which can be easily increased by adulteration,
and a few kegs of beer on hand, an emergetic new-
comer in New York not only obtains at once the
means of livelihood, but finds himself speedily a
CRIMINAL POLITICS 133
prominent social and political figure in his ward,
whom men that he thinks highly placed consider it
worth their while to flatter, or cajole, or encourage.
The ease with which he can enter the liquor busi-
ness, an ease the like of which is not to be found
in any other civilized city, and his joy at finding
that in a rum-shop he has made the first step in
what seems to him a public career, naturally affect
profoundly the imagination of hundreds of his
countrymen, both here and at home, who know
something about him and watch his progress, and
form their estimate of American politics and
morals from his example.
It was unfortunate that the change in the con-
stitution of this State in 1846, establishing uni-
versal suffrage, occurred simultaneously with the
beginning of the great tide of emigration which
followed the Irish famine. Its result was that the
city was soon flooded with a large body of igno-
rant voters, who at Once furnished political specu-
lators with a new field for their peculiar talents.
Within six years they produced a kind of dema-
gogue, previously unknown to the American pub-
lic, in the person of Fernando Wood, who, by their
aid, got into the mayoralty in 1854—the first of
his kind who had ever done so, for he was to all
intents and purposes an adventurer, with no stand-
ing in the business community. It was really he
134 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSA YS
\
who organized New York city politics on what
may be called a criminal basis; that is, he discov-
ered the use which might be made in politics of
the newly arrived foreigner, and the part which
the liquor-dealers and all keepers of criminal or
semi-criminal drinking-places might be made to
play in maintaining party discipline and Organiza-
tion. In controlling a body of ignorant voters,
who did not read, no agents could be so useful
as the keepers of “resorts” in which men congre-
gated in the evening, and at which they got credit
for both food and drink.
Consequently the liquor-dealer, whether as a
keeper of a bar, or of a “ dive,” or of a brothel, or
of a cheap hotel, rapidly rose into the political
prominence which he has ever since enjoyed. He
became a captain of ten, or of fifty, or of a hun-
dred, according to the size of his rum-shop and
his own capacity for leadership. He rapidly took
the place in politics which in the early part of the
century was held by the foremen of the volunteer
fire companies, as a centre of political influence
and as the transmitter to the various wards of the
will of the gods of the Tammany Society. Wood
was succeeded as a boss by Tweed, and Tweed, of
course, brought the Wood system to perfection.
Pſe gave the liquor-dealers increased political
weight, and made his way to the hearts of the ten-
CRIMINAL POLITICS 135
ement-house population by lavish charities, such as
the distribution of free coal in winter, which Wood
had never thought of. His success may be esti-
mated from the fact that he was re-elected to the
State Senate by his constituents while the intelli-
gent and well-to-do world above them was ringing
with the exposure of his frauds and thefts.
How Tweed passed away everybody knows.
He was the victim of his own excess. He might
have stolen with perfect impunity for a long pe-
riod, had he been more moderate. He was ruined
by the scale on which he did his work. But his .
system remained, and in due time produced a suc-
cessor in the person of John Kelly, who had prof-
ited by Tweed's example, practised the great Greek
maxim “not too much of anything,” simply made
every candidate pay handsomely for his nomina-
tion, pocketed the money himself, and, whether he
rendered any account of it or not, died in posses-
sion of a handsome fortune. His policy was the
very Safe One of making the city money go as far
as possible among the workers, by compelling every
office-holder to divide his salary and perquisites
with a number of other persons. In this way no
One person made the gains known under Tweed,
but a far greater number were kept in a state of
contentment, and the danger of exposures was
thus averted or greatly lessened.
136 POLTICA D, AND ECONOMIC ESSA. YS
The more the Tammany organization had to rely
on the liquor-dealers, the more certain and rapid
was the transfer of its government to the hands of
the criminal class. By criminal class I do not
mean simply the class which commits highway
robbery or burglary, or receives stolen goods, or
Reeps gambling-houses or houses of ill-fame. I
mean not these only, but all who associate with
them in political work, and who share political
spoils with them ; who help to shield them from
judicial pursuit either by their influence with the
district attorney or with the police justices, or
with the police ; in other words, both the actual
perpetrators of crimes and those who are not re-
pelled by them and are willing to profit in poli-
tics by their activity.
As I have said before, each of the numerous
Small sets, or “gangs,” of which this world is
made up has its “head-quarters” at some liquor
store, or bar, or club, the keeper of which is its
political guide and friend in times of trouble ;
and he is under a constant impulse to push the
political fortunes of his clients and demand recog-
nition for them so as to justify their reliance on
him and respect for him. As long as Democratic
victories in this city have to be won by his exer-
tions, it is, of course, difficult or impossible to
gainsay him. Men of all other trades and callings
CRIMINAL POLITICS I37
occasionally retire from “politics” altogether, for
a long or short period. But the liquor-dealer
never retires. He remains an agitator, Organizer,
and counsellor by virtue of his calling. His
“place” is the centre of political gossip. He
knows more of what is going on in the ward or
district than anybody else—who hates whom ;
who is going to “get even " with whom ; what
Billy has been promised, or why he did not get it;
from whom Jake borrowed his assessment, and
how much he owes Barney, and what “deals”
are in progress or have been contemplated. Con-
sequently, every Organization which counts on him
tends more and more to pass into his hands and
those of his customers.
This tendency has been strong in Tammany for
many years. It has ended in excluding nearly all
men of good character and respectable associations
from its management. The public, which remem-
bers that it used to have prominent lawyers and
business men among its Sachems and on its
Executive Committee, is habitually startled at
finding it in charge of liquor-dealers and “toughs.”
The remedy so often proposed, of taking away the
charter which the Tammany Society obtained in
its early and better days as a semi-charitable or-
ganization, is puerile on its face. The Only use
of the charter of the Organization, as at present
138 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSAYS
constituted, is to enable it to own real estate. But
it does not need to own real estate in order to ex-
ist and flourish. It could get on just as well with
a hired hall as with a hall in fee-simple. Its
strength, I repeat, lies in the control it exerts over
the ignorant, criminal, and vicious classes through
its liquor-dealers, who never concern themselves in
the least about the charter, and do not need to do
so. It can exert all its present strength without
any legal Organization whatever, like any other
political club. Its original construction and de-
sign and history are important in only one way.
No organization such as it now is could be
started in our day; that is, the vicious and crimi-
nal class could not in any large city get up a club
Or association which would have the coherence,
prestige, and authority that Tammany has. The
attempt would be a failure from the outset, even if
the Organization did not succumb to the attacks of
the police. No civilized community would wit-
ness with calm or indifference the deliberate forma-
tion of a combination which was plainly hostile to
public prosperity and order, or the efficient ad-
ministration of justice. Steps would soon be taken
to break it up, or discredit it in some manner, so
as to destroy its attractiveness to its supporters.
Membership in it would bring such disrepute that
men seeking any foothold in the respectable busi-
CRIMINAL POLITICS 139
mess or professional class would be unwilling to
belong to it; politicians would be afraid to have
it known that they relied on it, and it would ra-
pidly go to pieces or be reduced to insignificance,
even if it for a short period managed to show
power.
The reason why the Tammany Society manages
to stand its ground is that it is nearly a cen-
tury old, and for fully half that time was a real po-
litical club, engaged in the maintenance and diffu-
sion of certain political ideas which were, during all
that period, making a considerable noise in the
world, and effecting great governmental changes in
many civilized countries. The leading men of the
party which was the exponent of these ideas in
this State, belonged to it, and a share in its man-
agement was one of the rewards of some kind of
prominence in the world outside, either political
or professional or commercial. Of course this
gave it, in process of time, great political weight.
Any Organization which has managed to exist and
flourish for half a century acquires great prestige
in a society as changeful as ours, in which Organi-
zations of all sorts rise, flourish, and fade with so
much rapidity, and in which even the most brill-
iant local reputations so soon pass out of men's
memories. With the aureole thus acquired Tam-
many came down almost to 1850. Soon after that
140 POL 77°ICAI, AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
the vicious element began gradually to enter it and
secure control of it, and drive politics, in the best
sense of the term, out of it, but with so little out-
ward sign of what was going on that the change,
when Suddenly revealed in Tweed’s day, gave the
public a shock of surprise.
Old New-Yorkers learned then that what had
seemed to their youthful imagination a sort of tem-
ple of liberty, of which the worst that could be said
was that it was too much given up to Southern
worship of negro slavery, had really been taken
possession of by a lot of tramps and converted into
a “boozing ken.” But they got over this shock
somewhat after Tweed’s day and the establishment
of Tilden's supremacy in Democratic councils, and
an air of respectability once more began to Sur-
round the ancient edifice. It did not, however, last
for very long. The process of degeneration set in
once more. The criminal classes renewed their ac-
tivity, and they were in full possession before
Tilden's death ; but once more, and in spite of
everything, the age of the edifice, the traditions
which surrounded it, prevented the public from
realizing what was passing within. It consequently
almost astounded good people the other day to
learn how few members of the Executive Com-
mittee could be said to have any really lawful Oc-
cupation outside politics, or any genuine connec-
CRIMINAL POLITIOS 141
tion with the respectable business or social
world.
Nothing is more surprising in the attempt to
deal with the problems of urban life than the way
in which religious and philanthropic people ignore
the close connection between municipal politics
and the various evils about which they are most
concerned. All the churches occupy themselves,
in a greater or less degree, with the moral condi-
tion of the poor. Charitable associations spend
hundreds of thousands every year in trying to
improve their physical condition. A conference
of Protestant ministers met in this city two years
ago to consider the best means of reviving relig-
ious interest among the working classes and induc-
ing a larger number of them to attend church on
Sundays. Of course these gentlemen did not seek
an increase in the number of church-goers as an
end in itself. The Protestant churches do not, as
the Catholic Church does, ascribe any serious spir-
itual efficacy to mere bodily presence at religious
worship. Protestant ministers ask people to go to
church in the hope that the words which they will
hear “with their outward ears may be so grafted
inwardly in their hearts that they may bring forth
the fruit of good living.” What was remarkable in
the debates of this conference, therefore, was the
absence of any mention of the very successful rival-
142 POLITICAL AND FO'OWOMIC ESSA YS
ry with the religion which, as an influence on the
poor and ignorant foreign population, politics in
this city carries On. The same thing may be said,
mutatis mutandis, of the charitable associations.
No one would get from their speeches or reports
an inkling of the solemn fact that the newly arrived
immigrant who settles in New York gets tenfold
more of his notions of American right and wrong
from city politics than he gets from the city mis-
sionaries, or the schools, or the mission chapels;
and yet such is the case. I believe it is quite with-
in the truth to say that, as a moral influence on
the poor and ignorant, the clergyman and philan-
thropist are hopelessly distanced by the politician.
It must be remembered that the poor immigrant
who drops down in New York generally comes
from a country in which the idea that the public
functionaries are the servants of the people, or the
product of popular selection, has not as yet pene-
trated the popular mind. He is apt to hold on
still, in a blind, unreflective way, to the old doc-
trime that the powers that be are of God, and that
what a man in authority says or does is, in Some
sense, the expression of the national morality. He
has not as yet learned to criticise public officers or
call them to account. He obeys them; he seeks
to ingratiate himself with them. He accepts their
decisions, if unfavorable, as misfortunes; if favor-
CRIMINAL POLITICS 143
able, as blessings. He does not dream of appeal-
ing against them to public opinion, for he does not
know what public opinion is. No sooner has he
established himself in a tenement-house or a
boarding-house than he finds himself face to face
with three functionaries who represent to him the
government of his new country—the police justice
of the district, the police captain of his precinct,
and the political “ district leader.” These are, to
him, the Federal, State, and municipal governments
rolled into one. He does not read Story or Bryce.
He knows nothing about the limitation of powers,
Or the division of spheres, or constitutional guar-
antees.
What he learns very soon is that, if he makes
himself obnoxious to the captain of the precinct,
he may be visited with so much vexation as to
drive him out of the ward; that if he would avoid
the severities of the police justice whenever he has
a little scrimmage with one of his neighbors, or
gets into “trouble “ of any description, he must
have a mediator or protector, and this mediator or
protector must be “the district leader” or a poli-
tician belonging to one party or the other. He
then perceives very soon that, as far as he is con-
cerned, ours is not a government of laws, but a
government of “pulls.” When he goes into the
Only court of justice of which he has any knowl-
144 POLITICAI, A. WD ECOAVOMIC, ESSA YS
edge, he is told he must have a “pull” with the
magistrate or he will fare badly. When he opens
a liquor-store, he is told he must have a “pull” with
the police in order not to be “raided” or arrested
for violation of a mysterious something which he
hears called “law.” He learns from those of his
countrymen who have been here longer than he
that, in Order to come into possession of this
“pull,” he must secure the friendship of the
district leader. These three men are to him
America. Everything else in the national in-
stitutions in which Americans pride themselves,
he only sees through a glass darkly, if he sees it
at all.
If he is a man of parts and energy, or rises
above the condition of a manual laborer into that
of a liquor-dealer or small contractor, he finds him-
self impeded or helped at every step by “pulls.”
If he wants a small place in the public service, he
must have a “pull.” If he wants a government
contract, he must have a “pull.” Whether he
wants to get his just rights under it, or to escape
punishment for fraud or bad work in the execu-
tion of it, he must have a “pull.” In the ward in
which he lives he never comes across any sign of
moral right or moral Wrong, human or divine jus-
tice. All that he learns of the ways of Providence
in the government of the city is that the man with
ORIMINAL POLITICS 145
32
the most “pulls” gets what he wants, and that the
man with no “pulls” goes to the wall. Every ex-
perience of the municipality satisfies him that he
is living in a world of favor and not of law. He
hears that large sums of money are voted every
year for the cleaning of the streets, but he sees
that they are not cleaned. He hears that it is for-
bidden to throw out dirt and ashes into the high-
way, but he sees that all his neighbors do it with
impunity. He hears that gambling-houses and
houses of prostitution are forbidden, but he sees
them doing a roaring trade all around him. He
hears that it is a crime to keep a liquor-saloon
open on Sunday, but he finds the One he frequents
is as accessible on Sunday as On any other day.
He hears that licenses to sell liquor should be
granted only to persons of good character, but he
sees that the greatest scoundrels in his neighbor-
hood get them and keep them as readily as anyone
else. He has come over the sea with the notion
that magistrates should be grave and discreet per-
sons, learned in the law, but he sees seated on the
bench in his own district his own friend, Billy
McGrath, who plays poker every night with him
and “the boys” in Mike Grogan's Saloon, and in
court always gives his cronies “a show.” No-
where does he come on any standard of propriety
or fitness in the transaction of public business, or
146 JPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
on any recognition of such things as duty or honor
in dealing with the public interests.
Now, what chance have the city missionaries
and philanthropists of making themselves felt in
an atmosphere of this sort 2 They might as well
go to the African heathen, and try to make Chris-
tians by dividing their preaching time with the
medicine-men, as to try to make an impression on
the poor of this city as long as the administration
of its affairs is a standing denial of God. What
helpless visionaries they must seem to thousands
as they wander about the liquor-saloons with their
Bibles, and tell their tales of what good Americans
think about life and death and judgment, and
about the prosperity which waits on the homest
man and good citizen. The truth is that anyone
who occupies himself with the moral and religious
elevation of the poor in this city can no more dis-
regard politics than a doctor, in treating physical
disease, can refuse to take notice of bad drains or
decaying garbage. He must not only take politics
into account in his work, but must take it into ac-
count at the very beginning.
What is to be done by reformers generally to in-
troduce a new and better régime into city affairs,
it is not easy to describe fully within the limits of
an article like this. There are certain things, how-
ever, which have been fully tried and have so
CRIMINAL POLITICS 147
plainly failed that no more mention should be
made of them. One is the denunciation of univer-
sal suffrage. There is no doubt that universal suf-
frage has added to the difficulties of city govern-
ment, and has lowered the standard of official pu-
rity and fitness; but, to use the slang phrase, it
has so plainly “come to stay,” and is so firmly
lodged in the political arrangements of most civil-
ized nations, that it is a mere waste of time to de-
claim against it. Complaining of it as an obstacle
to good government is like complaining of a stormy
Sea as a reason for giving up navigation.
Another is reliance on the State Legislature for
new charters, or for the expulsion of bad men from
office by special legislation. This mode of reform
was begun in 1857, when the Republican party got
possession of the State government, and it has
ended in converting the interests of the city into
gambling-stakes for Albany politicians to play
with. They oust each other from city offices with
no more reference to the interests of city tax-
payers than butchers on killing-day to the feelings
of the Oxen. There have been eleven charters en-
acted since 1846, and we have now got the best of
them all, and the best we are in the least likely to
get. It is the simplest, and puts more direct
power into the hands of the city voters than they
have ever had before. Its excellence lies in the
148 J2OLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
fact that it concentrates in the mayor responsibil-
ity for appointments to all the leading offices ex-
cept the comptrollership, and puts the control of
taxation in the hands of a small body of conspicu-
ous men elected on a general ticket. We cannot
do better than this. It makes every election a di-
rect appeal to the good sense and public spirit of
the voter. No community as heterogeneous as
ours can manage its affairs successfully through
democratic forms without reducing to its lowest
possible point the number of executive officers
whom it has to watch, and call to account when
things go wrong. As soon as responsibility is
widely diffused in such a community, “deals" or
bargains between politicians for the division of
the offices at Once begin.
For we have among our other difficulties to deal
with the fact—in some of its aspects a tremendous
one—that the fifty years of the spoils system have
almost destroyed in the popular mind the tradi-
tion of trusteeship in connection with public offices.
Among active politicians they are now almost uni-
versally looked upon, as in France under the old
régime, as franchises or privileges authorizing the
holder to levy a certain amount of toll on the State
for a certain limited period. Until this view has
been eradicated, it is reasonable to fear that a
large municipal legislature or council, which some
CRIMINAL POLITICS 149
are thinking of, would simply be a reproduction
On a smaller scale of the Albany Legislature, with
whose weaknesses and defects the public by this
time is tolerably familiar. It is safe to say that,
as things are to-day, we cannot better ourselves by
any changes in the framework of the city govern-
ment which there is the least chance of obtaining
from the law-making power, except in one particu-
lar, and that is the exaction of higher qualifications
for the office of police justice. The police magis-
trates are, after the mayor, perhaps the most im-
portant city officers. They have a more direct re-
lation to municipal health and morals than any
other. They ought to be lawyers, of at least seven
years' standing at the bar, and men of established
character and repute. At present there is no stand-
ard of fitness for the office whatever. Any man
who can get it through “pulls” is held to be com-
petent to fill it, and it is, as a matter of fact, dis-
posed of as a piece of party spoil to active local
politicians. So that it may be said that, with this
exception, we have had since 1885, when the abso-
lute power of appointment was put into the mayor's
hands, as good a Scheme of local government as
we have ever had, or are likely to have within any
period worth thinking about for practical pur-
poses.
Have we, then, exhausted our resources 2 Is
150 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
the rule of the criminal classes under which we are
living at this moment destined to be permanent 2
Who or what is to blame for it 2 Can it not be
shaken off, or can its recurrence not be prevented 2
The answer to these questions is comparatively
easy. There is nothing unnatural or abnormal in
Our condition. It is the plain and natural effect
of causes of the simplest and most obvious kind.
In fact, it would be very odd if we were any better
off than we are, considering the way in which we
manage our municipal business. The objects of a
municipal corporation are nearly as definable as
those of a railroad company. They consist simply
in supplying the inhabitants of a certain locality
with certain conditions of physical health and
comfort, plus the education of their children. The
work is paid for by an annual subscription, and
the executive officers are elected by a general vote.
If there be in this world a plain moral obliga-
tion, it is the obligation which rests on every in-
habitant to use his vote in electing these officers
solely in the common interest of himself and his
neighbors. To use it in his own individual inter-
est, or in the interest of some other corporation or
body of persons not dwelling in the locality or
owning property in it, is of exactly the same moral
Quality as the transaction called “wrecking a rail-
road,” in which the directors of a railroad corpo-
ORIMINAL POLITICS 151
ration ruin it either for their own personal gain or
in order to contribute to the prosperity of some
other railroad.
In other words, it is a breach of trust. The
more poor, Or ignorant, or helpless the neighbors
of an inhabitant of a municipal corporation are, the
more solemn is the obligation which rests on him
to use his superior intelligence for their benefit.
He has no right to let them be swindled by clever
sharpers if he can prevent it, simply because they
are easily duped. He has no right to say that, as
he can take care of himself in any event, he is not
going to trouble himself about the plight of those
who have neither knowledge enough nor money
enough to protect themselves against fraud. He
has no right to shut his eyes to dirty streets else-
where because he can afford to keep his own street
clean by private contract, and has a country house
where he spends half the year. He has no right
to surrender the poor to corrupt Orignorant judges,
because he can pay for the best police the country
affords. In short, he has no right to live an abso-
lutely selfish life in the city any more than in the
country at large. Patriotism has its municipal
obligations as well as national obligations, and, in
fact, makes duty to the municipality far clearer to
the plain man than duty to the nation.
If this be all true, and I do not think it will
152 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA. YS
meet with denial from any respectable source,—
we shall have little difficulty in showing that the
responsibility for our local misgovernment by no
means rests on “the ignorant foreigners ”: on the
contrary, it rests very distinctly on the intelligent
and well-to-do natives. They have three times
since 1884 deliberately gone through the process
known in railroading as “wrecking ”—that is,
have tried to use the municipal administration to
promote schemes in which the city, as a city, has
no special interest whatever. If the minority of
the stockholders of a bank were to endeavor to
put into office a certain board of directors, in or-
der that they might make heavy loans to political
committees, or merely in order to show their own
strength, they would soon stand in the public eye
in the same moral, if not legal, position as the
men who wrecked the Sixth National Bank. And
yet it is difficult, from the moral point of view,
to distinguish between such conduct as this and
the conduct of the Republicans who at every
mayoralty election, when they know they cannot
Succeed, persist in running a third candidate in
order to exert influence on the Presidential elec-
tion or on congressional legislation.
New York is, has been, and probably will re-
main for an indefinite period, a Democratic city.
In so far as “Democratic ’means the votes of the
CRIMINAL POLITICS 153
more ignorant of the population, of course this is
to be regretted. I regret it as much as anybody.
But it is a fact, and has to be dealt with as a
fact. And there is another fact of the situation
still more important than this—a fact which I
think may be called unique as a political phenome-
non; namely, that the ignorance and vice of the
city have been organized in an association mainly
for the purpose of plundering the municipal treas-
ury and quartering a large body of shiftless peo-
ple on the public service. But, fortunately for the
city, this association does not contain a majority
of the municipal voters, though it does contain a
majority of Democratic voters.
But the minority of Democrats who are hostile
to it and to its works and ways, and are willing
to act against it, is considerable—considerable
enough to put the association in a minority at
city elections. These dissentient Democrats can-
not be got to accept Republican nominations, no
matter how good they are: this, too, is very re-
grettable. It would not be true if all Democrats
were as intelligent and public-spirited as we
should wish to see them. But it is a fact, and has
to be dealt with as a fact. It has, therefore, to be
taken into account by intelligent and honorable
men, in providing the city with an administration,
just as much as the liability of city houses to take
154 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
fire. Municipal politics, like all other politics, is
a practical art. It deals with men as they are,
and not as we wish them to be. There is hardly
One of us who, if he had the power of peopling
New York anew, would not make an immense
number of changes among its present inhabitants.
But the problem before the wise and good is
simply how to give the present inhabitants, such
as they are, with all their imperfections on their
heads, the best attainable government. The les-
son of experience on this point is that we should
vote for the best candidate whom either Demo-
cratic faction puts up, and try to extract a good
nomination from it by the promise or offer of this
support. In nine cases out of ten this would give
us as good a city government as we are, in the
present condition of human nature, entitled to.
It would have given Mayors Grace and Hewitt
overwhelming majorities in 1884 and 1888. They
were elected, it is true, in its absence, and they
began a process of filling city offices which, but
for the Republican mistake in running a candi-
date in aid of General Harrison in 1888, would,
in spite of some haltings, have gradually revolu-
tionized the municipal Service and established
Sound and probably permanent administrative
traditions. As it was, this process put first-rate
men at the head of the Board of Public Works
ORIMINA.J., POLITICS 155
and of the Health Board. It partially rescued the
Excise Board from the liquor-dealers and con-
siderably improved the Park Board; and had the
large number of vacancies which have fallen into
the hands of Tammany during the term of Mayor
Grant been placed at the disposal of Mayor
Hewitt, or of a man like him, we should have en-
tered on the year 1891 with brighter municipal
prospects than New York has known for fifty
years.
But there can be no hope of permanent im-
provement in municipal business, any more than
in any other business, until city elections are con-
ducted for the sake of the city. Any business
which is administered in the interest of some other
business soon ends in bankruptcy. A dry-goods
business managed with a view not to the Sale of
the dry goods, but the establishment of a news-
paper, would not last very long. New York is too
rich to be brought to insolvency. Great cities,
when badly administered, cannot be sold and abol-
ished; they simply become dirty, unhealthy, un-
safe, disgraceful, and expensive. It is high time
that this great municipal shame disappeared from
among us, and deliverance ought not to be difficult,
for we believe there is not a city in the Union in
which the honest, well-meaning, Orderly, and in-
dustrious voters are not in a large majority.
“THE ECONOMIC MAN ?”
WE have been hearing during the past twenty
years, and with greatly increased emphasis during
the past ten, of the utter discredit which has over-
taken the older political economy of Adam Smith,
and Ricardo, and Mill, and Cairnes, and Say, and
Cobden, and Bastiat. Their system, we have been
told, is largely a deductive system, in which the
premises are furnished by hypotheses which have
no basis in the actual facts of industrial life, and
are not verified either by experiment or observa-
tion. Not only are these premises not true of the
world at large, but they are not true of any par-
ticular country in the world. They assume that
the civilized world lives under the régime of
competition, whereas there are only two or three
countries which can be said, with any approach to
accuracy, to do so. The “Economic Man” of Ri-
cardo always buys in the cheapest markets, and
always waits patiently until he can sell in the dear-
est, and he assumes that in so doing he renders
the best service in his power to the community.
“ THE ECONOMIC MAN" 157
Moral considerations do not, in any degree, affect
his business transactions. There is no place in his
system for brotherly kindness or charity. It is in-
expedient for the state to attempt to regulate him
in any way, either by keeping him out of the
cheapest market or impeding his access to the
dearest. All he asks of it is to be left alone to
deal with his fellow-men in such manner as his
own natural acuteness or his command of capital
may permit. His one desire is to make all the
money he can by every means not illegal. Laissez
faire, laissez passer, comprises the sole and whole
duty of the state toward him.
Ricardo, who is the scapegoat who has to bear the
burden of most of the sins of the old school, or who,
at all events, figures most prominently in this dis-
cussion, has, it is said, built up his political economy
on the desires and fears of an entirely mythical
personage. For his “Economic Man” is not a real
man. This man does not represent the human race
in general Or any particular part of it. He is a
creature of the economist's imagination. The facts
of human life have not entered into his composition.
The old political economy—the “Smithianismus,”
as the Germans call it—has been based on the as-
sumption that this economic man exists. It must
be discarded when it is shown that he does not
exist ; that his assumed motives and activities are
158 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS
L.
not the law of industrial communities. A new in-
ductive political economy must, therefore, take the
place of this old deductive one, and must be based
On the observation and careful accumulation of the
facts of industrial life in civilized countries, either
as they now exist or as they are historically re-
corded. As the economic history of every coun-
try differs in some degree from that of every other
country, it follows that every country must have
its own political economy and its own staff of ex-
pounders of the local science.
This is, accordingly, what has happened. There
have arisen a German School, an Austrian school,
an English School, a Russian school, and an Amer-
ican school, which all differ in the matter of
“method,” but all agree in repudiating Adam
Smith and his economic followers, in denouncing
laissez faire, laissez passer, as an economic rule, in
being intensely “historical,” and in endeavoring to
Supply morality to trade through some sort of gov-
ernment interference, not as yet clearly defined.
The scorn of the new schools for Smith and Mill
and Ricardo is indeed almost bitter, but their dif-
ferences about “method”—that is, about the exact
nature of the mental processes by which they reach
their conclusions—are already nearly as numerous
as those of the metaphysicians, and are apparently
likely to prove as barren. If Comte, who first
“ THE ECOWOMIC MAN ?” 159
flouted the pretensions of political economy to be
considered a Science, were now living, these differ-
ences would please him hugely as illustrations of
the soundness of his position. A little volume on
“The Scope and Method of Political Economy,”
recently published by Mr. Keynes, the Lecturer on
Moral Science in Cambridge University (England),
should be read by any one who wishes to get an
adequate idea not so much of economical method-
ology as of the methodological confusion which
reigns among the economists. He remarks truly :
“Economic science deals with phenomena, which are
more complex and less uniform than those with which the
natural Sciences are concerned ; and its conclusions, ex-
cept in their most abstract form, lack both the certainty
and precision that pertain to physical laws. There is a
corresponding difficulty in regard to the proper method óf
economic study, and the problem of defining the condi-
tions and limits of the validity of economic reasoning be-
comes one of exceptional complexity. It is, moreover,
impossible to establish the right of any one method to
hold the field to the exclusion of others. Different
methods are appropriate according to the materials avail-
able, the stage of investigation reached, and the object in
view ; hence arises the Special task of assigning to each its
legitimate place and relative importance.” (P. 6.)
Still more pertinent is the following:
“The sharp distinctions drawn by opposing schools, and
their narrow dogmatism, have unnecessarily complicated
160 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
the whole problem. The subject has become involved in
heated controversies that have not only made it wearisome
to unprejudiced persons, but have also done injury to the
credit of political economy itself. Outsiders are naturally
Suspicious of a science in the treatment of which a new
departure is so often and so loudly proclaimed essential.”
(P. 8.)
This contempt for the “Economic Man” is the
more remarkable because the members of the his–
toric school themselves perforce make use of him.
IROscher, who may be called the chief of it, relies
on him fully as much as Ricardo. Such phrases
as these abound in him:
“The systematic effort of every rational individual in his
household management is directed towards the obtaining
by a minimum of sacrifice of pleasure and energy a maximum
satisfaction of his wants.” (Vol. I, pp. 60–66.) “The in-
centive to ameliorate one's condition is common to all men,
no matter how varied the form, or how different the in-
tensity of its imagination. It follows us all from the cradle
to the grave. It may be restricted within certain limits,
but is never entirely extinguished.” All normal economy
aims at securing a maximum of personal advantage with a
minimum of cost or outlay.” (P. 73.) “Self-interest
causes every one to choose the course in life in which he
shall meet with least competition and the most abundant
patronage.” (P. 75.) “The abstraction according to which
all men are by nature the same, different only in conse-
quence of a difference of education, position in life, etc.,
all equally Well equipped, skilful, and free in the matter of
“ THE ECONOMIC MAN " 161
economic production and consumption, is one which, as
Bicardo and Von Thunen have shown, must pass as an indis-
pensable stage in the preparatory labors of political econo-
mists.” (P. 105.) “The mathematical laws of motion
operate in a hypothetical vacuum, and When applied are sub-
ject to important modifications in consequence of atmos-
pheric resistances. Something similar is true of most of
the laws of our Science; as, for instance, those in accord-
ance with which the price of a commodity is fixed by the
'buyer and Seller. It also always supposes the parties to the
contract to be guided only by a sense of their own best in-
terest, and not to be influenced by secondary considera-
tions.” (P. 103.)*
The comparison of Ricardo's Economic Man to
the first law of motion is an old One, but it is as
good to-day as when it was first made. It is quite
true, as far as human knowledge goes, that no body
actually continues for an indefinite period in rec-
tilinear and uniform motion. But it is also true
that no real progress would ever have been made
in astronomy or mechanics without the assumption
that if a body were set in motion in a vacuum this
is the way in which it would move. It is no less
true that political economy, no matter how defined,
cannot be taught without assuming the existence
of an Economic Man who desires above all things,
and without reference to ethical considerations, to
get as much of the world’s goods as he can with
* These quotations are all made from Lalor’s translation.
11
162 POLITICAL AND JECONOMIC ESSA YS
the least possible expenditure of effort or energy
on his own part. The fact that he is not humane
or God-fearing no more affects his usefulness for
scientific purposes than the fact that the first law
of motion would carry a cannon-ball through a
poor man's cottage. The theory of production,
of value, and of exchange, rests on his assumed
existence. He supplies the raison d'être of the
whole criminal law and of a large part of the civil
law of all civilized countries. Ethics, and religion
in so far as it furnishes a sanction for ethics, exist
for the purpose of deflecting him from his normal
course. The well-known “Gresham's Law,” which
declares that the less valuable of two kinds of
legal-tender money will drive the more valuable
out of circulation, has been understood by some
of our more ignorant bimetallists as meaning that
one will exert some kind of mechanical pressure
or chemical repulsion on the other. But “Gres-
ham's Law” is simply a deduction from observa-
tion of the working of the Economic Man's
mind when brought into contact with two kinds of
currency of unequal value, and through our knowl-
edge of the Economic Man we can predict its
operation with almost as much certainty as the
operation of a law of chemistry or physics.
Ethics and religion, in fact, constitute the dis-
turbing forces which make possible the Organiza-
“THE ECONOMIC MAN " 163
tion and prosperous existence of civilized states.
They have to be calculated and allowed for and
their working observed, just as the disturbing force
of gravity, Or atmospheric or other resistance, has
to be calculated, allowed for, and its working ob-
served, in astronomy or mechanics. But this cal-
culation would be impossible if the constant
tendency were not known. If the Economic Man
were blotted out of existence, nearly all the dis-
cussions of the economists would be as empty
logomachy as the attempts to reconcile fixed fate
and free will. That I am not here fighting a shadow
is shown by the fact that General Francis A.
Walker, himself an economist of eminence, in a re-
cent address before the American Economic Asso-
ciation, on “The Tide of Economic Thought,” gives
the following as one of the reasons for the currency
at this juncture of “the vaguest and wildest
schemes for human regeneration upon an economic
basis '':
“First. The economists themselves are largely respon-
sible for this state of things, on account of the arbitrary
and unreal character of their assumptions and the haughty
and contemptuous spirit in which they have too often
chosen to deliver their precepts. Especially are our Amer-
ican economists sinners above the rest in these respects.
Long after even the English economists, who have been
lordly enough, Heaven knows! had importantly modified the
traditional premises of the science to meet the facts of human
164 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
nature, and had, with a wider outlook, admitted many ex-
tensive qualifications of the doctrine of laissez faire, the
professors of political economy in the leading American
colleges continued to write about the economic man of
Ricardo and James Mill as if he was worth all the real men
who ever lived ; and the editors of the journals and re-
views which especially affected to exercise authority in
economics, greeted with contumely every suggestion of an
exception to the rule of individualism, from whatever
Source proceeding, for whatever reason proposed. Even
the complete establishment of such an exception in the
policy of half a dozen nations, and its triumphant vindica-
tion in practical working to the satisfaction of all publi-
cists, all men of affairs, and even of those who had once
been selfishly interested to oppose it, constituted no rea-
son why these high priests of economic Orthodoxy should
accept it.”
I might, if I had space, take serious exception
to these allegations about the teachings of profess-
ors in American colleges, On the Score of exagger-
ation, and also to the proposition touching the
satisfaction of “all publicists and all men of
affairs,” on the score of accuracy. But I am not
concerned about this so much as about the state-
ment that the English and other economists have
“importantly modified the traditional premises
of the science.” I am sure that were General
Walker debating any topic but political economy,
in discussing which no man ever gets fully outside
of his subject, he would at Once recognize the fact
“ THE ECONOMIC MAN 7° 165
that the premises of “a science” cannot be altered
to suit any one's fancy or convenience. Science
means the law which regulates the succession of
phenomena. Scientific investigation means an
attempt by observation or experiment, or both, to
get at this law. But it is only in theology or
metaphysics that the Scientific investigator creates
his own premises, and makes hypotheses which
account for nothing. In all other fields, political
economy included—if it be a science—the prem-
ises are not furnished by the logician, but by the
phenomena of nature. Human Society furnishes
the economist with his phenomena, and therefore
with his premises. He can, if he be a scientific
man, no more modify them “importantly ’’ or
otherwise than he can by taking thought add a
cubit to his stature. He can, of course, as in any
line of investigation, frame hypotheses, but the
hypotheses have to be verifiable by observation or
experiment. But under all circumstances, and for
all purposes, there is no getting away from the
phenomena. You may dislike them, or wish they
were otherwise, but accept them you must. You
may approach them inductively by collecting
them for your premises, or you may approach them
deductively by concocting a hypothesis or theory
to explain them, but you must still apply them
promptly to your conclusion to see whether they
166 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
fit. I venture to assert that there is not a single
economist of the old School, beginning with Adam
Smith, who, as a scientific man, has not used both
these methods with such success as his diligence
and skill permitted. But in all economic investi-
gation the first inquiry is, and, so far as it is eco-
nomical, must forever remain : what will the Eco-
nomic Man do when brought in contact with certain
selected phenomena of the physical or social
world? And the more complicated the facts of the
industrial and social world are, the more necessary
to the economist the Economic Man is, in order to
enable him to steer his way through the maze.
The existing confusion in the economic world,
which General Walker's charge, quoted above, well
illustrates, is due, apparently, to difficulty in getting
the members of the new or historical schools to
tell us in what character they appear. One can
never tell, in listening to them, whether they are
addressing us as Scientific men or statesmen.
Their air of authority is that of scientists, but the
eager philanthropy of their utterances indicates
that they are really would-be legislators. Their
clothes are economical, but their talk is ethical.
To take ROScher again as an example of the best-
known and most moderate of them, one finds that
what he has added to the work of the older econo-
mists, besides the illustrations supplied by an
“THE ECOWOMIC MAW 2) 167
enormous erudition, consists mainly of theology
and metaphysics. The new schools profess to know
far more about the will of God, and about duty
and the moral Sources of happiness, and the ethi-
cal foundations of the state, than the older econo-
mists; but they have not contributed anything of
practical importance to our knowledge of the laws
of value, of production, or of exchange, as extracted
from the mind of the producer and purchaser. The
test of Science is that it enables one to predict con-
sequences. Until Our researches have enabled us
to foresee exactly what will happen if something
else happens, although we may have discovered val-
uable and interesting facts, we have not discovered
a law. That the historical School has laid before
us a large mass of interesting information about
the industrial condition of various countries at
various periods cannot be denied, but I am unable
to see in what its contributions to economical
literature differ from the books of intelligent and
observant travellers. Its great objection to the
policy of laissez faire—that it permits a consider-
able amount of cruelty, oppression, and suffering,
and that, in spite of its teachings, poverty exists
On a great Scale among the laboring classes—is an
ethical or political, not a scientific, objection. It &
is simply saying to the rich what the “Society for
the Abolition of Poverty” says—that they are cruel
168 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
or unjust. It does not suggest any economical
mode, in the scientific sense of the term, for im-
proving the condition of the poor.
Take as an example of my meaning General
Walker's announcement, in the passage I have
just quoted, of “the complete establishment’ of
“an exception to the rule of individualism " (I
presume the regulation of factory labor) “in the
policy of half a dozen nations.” “to the satisfac-
tion of all publicists, all men of affairs,” etc.
This exception, let us observe, was first made in
the country which has been supposed to be most
influenced by the individualists. But no matter
what its merits, or what its results, the fact re-
mains that it is not an exception in the economic
sense. It is a political or social measure, not an
economic One. It is not a conclusion of economic
science. It is a dictate of humanity or physiology
or religion. It is a police regulation, to which the
Economic Man is no more opposed than to the re-
strictions on the use of public water or the munic-
ipal prohibition of the storing of gunpowder. It
was opposed in the beginning not by economists,
but by manufacturers who happened to be at the
time strongly combating the kind of government
interference with production which had been the
rule in Europe ever since the Middle Ages. There
is no foundation for the suggestion that in any “half
“ THE ECONOMIC MAN ?” 169
dozen º' countries in the world the Economic Man
has offered any serious impediment to the kind of
special interference with distribution for the bene-
fit of the race which is known as socialistic legis-
lation. The legislation has, as a matter of fact,
begun earliest in England, where individualism
has been supposed to be most powerful, and has
gone on, pari passu, with the spread of the opinions
associated with the names of Smith and Ricardo
and Cobden. The only effect of these opinions
on English legislation has been to abolish the
former hindrances to exchange with foreign coun-
tries; and those who advocated this have certainly
not been brought to shame by the resulting effect
On the national industry and on the condition of
the working classes. -
In short, the new school of economists area
rather politicians, using the word in its good
sense, than scientific men. What mainly occupies
them is legislation for taking away money from
capitalists and distributing it among laborers.
The earlier school may have paid too much atten-
tion to the problem of production. The later
Ones can hardly be said to pay any attention at
all to production. With the effect of their plans
on production—that is, on the dividend which the
earth yields every year to the labor of its inhab-
itants—they hardly seem to concern themselves.
170 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
To talk of their championship of the working
classes as being in any sense scientific would be
an abuse of language.
I cannot help thinking that General Walker's
ascription of the existing currency “of the
vaguest and wildest schemes for human regenera-
tion on an economic basis” to the economists
—meaning by that the followers of Ricardo and
Mill—is a curious misapprehension. It reads
very like the criticism of the wolf on the lamb's
pollution of the water. If dates throw any light
on the matter, “the wild and vague schemes
for human regeneration upon an economic basis”
did not begin to spread or take hold of any civil-
ized community with marked force or effect until
after the convention of the “Ratheder Socialis-
ten" in Germany in 1877, and the appearance of
the historical school in Germany, England, and
America. Professor Ingram's attack on political
economy in general in the “Frcyclopædia Britan-
nica” undoubtedly gave somewhat of a blow to
“Smithianismus,” but he only repeated what
Comte had already said of the absurdity of Sup-
posing that there could be any such thing as
economical science apart from the general Science
of sociology. He, however, greatly diminished
the apparent value of the Economic Man and
helped to start crowds of young professors and
“THE ECONOMIC MAN ?? 171
labor agitators and politicians in search of a new
economy which would shorten hours of labor,
raise wages, humble the employer, give the la-
borer a fair share in the luxuries of life, and
eventually abolish poverty.
The progress of this quasi scientific movement
toward social regeneration through government
interference, of the discredit of the older econo-
mists, and of the resulting economic confusion of
which General Walker speaks, has been hastened
by two other agencies of which he takes no notice. .
The charge that this confusion has been brought
about through the bad manners of the old econo-
mists, and the hard-and-fast way in which they
presented their theories to the multitude, shows
that it is not science but politics which has been
expected of them. The fact—if it be a fact—that
the multitude refuses to listen to them any longer,
and has gone off to worship new gods, does not
prove that they have reasoned wrongly on the
facts of Society. It simply proves that their con-
clusions are unpopular. That a certain number
of persons have gone into “the vaguest and
wildest Schemes for human regeneration on an
economic basis” does not show that the assump-
tions of the old economists have been “arbitrary
and unreal,” although it may show that their pre-
cepts have been delivered in a “haughty and con-
172 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSA YS
temptuous spirit.” But judging these economists
as legislators, which is really what the new school
does, it is impossible to decide, on any data now
in our possession, whether the laissez-faire sys-
tem, as it is called, has been, or will be, success-
ful or not.
There is, unhappily, no absolute test of suc-
cess in economic legislation. All that the wisest
legislator can look for as a sign of his success
in dealing with economic problems is a reduc-
tion in the amount of discontent among the
poor. To abolish discontent among the poor com-
pletely, in any country, is as hopeless a task as
to abolish poverty, and no statesman attempts
it. Whether he has succeeded in lessening dis-
content he can Only ascertain approximately, by
means of an inference from the increase of con-
sumption as shown in statistics collected from
various sources. He concludes, a priori, that the
poor are less discontented when they consume
more of the necessaries and luxuries, because he
has observed that, as a rule, physical comfort
among the great bulk of mankind tends to pro-
duce happiness; but no economist can say with
"certainty that any particular kind of economical
legislation is the best possible, or has produced
effects which no other kind would or will produce.
It is here that the complexity of all sociological
“THE ECONOMIC MAN ?? 173
problems comes in to baffle the politician, and
compels him, in the vast majority of cases, to
legislate simply for the Economic Man, with
whose needs and tendencies he is, as a rule, far
more familiar than he is with the needs of the
ethical man. So that if the new schools of politi-
cal economy enter the field, as they are apparently
doing, not as Scientists, but as legislators, their
attacks on the old One as politicians cannot have
any better basis than pride of opinion. It re-
mains to be seen whether their plans for the pro-
motion of human happiness are in any way supe-
rior to those of the old school or not.
It seems to be forgotten that the paternal sys-
tem of government, in which what is called “the
state” plays the part of an earthly parent to the
individual, has been tried on an extensive scale in
various communities and at various periods of the
world's history, and with very poor success. I
grant that it has not been tried under conditions
as favorable as those which now exist. The ex-
periment may now be made with greatly improved
administrative machihery; with minute as well as
wide knowledge of economic facts and tendencies,
and under the watch of a powerful public opinion.”
But, on the other hand, the state has lost com-
pletely, in the eyes of the multitude, the moral and
intellectual authority it once possessed. It does
174 POLITICAI, AND ECONOMIG ESSA YS
not any longer represent God on earth. In demo-
cratic countries it represents the party which
secured most votes at the last election, and is, in
many cases, administered by men whom no One
would make guardians of his children or trustees
of his property. When I read the accounts given
by the young lions of the historical school of the
glorious future which awaits us as soon as we get
the proper amount of state interference with our
private concerns for the benefit of the masses, and
remember that in New York “ the state ’’ consists
of the Albany Legislature under the guidance of
Governor Hill, and in New York city of the little
Tammany junta known as “the Big Four,” I con-
fess I am lost in amazement. I ask myself, How
can anybody who attacks the old school with such
vigor for its indifference to the facts of daily life,
be so completely oblivious of that most patent
fact, that the capacity of the state for interfering
with people profitably, has not grown in anything
like the same ratio as the popular intelligence, and
that there is nothing in which modern democracy
is showing itself so deficient as in the provision of
inspecting machinery—that is, in securing the
faithful execution of its plans for the promotion
of popular comfort 2
The agencies which have really done most to
discredit the older political economy with the
“ TITE ECOWOMIC MAN 7° 175
masses, and to produce an efflorescence of wild
Schemes of Social regeneration on an economic
basis, are, as I have said, two in number. The
first is the extravagant expectations about the
powers of the state in the solution of economical
problems raised by the historical school since its
appearance in 1877. Its promises and denuncia-
tions have been flung into democratic communities
in which, as in France, Germany, and England, the
poorer classes were just becoming aware of the
extent of the power over the government which
universal suffrage had put into their hands. In no
country have “the masses,” in the modern sense of
that term, ever been greatly concerned about polit-
ical liberty, as the men of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries in this country and England
understood it and fought for it; that is, about the
division of the sovereignty between different bodies
so as to prevent the growth of arbitrary power.
The greatest political interest of that vast majority
of the human race which is in but a small degree
removed from want, always has been, and probably
always will be, the power of legislation over dis-
tribution. A good government always has been to
them a government under which trade is brisk,
wages are high, and food is cheap. The reason
why the older political economy has seemed to
them “a dismal Science ’’ has been that its teach-
176 POLITYCA.J., AND ECONOMIG ESSA YS
ings, in so far as it attempted to teach, discouraged
reliance on the state for these things, and made the
attainment of them dependent on individual char-
acter. I am not now discussing whether this doc-
trine was or was not pushed too far; I simply say
that it was the most natural thing in the world for
the working classes of England, for example, which
had been so long familiar with legislation for the
direct benefit of the middle and upper classes, to
receive with anger or suspicion the announcement
that the care of any class by the state was a mis-
take, and that individual independence was the
true rule of industrial life. When these classes,
therefore, found themselves invested through the
suffrage with political power, it was inevitable that
they should seek at once to improve their condi-
tion through legislation, and should receive with
acclamation the news that a new school of political
economy had been founded which taught as “sci-
ence” that the politicians were the true fathers of
their country, and would, on application, put an
end to unjust distribution. In short, the new de-
parture which the new schools are all calling for is
a new departure in politics, not in political econ-
omy. There is hardly a trace of science in their
talk any more than in that of city missionaries.
What they are asking us to do is simply to try a
hazardous experiment in popular government.
“ THE ECONOMIC MAN' 177
The second agency in producing the existing
economic confusion, which, as it appears to me,
General Walker overlooks, is the substitution in
nearly all the churches of the “gospel of social
endeavor,” as it has been called, for the old theo-
logical gospel. There are very few clergymen to-
day who venture to expound in their pulpits what
was formerly called the “Queen of the Sciences,”
the science of Christian theology. This used to be
their chief business. Of this science they were
the acknowledged masters. They were supposed
to have the key to the greatest of all earthly prob-
lems, and their contentions with each other Over
the proper solution of it, furnished the chief in-
terest of the intellectual world in all countries.
When Dr. Lyman Beecher took the charge of a
group of “anxious inquirers” out of the hands of
Judge Gould at Litchfield, he did so as a profes-
sional man, just as a physician would have taken a
case of typhoid fever out of the hands of an apothe-
cary, and the church saw clearly the overwhelming
necessity of the judge's deposition. Probably nine
out of ten of the members to-day would smile over
the good doctor's notion that his skill in dealing
with spiritual suffering was, ea officio, any greater
than the judge's. In fact, authority has departed
from the pulpit as a profession. Everybody nowa-
days acknowledges this, and clergymen feel it.
12
178 JPOLITICAL AND ECONOMYC ESSA YS
They feel especially that they have failed in obtain-
ing influence for revealed religion over the great
masses of population congregated in modern cities,
and yet it is these masses which have aised what
is called the “labor problem,” and have produced
the prodigious economic tumult which the histori-
cal school is trying to allay.
That ministers who feel that the old gospel has
lost its power to soothe discontent and to account
for Social evils, should endeavor to get at the point
of view of the laboring poor, and should in a large
number of cases, through force of sympathy, come
to share in their illusions touching the power of
government over distribution, is Surely very na-
tural. The socialist view of what social arrange-
ments ought to be, is very much like that of the
early Christians, and the clergyman's imagination
is naturally touched by finding it held by large
bodies of his contemporaries. Moreover, was not
the world Once conquered by an ethical idea, and
what is easier than for an ardent preacher to be-
lieve that it is not too late to do it over again? It
has been maintained in this city in a clerical con-
vention within twenty years, in all seriousness, that
the whole world might be, and probably would be,
with proper effort, “ converted,” in the technical
sense of that term, within thirty years. What is
there very wonderful in the opinion that this con-
“THE ECONOMIC MAN" 179
version might be hastened by a rearrangement,
under government Superintendence, of the relations
of labor and capital.
Moreover, the notion that the economists are to
blame for the aberrations of “the benevolent cler-
gymen, ecstatic ladies,” and other “prophets and
disciples of an industrial millennium,” would be
more plausible if an industrial millennium were any-
thing new, or if, from the days of Hesiod to our
own, the evils of man's condition had not been laid
on the greed of the rich, On the pride of the wise
and learned, and on the inhumanity of the great, by
a long catena of poets, Sages, and prophets. That
the volume of social discontent is now greater than
in former ages is due mainly to the multitude of
new problems we have to face, to the immensely
improved means of spreading ideas, to the won-
derful economic changes effected by Science and
invention, and, though last not least, to the appear-
ance on the scene of the new schools of political
economy to preach the limitlessness of the province
of government. But the labor problem remains
very much what it has been ever since agriculture
was substituted for hunting and fishing—a prob-
lem which, in the main, each man must solve for
himself.
IDLENESS AND IMMORATITY
ONE of the most curious and interesting politi-
i cal and economical changes of the last hundred
years, although it has attracted comparatively little
notice, is the transfer of the legislative and ad-
ministrative branches of government from the rich
to the poor. We hear a great deal about the re-
cent transfer of power to the people in certain
countries, such as France, England, the United
States, Germany, Italy, meaning thereby the power
of determining at the polls who shall compose the
government and what its policy on certain ques-
tions shall be. But we hear little about the change
in the character of the governing class, which is also
a very marked feature of the democratic move-
ment. g
Now, the governing class all over Europe was,
from the fall of the Roman Empire to the Revo-
lution in France and down to the passage of the
Reform Bill in England, and, we may say, down to
Andrew Jackson's time in America, the wealthy
class; and the wealthy class until the present
IDI, EAWESS AND IMMORALITY 181
century were the owners of the soil. Modern Eu-
rope was in fact settled, if I may use the expres-
sion, On the theory that the landowners were “the
country,” the “legal country” as the French called
it, and that everybody else was in a certain sense
a sojourner or interloper. Before the Reform Bill
in England, all extension of the suffrage beyond
the freeholders, and all admission to Parliament of
men who had no property in land, was denounced
as committing the public affairs to people who
had “no stake in the country.” The property
qualification for the suffrage which existed in most
States of the Union at the Revolution, and con-
fined it to “freeholders,” was based on the same
assumption, that is, that the nation was made up
of those who owned the land in fee simple, and
that all others might betray it, or run away from
it, or had but a faint interest in its fame or pros-
perity.
That this notion had good traditional authority
there is no denying, for it was the great landed
proprietors who evoked some sort of order out of
the chaos which followed the invasion of the Bar-
barians. The man who by force of character and
military talent was able to gather a sufficient body
of armed followers to protect a certain bit of terri-
tory against pillage by marauders, to build a forti-
fied house on it in which his dependents might
182 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC, ESSA YS
find temporary shelter for their families and cattle,
and guarantee to the cultivators of the soil a fair
amount of Security while working in the fields, be-
came outwardly the governor of his protégés. Far
from wishing to share his authority, the great
dread of their lives was that he would lay it down
or fail to exercise it with sufficient vigor. For
similar reasons they were only too glad to have his
oldest son assume the same rights and duties On his
father's death, and in two or three generations a
hereditary landed aristocracy was established, and
the reorganized Society found it in full possession
of all the government there was, and kept it there
for a thousand years.
The men who owned the land, too, were during
all this period the only wealthy class except the
Jews. Land was the only investment which fur-
Inished anything that could be called an income.
Everybody was more or less afraid to let his prop-
erty out of his sight, or own property which
could be carried away. The name given to
land in the nomenclature of the English com-
mon law —“real property” or “real estate”—ex-
pressed not only the popular notion about it,
but described the greatest political and econom-
ical fact of the day. The “man of property”
was the landed man. He and his followers owned
the country, and it seemed for ages perfectly
IDI, ENESS AND IMMORALITY 183
natural and right that they should govern the
country.
Now, the peculiarity of landed property which
draws its income from rents is that it needs the
personal attention of the owner. It used to make
him a great man among his tenants, over whose
future he exercised much power; and this power
was increased in many countries by attaching to
it the administration of local justice and the
management of the financial affairs of the district
or county. The country gentleman for fully
twelve hundred years exercised jurisdiction over
local affairs and small controversies, besides levy-
ing and spending the local taxes. He was, as a
rule, consequently an extremely busy man, and
became in popular estimation the Only real states-
man. Even in Burke's day a man of his great
political genius was held by the Whigs to be
unworthy of a seat in the Cabinet, because he was
not connected with the landed gentry. So late as
the Peninsular war, that most practical of com-
manders, Wellington, sent home earnest appeals
for officers of “good family,” meaning the sons of
country gentlemen, as having Some special and
mysterious superiority in the work of fighting,
although he was opposed to an enemy who had
overrun Europe with an army led by the sons of
butchers, bakers, and tavern-keepers. The necessity
184 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
for keeping the property together in the hands of
the eldest son to enable him to maintain the position
of the family in Society or politics, compelled the
youngest sons to shift for themselves, and in every
modern European country they were enabled to
shift for themselves by having the public service
reserved for them. They officered the army and
navy and the diplomatic Service, and got all the
best places in the civil administration. In fact,
John Bright did not exaggerate greatly when,
speaking of the period before the introduction of
the method of filling subordinate places by com-
petitive examination, he called the public service
a “huge system of out-door relief for the younger
members of the aristocracy.” The French Revo-
lution made the first break in this system in
France; but it has lasted in England almost down
to our own day, and is still in existence, in a modi-
fied degree, in Germany and Austria.
It will be easily seen that this is a description
of a state of things in which, as a rule, the owners
of the wealth of the country were both its legisla-
tors and administrators, and that both the fathers
and the sons were kept busy. They all had their
duties and responsibilities, either as managers of
their own estates, or as local magistrates, or as
legislators, or as officers of the army and navy, or
of the civil service, or as ministers of the estab-
IDI, EWESS AND IMMOAEALITY 185
*~
lished Church—an organization which in all coun-
tries in which it existed, possessed an enormous
mass of property. The economical or political
revolutions which have occurred within the present
century have greatly changed all this. Power has
passed from the owners of the land to people
of every kind of occupation. The work of legis-
lation has been largely given over to poor men,
Or the Sons of poor men, who in all parliamentary
countries except England, draw pay for it. The
administrative offices have been thrown open to
the same class. The great landowner has been
converted almost everywhere into an annuitant,
drawing a certain income from his estates, but ex-
erting comparatively little influence on the lives or
fortunes of the tenants. In a word, the aristocracy of
all countries except Germany has become our idle
class. It is literally true of the aristocrats now,
that they toil not, neither do they spin. They no
longer render the state the service which the old
feudal tenures exacted of them, and their enjoy-
ment of large incomes drawn from the industry
expended on the soil by others, becomes increas-
ingly difficult to defend in the forum of abstract
justice. The great landholders of the world have,
in fact, more and more to protect themselves by
showing the danger to all property that would
probably result from an attack on their particular
186 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
kind of property. One consequence of this is
that the accumulated wealth of the world no
longer passes into the land. The passion for
“broad acres” has died or is rapidly dying out.
The number of people who are “land poor ’’ in-
creases. The extraordinary improvement in the
means of communication has, for practical pur-
poses, thrown all the agricultural land of the
world into one market, and thereby all the farmers,
from China to Peru, compete with each other.
As either a consequence or an accompaniment
of this, the accumulated capital of each year is
now gathered up by corporations who turn it over
in all sorts of industrial enterprises, through the
instrumentality of hired employees, and pay the
owners a moderate but tolerably sure percentage
on it. If it is not disposed of in this way, it goes
into government loans, on which interest is paid
out of the taxes. Now, the amount of these in-
vestments from which men may draw a certain in-
come, without any exertion of mind or body On
their own part, is something enormous. The cap-
ital invested in the railroads of the world is esti-
mated at $30,000,000,000. The total national
debts of the world are estimated at $32,000,000,000.
A good deal of this, of course, does not yield in-
terest, but if, On the average, it pays One per cent.,
the income drawn from it is immense, and we leave
IDDENESS AND IMMORALITY 187
out of sight the very large number of various in-
dustrial enterprises owned by corporations whose
shares may be held by anybody, however unused
to and unfit for active business.
The interest on this great sum, of course, goes
in a considerable degree into the pockets of men
and women who are actively engaged in Some sort
of industry, and represents their savings. A con-
siderable part of it is devoted to the support of
helpless people, widows and Orphans, and the aged
and infirm. Much of it passes into the treasury
of charitable and educational institutions and
churches. But it affords also to a large and in-
creasing body of persons of both sexes the means
of living lives of absolute leisure, of abstaining, that
is to say, from all distasteful labor, from doing the
things they do not like to do; and what is perhaps
fully as important in its moral aspect is, that it
breaks their connection with any particular locality.
In the old days before the creation of this great mass
of stocks and bonds, nearly every man was bound
by ties of some sort to a particular place, in which
his presence during the greater part of the year
was made necessary by some sort of duty, or from
which departure was difficult or inconvenient. Of
course this is still true of the great bulk of man-
kind. The majority of the human race are still in a
certain sense adscripti glebae, bound by uncontrol-
188 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
lable circumstances to pass their lives in Some par-
ticular spot of earth. But the proportion which
can, if they please, lead nomad lives, that is, can
pass from place to place at will and settle them-
Selves for longer or shorter periods in any one that
takes their fancy, gains very rapidly and is now
very large in every country. England and America
supply by far the greater number of these “heim-
athlosen,” as the Germans call people who have no
fixed domicile, owing doubtless in part to Anglo-
Saxon restlessness, but certainly in a very large de-
gree to the large revenue yielded in these countries
by various kinds of what we call “interest-bearing
securities,” or, in other words, to the large number
of persons in both countries who have investments
which do not call for their personal attention and are
made fruitful by other people's management and
labor. No doubt a good deal of this migration has
serious objects in view—such as health or education.
But the proportion of it that is simply aimless
wandering in search of new forms of excitement or
amusement, is very large and is growing. One of
the most marked effects of this migratory habit is a
certain volatility which makes it difficult to keep
the attention fixed very long on one object or on
One species of occupation or amusement, and ends
by reducing its victims to a somewhat childish
mental condition. Every one who has had any ac-
IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 189
quaintance with the world of fashion and leisure
which is to be found at any of the European win-
ter and Summer resorts, must have observed how
easily people tire of their amusements and com-
panions, how necessary frequent change of place
or pursuit is to their comfort, and how often
they remind one of the perennial childish cry,
“Mamma, what shall I do next 2 °
Mr. Gladstone, in discussing Lord Tennyson's
“Locksley Hall Sixty Years After,” enumerates
the changes which have come over England within
that period, and mentions as one of the most
marked the great increase of this idle class, and
he throws on them the burden of justifying their
existence. But the increase continues in an accel-
erated ratio. The last thing in the world they
think of is justifying either their existence or the
manner of their existence. No class are less given
to any species of speculative inquiry or less
troubled about the moral aspect of their pursuits.
In so far as the members have become serious, it
is in desiring new forms of amusement or new
places to play in. In fact, they have made amuse-
ment a business, and engage in it with an attention
to details, a regard to finish and efficiency, which
in many cases would be sufficient to insure success
in any species of trade or industry. Where they
are weak is in want of persistence, for to nothing
190 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
is a life of amusement more fatal, as I have said,
than the power of continuance in any one pursuit.
The will becomes gradually weakened under long
release from strenuous exertion, and the thing “got
up,” however successful it may be, Soon becomes
tiresome.
There is one distraction, however, of which the
idle class can hardly be said ever to tire, and
which idle people can hardly be considered capa-
ble of avoiding, and that is the distraction of love-
making under more or less illicit conditions. This
is what they fall back on when all else fails or
becomes vapid. When men and women are
thrown together in the midst of luxury without
duties or responsibility, and without exposure to
any criticism except what comes from persons
similarly situated, the possibilities of scandal grow
very rapidly, and the air is soon filled with it.
The sexual passion is of all passions the most
wayward, watchful, and readiest for temptations.
Neither law nor religion, nor tradition nor cus-
tom, has yet been able to furnish a force capable
of keeping it wholly within the artificial channels
which society has provided for it. Propinquity, as
is well known, is always liable to rouse it into
action even in the most humdrum conditions.
The disposition of the “any man” to fall in love
with the “any woman * whom he sees most fre-
\–
IDLH/NESS AND IMMORALITY 191
quently is one of the commonplaces of worldly
wisdom. So is the disposition of tho “any
woman " to see in the “any man * with whom she
may be thrown into daily or frequent intercourse,
a possible lover. On this very solid anthropologi-
cal fact the code of propriety which in all coun-
tries regulates the intercourse of the sexes has
been framed. In Semi-barbarous societies it is
framed by men, is rigid in its requirements and
Draconian in its penalties. In highly civilized
societies it is largely framed and enforced by
women, and though its provisions have been
greatly relaxed and its Sanctions much mitigated,
nevertheless its basal assumption, as the philoso-
phers say, remains undisturbed. That assumption
is that when young persons of both sexes are
thrown together with nothing to do, they need,
whether married or single, to be closely super-
vised.
This precise situation does not often arise when
people are living in their homes in their own
countries. They have their cares and responsi-
bilities, and perhaps work to do. They are sur-
rounded by relatives or friends, and feel the har-
ness of custom and tradition and public opinion in
nearly every act of their lives. The first step in
the path of vice or folly draws forth warnings
which they have been taught by long habit to
192 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSA YS
respect. But when removed from the pressure of
these time-honored restraints, as in the large
country-houses in England Or on the Continent,
and as in the fashionable resorts, such as Pau or
Monte Carlo, or a score of other places which I
need not enumerate, which in Our time are crowded
with the rich and idle both Summer and winter, the
air becomes charged with amorous electricity; men
and women become, consciously or unconsciously,
ready for amorous adventures. There are few
women who are not, under such conditions, more
or less ready for the mild excitement at least of
repelling unlawful advances, and few or no men
who do not believe themselves worthy of a bonne
fortune, and likely to fall in for one any day.
Hunting, polo, lawn tennis, gambling, dinner-giv-
ing, all pall in the long run, or are confined to cer-
tain seasons, but the ewige Weib remains as a
perennial resource. The annual social chronicles
of the Indian sanitaria in “the Hills” and of the
pleasure resorts of the European continents, con-
tain illustrations in abundance of the tremen-
dous strain which an idle and luxurious life puts
On the bonds of the old morality. The murders,
the duels, or the elopements which every now and
then occur, impressive as they are, give but a
slight idea of the moral turmoil which goes on be-
low the surface. Every year contributes its list of
IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 193
catastrophes of which the world never hears, of
work made hopelessly repulsive on the very
threshold of life, of family peace destroyed be-
yond recovery, of affections irretrievably diverted
from their old and lawful channels, of honest
worth covered with ridicule, of high aspirations
, quenched in a swash of triviality or childish “gay-
ety.” The worship of wealth, in its coarsest and
most undraped form, too, that is, wealth as a pur-
veyor of meat, drink, clothing, and ornamentation,
which goes on in this milieu, “makes hay’ of all
noble standards of individual and social conduct.
Perhaps the very worst influence of the idler,
however, is to be found in the effect of the specta-
cle of their lives on what is called “the labor
problem.” “The labor problem” is really the
problem of making the manual laborers of the
world content with their lot. In my judgment this
is an insoluble problem. No discoveries nor in-
ventions will ever solve it as long as population
continues to press close on the available products
of human industry. The causes of the dissatisfac-
tion of the masses with their condition may change
from age to age, but the dissatisfaction will con-
tinue, and the blame will be always laid on those
who have a larger share of the world's goods than
others. But there is no question that the existing
discontent is, and not unreasonably, aggravated by
13
194 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS
the spectacle of the enjoyment by the growing idle
class, of the benefits of the social and political
organizations, without any contribution worth
mention to the trouble and cost of maintaining
these organizations. The taxes paid by the annui-
tant or rentier class are but a trifling return, in
reality, for the security they possess for person and
property. The workers of the world provide
them with police, with courts of justice, and means
of travel—in short, every agency which makes
their enjoyment possible, for sums in cash which
they would hardly pay to a good club. Reasona-
bly or unreasonably, the masses resent this more
and more. It gives mere envy an air of respecta-
bility and rationality. They say that even if a
good defence may be made for inequality of condi-
tions based on inequality of capacity and services,
there ought not in truly democratic communities,
to be any people who render no service at all, and
who allow others to till, and spin and weave, and
police, and fight, and teach, and invent and dis-
cover, plough the seas and dig the mines for them,
while they look on and draw their quarterly divi-
dends and spend them in childishness; that we
shall never have social peace till every man has a
fair share of the social burdens.
The arguments in favor of the existence of the
class called “men of leisure * are familiar to every
IDLENESS AND IMMORALITY 195
one. The contributions of this class to civilization
have been very great. There are books of the
greatest value to the community which cannot be
contributed by busy men. It is only the men of
leisure who can look after the artistic side of life,
and the artistic side of life has to be cultivated in
order to keep man above the contented Ox Or
porker. The services, too, which they render to
the state by being allowed to choose their work
are often of inestimable value. No one can think of
Darwin's, or Grote's, or Cavour's, or Gladstone's, or
Howard's, or Motley's pecuniary competency, with-
out thankfulness. Even the socialists share this
feeling. It is impossible to say which of all men
of leisure will turn their leisure to useful account;
and it would be therefore dangerous, even if it were
possible, to make a rule prohibiting their existence.
The best thing in the world is individual freedom;
and a man who is compelled to work by law when
there is no fear of his becoming dependent on the
labor of others for a livelihood, is to all intents and
purposes a slave. Better that ten men should
“loaf" than that one should lose his liberty.
But the modern democracy must take on itself
part of the blame which it throws on the idlers.
The rich are being gradually and relentlessly ex-
cluded as a rule from public office in all the demo-
cratic countries. There are enough well-to-do men
196 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMTO. ESSA YS
of leisure in New York to give us an excellent city
government without payment, except in the subor-
dinate places, were the poor willing to give up their
chance of the salaries. Venice, in its best days,
secured a large body of good officials by compelling
men of fortune to serve in the offices to which they
were elected. Berlin has to-day a first-rate com-
mon council made up in the same way. But there
is very little chance of our seeing this system
spread. The most discouraging phenomena of
government by universal Suffrage thus far, is its
strong tendency to treat public offices as “plums.”
rather than trusts, to be distributed among poor
men as rewards for winning elections, and to con-
sider indifference to the salary as a positive dis-
qualification.
As long as this tendency lasts, we fear the alien-
ation of the rich and their disposition to make
amusement a serious business will continue, and
the chief cure will be found only in the resolute
resistance of the individual conscience. Nothing
does more in this country to recruit the ranks of
the pleasure-seekers than the tendency of rich
fathers, backed up in this by the public generally,
to treat money-making as the Only serious business
of life. A young man bred in this notion natu-
rally says to himself when he inherits a fortune :
“Money-getting, however laudable a pursuit in it-
IDLENESS AAWD IMMORALITY 197
Self, is surely only incumbent on those who have not
got money or want more of it than they have got.
Why should I, who have got all I want, continue
to work for it? No, I must enjoy it.” And when
he has given himself up to the child's life, buying
fresh toys every day and throwing them away the
next, the Only thing which excites the wonder of
those of his friends and neighbors who do not envy
him, is that he should not have “stayed in busi-
ness.”
The truth is that there has never been an
age of the world in which there were such oppor-
tunities for men of fortune to find enjoyment in
contributions to the general welfare. To some
natures philanthropy, pure and simple, is odious,
but there remain art, literature, Sćience, agriculture,
education. By this last I do not mean simply the
instruction of youth either at schools or colleges,
but also the work of persuasion through voice and
pen. There never has been in the history of the
world such a field for orators and writers as a
democratic country now offers. There is no nobler
nor more fascinating game than the work of chang-
ing the opinions of great bodies of men, by induc-
ing them to discard old beliefs and take on new
Ones, or arresting their rush after strange gods.
But very few indeed ever take up any such work
late in life. The taste for it must be formed and
198 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
the equipment provided in youth. Though last,
not least, the delusion must be got rid of that there
is no use in trying to act on the minds of One's
fellow-men unless one can thereby get an office.
It is this which makes a great many useful young
men wash their hands of politics and go in for polo
and tennis and flirtations instead. Official life, as
Our Government is now organized, has no field for
a really high ambition. Public functionaries are
becoming more and more the puppets of the man-
agers outside, and the managers are whatever pub-
lic opinion lets them be or insists on their being.
The coming rulers of men are those who mould the
thoughts or sway the passions of the multitude.
TEIE DUTY OF EDUCATED MEN IN A
DEMOCRACY
PERHAPS I ought not to say it, but college grad-
uates are not, as a rule, remarkable for the amount
of knowledge, properly so called, which they bring
away from the universities. Everything they
learn there in the way of languages or of Science
makes a comparatively small impression on the
great mass of them. The great use of the collegé
course is the formation of the habit of attention
and study at the age when mental and other habits
are most easily formed. But a college education
has a perceptible general effect on the intellectual
Outlook. Its most marked effect on men in rela-
tion to their duties to the community at large, is in
raising their standards. Their motions of how
things Ought to be done are changed. They ex-
pect a good deal more in the character and attain-
ments of public men, and in the order of public
business. The municipal government, for in-
stance, which the educated men would set up, if
they had their way, would be something consider-
200 . POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA. YS
ably different from any municipal government now
in existence. Congress and the State legislatures,
too, would be, if the suffrage were confined to col-
lege graduates, composed of another class of men
than that which now fills them. A very large por-
tion of our present legislation would never be en-
acted, and the probabilities are that the ceremonial
side of the government would be much enlarged.
I remember that two or three years ago President
JEliot wrote in The Forum,” pointing out that our
municipal government would never be what it
ought to be until all our city officials had received
a special training for their work, and he mentioned
the various kinds of training which they needed.
Now this was distinctly the college graduate’s
view of the matter. The popular mind was not
then occupied with the need or the difficulty of
getting trained men for such work. It would have
been satisfied with men of ordinary honesty. The
notion that trained men were a possibility, proba-
bly never occurred to the bulk of the citizens.
We should probably, in a college-graduate gov-
ernment, witness the disappearance from legisla-
tion of nearly all acts and resolutions which are
passed for what is called “politics;” that is, for
the purpose of pleasing certain bodies of voters,
without any reference to their real value as contri-
* Vol. XII., p. 153, October, 1891.
EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 201
butions to the work of government. This would
of course effect a very great reduction in the size
of the annual statute-book. For, to the mind of
the ordinary legislator of to-day, the duty of pleas-
ing the voters is even more obligatory than the
duty of furnishing them with good government. In
this duty of pleasing the voters there is no ques-
tion that a college education as a rule unfits a man.
He cannot discharge it without a fight with his
ideals formed at a susceptible age. James Russell
Lowell furnishes an illustration of my meaning.
He was unquestionably as patriotic an American
as ever lived, and a thorough Democrat. Democ-
racy has never received so fine a tribute as he paid
to it in Birmingham. But, somehow, as an edu-
cated man, he was out of tune with the multitude.
The West never quite took to him. The New York
Tribune denied him even the right to be considered
“a good American.” Senator Sherman and other
Republicans wrote “Ichabod” on him when he sup-
ported Mr. Cleveland. The cause of all this really
was that his political standards differed from
theirs. He lived in an earlier republic of the
mind, in which the legislation was done by first-
class men, whom the people elected and followed.
In a republic in which the multitude told the legis-
lators what to do, he never really was at home.
This brings to me the question, what is really
202 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
the attitude of educated men toward universal Suf-
frage to-day? As a general rule I think they
really mistrust or regret it, but accept it as the
inevitable. Probably no system of government
was ever so easy to attack and ridicule, but no
government has ever come upon the world from
which there seemed so little prospect of escape.
It has, in spite of its imperfections and Oddities,
something of the majesty of doom, and nobody
now pretends that any people can avoid it. There
has been, however, a notable change within forty
years, in the opinion of the educated class, as to
its value, owing to its numerous mistakes; but,
curiously enough, these mistakes seem often to be
due to the difficulty experienced in finding out
what its mind is. Its mass in countries in which
it exists, is so large that the process of interrogat-
ing it is one of extraordinary difficulty even for
the most expert. Politicians, of all varieties, think
they know what the people think upon any given
question of the day, but most of them are always
wrong. There could not be a better illustration of
this than the mistake made by Senator Hill, Gov-
ernor Flower, and other politicians in this State
about Maynard's nomination. They had the deep-
est interest in knowing what the popular judgment
On this nomination would be, but fell into an im-
mense error about it.
JEDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 203
This difficulty is not likely to decrease, and is
likely to produce a great many legislative follies;
because, unhappily, it seems to be the way of
most politicians in all countries, when puzzled
or uncertain about the drift of public Sentiment,
to choose the course which seems the least wise
or most childish, meaning by that the course
which seems to promise most immediate gratifi-
cation, or to display most indifference to remoter
results. One consequence of this is that uni-
versal suffrage has taken the blame of a great
many mistakes for which it is not responsible, and
which have come to pass simply owing to want of
skill in questioning it on the part of law-makers.
But, after all allowances and excuses have been
made, its errors are sure to be frequent and on a
considerable scale. We may expect, for instance,
such mistakes as our silver policy, with increasing
frequency, because the politics of the world are
becoming more and more a controversy between
rich and poor. The influential and the rich men
are taking the place of the feudal baron and the
absolute monarch as objects of popular attack, and
moderate physical comforts for all, or a “living
wage,” have taken the place of political liberty.
But the rich man cannot and will not be openly,
robbed. He runs no risk of having his head cut
off, or his property confiscated. He will probably
204 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC JºSSA YS
be got at through experiments in taxation, or in
currency, which unfortunately rarely reach the
precise objects at which they are aimed, and
Sooner or later, like the silver purchases, involve
the whole community in great distress.
The idea that distribution must be, in some man-
ner, reformed, is taking greater and greater hold
of the world, and the popular mind is so much im-
pressed with what seems to be the injustice of the
present system, that hardly any attention is paid
to the size of the earth's dividend. And yet, to
divide among the people of every country all the
accumulated wealth there is in it, or to divide
among them the annual yield of its land and labor,
is one of the simplest of arithmetical problems. In
no case would any such dividend make any material
change in the condition of the great bulk of the
population. There is no deduction from the Opera-
tion of nature more certain than that the earth is
not meant to afford much more than a fair subsist-
ence to the dwellers on it. The mass of mankind
have been poor from the earliest ages, simply be-
cause they multiply close up to the provision which
the earth normally makes for them. They have
always done so, and probably will always do so, in
every country. It is true that their condition has
improved since the introduction of steam into the
work of production; but their content has not in-
J'D UCA TED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 205
creased, and the contrast between their mode of
life and that of the very rich remains about the
same. There is no wider interval now between the
house of the modern rich man and the laborer's cot-
tage than there was between the castle and the hut
of the Middle Ages. If all that needed to be done
to make everybody comfortable and contented was
to pull down the rich man's palace, and decree that
no more should be built, the problem of modern
politics would be easy. But the truth is that there
is no cure for the evils of our present condition
but a great increase in the produce of the earth,
without any corresponding increase in population,
and without any abatement in the industry, enter-
prise, and energy of the existing workers. When
we think of the enormous resources of the globe
which are still untouched, we are apt to forget that,
in order to get at them, we have to go on breeding
an increased number of men and women, who will
keep alive, generation after generation, the old
story of unequal and unjust distribution.
But to divide the earth's products equally, or
anywhere near equally, among the people, would
be to ignore the claims of Superior talent, industry,
or frugality upon the larger share, or, in other
words, to ignore differences of character. I think
most educated men will agree that in the long run
our civilization could not stand this. All progress
206 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSA YS
has been made hitherto on the competitive prin-
ciple, which means giving the prize to the best
man; and we can hardly conceive of its being made
in any other way. To prescribe that no one shall
do better than any one else, is to reproduce China.
Now, in the presence of all this, the rôle of the
educated man is really a very difficult one. No in-
telligent man can or Ought to ignore the part which
hope of better things plays in our present social
system. It has largely, among the working classes,
taken the place of religious belief. They have
brought their heaven down to earth; and are liter-
ally looking forward to a sort of New Jerusalem, in
which all comforts and many of the luxuries of
life, will be within easy reach of all. The great
success of Utopian works like Bellamy's shows
the hold which these ideas have taken of the popu-
lar mind. The world has to have a religion of some
kind, and the hope of better food and clothing,
more leisure, and a greater variety of amusements,
has become the religion of the working classes.
Hope makes them peaceful, industrious, and re-
signed under present suffering. A Frenchman
saw a ragged pauper spend his last few cents on a
lottery ticket, and asked him how he could com-
mit such a folly. “In order to have something to
hope for,” he said. And from this point of view
the outlay was undoubtedly excusable. It is liter-
JED UCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 207
ally hope which makes the world go round, and
one of the hardest things an educated man who
opens his mouth about public affairs has to do, is
to say one word or anything to dampen or destroy
it. Yet his highest duty is to speak the truth.
Luckily, there is one truth which can always be
spoken without offence, and that is that on the
whole the race advances through the increase of
intelligence and the improvement of character, and
has not advanced in any other way. The great
amelioration in the condition of the working
classes in Europe within this century, including
the increasing power of the trades-unions, is the
result not of any increase of benevolence in the
upper classes, but of the growth of knowledge and
self-reliance and foresight among the working
classes themselves. The changes in legislation
which have improved their condition are changes
which they have demanded. When a workingman
becomes a capitalist, and raises himself in any way
above his early condition, it is rarely the result of
miracle or accident. It is due to his superior in-
telligence and thrift. Nothing, on the whole, can
be more delusive than official and other inquiries
into the labor problem, through commissions and
legislative committees. They all assume that there
is some Secret in the relations of labor and capital
which can be found out by taking testimony. But
208 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
they never find anything out. Their reports during
the last fifty years would make a small library, but
they never tell us anything new. They are meant
to pacify and amuse the laborer, and they do
so ; but to their constant failure to do anything
more we owe some of the Socialist movement.
The Socialists believe this failure due to want of
will, and that Karl Marx has discovered the great
truth of the situation, which is, that labor is en-
titled to the whole product. The great law which
Nature seems to have prescribed for the govern-
ment of the world, and the only law of human
society which we are able to extract from history,
is that the more intelligent and thoughtful of the
race shall inherit the earth and have the best time,
and that all others shall find life on the whole dull
and unprofitable. Socialism is an attempt to con-
travene this law and ensure a good time to every-
body independently of character and talents; but
Nature will see that she is not frustrated or brought
to nought, and I do not think educated men should
ever cease to call attention to this fact, that is,
ever cease to preach hopefulness, not to everybody,
but to good people. This is no bar to benevolence
to bad people or any people, but our first duty is
loyalty to the great qualities of our kind, to the
great human virtues, which raise the civilized man
above the Savage.
EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRA. O'Y 209
There is probably no government in the world
to-day as stable as that of the United States. The
chief advantage of democratic government is, in a
country like this, the enormous force it can com-
mand on an emergency. By “emergency’I mean
the suppression of an insurrection or the conduct
of a foreign war. But it is not equally strong in
the ordinary work of administration. A good many
governments, by far inferior to it in strength, fill
the offices, collect the taxes, administer justice, and
do the work of legislation with much greater effi-
ciency. One cause of this inefficiency is that the
popular standard in such matters is low, and that
it resents dissatisfaction as an assumption of su-
periority. When a man says these and those things
ought not to be, his neighbors, who find no fault
with them, naturally accuse him of giving himself
airs. It seems as if he thought he knew more
than they did, and was trying to impose his plans
On them. The consequence is, that, in a land of
pure equality, as this is, critics are always an un-
popular class, and criticism is, in Some sense, an
odious work. The only condemnation passed on
the governmental acts or systems is apt to come
from the opposite party in the form of what is
called “arraignment,” which generally consists in
wholesale abuse of the party in power, treating all
their acts, Small or great, as due to folly or deprav-
14
210 POLITICAI, AAWD ECOWOMTO. ESSA YS
ity, and all their public men as either fools or
knaves. Of course this makes but small impres-
Sion. On the public mind. It is taken to indicate
not so much a desire to improve the public service
as to get hold of the offices, and has, as a general
rule, but little effect. Parties lose their hold on
power through some conspicuously obnoxious acts
or failures; never, or very rarely, through the judg-
ments passed on them by hostile writers or Orators.
And yet nothing is more necessary to successful
government than abundant criticism from Sources
not open to the suspicion of particular interest,
There is nothing which bad governments so much
dislike and resent as criticism, and have in past ages
taken so much pains to put down. In fact, a his-
tory of the civil liberty would consist, largely, of
an account of the resistance to criticism on the
part of rulers. One of the first acts of a successful
tyranny Or despotism is always the silencing of the
press Or the establishment of a censorship.
Popular objection to criticism is, however, sense-
less, because it is through criticism—that is,
through discrimination between two things, cus-
toms or courses—that the race has managed to
come out of the woods and lead a civilized life.
The first man who objected to the general naked-
ness, and advised his fellows to put on clothes, was
the first critic. Criticism of a high tariff recom-
JºD UCA TED MEN IN A D FMOCRA C Y 211
mends a low tariff; criticism of monarchy recom-
mends a republic ; criticism of vice recommends
virtue. In fact almost every act of life in the prac-
tice of a profession or the conduct of a business,
condemns one course and suggests another. The
word means judging, and judgment is the highest
of the human faculties, the one which most distin-
guishes us from the animals.
There is, probably, nothing from which the pub-
lic service of the country suffers more to-day than
the silence of its educated class ; that is, the Small
amount of criticism which comes from the disin-
terested and competent sources. It is a very rare
thing for an educated man to say anything pub-
licly about the questions of the day. He is ab-
Sorbed in Science, or art, or literature, in the prac-
tice of his profession, or in the conduct of his
business; and if he has any interest at all in pub-
lic affairs, it is a languid one. He is silent because
he does not much care, or because he does not
wish to embarrass the administration or “hurt the
party,” or because he does not feel that anything
he could say would make much difference. So
that, on the whole, it is very rarely that the in-
structed opinion of the country is ever heard on
any subject. The report of the Bar Association
On the nomination of Maynard in New York was a
remarkable exception to this rule. Some improve-
212 PO I, ITICA 7, AAWD ECONOMIC ESSA YS
ment in this direction has been made by the ap-
pearance of the set of people known as the
“Mugwumps,” who are, in the main, men of culti-
vation. They have been defined in various ways.
They are known to the masses mainly as “kickers ;”
that is, dissatisfied, querulous people, who com-
plain of everybody and cannot submit to party
discipline. But they are the only critics who do
not criticise in the interest of party, but simply in
that of good government. They are a kind of
personage whom the bulk of the voters know noth-
ing about, and find it difficult to understand, and
consequently load with ridicule and abuse. But
their movement, though its visible recognizable
effects on elections may be small, has done ines-
timable service in slackening the bonds of party
discipline, in making the expression of Open dissent
from party programmes respectable and common,
and in increasing the unreliable vote in large States
like New York. It is of the last importance that
this unreliable vote—that is, the vote which party
leaders cannot count on with certainty—should be
large in such States. The mere fear of it prevents
& great many excesses.
But in criticism one always has hard work in
steering a straight course between optimism and
pessimism. These are the Scylla and Charybdis
of the critic's career. Almost every man who
JºD UCATED MENT IN A DEMOCRA. O'Y 213
thinks or speaks about public affairs is either an
optimist Or a pessimist; which he is, depends a
good deal on temperament, but often on character.
The political jobber or corruptionist is almost al-
ways an Optimist. So is the prosperous business
man. So is nearly every politician, because the
optimist is nearly always the more popular of the
two. As a general rule, people like cheerful men
and the promise of good times. The kill-joy and
the bearer of bad news has always been an odious
character. But for the cultivated man there is no
virtue in either optimism or pessimism. Some
people think it a duty to be optimistic, and for
Some people it may be a duty; but One of the
great uses of education is to teach us to be neither
one nor the other. In the management of our per-
sonal affairs, we try to be neither One nor the other.
In business, a persistent and uproarious optimist
would certainly have poor credit. And why? Be-
cause in business the trustworthy man, as every-
body knows, is the man who sees things as they
are; and to see things as they are, without glamour
or illusion, is the first condition of worldly success.
It is absolutely essential in war, in finance, in law,
in every field of human activity in which the future
has to be thought of and provided for. It is just
as essential in politics. The Only reason why it is
not thought as essential in politics is, the punish-
214 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA. YS
ment for failure or neglect comes in politics more
slowly.
The pessimist has generally a bad name, but
there is a good deal to be said for him. To take a
recent illustration, the man who took pessimistic
views of the silver movement was for nearly twenty
years under a cloud. This gloomy anticipation of
1873 was not realized until 1893. For a thousand
years after Marcus Aurelius, the pessimist, if I
may use the expression, was “cock of the walk.”
He certainly has no reason to be ashamed of his
rôle in the Eastern world for a thousand years after
the Mohammedan Hegira. In Italy and Spain he
has not needed to hang his head since the Renais-
sance. In fact, if we take various nations and
long reaches of time, we shall find that the gloomy
man has been nearly as often justified by the
course of events as the cheerful one. Neither of
them has any special claim to a hearing on public
affairs. . A persistent optimist, although he may
be a most agreeable man in family life, is likely,
in business or politics, to be just as foolish and
unbearable as a persistent pessimist. He is as
much Out of harmony with the Order of nature.
The universe is not governed on optimistic any
more than on pessimistic principles. The best
and wisest of men make their mistakes and have
their share of Sorrow and sickness and losses. So,
JED UCA TED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 215
also, the most happily situated nations must suffer
from internal discord, the blunders of statesmen,
and the madness of the people. What Cato said
in the Senate of the conditions of Success, “vigi-
lando, agendo, bene Consºlendo, prosperó onvnia.
cedunt,” is as true to-day as it was two thousand
years ago. We must remember that, though the
optimist may be the pleasantest man to have about
us, he is the least likely to take precautions; that
is, the least likely to watch and work for success.
We owe a great deal of Our Slovenly legislation to
his presence in large numbers in Congress and the
legislatures. The great suffering through which
we are now passing, in consequence of the per-
sistence in our silver purchases, is the direct result
of unreasoning optimism. Its promoters disre-
garded the warnings of economists and financiers
because they believed that—somehow, they did not
know how—the thing would come out right in the
end. This silver collapse, together with the Civil
War over slavery, are striking illustrations to occur
in One century, of the fact that, if things come out
right in the end, it is often after periods of great
suffering and disaster. Could people have fore-
seen how the slavery controversy would end, what
frantic efforts would have been made for peaceful
abolition | Could people have foreseen the panic
of last year, with its widespread disaster, what
216 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA. YS
haste would have been made to stop the silver pur-
chasos | And yet the experience of mankind afford-
ed abundant reason for anticipating both results.
This leads me to say that the reason why edu-
cated men should try and keep a fair mental bal-
ance between both pessimism and Optimism is that
there has come over the world in the last twenty-
five or thirty years a very great change of opinion
touching the relations of the government to the com-
munity. When Europe settled down to peaceful
work after the great wars of the French Revolu-
tion, it was possessed with the idea that the free-
dom of the individual was all that was needed for
public prosperity and private happiness. The
old government interference with people's move-
ments and doings was supposed to be the reason
why nations had not been happy in the past.
This became the creed, in this country, of the
Democratic party which came into existence after
the foundation of the Federal government. At
the same time there grew up here the popular idea
of the American character, in which individual-
ism was the most marked trait. If you are not fa-
miliar with it in your own time, you may remember
it in the literature of the earlier half of the cen-
tury. The typical American was always the archi-
tect of his own fortunes. He sailed the seas and
penetrated the forest, and built cities and lynched
EDUCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 217
the horse-thieves, and fought the Indians and
dug the mines, without anybody's help or support.
He had even an ill-concealed contempt for regular
troops, as men under control and discipline. He
scorned government for any other purposes than
security and the administration of justice. This
was the kind of American that Tocqueville found
here in 1833. He says: *
“The European often sees in the public functionaries
simply force; the American sees nothing but law. One
may then say that in America a man never obeys a man, or
anything but justice and law. Consequently he has formed
of himself an opinion which is often exaggerated, but is
always Salutary. He trusts without fear to his own
strength, which appears to him equal to anything. A pri-
vate individual conceives some sort of enterprise. Even if
this enterprise have some sort of connection with the pub-
lic Welfare, it never occurs to him to address himself to
the government in order to obtain its aid. He makes his
plan known, offers to carry it out, calls other individuals
to his aid, and struggles with all his might against any ob-
stacles there may be in his way. Often, without doubt, he
succeeds less well than the State would in his place; but
in the long run the general result of individual enterprises
far surpasses anything the government could do.”
Now there is no doubt that if this type of char-
acter has not passed away, it has been greatly
modified; and it has been modified by two agencies
* Democracy in America, Vol. I., p. 157.
218 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
—the “labor problem,” as it is called, and legisla-
tive protection to native industry. I am not going
to make an argument about the value of this pro-
tection in promoting native industry, or about its
value from the industrial point of view. We may
or we may not owe to it the individual progress
and prosperity of the United States. About that
I do not propose to say anything. What I want
to say is that the doctrine that it is a function of
government, not simply to foster industry in gen-
eral, but to consider the case of every particular
industry, and gives it the protection that it needs,
could not be preached and practised for thirty
years in a community like this, without modifying
the old American conception of the relation of the
government to the individual. It makes the gov-
ernment, in a certain sense, a partner in every in-
dustrial enterprise, and makes every Presidential
election an affair of the pocket to every miner and
manufacturer and to his men; for the men have for
fully thirty years been told that the amount of their
wages would depend, to a certain extent, at least,
on the way the election went. The notion that
the government owes assistance to individuals in
carrying on business and making a livelihood has,
in fact, largely through the tariff discussions, per-
meated a very large class of the community, and
has materially changed what I may call the Amer-
JED UCA TED MEN IN A DEMOCRA. O'Y 219
ican outlook. It has greatly reinforced among the
foreign-born population the socialistic ideas which
many bring here with them, of the powers and
duties of the State toward labor, for it is preached
vehemently by the employing class.
What makes this look the more serious is that
our political and social manners are not adapted
to it. In Europe, the State is possessed of an ad-
ministrative machine which has a finish, efficacy,
and permanence unknown here. Tocqueville com-
ments on its absence among us, and it is, as all the
advocates of civil-service reform know, very difficult
to supply. All the agencies of the government
suffer from the imposition on them of what I may
call non-American duties. For instance, a custom-
house organized as a political machine was never
intended to collect the enormous sum of duties
which must pass through its hands under our tar-
iff. A post-office whose master has to be changed
every four years to “placate ’’ Tammany, or the
anti-Snappers, or any other body of politicians,
was never intended to handle the huge mass which
American mails have now become. One of the
greatest objections to the income tax is the prying
|-into people's affairs which it involves. No man
likes to tell what his income is to every stranger,
much less to a politician, which our collectors are
sure to be. Secrecy on the part of the collector
220 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA. YS
is, in fact, essential to reconcile people to it in
England or Germany, where it is firmly estab-
lished ; but our collectors sell their lists to the
newspapers in Order to make the contributors
pay up.
In all these things we are trying to meet the
burden and responsibilities of much older societies
with the machinery of a much earlier and simpler
state of things. It is high time to halt in this
progress until Our administrative system has been
brought up to the level even of our present require-
ments. It is quite true that, with our system of
State and Federal Constitutions laying prohibi-
tions on the Legislature and Congress, any great
extension of the sphere of government in our time
seems very unlikely. Yet the assumption by Con-
gress, with the support of the Supreme Court, of
the power to issue paper money in time of peace,
the power to make prolonged purchases of a com-
modity like silver, the power to impose an income
tax, to execute great public works, and to protect
native industry, are powers large enough to effect
a great change in the constitution of society and
in the distribution of wealth, such as, it is safe to
say, in the present state of human culture, no gov-
ernment ought to have and exercise.
One hears every day from educated people some
addition to the number of things which “govern-
ED UCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 221
ments” ought to do, but for which any government
we have at present is totally unfit. One listens to
them with amazement, when looking at the material
of which our government is composed, for the mat-
ter of that, of which all governments are composed,
for I suppose there is no question that all legisla-
tive bodies in the world have in twenty years run
down in quality. The parliamentary system is ap-
parently failing to meet the demands of modern
democratic society, and is falling into some disre-
pute; but it would seem as if there was at present
just as little chance of a substitute of any kind as
of the dethronement of universal suffrage. It will
probably last indefinitely, and be as good or as bad
as its constituents make it. But this probable
extension of the powers and functions of govern-
ment make more necessary than ever a free expres-
sion of opinion, and especially of educated opinion.
We may rail at “mere talk” as much as we please,
but the probability is that the affairs of nations
and of men will be more and more regulated by
talk. The amount of talk which is now expended
on all subjects of human interest—and in “talk”
I include contributions to periodical literature—
is something of which a previous age has had the
smallest conception. Of course it varies infinitely
in quality. A very large proportion of it does no
good beyond relieving the feelings of the talker.
222 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
Political philosophers maintain, and with good
reason, that One of its greatest uses is keeping
down discontent under popular government. It is
undoubtedly true that it is an immense relief to a
man with a grievance to express his feelings about it
in words, even if he knows that his words will have
no immediate effect. Self-love is apt to prevent
most men from thinking that anything they say
with passion or earnestness will utterly and finally
fail. But still it is safe to suppose that one-half
of the talk of the world on subjects of general in-
terest is waste. But the other half certainly tells.
We know this from the change in ideas from gen-
eration to generation. We see that opinions which
at one time everybody held became absurd in the
course of half a century—Opinions about religion
and morals and manners and government. Nearly
every man of my age can recall old opinions of his
own, on subjects of general interest, which he
once thought highly respectable, and which he is
now almost ashamed of having ever held. He
does not remember when he changed them, or why,
but somehow they have passed away from him.
In communities these changes are often very strik-
ing. The transformation, for instance, of the
England of Cromwell into the England of Queen
Anne, or of the New England of Cotton Mather
into the New England of Theodore Parker and
ED UCATED MEN IN A DEMOCRACY 223
Emerson, was very extraordinary, but it would be
very difficult to say in detail what brought it about,
or when it began. Tiecky has some curious obser-
vations, in his “History of Rationalism,” on these
silent changes in new beliefs apropos of the dis-
appearance of the belief in witchcraft. Nobody
could say what had swept it away, but it appeared
that in a certain year people were ready to burn
old women as witches, and a few years later were
ready to laugh at or pity any one who thought old
women could be witches. “At one period,” says
he, “we find every one disposed to believe in
witches; at a later period we find this predispo-
sition has silently passed away.” The belief in
witchcraft may perhaps be considered a somewhat
violent illustration, like the change in public opin-
ion about slavery in this country. But there can
be no doubt that it is talk—somebody's, anybody's,
everybody's talk —by which these changes are
wrought, by which each generation comes to feel
and think differently from its predecessor. No
One ever talks freely about anything without con-
tributing something, let it be ever so little, to the
unseen forces which carry the race on to its final
destiny. Even if he does not make a positive im-
pression, he counteracts or modifies some other
impression, or sets in some train of ideas in Some
One else, which helps to change the face of the
224 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIO ESSA YS
world. So I shall, in disregard of the great lauda-
tion of silence which filled the earth in the days
of Carlyle, say that one of the functions of an edu-
cated man is to talk, and, of course, he should try
to talk wisely.
WEIO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF
SOCIALISM 2
IF I were to visit a friend of very moderate
means, who was living very simply in a flat, in a
remote part of the city, and he were to tell me
that he was going to move into a house on Fifth
or Madison Avenue ; that he was tired, as was his
family, of the very restricted life he had been lead-
ing; that he meant to give his children better
quarters, better clothing, a better education, and
more frequent access to the world of fashion and
amusements, than they had previously had, I
should conclude that he had received, in some
way, a considerable addition to his income. But
if I found, on inquiry, that not one cent or only
a few hundred dollars had been added to it, I
should conclude that the poor fellow was insane;
that he was laboring under the well-known hallu-
cination called plutomania.
Now I am very much in the same state of mind
about the Socialists and ethical economists that I
would be about him. I have, during the last two
15
226 IPOLITICAL AND JECONOMIC JºSSA YS
years, been reading a great deal of Socialistic litera-
ture, ending the other day with Kidd's “Social
Evolution.” The principal thing which I have
learned from it all is that we are on the eve of a
great social transformation. The régime of slavery
has passed away; and the régime of feudalism has
passed away; and the régime of competition is
to pass away, and that before very long. The
process began a few years ago, I am told, with
the overthrow of the Manchester School. That
school taught the doctrine of laissez faire as the
best rule of living for the community. It taught
individualism. It taught that the least possible
government was the best. It reasoned about all
social topics from the “economic man,” a person
whose main desire was to get money with the
least possible amount of exertion. It was willing
to let the ablest man get the best things in life,
and SO On.
I learn that this is all now to be changed, not
because it is not scientific, but because it is
disagreeable or inhuman. Government is to in-
terfere a good deal. It is first of all to take
possession of the gas- and water-works, the rail-
roads and telegraphs of the country. By and by
it is to take possession of all the instruments of
production, and see that nobody ever wants work.
All the very rich men and the idle men are to dis-
TWII O WILL PA Y TIII; B/C/S OF SOCIALISM # 227
appear, and everybody is to be moderately well
off. The differences, whatever they are, between
workingmen and other people are to come to an
end. According to IKidd, the workingmen are to
have the same “social position " as every one else,
because “moderate income is to give as good a
Social position as a large One.” “The position of
the lower classes is to be raised at the expense of
the wealthier classes.” “Education in its highest
forms ”—which I suppose means college education
—is to be within the reach of everybody, and not, as
now, the privilege of the well-to-do only. “The
sphere of action of the State is to extend to every
department of our social life.” I might quote
indefinitely to this effect from Marshall, from the
Fabian “school” of economists, the “historical
school” in Germany, and the Ely “school” in this
country. In the world which they not only prom-
ise us, but which they say is now really near at
hand, there will be no distinction of classes.
Workingmen and their children will have exactly
the same opportunities which professional men
and people of moderate means now have. They
will have their dinners, their balls, their theatres,
their summer trips, their short hours of labor, their
libraries, museums, and so forth. I am told this
great change is coming very fast, though, as far as
I can see, the signs of it are only to be found, as
228 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
\ ,
* * * .
yet, in authors' studies and in college lecture-
rooms. Mr. Kidd's authorities about it are chiefly
the monthly magazines, Marshall, and an interview
with W. T. Stead. The Fabian School cites no
authorities at all, producing the whole change de-
ductively out of its own head. Professor Ely
bases his beliefs also on his own intuitions. A
very large part of the work is to be wrought
through “ethics,” or “the science of ethics,” which,
I believe, is the name given by the various Schools
to the opinions of some of their members about
the injustices of the competitive or present system.
I do not, as I have said, See any signs of the
new régime in the world outside, except in ex-
tension of government interference to some en-
terprises, “affected,” as our courts say, “with a
public use.” But no hard-and-fast line between
government business and private business was
ever drawn, even by the unfortunate Manchester
School. What John Stuart Mill—whom I suppose
I may describe as speaking for them, at all events
to some extent—said, was that the question what
things government should take charge of itself,
and not leave to private enterprise, is to be settled
by judgment, just as the question what things the
head of a family should buy and what make at
home, has to be settled by judgment. Government
is, from the outset, a joint-stock enterprise. To
WHO WILL PA. Y. THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM £ 229
say that it may run a post-Office, but must on no
account carry On a gas-factory or water-works,
would be absurd. But whether, besides running a
post-office, it should also run gas-works and water-
works, depends on time and place and circum-
stances. To allow the city government of New
York to do things which it is perfectly safe to let
the corporation of Birmingham or Berlin do,
would be extremely foolish. The truth is that the
business of man in this world is to make himself
as happy and comfortable as liability to death and
disease will let him, and not to carry out the
theories of “schools" or doctrinaires.
I make this little digression to get rid of the
Supposition that anything the civilized govern-
ments of the world are doing—and have done—for
the convenience of their citizens, is to be consid—
ered the beginning of any great “movement” or
“evolution.” They have done nothing as yet
which interferes seriously with any man's rational
liberty. It makes no difference to me where I get
my gas, or water, or transportation, provided I get
it good and pure, provided I am not forced to take
it if I do not want it, and provided I am not com-
pelled to pay for anybody else's supply. I may
say much the same thing of the education of chil-
dren. Numerous experiments have shown mo in
Various countries that if the State does not under-
230 POLITICAL AND EC/ONOMIC ESSA YS
take the education of children, they will not be
educated, and I am so sensible of the value of
education to our civilization that I am well satis-
fied if the State should do it; nay, I insist that
the State shall do it. I maintain, therefore, that
no beginning of an evolution, or of an Organic
change in human Society, has yet been made by
any State. Whatever we are to have in that line
is still to come, and it is of what is to come—that
is, of what we are promised or threatened with—
that I here concern myself.
As I said at the beginning of this article, when
a man is about to move into a larger house and
change his whole manner of life, he is, if Sane, sure
to ask himself what the change will cost, that is,
what increase in his expenditures it will make
necessary. If Sane, also, he will follow this ques-
tion by another, namely, Have I got the money?
Now, in reading these stories to which I have
referred, of the social evolution through which
modern communities are to pass shortly, I find
absolutely no allusion to cost. It is quite evident
that, when the change comes about, it will make a
great increase in the mere living expenses of every
civilized population, without any increase of in-
come that I can see or hear of. In this it will
differ from all previous evolutions or revolutions.
When the world gave up slavery, it substituted for
TWETO WILL PA. Y. THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM 2 231
a very wasteful form of labor a much more pro-
ductive one. When, in the eighteenth century, it
emancipated the peasantry from the kings and
nobles, it gave a great impetus to their industry.
It relieved them of enormous burdens incurred for
the benefit of idle and frivolous men, and it greatly
increased the motives for saving. The French
Tevolution gave a powerful stimulus to agricult-
ure, and much enlarged the income of the work-
ing farmer. In like manner, in England, the
introduction of the factory régime made large ad-
ditions to the national income, and, through this,
raised the wages and the standard of living of the
working population. What Sidney Godolphin
Osborne did by sending the Wiltshire farm-labor-
ers to the North tells the whole story. In fact,
the history of all the social and industrial changes
of the civilized world during the past hundred
years is, in the main, the history of great improve-
ments in money-making, the history of additions
both to the national and the individual income.
The Manchester School has been much blamed for
attaching too much importance to this, for think-
ing too much of additions to wealth without con-
cerning itself as to the manner in which it was dis-
tributed. I am not concerned to defend it against
this charge. My point is, that, ever since the fall
of the Roman Empire, changes in the Social con-
232 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSA YS
dition of the civilized world have meant great im-
provements in the social income. No matter who
got the money, more of it came in. Everybody
who changed his style of living—barring, of course,
spendthrifts and swindlers—did so because he
knew his means permitted it.
The peculiarity of the social evolution which the
philosophers say is now impending is, that it is to
be not a money-making, but a spending evolution.
Everybody is to live a great deal better than he
has been in the habit of living, and to have far
more fun. Poverty is to disappear, and real des-
titution — what the French call “la misère’—to
become unknown except as the result of gross mis-
conduct. I was one day last winter in the Univer-
sity Settlement in Delancey Street, New York,
and paid a visit to the rooms in the top story of
the building occupied by Dr. Stanton Coit and his
fellow-laborers. They were very neatly and com-
fortably furnished, but perfectly simple and plain.
Dr. Coit explained to me that the aim of those
who furnished them was to show the kind of rooms
every workingman would have “if justice were
done.” I have since inquired what the rent of
those rooms would be to-day in that neighbor-
hood, and am told it would be about $750 a year,
or about $14.50 per week. But I am also told that
$14.50 is about the rent which the better class of
WHO WILL PA. Y. THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM & 233
laborers now pay for their rooms per month. The
general run of unskilled laborers do not pay over
$10 per month; so that, to do “justice” to a work-
ingman in this one particular, would cost some-
body about $43 a month. Who is this to be?
A rent of $58 per month ought, according to
the Ordinary calculations, to argue an income of
$290 per month. What workingman gets this?
If he does not get it, and Ought to have it, who is
keeping him out of it?
What is the real working-class trouble 2 What
is it that makes their condition a “problem?”
Why has it become a question of growing impor-
tance in the politics of all European countries, as
well as in our own 2 Why are so many books and
pamphlets written about it? Why do so many
people feel or affect a deep interest in it? Why
does it call out so much “ethical” discussion?
Why are we threatened with “social evolution ” as
a means of settling it?
The answer to all these questions is very simple.
It is the workingman's want of money which
makes him the object of so much pity, and dread,
and speculation. If he were better paid—as well
paid as a clerk, a clergyman, a lawyer, a doctor, a
business man—all the fuss we make about him
would be an impertinence. We should bestow no
consideration on his food, or clothing, or educa-
234 JPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
tion, or on his “elevation,” or on the elevation of
his family. We should have no “ethical con-
cepts” about him. So that the labor question is
the question why the workingman does not have
more money. The answer is that he gets now all
there is for him, and that, if he is to have more, it
must come from some great and sudden increase
of production unattended with a great increase of
population. The income of this and every other
country in the world, since the plunder of foreign
nations has ceased, is the product of its land and
labor. Some of this income goes to pay wages,
some goes to repair machinery and buildings, and
some goes to pay profits to capital, Or, in other
words, to reward men for Saving or for supplying
long-felt wants. Consequently, to do justice to the
laborer and greatly increase his comforts, so that
he shall be as well off as anybody else, we must cut
down the profits or interest on capital, or seize the
capital, unless some hitherto unknown source of
supply has been discovered.
Now let us see what would be the result of dis-
tributing among labor all the profit and interest
on capital of the entire country. It must be ob-
served, however, that, if we took it all, capital
would promptly disappear, and next year, or the
year after, labor would have to depend on its own
resources. Besides this, the Socialistic programme
WHO WILL PA. Y. THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM # 235
makes no provision for Saving; the money is all to
go in furniture, or amusements, and transportation.
The capitalistic or Saving class—Or, in other words,
the class which every year keeps back part of the
national income for use next year—will vanish
from the scene. We believe “the State" is, in the
new régime, to play the part of the capitalist, but
it could not withhold from labor the means of liv-
ing with the comfort required by the new creed.
The total wealth of the United States, according
to the census of 1890—that is, the total existing
product of land, labor, and saving—was $65,037,-
091,197; the population of the country was at the
same date 62,622,250. Evenly divided, this would
give $1,039 per caput, or a little more than $5,000
per family on the commonly accepted basis of five
persons to a family. If the laborer spent his
$5,000 at once in making himself comfortable, of
course, he would, as well as the country at large,
be worse off than ever. He would, in fact, be
plunged at once into a very hopeless kind of pov-
erty. But suppose he invested it; it would not
yield him over, say, six per cent. at present rates of
interest. This would make his income $300 a.
year, or about $6 a week. It is evident that
he could on this make no material change in
his style of living. Six dollars a week does not go
far in rent and furniture and dinners and amuse-
236 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMTO AESSA YS
ments. We have no statistics showing the annual
income of the United States, but if we put it down
as six per cent. On the total accumulated wealth, we
shall certainly not underestimate it. This interest
would be $3,902,225,472, which, divided among the
population, would give $62.31 a head, or $311.55
per family of five persons—that is, less than a
dollar a day.
This does not differ materially from the results
obtained in Great Britain. Robert Giffen, the
English statistician, in one of his most elaborate
articles a few years ago, estimated the total capital
of the people of the United Kingdom, or the accu-
mulated wealth of the nation, at £8,500,000,000
sterling, the population at that time being almost
exactly 34,000,000, thus giving each individual
$1,250 per caput, or about $6,000 per family,
counting, as before, five to a family. If this were
invested in England, it would hardly give more
than four per cent., or $240 a year, which would be a
pleasant addition to wages, but would leave no mar-
gin for amusements, travel, books, or “swell’
clothing. We have no means of getting at the wealth
of well-to-do people in the United States, there
being as yet no reliable statistics bearing on that
Subject; but an analysis of the income-tax returns
in Great Britain shows that in a year when 456,-
680 persons were assessed, 118,830 had incomes
WJTO WILL PA. Y. THE BILLS OF SOCIA LISM & 237
over £300 a year, the total being £110,565,955.
On the assumption that these people ought to be
despoiled and made to share with their less fortu-
nate brethren, let us see what would happen.
The population of the kingdom in the year these
returns were made was 37,176,464. If the income,
then, of people having more than £300 a year
were divided among the masses per capita, it
would give each individual an income of about £3,
or $15, annually. I always wonder, when reading
the romances of the ethical economists, whether
they have ever taken the trouble to look at these
figures. Apparently they have not. If they had,
we should assuredly, unless they have gone clean
daft, hear less talk about what “the State’’ or the
municipality can and Ought to do for the elevation
of the poor. The State has no money which it
does not wring from the hard earnings of sorely
pressed people. If it took, as we see here, every
cent they had, it would not be able to make a very
noticeable change in the laborer's condition, even
for a single year. What the rich spend on them-
selves is only a drop in the bucket, and they can
secure none of their luxuries without sharing with
the laborer, through investment.
The notion that there is a reservoir of wealth
somewhere, either in the possession of the Govern-
ment or the rich, which might be made to diffuse
238 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIO ESSA YS
“plenty through a smiling land,” is a delusion
which nearly all the writings of the ethical econo-
mists tend to spread, and it is probably the most
mischievous delusion which has ever taken hold on
the popular mind. It affects indirectly large num-
bers of persons, who, if it were presented to them
boldly and without drapery, would probably repu-
diate it. But it steals into their brains through
sermons, speeches, pamphlets, Fabian essays, and
Bellamy utopias, and disposes them, on humani-
tarian grounds, to great public extravagances, in
buildings, in relief work, in pensions, in schools,
in high State wages, and philanthropic undertak-
ings which promise at no distant day to land the
modern world in bankruptcy. It will be very
well if the century closes without witnessing this
catastrophe in France or Italy, or both—the two
countries in which the democratic theory of the
inexhaustibility of State funds has been carried
furthest. It is diffusing through the working
class of all countries, also, more and more every
day, not only envy and hatred of the rich, but an
increasing disinclination to steady industry, and
an increasing disposition to rely on politics for the
bettering of their condition. The Unions in Eng-
land have already announced openly that it is no
longer to strikes, but to Parliament, they must look
for elevation, and, of course, all that Parliament
WHO WILL PA. Y. THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM £ 239
can do for them is either to give them more
money for less labor, or to spend other people's
money on them in increasing their comforts.
This indifference to cost, or unwillingness to say
where the money is to come from to make all the
world happy and comfortable, is not confined, by
any means, to our American and English Socialists.
It is an equally marked characteristic of those of
the Continent. Says the Paris Temps, speaking
of that latest Scheme of pensioning all old people:
“What are the usual tactics of Radicals and Socialists?
They call with loud cries for reforms of all sorts, and vote
the principle of them, but always refuse to discuss their
financial consequences. More than this, they are among
the first to vote remissions of taxes. On one side they swell
the expenses; on the other they diminish the resources.”
At Roubaix, the other day, the mayor proposed
the following resolution: “All invalid laborers and
all children should be supported by the Commune
and the State.” Somebody then asked him where
the Commune and the State were to get the money.
His answer was: “The money will be taken wher-
ever it can be found.” As Director Ely says, it
was to be done from a “broad social stand-point,”
and “the general social effect ’’ only—not cost—
was to be considered.
Next in importance to the delusion that there is
240 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
somewhere a great reservoir of wealth, which can
still be drawn on for the general good, is the delu-
sion that there is somewhere a reservoir of wisdom
still untapped which can be drawn on for the
execution of a new law of distribution. Not only
is this current, but some of the philosophers have
got into their heads that if our politicians had more
money to spend, and more places to bestow, they
would become purer and nobler and more public-
spirited. This theory is so much opposed to the
experience of the human race, that we are hardly
more called on to argue against it than against the
assertion that there will be no winter next year.
We must take it for granted that what is meant is
that there is somewhere a class of men whose ser-
vices are now lost to the world, who would come
into the field for the work of production and dis-
tribution under the new régime, and display a
talent and discretion and judgment, which now
cannot be had either for love or money, for the
Ordinary work of the world. Any salary is, to-day,
Small for a competent railroad, mining, or mill-
manager; but we are asked to believe that when the
State took charge of the great work of clothing and
feeding and employing the community, men would
be found in abundance to see that “ideal justice”
was done, at about $3,000 a year. Well, there is no
sign of such men at present. Nobody knows of
WEIO WILL PA. Y. THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM # 241
their existence. The probabilities of biology,
physiology, psychology, and Sociology are all
against their existence. The opportunities for
display of their talents even now are immense,
and yet they do not appear. Nobody Says he has
ever seen them. Nobody pretends that they could
be found, except the ethical economists, and they
never mention their names or habitat. In fact,
as in Bellamy's case, the writers of the Social
romances are compelled to make them unneces-
sary by predicting a change in human nature which
will make us all wise, just, industrious, and Self-
denying. .
I think, on the whole, it would not be an
exaggeration to say that such a social evolution
as the ethical economists have planned could not
be accomplished, even for a single year, without
doubling the wealth of every country which tried
it, while making no increase in the population.
And this arrest of the growth of the population is
just as necessary as the increase of wealth. For it
is the exertions of mankind in keeping up and in-
creasing their numbers which have prevented the
poor from profiting more by the recent improve-
ments in production. Statistics show readily that,
thus far, subsistence increases more rapidly than
population, and this does much to cheer up the
optimists and the revilers of Malthus. But to
- 16
242 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
make a man of any use to civilization, he must in
some manner be able to pay for his board. If
wheat costs only ten cents a bushel, the man who
has not and cannot get the ten cents is clearly a
bit of surplus population. He has to depend on
some One else for his support, and is thus a bur-
den to the community. Employing him at the
public expense does not change the situation, for
his neighbors are the public. If they really
wanted the work done, he would have something
to exchange. If they do it in order to keep him
from starving, the demand for his labor is not
legitimate, and is only a thin disguise for charity.
Population and subsistence are equally balanced,
in an economical sense, only when there is a full
demand for all the labor that offers itself, a state of
things which is never seen now in any of the great
towns of the world. Let a strike but take place
in any branch of unskilled or only slightly skilled
labor, and the swarm of applicants for the Vacant
places, who instantly appear, shows that there is in
that spot an excess of people. That is to say, statis-
tics may prove that food has far outrun the popula-
tion of the United States at large, and yet there will
be in New York and Boston and Philadelphia thou-
sands who find it very difficult to purchase it at
any price. The Socialists have no plan of dealing
with this, except making the successful support
WHO WILJ, PA. Y. THE BILLS OF SOCIA.J., ISM & 243
the unsuccessful, the industrious the idle, on the
same scale of comfort as their own.
I have also learned from my reading that a new
“law of distribution * is under consideration in the
colleges and ethical schools of the world, and that
there is a fair prospect that One which will satisfy
all existing needs will be evolved. Now, there are
only three laws of distribution of which I can form
any conception. One would be a natural law, like
the law of gravitation, which automatically divided
among all concerned, as soon as completed, the
results of any given piece of production, without
any care On the part of anybody, and of which no-
body could complain any more than of the earth's
attraction. Another would be a law formed by
some authority, which everybody would acknowl-
edge as final, and to which all would submit,
either owing to the overwhelming force at its com-
mand, Or to the universal confidence in its justice.
The third would be the present law, which I may
call the law of general agreement, under which
everybody gets the least for which he will labor,
and the least for which he will save and invest.
If there be any other than these, I am unable
to think it.
The first of these, T presume, does not need dis-
cussion. There never will be any natural distribu-
tive force to which we shall all have to submit as
244 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
we submit to the law of chemical affinity or pro-
portion. The division of the products of labor
and capital will always be the subject of some sort
of human arrangement, in which the human will
will play a more or less prominent part. So that
the second of these laws would have to be the
result of some kind of understanding as to who or
what the deciding authority should be, to which all
would have to submit without murmuring. Thus far
in the history of mankind it has never been possi-
ble to come to such an agreement even on matters
touching the feelings much less nearly than One's
share of the products of One's labor. No govern-
ment, spiritual or temporal, has ever existed, which
had not to keep in subjection a hostile minority
by the use of force in some shape. The Pope in
the Middle Ages came nearer seeming the voice of
pure justice than any other power that has ever
appeared in the Western world. But Christendom
was never unanimously willing to let him arrange
even its political concerns, and I do not think it
ever entered into the head of the most enthusiastic
papist to let him arrange his domestic affairs—so
far as to say what his wages or his profits should
be. The guilds came near doing this in various
trades, but their authority was maintained by the
power of expulsion. When the whole of civil
society becomes a guild, this power cannot be ex-
WHO WILL PAY THE BILLS OF SOCIALISMA 245
ercised, because there will be no place for the
expelled man to go. To make him submit, there
would have to be some sort of compulsion put
upon him. In other words, he would have to be
enslaved by being compelled to labor against his
will for a reward which he deemed inadequate.
Except on the assumption, which the smallest
knowledge of human nature makes ridiculous, that
everybody is sure to be satisfied with what he
gets for his work, any law of distribution emanat-
ing from a human authority would necessarily re-
sult in slavery. In truth, it is impossible to con-
ceive any plan of State Socialism which would not
involve the slavery of some portion of the popula-
tion, unless we can picture to ourselves unanimity
concerning the things on which men under all pre-
vious régimes have been most apt to differ.
It is hardly necessary to discuss the chances of a
“State” composed of men of such acknowledged
wisdom and goodness that nobody would dispute
their ordering of his domestic concerns. But, im-
probable as this is, it is by no means so improba-
ble as a State composed of men competent to meet
the Socialists’ demands in their business capacity.
The ethical economists never go into details on
this subject. They assume, as does Schmoller,
that the State—that is, the small body of men
charged with the enormous responsibilities of a
246 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
socialist or semi-socialist community, both with its
production and distribution, and the care of its
health and morals—would in Some manner be a
sort of concentration of the virtue and morals of
the whole community; that it would, in addition,
have an amount of administrative power, for which
railroads, mines, and mills now vainly offer almost
any salary, and for which nations would give
every conceivable earthly honor and reward —
fame, power, money, and enthusiastic homage —
could they get them for the management of their
finances or the command of their armies. As this
assumption is so gross and bold that there is
curiously little discussion about it, and as its
basis is never explained, it may be dismissed as
chimaera.
Mr. Kidd makes mention, among Socialists’ ex-
pectations, the expectation that Some day the
laborer will have the same “social position” as
the more well-to-do classes, that is, what the
French call the bourgoisie — the men who wear
black coats and do no manual labor. “Social
position" is an extremely vague phrase, and yet I
think there is probably more hope for the working
classes in this direction than in any other. The
Socialists mean, I presume, by Sameness of social
position, association for purposes of social enjoy-
ment on a footing of equality and with reciprocity
WHO WILL PA. Y. THE BILLS OF SOCIALISM # 247
of pleasure. But the difficulties in the way of this
consummation, though on the surface trifling, and,
like the thing itself, hard to define, are nevertheless
likely to prove very troublesome. The old feudal
feeling which made the man who employed labor
look down on the laborer as an inferior or semi-
menial person, has hardly reached this country, or,
if it ever did reach it, has died out. Society is
consequently divided by what we may call natural
lines—that is, by differences of taste, of personal
habits, of mental culture, and social experience.
People of the same “social position” are, as a rule,
people who live in much the same way—that is,
with about the same expenditure in clothes, furni-
ture, and cookery, and are drawn together by some
sort of community either of ideas Ör of interests.
But any change which goes on in the way of
development or “evolution,” in this arrangement,
is in the direction of bringing people together
socially who do not live in exactly the same way,
do not belong to the same caste or circle or class.
In those countries in which the democratic move-
ment has made most advances and made most im-
pression on the manners—France, Italy, and the
|United States, for instance—differences of fortune
are less and less potent in preventing social inter-
course. But in no country has the workingman
made his way as yet into anything that can be
248 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
$
called “society,” that is, into any circle which
gives “social position.” Nor could he be intro-
duced into it by any sort of legislation or any
species of compulsion. “Social position” is some-
thing beyond the reach of armies, or fleets or par-
liaments. It must be won in Some manner. It
cannot be accorded or decreed. The difference
between a lady's drawing-room full of guests, and
a wigwam packed with squaws and warriors, tells
better than even science, or art, or laws, or govern-
ment, the distance the community has travelled in
its upward course.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION IN 1896
THE country is suffering to-day from two Se-
quelae of the civil war. One is the currency ques-
tion, and the other the tariff question. Of neither
of them, as national questions of momentous in-
terest, had anybody the smallest idea before the
war. What the political prophets thought would
follow it, were great disorder in the South and
great difficulty in persuading the army to go back
to civil life and peaceful industry, and, possibly, in
persuading the people to pay the national debt.
None of these perplexities has come upon us. The
troubles which have come upon us are a strong de-
sire to debase the currency and to levy heavy taxa-
tion for protective purposes. These two problems
to-day constitute almost the sum total of our poli-
tics, and they present themselves in an extremely
unmanageable form.
The plan of making money go farther, by debasing
or depreciating it, is a very old one. It is not quite
as old as metallic money, but it is as old as legal
tender. There was no use in debasing the medium
250 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
of exchange so long as nobody was obliged to take
it in return for his goods, or in payment of what
was due to him. But so Soon as the issue of money
became a governmental function, the practice of
adulteration, or clipping, or in Some manner alter-
ing it, so as to retain its purchasing or liquidating
power, while lowering its real value, became very
general. The Greeks resorted to it; SO did the
Bomans. So have nearly all modern nations.
But until our time it has always been a device
for the easy payment of public debts. It was
the favorite resort of embarrassed governments
before the days of public loans. It was the gov-
ernment that was to get the benefit of it, not pri-"
vate individuals. That it was a fraudulent device,
and that it was a thing, if possible, to be concealed,
nobody ever denied. History may be searched in
vain for any assertion of its morality. To see that
it must always have been looked upon as dishonest,
One has only to ask one's self why men invented
money, and why it has continued in use. They in-
vented it, and have clung to it, simply as a measure
of value ; that is, a small portable memorandum
of the worth of something they have parted with,
which shall procure them, on presentation, some-
thing as valuable as that thing. This is the
explanation of the practice of hoarding, or hid-
ing gold and silver coins, which has prevailed
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 251
in all ages. People have buried them in the
ground, or concealed them in holes and corners, in
the belief and expectation that no matter how long
they might be kept out of sight and out of use,
their purchasing power would, remain unchanged.
Sovereigns traded on this popular belief in the
steadiness of their value, by lowering this value
Secretly. But, as I have said, it was only sover-
eigns who resorted to this mode of raising the
wind, and it was so easy that down to the seven-
teenth century nearly all sovereigns resorted to it.
They were the official keepers of the national meas-
ure, and they privately shortened it for their own
benefit. They enlarged the power of regulating the
currency into the power of “scaling” their own
debts.
During our civil war we followed their example.
We issued debased currency—that is, dollars that :
were of inferior value to real dollars—and, in Our :
distress, not only paid the public debts with them,
but authorized all debtors to do the same thing to
their creditors. We excused this on the same
ground on which we excused our killing people or
destroying property at the South, namely, that it
was necessary to save the life of the nation. Con-
gress had the right of every government to pre-
serve its own existence by any means necessary for
the purpose. The country accepted this view of
252 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS
the matter. Our Government, we said, has issued
debased money as a matter of necessity. There
has been no concealment about it, and it will all
be made right in the end. Its dollars are bad dol-
lars. The reason it issued them was the same as
that for which it has destroyed thousands of lives
and vast amounts of property.
When the war was over, however, a very curious
thing happened. Some people came forward and
said : “We see these dollars of yours are really
not money, in the strict sense of the term, but
promises to pay money. You say you issued them
during the war on the plea of necessity. The war
has now been over for some years, and the neces-
sity has disappeared. Is it not time that you paid
them, or at all events cease to compel people to
take them in payment of their debts P’’ The answer
to these questions came from the Supreme Court in
what were known as the Legal Tender Cases.' The
court said that the power to regulate the currency,
which every government must have, was really a
power to make any kind of money it pleased; that
it had power not only to stamp and weigh the metal
or metals which mankind has in all ages agreed to
regard as the only true money, the only safe measure
of value, but to make money out of any metal or
* The effect of these decisions will be found summed up in
Chap. lvii. of Hare’s “American Constitutional Law.”
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 253
other material, to issue it instead of the money ac-
tually current, to raise or lower its value in the
market, and to give it any name it thought proper—
to call, for instance, a piece of paper ten inches
by four “One dollar,” or to declare a piece of cop-
per or platinum to be of the same value as a circu-
lar piece of gold weighing 25+}ſ grains, and usa-
ble for the same purposes;–that therefore its
paper promises to pay money were, to all intents
and purposes, money. All the discussion which
has raged among lawyers over this decision has
turned upon the constitutionality of it, not on the
justice or honesty of it. The court judged of the
power of Congress in this matter of currency by
analogy. It said that Congress must have the
power over the currency as an “incident of Sov-
ereignty,” which all the old governments have had,
and the definition of sovereignty was obtained by
observing the practice of sovereigns. Turning to
history, it found that all the older governments
had depreciated the currency for their own benefit,
but I do not believe it found one champion of the
right to do it, or that any one of these governments
ever publicly claimed such a right for itself. So
that we have clothed our Government with a power
which no other government has ever possessed in
the forum of morals. The right to punish people
for their religious opinions might in fact be recog-
254 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
nized, with more force, as an “incident of sov-
ereignty” on the same grounds. “Cujus regio ejus
Teligio” was an accepted maxim of European pub-
lic law for a thousand years.
Out of this decision has grown our currency
question, as we see it to-day. So soon as the
people of the United States heard from the mouths
of their judges that their Government had the
power not only to regulate money, that is, to
weigh, stamp, and give it a name, but to choose
the material for it, and fix its value, a large party
Sprang up, commanding a majority in Congress,
and demanded that the Government should go to
work to make money out of paper, and pay its
debts with it. This party was beaten, after a hard
struggle, by the aid of various arguments, of which
the foremost was that, paper having no intrinsic
value, Congress might increase it to any extent it
pleased, and it would thus soon become worthless,
—witness the Continental paper, the French as-
signats, and the Confederate money. The green- ;
backers then abandoned the field, or were in the
fair way of abandoning it, when silver began to
fall heavily. It at once seemed to them that here
was something cheap, comparatively easy to get
hold of, and therefore peculiarly suited to the
needs of the poor, which was already in use as
currency in many countries, and would be nearly
ſ’HIE POLITICAI, SITUATION 255
as good as greenbacks as a means of restoring
prosperity. It could not be said of it, as had been
said of the greenback, that it had no intrinsic
value. It had value, apart from its use as money.
It was a metal. Moreover, Congress could not
increase the quantity of it at pleasure, as it could
increase the quantity of greenbacks. Its amount
was fixed by nature.
Then there grew up about silver a remarkable
amount of legendary matter. The ancient idea
that money was a measure of value seemed to fade
away. To the demand of those who insisted that
gold should be retained in circulation, and that
silver should, as money, bear some fixed ratio to
it, the answer was made that we could, by legisla-
tion, make the ratio anything we pleased,—15 to 1,
or 16 to 1, or 20 to 1. Some preferred 15 to 1 be-
cause this was the ratio fixed by the Almighty
when placing the two metals in the ground.
Others did not think any ratio was necessary
because gold Ought not to be retained in circula-
tion in a country of poor Or plain people. Silver
ought to do all the work of money. If it was too
heavy, as some said, for daily use, let it be stored
and have paper issued against it. Paper money,
by the by, could be issued “against " anything.
It did not need to be exchangeable for a thing
provided it were “based" on it, that is, if the
256 PO I, ITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
issuer of the paper owned something of value
which he had in his mind when he issued it.
Therefore, silver did not need to be mined or
coined in order to “base ’’ paper on it. We need
Only, One member of Congress said, have our
engineers calculate how much silver there was in a
mountain, and we could then “base ’’ paper on it
to that amount. Silver, too, was gradually per-
sonified into something almost human. It was
entitled to “a place of honor.” It was the friend
of the poor, and stayed with people in times of
misfortune when gold fled to the rich, or to foreign
countries. You could be ungrateful, or indiffer-
ent, to silver as to a human friend. Very recently,
a member of Congress reproached a newspaper in
this city with “never having said a kind word of
silver.” Silver came to have a “cause ’’ of its own,
to be degraded or betrayed. It had triumphs to
achieve and defeats to sustain. You could insult
silver, or slight it, or slander it, or humiliate it, or
snub it. I do not believe that it would be easy to
find, in the discussions of the past ten years, the
smallest recognition, on the silver side, that money
is, or ought to be, a measure of value simply. It
has been treated throughout as a commodity which
it was the duty of the Government to make as
plentiful as possible, and put within easy reach of
as large a number of people as possible. On this
THE POLITICAL, SITUATION 257
view of the duty of the Government, what we call }
the silver party, which is now in the field, has |
been founded.
Now, the founding, in a country of universal suf-
frage, of a party which looks on money not as a
measure of value but as a commodity, is a new
thing and a serious One. The aberrations of the
human mind on the subject of currency have, as I
have already said, been many since the dawn of
history, but I do not recall any aberration in which
the "pretence, at least, of regarding money as a
standard by which to regulate the exchange of
commodities, was not kept up. This pretence
often covered fraudulent alterations of the stand-
ard, but it was never laid aside, and the altera-
tions were concealed. The adulterators and
debasers never said, “Never mind about the pur-
chasing power of this ; the more there is of it the
better for you.” They always said, “This is just
the same as what you have got already, and will
purchase you just the same amount of anything
you desire.” Moreover, like most other functions
of government in times past, the regulation of the
currency was always left in the hands of a few ex-
perts, that is, of men who made the currency a
matter of scientific observation, and who sought,
according to their lights, to make money a measure,
as well as a medium, of exchange. For the cur-
17
258 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
rency question is not altogether, as many suppose,
a question of material or of quantity. It is, essen-
tially or mainly, a question of psychology. What
they study, who study it aright, is the way the hu-,
man mind plays around exchange. The merits or
demerits of gold Or silver or paper as money are to
be found not in the things themselves, but in the
way in which the people who use them look at
them. Take Gresham's Law for instance. It says
that, when there are two kinds of currency, one
inferior in value to the other, but both legal ten-
der, the more valuable One will leave the country.
Well the more valuable one does not walk off of
its own accord; it is sent away by men who see
profit in exporting it. The objection to silver—
the great overwhelming one—is that the men whol
make most use of coin prefer gold. And what all
statesmen or economists who make a specialty of
currency try to get at, through tables of prices, and
movements of bullion, is how people feel about the
different kind of medium in which they make their
purchases and pay their debts.
The transfer to the newspaper, the caucus, the
convention, and the popular vote, of this extremely
delicate task of deciding what kind of money in
any given country makes the best measure of
value, while furnishing the most convenient medium
of exchange, is, as I have Said, something new.
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 259
The problem before the country now is almost as
much how to take the measure of value out of poli-
tics, as how to get at the right measure just now.
For there will be little use in establishing the gold
standard or any other standard, unless politicians
can be induced to let it alone, and leave it in the
hands of men who will change it only to secure
greater steadiness, and not to help debtors or to
stimulate a particular branch of industry. Until it
is well established that the currency will not come
up as a question to be settled by the popular vote
at every Presidential election, there cannot be any
industrial or commercial peace or tranquillity. The
questions of ratio or no ratio, of one metal or an-
other, of government paper or bank paper, of elas-
ticity or fixity, have all to be considered with ref-
erence to the effect on the standard of value, and .
this class of problem is no more capable of being
settled at the polls than are parallels of latitude or
of longitude. The debating of it on the stump, ex-
cept to prevent the commission of some great folly,
Or to procure their transfer to experts, is a patent
absurdity. The one thing which the popular vote
can safely do for the currency, is to direct its com-
mittal to a few men who are familiar with it, both
from the theoretical and the practical side. This,
too, is the main object of the championship of the
gold standard which we now witness. What the
260 POLITICA D A WD ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
“gold bugs” really demand is not the gold stand-
ard, so much as assimilation in currency matters to
the other great commercial nations, and the absolute
abandonment of the currency question as a politi-
cal issue. That we shall secure these things at
one election is not likely, but the election of a
President on a sound-money platform will be the
first step toward it, and a great one.
The currency problem is made all the more com-
plicated by the attitude of the West toward the
East. That there is a line dividing the two regions
has been for a long time vaguely perceived, but it
was never so clearly defined as by the war feeling
and by the silver question. Speaking generally, the
bulk of whatever there was of pugnacity toward.
England after Mr. Cleveland's message was to be
found west of the Alleghanies; and, speaking gen-
erally, also, it may be said that the principal sup-
port of the silver standard is to be found west of
the Alleghanies. It is accompanied in both cases
by a dislike or distrust of the East, which is partly
social and partly financial, and covers also Euro-
pean countries, but principally England. The Social
dislike or distrust would need an article to itself.
The financial one is, in the main, that of a borrowing
for a creditor community, and that of a new agricul-
tural community for One which is devoted mainly
to the business of Selling commodities and exchang-
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 261
ing money. It is composed, in part, of the old dis-
like of the farmer for the financier, and in part,
that of the poor debtor for the rich creditor. Be-
hind it all lies great ignorance about foreigners and
foreign relations, and of the other forms of Society
than those by which western men are surrounded,
combined with an immense sense of power. It is
difficult to make a western man understand that a
country of 70,000,000 of inhabitants cannot do
anything that it has a fancy to do, including the
circulation of silver at a fixed ratio. It is also
difficult to persuade him that a well-dressed man
with superfine manners, does not cherish evil de-
signs of some sort. He does not see how the great
fortunes he hears of in the East have been honestly
acquired, and he, therefore, would hear with equa-
nimity of the bombardment of eastern cities.
He brooks very ill the unconscious assumption of
Superiority which the long cultivation of the social
art brings with it in older countries, and thinks it
the main business of the American abroad to re-
sent this by threats and defiance.
Among the mass of western people, a knowledge
of the conditions of foreign exchange is scanty.
The notion that a nation with $1,600,000,000 of
foreign commerce can be a law unto itself in com-
mercial matters, and that it is easy to create finan-
cial conditions which will cut us off from the rest
262 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
of the world, is still rife in that part of the
country. In fact, it would not be too much to Say
that, in spite of a high degree of culture at certain
points, the West is suffering all the observed con-
sequences of too great isolation,-that is, want of
more contact with other social conditions and other
forms of civilization. All genuine and steady prog-
ress thus far has come from intercourse with for-
eigners and familiarity with their point of view,
and readiness to adopt whatever is best and most
suitable in their ideas, manners, or customs. This
has been true from the earliest times, is, in fact,
the most familiar phenomenon of advancing civil-
ization. The greatest danger the Valley of the
Mississippi runs to-day, is the danger of living in
its own ideas, the belief that Providence still
creates peculiar peoples.
Escape from the silver idea is not likely to be
easy. The protective idea is incorporated with it.
The belief that silver is a commodity, not simply a
measure of value, has taken possession of the west-
ern mind. The notion that it is, therefore, as
much entitled to protection as any other com-
modity, by any means within reach of the Govern-
ment, is not easily dislodged, so long as the pro-
tective theory prevails at the East. It is not easy
for an eastern protectionist to face the arguments
by which a western man refuses to help the East
TEIE POLITICAL SITUATION 263
to support its industries by heavy duties so long
as the West, and more especially the mining
States, have no share in the blessings derived from
the national policy. The western man is a pro-
tectionist, too, but he wishes to push the plan
farther, and he has concocted a theory of currency
to go along with it. A self-supporting Europe-
defying country, producing everything it wants for
its own use, including its own money, is his idea
of a state. The eastern man goes only half way.
He wishes to be independent of Europe indus-
trially, but to keep up his connection with it pecu-
niarily, which is not thorough and complete “Am-
ericanism.” i
That these ideas will be overcome, except by act-
ual experiment, seems unlikely. If the currency
should, by the next election, fall into the hands of a
Government dominated by the ideas of the silver-
ites, we must be prepared for deliverance through
a panic of very great magnitude. This is the way,
as a general rule, the financial heresies of a dem-
Ocracy are dissipated. Books are not read, or
theorists much listened to. The thing has to be
tried. Nevertheless discussion has produced a
great deal of effect in the great cities where com-
mercial considerations tell, and the chances are
that, if the sound-money men shall get hold of the
Government in 1897, the cult of silver will gradu-
264 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS
ally retreat, like paganism in the early ages, to re-
mote country districts, and linger rather as a
superstition than as a financial theory. Several
things are working against it, and the most power-
ful is the great increase in the production of gold;
but its greatest support, that which will probably
last longest, is patriotic belief in the power of the
nation to do what it pleases.
Much the same things are true, mutatis mºſ-
tandis, of the tariff question. I am quite aware
that there is a great deal to be said for a tariff that
shall fairly protect native industries from foreign
competition. The theory of protection has been
defended by many able men, and is held by many
honest ones. But the protective tariff, as enacted
by legislation either in this or in any other demo.
cratic country, is never the protective tariff which
publicists or economists work out in their libraries.
The latter takes a general view of the whole field
of industry, and endeavors to impose duties with
Such impartiality that no one industry shall profit
at the expense of another, or interfere with an-
other's freedom of action. Moreover it insists
above all things on permanence, Or, at all events,
On Sufficient permanence to enable the legislator
to see the result of his own experiments, as regards
the amount and the incidence of his duties. This
is the sort of tariff which protectionists write,
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 265
books about, and lecture about land laud on the
stump.
The actual tariff of legislation is a totally differ-
ent affair. It is made up not so much on a
general view of the needs of all industries, as on
the account each industry gives of the amount of
duty it needs to make it profitable. It favors, too,
those which are able to make the largest contri-
butions to electioneering expenses of the party
which enacts it, without regard to the general
effect. Permanence is the last thing it thinks
of. Our tariff has undergone twenty-five changes
since the war, all in the direction of higher duties.
All but one of these changes were made on the
demand of manufacturers, who claimed more as-
sistance, and got it without any inquiry into the
reason why they needed it, or why they had failed
to make sufficient profits under the existing duties.
So that the tariff of the scientific protectionists is
never seen and probably never will be seen in
practice, nor is it at all likely that any tariff can
ever have much stability — and this for reasons
which apply to all, or nearly all, governmental in-
terferences with trade and industry.
No such interference can in modern society ever
be isolated or confined to one object or class
of objects. Its effects are always vastly more far-
reaching than the promoter ever imagines. One
266 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
of the most marked of these is to stimulate com-
petition at home by bringing more capital into
every protected industry—thus diminishing the
advantages of protection to each beneficiary, while
tempting people to start new industries without a
special fitness for them, in reliance on protection.
So that, like all stimulants, its influence dimin-
ishes as time goes On, and the cry for more du-
ties or new duties is constant. There have been,
as I have Said, twenty-five changes in the tariff
since 1861, and only one of them has been due
to the so-called free-traders. All the others were
made on the demand of dissatisfied protectionists.
And yet, as any business man will tell you, nothing
is more necessary to prosperous industry than
stability in the conditions under which it is carried
on. That is, business can flourish under either a
high or low tariff, if the business man can make
his calculations with certainty. But of any steady
tariff there is no more promise, apparently, to-day
than there was ten years ago. If the Republi-
cans elect the President and have a majority in
both Houses, they will probably pass something
like the old McKinley tariff bill, and they gen-
erally suppose that this will bring in an era of
prosperity; but it will not do so any more than
the old McKinley tariff which led to the terrible
defeat of 1890. It will be full of excesses and
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 267
abuses which will bring about another reaction,
and there will then be in a few years another kind
of tariff with a similar result. Prosperity will
wait for a settlement of the currency question.
Another objection to the protective system, per-
haps in the long run the most serious of all, is its
effect on public life. No contemporary observer
can fail to be struck with the disappearance from
Congress and the State Legislatures of men
prominent for eloquence, character, or the weight
of their opinions. It is no exaggeration to say
that there is hardly one left in the political world
who is listened to for doctrine or instruction on
any great public question. There are in Congress
no orators, no financiers or economists, no scholars
whom people like to hear from before making
up their minds—no Clays, no Websters, no Cal-
houns, no Wrights, no Marcys, no Everetts, no
Sewards, no Lincolns, no Fessendens, no Trum-
bulls, no Sumners, no “illustrations,” as the
Trench call them, in any field. The talent of the
country in fact seems to have taken refuge in
the great business corporations, and in the colleges,
just as in the Middle Ages it took refuge in the
monasteries. In the late attempts of Congress to
get up a war there seemed to be no one in either
House capable of drafting a resolution which
would present its designs in respectable shape.
268 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIG ESSA. YS
We cannot recall any case in modern times in
which a government seemed so completely aban-
doned by the adepts and experts.
Now why is this to be ascribed to the tariff?
|Well, in this way: Business—the making of money
by the production or sale of commodities—is the
greatestinterest of life to the bulk of the American
} community. As soon as government is presented
to men as an instrument for the addition to their
income of a sum in dollars and cents which they
can enter in their ledgers every year, as they can
profits from a speculation, they cease to think of it
as an instrument for the promotion of the general
welfare. Their mind gets fixed on it wholly as a
means of increasing their own revenues. When a
man has once entered in his accounts a good sum
as the result of a piece of legislation procured by
his own exertions, he is never again the same man
as a citizen. He takes an entirely different view
of the State, of the objects of government, of the
nature of patriotism, and of the functions of the
legislator. Politics becomes business to him.
The duty of getting high-tariff men into Congress.
who will put the right duty on his commodity
becomes a duty which he owes to his partners,
to his creditors, to his family. The expediency
of paying any sum necessary to elect such men
becomes as plain as the expediency of paying
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 269
the expenses of his drummers. Opponents of
his tariff become to him assailants of property
and order. A speech against the tariff is an
instigation to communists to wreck his mill or
his workshop. Free-trade books become quasi-
incendiary publications. Free - trade professors
and editors are corrupters of youth. All the
mental influences which create orthodoxy on any
subject, work for the conversion of defence against
foreign industrial competition into the highest
duty of a citizen.
Once fill the country with this idea, as with a
religion, and the effect on politics soon becomes
manifest. Men who believe in freedom of thought
and expression, and who think that government,
has other and higher duties than seeing that the
business of the private citizen is profitable, are:
generally the fittest men for public life. Such}
men are rarely good tariff men, and they are,;
therefore, sedulously discarded by caucuses and
conventions. Bosses are hostile, to them because"
money cannot readily be obtained to promote their
election, and because they are too independent to
be easily disciplined. When this process has
lasted a number of years, the thoughts of the élite
of the nation naturally turn away from politics to
fields in which a man may speak the thing he
wills, and be the master of his own career.
270 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
With more space at my disposal illustrations of
this would be easy. There is one before us to-day,
however, which cannot be passed over. That this
tendency to eliminate men of ability and indepen-
dence of thought from public life should end in.
making Major McKinley the Republican candidate
for the Presidency, is what is now called “the
logic of the situation.” If this sifting process con-
tinued very long, it was inevitable that it would at
last discard from the list of qualifications for the
Chief Magistracy everything but devotion to a high
tariff, and put in nomination for it a man who had
nothing else to recommend him. All the Republi-
can candidates since the foundation of the party—
Lincoln, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Blaine, Harrison
—have had some solid claim for the place, apart
from the tariff. Lincoln was a considerable orator
and Valiant opponent of slavery when he was
nominated. Grant was a great soldier. Hayes
was a good soldier, a sound financier, and a highly
respectable local administrator. Garfield was a
Scholar, an Orator, and a publicist of distinction.
Harrison was a distinguished soldier, and had con-
siderable eminence at the bar of his own State.
Blaine was admired for a good many things which
had no connection with protection for native in-
dustry. But, as the tariff becomes more prominent
in the party councils, the standard of talent or
THE POLITICAL SITUATION 271
achievement necessary for the place steadily de-
clines. There was a strong Inote of warning on
this subject in General Harrison's remark that a
“cheap coat made a cheap man,” and in the pre-
posterous doctrine which many of the Republican
leaders began in 1890 to preach on the stump,
that dearness of commodities was a good thing
for the poor/The intellectual descent made by
the party at that time cleared the way for a far
poorer sort of candidate than any it had ever had,
may, worse than any party had ever had since the
foundation of the Government, for we are ready to
allow any one who has looked into the published
volume of Major McKinley's speeches, or has
examined his record as Governor of Ohio, to
compare him with any President, or Presidential
candidate, in our history. Any such examination
will show that the party has, in its search for a
suitable standard-bearer, reached a region of ex-
traordinary intellectual poverty and moral weak-
ness, but still a region toward which it has for
many years been steadily marching.
The financial situation is simply this: Partly
under the influence of the silver craze, partly under
the influence of a renewal of the greenback craze
—which makes greenbacks a Sacred relic of the war
to be preserved in spite of their defects as money
—we have undertaken to keep about $900,000,000
272 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIG ESSA YS
of mixed silver and government paper at par with
gold. This is the most tremendous task any civil-
ized government has ever imposed upon itself.
The Bank of England only agrees to keep $80,000,-
000 of paper at par. The Bank of France has only
$700,000,000 to look after, at the most, for this is
all the paper it is allowed to issue, and keeps gold
for nearly half of this. The German Bank has
Only to keep its paper at par in securities, bank-
notes, discounted bills, and legal-tender notes of the
government. But we undertake to see that every-
body who wants it shall get gold for more than
$400,000,000 of silver, which brings only 58 per-
cent. of intrinsic value in the market, and for
about $500,000,000 of paper which has no intrinsic
value whatever. In order to do this, we borrow
gold whenever our stock of it runs short, and
every successful loan is greeted as a great finan-
cial triumph.
Upon this borrowed stock of gold, too, Gresh-
am's Law plays incessantly. I have recalled the
meaning of this law in an earlier part of this arti-
cle. It means for us that any one who finds it nec-
essary to settle a balance with a foreign creditor,
and who is unable to settle it with silver or paper,
may settle it with gold drawn from the Treasury.
So that the Government stock of gold is sure to
undergo incessant diminution from these drafts.
THE POLITICAI, SITUATION 273
Now the protectionist, or I may say McKinley,
remedy for this is to procure larger revenue by put-
ting higher duties on foreign imports. Granting
that this would increase the revenue, the only dif-
ference would be that we could purchase our re-
serve of gold with our own money, instead of bor-
rowing it. But it would not diminish the drafts on
this reserve. These drafts arise out of the fact
that with a dollar in silver worth only 58 cents, Te
can go to the Treasury and get a dollar worth: 100
cents. This demand will not cease until silver be-
comes worth 100 cents on the dollar, or the race of
money-changers dies out, or until the volume of
our currency is so reduced that we shall need gold
for other uses than bolstering up our silver and
greenbacks. If all this be true, it is easy to see
that the declarations in favor of the gold standard
in the Republican platforms will profit us little,
unless some means are devised to stop the drain
of Our gold caused by our periodical announce-
ments that we mean to keep our silver and paper
at par with gold, or perish in the attempt. So
long as this continues, it matters not whether we
buy the gold for our reserves, or borrow it, we
shall be constantly on the edge of a silver basis,
and consequently of a frightful panic.
The work of currency reform, therefore, consists
in following the example of the other great nations
274 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
of the earth and leaving silver to do the best it can
as token-money or small change—that is, limiting
its legal tender quality—and in reducing the vol-
ume of the greenbacks, or wholly redeeming them,
and discharging the Government from the duty
of keeping anything at par, except its own credit.
But this involves the substitution, for the green-
backs and silver, of some sort of banking system
whose paper shall be secure and whose circula-
tion shall contract and expand with the wants of
trade. No Legislature since 1815 has had a mores,
serious task before it than this, and we doubt if
any Legislature has ever had. It will need a Con-
gress either of remarkable intelligence or of re-
markable docility. It will need a first-rate finan-
cier to direct the operation, One who is intimately
acquainted with currency problems both as affected
by home trade and by foreign exchange—such a
man in truth as Alexander Hamilton or Albert
Gallatin.
TEIE REAL PROBLEMS OF T).EMOCRACY
MR. JoHN MORLEY, in replying to some of Mr.
Lecky's charges against the liberal movement of
the last fifty years in England, expresses his regret
that in his recent book, “Democracy and Liberty,”
Mr. Lecky has not devoted himself to a discussion
of democracy in all its aspects; its effect not only
On government, but on Social relations of every
description, on Science, on art, on literature—on
the whole of life, in short, as we see it in the
western world to-day. He says:
“We can hardly imagine a finer or more en-
gaging, inspiring, and elevating subject for inquiry
than this wonderful outcome of that extraordinary
industrial, intellectual, and moral development
which has awakened in the masses of modern
Society the consciousness of their own strength,
and the resolution, still dim and torpid, but certain
to expand and to intensify, to use that strength for
purposes of their own. We may rejoice in democ-
racy or we may dread it. Whether we like it or
detest it, and whether a writer chooses to look at
276 POLITICA L AND ECONOMYC ESSA YS
it as a whole or to investigate Some particular
aspect of it, the examination Ought to take us into
the highest region of political thought, and it un-
doubtedly calls for the best qualities of philosophic
statesmanship and vision.”
The task suggested is not easy, and Mr. Lecky,
perhaps wisely, has not attempted it. He devotes
himself mainly, in the first volume, at least, to
describing the objectionable tendencies of de-
mocracy, more particularly as illustrated by the
history of the last half century in England and
America. The second volume may be called a
series of essays on the topics now most frequently
discussed in democratic countries; Mr. Lecky gives
the pros and cons of each without committing
himself to very positive opinions on any of them.
All authors who touch at all on democracy in our
day recognize in it a new and potent force, des-
tined before long to effect very serious changes in
the Social structure, and to alter, in many important
respects, the way in which men have looked at
human Society since the foundation of Christianity.
But they handle it very much as we handle electric-
ity; that is to say, tentatively. They admit they
are dealing with a very mysterious power, of which
they know as yet but little, and on the future man-
ifestations of which they cannot pronounce with
any confidence. The great difficulty in the way
THE JEEAL PAE OBLEMS OF DEMOCRA C Y 277
of discussing it philosophically or scientifically is
the one which doubtless Mr. Lecky himself has
experienced—that thus far all investigators have
been themselves part of the thing to be investi-
gated. Every man, or nearly every man, who
takes up a pen to examine the questions what
democracy is, and what effect it is likely to have
on the race, is himself either an earnest advocate
or an earnest opponent of it. He sees in it either
the regeneration of mankind or the ruin of our
civilization. This is true of nearly every writer of
eminence who has touched on it since the French
Revolution. The most moderate of its enemies
seldom admits more on its behalf than his own
ignorance of what it promises. Its defenders are,
as a rule, too enthusiastic to make their predic-
tions of much philosophic value.
In England, the historic background has enough
social gloom in it to make the glorification of
democracy comparatively easy work for the faith-
ful thus far. In America its success seems so
closely connected with the success of the gov-
ernment itself that praise of it and prediction of
its complete sufficiency, have become the part
of patriotism. Doubts about its future seem
doubts about the future of the nation, which no
lover of his country is willing to entertain lightly.
Tocqueville is the one man of eminence who in
278 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA. YS
modern times has attempted for democracy what
Montesquieu attempted for all government—the
discovery and exposition of the principle on which
it rests. His work on “Democracy in America” is
so well known that it is hardly necessary to say that,
treating the base of democracy as equality, he has
sought to foretell what the effect of this principle
would be, in the end, on manners and institutions.
Some of his predictions have come true. Some
are very erroneous, and the fact is that, as the
years roll by and American development continues,
his work becomes less valuable. It will always be
interesting as what the French call an étude, and
was the first glimpse Europe got of the effect of
democratic institutions on character and man-
ners, but it has not maintained its earlier fame.
Tocqueville fell more and more, before he died,
into an attitude of partisanship, and his later polit-
ical essays are too deeply tinged with melancholy
about the future, for an impartial investigator.
No one, since his time, has taken the subject up
with more authority than Sir Henry Maine. In a
book on Popular Government, published in 1886,
he ventures on a broad characterization of demo-
cratic society, which bears the mark of insufficient
observation. The Only thing he has to rely upon ---
in the way of experience is the Athenian democ-
racy and that of America. There was not in the
TETE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRA C Y 279
ancient world any democracy at all in the sense in
which we understand the term, and the working
of the system in the United States has been too
short, the disturbing elements have been too nu-
merous, and Sir Henry's acquaintance with it is
all too slight, to make it possible for him to speak
about it with philosophic positiveness. To crown
all, he was essentially an aristocrat, an authority ºf
who, rightly or wrongly, felt his position in some
sort menaced by the new régime.
Mr. Lecky suffers from the same disadvantages.
He is a gentleman in the old sense of the term,
who feels that his weight as such is in some sort
menaced. In the new régime he expects men of
his sort to count for less in some way, probably in
many ways. He is fresh, too, from a revolution in
his own country, much more searching and deep-
seated than revolutions used to be—one of the
first democratic revolutions, in short, that we have
had since that of France, one hundred years ago.
The recent Irish land laws are the dethronement
of a great class, the apparent sacrifice of the few
to the many, on a large scale; this is what democ-
racy calls for, but it is never accomplished without
seemingly serious violations of natural justice.
Mr. Lecky took a prominent part in opposing-
these recent changes in Ireland. Whether they
are bad or good, no man could share either in
280 IPOLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
defending or in advocating them without consider-
able damage to his judicial-mindedness, to his
philosophic insight, so to speak. He cannot ap-
proach them as a Cavour or a Beaumont. He is
part of the revolution. He cannot wholly like
them, and he cannot help ascribing them in some
way to the great movement which, for better or
worse, is plainly upturning the world, putting
down the mighty and exalting the humble. If,
therefore, one were disposed to be ill-natured, one
might call Mr. Lecky's book an attempt to pay
democracy off for suggesting or assisting the Irish
land laws and home-rule movement. It is essen-
tially an address to the opponents of democra-
cy, written with his usual narrating ability and
fulness of reading; but, for the reasons I have
stated, it cannot do much to convince those who
are not fellow-sufferers and do not share his prej-
udices. In short, it is not the book on democra-
cy of which the world is just now in need and
in search.
The chief objection to it, and to most recent
writings of the same sort, is that, while nominally
discussing democracy, it really only points out the
apparently bad tendencies of democracy. It does
not treat democracy as a whole. It errs in this
respect somewhat as Burke's Reflections on the
French Revolution do. One could not get from
THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 281
Burke any idea of the objections to the ancien
régime. The Revolution seems, according to him,
the work of mocking devils who could give no
reason for their mischief. That anybody in France
had anything serious to complain of, anything
which could not be removed by means of a little
patience and good will, anything which was likely
to have an educating influence, which was likely to
mould character and breed defects, does not appear.
The whole outbreak seems gratuitous, uncaused,
and therefore against the order of nature. Mr.
Lecky singles out and makes prominent nearly
everything that can be said against democracy, by
means of partial comparison—the least fair of all
methods of judging either a Society or a régime,
and yet it is the commonest method of travellers
and essayists. For my part, I never read a de-
scription of the evils of democracy at the present
day without inquiring with what state of Society or -
with what kind of government the writer compares
it. When and where was the polity from observa-
tion of which he has formed his standard? When
and where was the state of things, the “good
estate,” from which we have declined or are declin-
ing? This is extremely important, for all we know
or can say about government must be the result of
actual observation. “Ideal government,” as it is
called, such as is described in Plato’s “Republic,”
282 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
or More’s “Utopia,” or Bellamy’s “Looking Back-
ward,” is interesting to read about, as the play of
an individual mind, but no one considers any of
these books very helpful to those who are actually
contending with the problems of to-day.
To enable any reformer to make his impress On
the age in which he lives, or to win any considera-
ble number of his countrymen over to his way of
thinking, the state of things he seeks to bring
about must commend itself to his contemporaries
as capable of realization. He must have some
model in his mind's eye, not too far removed, either
in time or in distance, from the popular imagina-
tion. This is an essential condition of the advance
of all great multitudes. Every man's standard of
civilization is drawn from what he has seen, or
thinks he may readily reach. Nearly all differ-
ences touching governments, between various peo-
ples Or between various classes of the same Society,
came from differences of standards. Some are ex-
tremely content with a state of things that others
think impossible. An Indian, for instance, cannot
understand the white man's eagerness to get him
to give up the tepee, in which he has been so
happy, for the log cabin or the frame house. The
spoils politician is puzzled by the Mugwump's
passion for competitive examinations, and govern-
ment based on party distribution of the offices as
THE REAL PEO BLEMS OF DEMOCRA. O'Y 283
spoils seems to him most natural and thoroughly
successful. Probably few or no Tammany men
can to this day quite understand the objection of
reformers to their style of government. They see
that tens of thousands apparently like it and are
satisfied with it. What is the need of a change 2
The cause of all the discussion is that the Mug-
wump has a different standard of government from
the politician, and is not satisfied until the govern-
ment he lives under comes up to it. In like man-
ner, when a monarchist or conservative begins to
complain to a democrat of the defects of his sys-
tem and of the gloominess of its prospects, in order
to produce any effect he must point out from what
period or from what system there has been a fall-
ing away. When and where were things any bet-
ter, taken as a whole 2 And how much better
were they 2 This is a question which evory writer
on democracy is bound to answer at the outset.
I have said “taken as a whole,” because the fatal
defect of all attacks on democracy of recent years,
like Mr. Lecky's, is this defect of partial compar-
ison. When we undertake to compare one régime
with another, old with new times, it does not do to
fasten on One feature of either. In Our day this
is sure to be ineffective. If we judge American
society, for instance, solely from the point of view
of legislative purity and ability, it will certainly
284 JPO LITICAI, AAWD JECONOMIC ESSA. YS
suffer in comparison with that of Great Britain.
If we judge it from the point of view of judicial
learning and independence, we shall probably reach
the same conclusion. It would be quite easy to point
out certain losses which it sustains from the ab-
sence of an aristocracy, as contrasted with any
European country. If, too, we undertake, as Mr.
Lecky does, to compare the England or Ireland of
to-day with the England or Ireland of some by-
gone period, known or unknown, it does not do to
say that at that period Parliament was better, or
county government was better, or legislation was
more deliberate and impartial, or other statesmen
were better than Mr. Gladstone. To produce any
real effect the comparison has to be complete.
You have to compare the general happiness from
all causes. You have to treat the two contrasted
communities as places for the poor and friendless
man, or for the industrious, enterprising, and
thrifty man, to live in, as well as for the wealthy
and cultivated man. Otherwise you make no
headway. Every reader will think instantly of the
things you have overlooked. You cannot compare
the England of to-day with the England of 1800
or 1867 without destroying or greatly weakening
your case. There is not a poor man in England
who is not conscious that he is vastly better off, as
regards all the things furnished him under the
TLIE IREAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 285
name of “government,” than his grandfather was.
The same thing is ludicrously true of Ireland. A
proposal submitted to the people in either country
to go back fifty Or one hundred years, would be
rejected almost unanimously with derision. You
might give them fifty reasons for thinking them
mistaken, but not one of them would produce any
impression. Why is this? An adequate book on
democracy would answer the question. It would
not only give these reasons, but state fully and
fairly why they were certain to be disregarded.
The truth is that democracy is simply an experi-
ment in the application of the principle of equality
to the management of the common affairs of the
community. It is the principle of equality which
has conquered the world. That one man is as good
as another is an outgrowth of what may be called
social consciousness, and as soon as it has got pos-
session of the State, democratic government follows
as a matter of course. The theory of the social
contract is an offspring of it. This theory made
no impression on the masses when Locke preached
it. It did not reach the people till Rousseau took
it up, in the middle of the last century. Since
then it has made great strides. Rulers have be-
come the mere hired servants of the mass of the
community, and criticism of them has come natu-
rally with the employment of them as agents. The
286 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
notion that all men are alike, and are entitled to
an equal voice in the management of the common
affairs, is democracy. It is the effort of all to
assert this, and to see how the thing can be done,
which forms the democratic experiment that is be-
ing tried in so many countries.
Many things have occurred which seem to war-
rant the belief that it will not succeed. What con-
stitutes the success of a government 2 The very
first answer to this question is that we cannot tell
whether a government is successful or not with-
out seeing how long it lasts. The first duty of a
government is to last. A government, however
good, which does not last is a failure. The Athen-
ian republic, the Roman republic and empire, the
Venetian republic, the French monarchy, the En-
glish monarchy, and the American republic, have
all to be tried by this test. To say that a govern-
ment is a very good government, but that it was
overthrown or changed in a few years, is almost a
contradiction in terms. All we know of any value
about any government is derived from observation
of its working. It must be confessed, therefore, that
nearly all that we read in our day about democracy
is pure speculation. No democracy has lasted long
enough to enable one to write a treatise on it of
much value. Almost everything that Mr. Lecky
says of the working of democracy in America, or
THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 287
that he has got from Mr. Bryce, though all true,
fails to throw much light upon the future.
The men who first began to write on democracy,
toward the close of the last century and the begin-
ning of this, had really a very small notion of its
working on the scale which the modern world wit-
nesses. Their only opportunities of observation
lay in the history of the small Greek communities,
of early Rome, of Venice and the minor Swiss can-
tons, and of the early New England States. They
had not for a moment pictured to themselves the
government by universal Suffrage of communities
numbering tens of millions. Their democracies all
met in the forum or market-place ; their leading
men were known to every citizen. Nothing seemed
easier than to fill the public offices by a mere show
of hands. Every man was supposed to be intensely
occupied with public affairs, to be eager to vote on
them, and to be quite able to vote intelligently.
The work of management had not a prominent
place in any former democratic scheme. The
“demagogue’—that is, the man who leads people
astray by specious schemes, by hostility to the
rich, or eagerness for war, or profuse prodigality,
Or winning eloquence—was well known. But the
man who does not speak, who makes no public im-
pression, who is not rich or eloquent or in any
manner distinguished, yet who leads the voters and
288 POT, ITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA. YS
holds legislation in the hollow of his hand, had
still to make his appearance.
In the new, unforeseen, enormous democracy,
40,000,000 to 100,000,000 in England, or France,
or America, he is indispensable. In these large
democracies, the work of bringing the popular will
to bear in filling the offices of the government, or
in performing any act of government, is one of
great difficulty, which needs almost constant atten-
tion from a large army of “workers.” To influence,
persuade, or inform this immense body of persons
is no easy matter, as two antagonistic forces are
always engaged in pulling it in different direc-
tions. The diffusion among it of any one view of
anything would be a serious task. To insure the
triumph of either view is still more serious. Then,
a very large proportion of the voters are not inter-
ested in public questions at all, or their feeblé'in-
terest has to be aroused and kept awake. Another
large proportion do not desire to give themselves the
trouble to vote. They have to be, in some manner,
induced to go to the polls, or have to be prepared
to go by numerous visits. The business of what is
called the “canvass” in modern democracy is, in
fact, something unlooked for and unprovided for by
theoretical democrats. It has produced a profes-
sion whose sole occupation is to get people to vote
in a particular way. As the mass of voters in-
TIME A.E.A.L. PIE OBJJ; MS OF DEMOCRACY 289
creases, this profession, of course, becomes larger
and lmore important. In my own Opinion, its im-
portance constitutes the strongest argument against
woman suffrage. The doubling of the number of
votes to be influenced or managed in any com-
munity is a very grave consideration; for not only
have you to find such workers, with the certainty
that their character will not be very high, but you
have to pay them, and no provision for their pay-
ment has ever been made in any scheme of demo-
cratic government. The duty of remunerating
them is thrown on the victorious parties at elec-
tions; in America, for a long time, this duty was
discharged by distributing among them the smaller
offices. There has been an escape from it here by
what is called civil service reform, or, in other
words, by competitive examination. In England,
the aristocracy, finding the government patronage
passing out of their hands, judiciously introduced
the merit system, in time to save it from the in-
coming democracy, but in France and Italy the
tendency is still in the direction of “spoils.” The
passion for government places is strong, and the
difficulty of getting anything done for the State,
except in return for a place, grows apace, On the
whole. If I said that the reluctance of a democracy
to vote at all, or to vote right, was not foreseen by
the early democratic advocates, and that they made
19
290 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
no provision for it in their system, I should not be
very far wrong. This was the greatest mistake of
the theoretic democrats. They never foresaw the
big democracies. The working of democracy in
America is something of which they had no con-
ception. They did not anticipate the necessity of
organizing and directing the suffrage, nor of the
intervention of the boss and his assistants.
When you come to examine this mistake, you
find it consists really in the absence of provision
for the selection of candidates by the multitude, or,
in other words, in the absence of a nominating sys- -
tem. None of the books contain any direction for
the performance of this work of nominating by a
large democracy. The founders of the United
States had apparently never thought of it. In
their day, a few leading men met and chose one of
theł Own number as a good person to fill, say, a
legislative or other important place ; or a promi-
ment man proposed himself to his fellow-citizens
to fill it. For some time after the foundation of
the government, a committee of Congress named
candidates for the presidency. But it was soon
seen that this would not do. The voters would not
allow any one to do this work for them. An elected
assembly had to do it, and the nominating conven-
tion, in its various stages, Swas started. In other
words, the business of electing officers was doubled
TITE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 201
by having another election to elect the people who
were to select good people to elect. This work of
nominating has added to the boss's, Or manager's,
power by adding to his duties. He has to see not
Only that people vote for the various candidates,
but that they vote for those who have to choose
them. More complication, more patience, more
atchfulness, more dexterity.
TJnder this régime, the nominating system, of
which no theoretical writer had the least idea, has
grown into a piece of machinery more complicated
than the government itself. The man who man-
ages it, who says who must compose the body
which selects the candidates—that is, who desig-
nates the delegates to the nominating convention
—is really the most powerful man in the commu-
nity. Every one who wishes to enter public life
bows before him. No one who, being in pºlic
life, wishes to rise higher, no Representative who
wishes to be Senator, no Governor who wishes to
be President, will gainsay him or quarrel with
him. Everybody but the President in a second
term is at his beck. For similar reasons, he holds
the legislators in his power. If they do not legis-
late as he pleases, he will not allow them to come
back to the legislature. He has to be consulted,
in fact, about every of pe. He may be boss of a
district, a city, or a state. The larger his do-
292 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC, JESSA YS
minion and the denser its population, the more
powerful he is. The people, being busy, are not
willing to go to the trouble of voting at two elec-
tions. As a rule, they do not vote at all for the
nominating convention. This is, therefore, almost
completely in the boss's hands. As he decides
who shall compose it, he also decides what it shall
do. In fact, in ordinary times and in the absence
of great public excitement, he is the great man of a
democratic community; and yet neither he nor the
nominating system which has made him what he is,
was foreseen by any early political thinker. There
was no foreshadowing of the difficulty that democ-
racy would experience in filling office, and no one
has as yet devised any good plan for the purpose.
Any person who to-day described the government,
say, of New York, or Pennsylvania, or any other
largº American State, out of the books, would give
no real idea of it. He would miss the real source
of power, and the way in which it was infused into
the machinery. If there be anything seriously
wrong with democracy in America to-day, it lies in
the nominating system; yet this attracts compara-
ſº little attention.
Another new phenomenon which has greatly
affected the development of democratic govern-
ment, and has received no attention, is the growth
of corporations. These aggregations of capital in
TEIE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 293
a few hands have created a new power in the
State, whose influence on government has been
very grave. They employ a vast number of
voters, over whom their influence is paramount ; a
single railroad company has in its Service thou–
sands of men. They own immense sums of
money, which they think it but right to use freely
for their own protection. In some States, men
make a livelihood in the legislature by “striking”
them, - that is, threatening them with hostile
legislation, and getting themselves bought off by
the agent of the corporation; for each corporation
is apt to keep an agent at the seat of government
to meet these very demands, and makes no Se-
cret of it. Latterly the bosses have taken charge
of this business themselves. They receive the
money, and see that the legislature is properly
managed in return. The companies have, in fact,
created a code of morality to meet this exigency.
The officers say that they are the custodians of
large amounts of other people's property, which
they are bound to defend, by whomsoever at-
tacked. That wrong does exist in the State is not
their affair. The reform of the legislature or of
the State is not their affair. It is their business
to keep safely what has been placed in their
charge. Indeed, the levying of blackmail on com-
panies, either as a contribution to campaign ex-
294 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
penses or as fees to pay for protection, is now one
of the principal sources of a boss's revenue, and, in
States like New York, goes a good way toward en-
abling him to defy hostile sentiment. It furnishes
him with funds for subsidizing the legislature and
the press. How to bring these corporations under
the law, and at the same time protect them from
unjust attacks, is one of the most serious problems
of democratic government. But it can hardly be
said to have received any discussion as yet. Cor-
porations are as powerful as individual noblemen
or aristocrats were in England in the last century,
or in France before the Revolution, but are far
harder to get at or to bring to justice, from their
habit of making terms with their enemies instead
of fighting them.
This brings me naturally to two other serious
and significant changes which have occurred with-
in fifty years in democratic societies. I mean the
decline of the legislatures, and the transfer of
power, or rather of the work of government, from
the rich to the poor.
That this decline of the legislatures is not a
mere decline in manners seems to me undeniable.
It is a decline in the quality of the members in
general respect, in education, in Social position, in
morality, in public spirit, in care and deliberation,
and, I think I must add, in integrity, also. Ilegis-
º
THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 295
lation is more hasty and more voluminous, is
drafted with less care, and enacted with less delib-
eration and with much greater indifference to pub-
lic opinion, particularly to instructed and thought-
ful public opinion. This is said to be true of
France and Italy, and in some degree of England,
but it is especially true of America. Congress and
the State legislatures are not what they were forty
years ago. Both the Senate and the House con-
tain fewer men of prominence and ability. The
members are more slenderly instructed, but much
more eagerly interested, in questions of political
economy, finance, and taxation than they used to
be, and more disposed to turn to account what
they conceive to be their knowledge. They are
more difficult to lead, and yet are more under
the domination of their own cliques or sets. In
the State legislatures, the boss is far more power-
ful than he was. But little legislation originates
with the members themselves. It is generally con-
cocted outside and passed under orders. Few of
the members are really chosen and elected by the
people. They are suggested and returned by the
boss of the State or district. They feel account-
able to him, and not to the public. The old
machinery of agitation, the public meeting and the
press, produces little effect on them. Their mo-
tives are rarely made known. Many of their acts,
296 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
if not corrupt, are open to the suspicion of corrup-
tion; some of them are bold attempts to extort
money. All this is true, as I have said, in some
degree or other, of all the countries in which
democratic institutions have taken or begun to
take root. These bodies have not answered the
earlier expectations of democratic philosophers.
The men who were expected to go to them do not
go to them. The men who have served the public,
well in them do not return to the service. The in-
fluence on them of the intellectual, cultivated, or
instructed world is Small.
To account for this, or to say how it is to be
mended, is, I admit, very difficult. Few subjects
have done more to baffle reformers and investi-
gators. It is the great puzzle of the heartiest
friends of democracy. The matter is growing
more serious in America as Society is becoming
richer and more complicated. As commerce in-
creases, credit expands and interests multiply, of
course the machinery of government increases in
delicacy. Derangement becomes easier, repair
more difficult. The effect, for instance, of insta-
bility in taxation, or of adventures in foreign
policy, upon foreign trade, or upon investment and
the movements of capital, is very great; so that
already merchants, bankers, and dealers in money
are beginning to ask themselves whether it will be
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and will confine the legislatures within very narrow
limits and make them meet at rare intervals. The
tendencies all over the Union are in this direction,
and Switzerland, the most democratic country in
Europe, is showing the way distinctly toward
less law-making and more frequent consultation of
the people at large. I believe, for instance, that
after a very few years' experience of the transfer
of the currency question, which has now begun, to
the management of popular suffrage, the legal
tender quality of money, which is now behind the
whole trouble, will be abolished, and the duty of
the government will be confined simply to weigh-
ing and stamping. The usefulness of the legal ten-
der now is ludicrously disproportioned to the noise
made about it. Bxcept as a rule for fixing the
denomination in which debtors must pay their
debts in the absence of an agreement—which
rarely causes any dispute—and for enabling debtors
to cheat their creditors by paper money or the adul-
teration of coin–which is not infrequent—it is
difficult to see what good purpose legal tender
serves. It is almost certain that the day will come
when it will be seen that no democratic govern-
ment is fit to be entrusted with the power of giv-
ing any substance legal tender quality, and that
the very best solution of the money problem is to
be found in letting people make their own bar-
THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 299
gains—a solution which will be hastened by the
increasing tendency to settle contracts, make pur-
chases, and pay debts by check or draft.
The other corrective of which I see signs,
though of less importance, is the increasing ability
or willingness of business men to separate their
business from their politics, and to refuse any
longer to put money into the hands of party
agents to do as they please with it. This use of
money, especially since the growth of the tariff
question in importance, has been One of the great
sources of the degradation of American politics,
because it supports the excesses or abuses of the
nominating system by strengthening the hands of
the boss; for it is he who generally receives the
funds. But it would be absurd to build great
hopes of progress on the mere cessation of an
abuse. It is a thing to be noted rather than dwelt
on. All that we can say with certainty is that no
Western society is likely, in modern times, to let
itself run completely down, as the ancient socie-
ties often did, without vigorous attempts at re-
covery and improvement. The general belief in
progress which now prevails, the greatly increased
desire to extract comfort out of life (and comfort
includes quiet and order), the more scientific spirit
of the time, the disposition of all classes to assume
social responsibility, and the Sense of what the
300 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMYC R'SSA. YS
French call “solidarity” diffused by the press, as-
sure us that every means of progress will be tried,
that no defect will be submitted to indefinitely;
but what means of improvement will be most
effective, and what Safeguards will be found most
reliable, he would be a rash man who would vent-
ure to predict in detail.
As to the transfor of the government to the
poor, it should be remembered that, except during
very short periods in ancient democracies, the
world has been governed by rich men; that is, by
the great landholders or the great merchants.
This is true of all the ancient republics and of all
the modern monarchies. The unfitness of poor
men for the important offices of legislation and
administration has been generally acted on in the
modern world, as a State doctrine. Every govern-
ment has been a rich man's government. It is
only in Some of the Smaller Swiss cantons that
departures from this rule have been made. But,
as a rule, in democratic societies in our day, govern-
ment has been transferred to poor men. These
poor men find themselves in possession of very
great power over rich communities. Through the
taxing power rich corporations and rich individu-
als are at their mercy. They are not restrained
by tradition; they are often stimulated by envy or
other anti-Social passions. If it were not for the
TEIN' RFAI, PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 301
restrictions imposed in American States by the
Constitution, the lives of rich men and of com-
panies would be full of difficulty. There has
grown up around this change the foreshadowing
of a code of morality in which men's right to be
rich is called in question, and the spoliation of
them, if done under forms of law, is not an offense
against morality. This, again, is counterbalanced
or neutralized by the general popular tendency to
make the accumulation of wealth the one sign of
worldly success, and to estimate men by the size
of their income, from whatever source derived.
There is probably in America to-day a nearer ap-
proach to a literal rendering of the English term
“worth,” as measuring a man's possessions, than
ever occurred elsewhere; that is, the term is more
fully descriptive of the fact than it has ever been.
Inevitably, there has appeared side by side with
this a certain distrust of the Opinions of persons
who have not made money, which has naturally
had an injurious effect on the government, and
has, along with several other causes, contributed
to the exclusion of the learned or professional
class from the work of administration. A faithful
description of the position of the wealthy class in
America to-day would probably say that the accu-
mulation of wealth by a man's own exertion is ad-
mired by the public, and greatly respected if he
302 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
gives it fully to public objects, but that his at-
tempt to participate in the work of government is
viewed with a certain jealousy, while contributions
for party purposes are eagerly received by the
bosses, and offices are occasionally given in return
for them by regular bargain. It is in this way, in
fact, as well as through lower forms of corruption,
that individual wealth protects itself against the
consequences of the change to which I have al-
ready called attention, the transfer of the govern-
ment to the poor and obscure. Property still has
weight in public affairs, but not open weight, and
the power of persuading the legislators has been
taken from the public orator, or writer, who
wielded it in the beginning of the century, and
turned over to the successful man of affairs, who
has schemes to carry out, but cannot waste time
in arguing about them with anybody.
Among the minor illustrations of the failure to
foresee, afforded by the early founders of democ-
racy and speculators on it, is the virtual abolition
of the board of electors who were to elect the
President. They are now a mere formal body of
registrars, who have no more to do with the results
than a voting machine. Another is the total loss
of the power of choice by the legislatures in elect-
ing Senators of the United States. The legisla-
tures no longer choose them. They are chosen by
TIME REAL PROBD EMS OF DEMOCRACY 303
the managers of the party outside, and the legis-
lators are, in fact, elected to carry out this choice.
A more complete disappointment than these two
modes of bringing great care to bear on two im-
portant operations of government could hardly be
imagined, and yet it is a disappointment which
does not appear to have been suspected as likely
to come. The present generation of reformers are
nearly as eager to abolish the Electoral College
and the legislative election of Senators, after a
century of experience, as the framers of the Con-
stitution were to establish them. The prevailing
desire is to remit the work in both cases to the
popular vote.
This brings to our notice two tendencies, ap-
parently, but only apparently, opposing, in Amer-
ican opinion. One is to throw as much of the
nominating or canvassing or preparatory work as
possible on individual men, like bosses and work- ...”
ers; the other is to make the constituency of each
important office as wide as possible. The whole
people of the Union would like to vote directly for
the President, the whole people of a State would
like to vote for a Senator, and the whole people of
a city would like to vote for an almost despotic
mayor, but few want to take any trouble in creat-
ing or arranging machinery for choosing them.
The work of “getting delegates’ to nominating
304 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
conventions, and making other preparations for
elections, is left to professionals; that is, to men
who do little else, and who get a living out of this
work. The exhortation of political moralists to
“attend the primaries” has become almost a joke
among the class to whom it is mainly addressed.
The discussion of all these matters—that is, the
observation of the working of democracy on a
large scale during the past century—should be the
work of any writer on democracy from the philo-
Sophic point of view in our day. Mr. Bryce's book
is mainly descriptive. He does not foreshadow
consequences or suggest remedies. Mr. Lecky is,
to a certain extent, right in drawing illustrations
from him, but we can read Mr. Bryce as well as
Mr. Lecky can, and we know better than he what
corrections or allowances to make. There are tens
of thousands of Americans more troubled by many
American phenomena than any European observer,
and far more intelligently; yet it is difficult for
any American to deal with them adequately as yet,
for obvious reasons.
In the first place, political speculation is some-
what discountenanced or discouraged in Ameri-
ca by the excessive cultivation of what is called
“patriotism,” not unnatural in a young people,
whose growth in wealth and numbers has been
prodigious beyond example. This “patriotism”
THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRA C Y 305
has been made by the multitude to consist in hold-
ing everything that is, to be exactly right, or
easily remedied. A complaining or critical man,
as a speculator is apt to be, is therefore set down
as a person “unpatriotic,” or hostile to his coun-
try. He may object to the other party, but he
must not find fault with the workings of his
government. The consequence is that any man
who expects to make his way in politics, or even to
succeed comfortably in a profession or business, is
strongly tempted to proclaim inceSSantly his great
content with the existing Order of things, and to
treat everything “American "as sacred. Criticism
of the government or of political tendencies is
apt to be considered a sign of infidelity to the
republic, and admiration for something foreign.
More than this, an American is himself part of
what he discusses or proposes to amend. He has
his prejudices, some of them hereditary; he has
tastes and associations, few of which are corrected
by contact with or knowledge of different forms of
society; and his range of possibilities is therefore
Il{Ul'I'OW.
What is most serious of all is that we have not,
as England Or France or Germany has, one great
capital, in which all the philosophers and specula-
tors, and in fact men of education, live and make
a philosophical or political atmosphere, are influ-
20
306 POLITICAI, AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
enced by each other's opinions, enjoy each other's
society, profit by each other's criticism, and trans-
mit to the provinces, as from a court of last resort,
final judgments on literature, art, and politics, and
Snap their fingers at Country denunciation and
grumbling. Our thinkers are scattered all over
the country, hundreds or thousands of miles away
from their congeners. They brood rather than
speculate. They live among “plain people.”
They have a human desire to be comfortable
and happy with their neighbors, to receive their
approval and respect. They have but few oppor-
tunities of intercourse with their fellows in other
parts of the country. Fiven in cases like the
Venezuelan affair, or like the greenback or silver
“craze,” it is so easy to fall in with the crowd, or
still easier to be silent, so hard to be generally de-
nounced as “unpatriotic " or as a “Mugwump,”
or to be accused of foreign tastes or leanings, that
attempts to point out a “more excellent way ” are
somewhat under a cloud. Only men of marked
ability or strong character make them, and even
for these the work is wearisome and a little dis-
heartening. In short, the influence of the scholarly,
thinking, philosophical class is not felt in Ameri-
can progress nearly as much as it ought to be.
This is the more regrettable because no rational
observer can suppose that the government of the
THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 307
TJnited States is destined to retain indefinitely its
present form. It is sure, like all governments
which have preceded it, to change, and probably
change from century to century. The history of
all republics and of all monarchies, like the history
of man himself, is one of incessant change. The
Greek republics, the Roman republic and empire,
the Venetian republic, the French and English
monarchies, have all undergone modifications from
generation to generation, in institution, laws, and
manners. Since Elizabeth the English monarchy
has experienced at least four enormous changes,
involving complete transfer of power and a com-
plete revolution in political ideas. Even China is
succumbing to what is called “the spirit of the
age.” To suppose that we, with forty-five repub-
lics, indulging in annual experiments in govern-
ment, shall be exempt from the general law is
absurd. These changes consist, too, as a rule, in
adaptation of the institutions of the country to
an altered condition of popular sentiment, to the
revelation of new dangers, to the decline or
deterioration of some law or custom. The Eng-
lish in 1649 would not submit to a monarch like
Charles I. In 1688 they would not submit to a
monarch like James II. In 1832 they would not
submit to a Parliament like that in which Pitt
thundered and Burke reasoned. In other words,
308 POLITICAL AND EC/OWOMIC ESSA YS
the history of nations is the history of incessant
attempts, fortunate or unfortunate, to better them-
selves.
For these reasons and many others, all disquisi-
tion on the phenomena of modern democracy in
any community as final, or as certain to result in
despotism or in any other great calamity, appears
to me exceedingly inadequate. Democracy in
America, like democracy and monarchy elsewhere,
is following the course of other political Societies.
It is suffering from unforeseen evils, as well as
enjoying unforeseen blessings. It will probably
be worse before it is better. It is trying a great
many experiments in laws and manners, of which
some, doubtless, will be hideous failures. The
régime of “crazes" through which it is now pass-
ing is very discouraging, but it is engaged, like
most other civilized societies, in a search after
remedies.
To illustrate my meaning, let me cite the case of
civil service reform. One of the unforeseen evils
developed by the new democracy not long after
the foundation of the government was the practice
of offering all the places, high and low, in the
government service, to the victors at each election
as “spoils.” It took fifty years to bring this evil
to what I may call perfection; that is, to reveal
in practice exactly how it would work, how it
THE REAL PROBLEMS OF DEMOCRACY 309
would affect legislation and administration and
public life. It was something novel at first,
because although, under European monarchies,
places were given away as rewards to favorites,
and were even sold, they were permanent, and the
field of distribution was small. It became deep-
ly rooted in the political manners of the people,
and by large numbers was looked on as the true
American system of appointment, the only one
suited to a democratic republic. Two generations,
at least, had never seen any other system. A full
discussion of its injurious effects on public life and
on the public service was not begun till after the
civil war. The advocates of a change were met
at first with intense hostility and ridicule from the
politicians and from members of Congress, and
were received with great indifference by the
general public. Yet, in five years they succeeded
in making some impression upon the President.
Within ten years after the war they had secured
some favorable legislation. Every President since
then has made further concessions to them, and
this year the final transfer of the whole federal
service, including 85,200 places, to the merit
system has been made. I do not believe that,
at the time when the agitation for civil service
reform began, there was any evil or abuse in the
government, an attack on which seemed so hope-
310 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
less, and yet this evil has disappeared within One
generation. I cite it as an illustration of the
danger or error of treating any democratic failure
as permanent or hopeless, or denying to any
democratic Society the capacity and determina-
tion to remedy its own defects in some direction
or other by some means or other. No society
in our time is willing to deteriorate openly, or
ever does so long, without struggling for Salva-
tion.
TEITE EXPENDITUTE OF RICH MEN
FROM the earliest times of which we have any
historical knowledge rich men have had to exercise
a good deal of ingenuity in expending their in-
come. The old notion that wealth is desired for
the sake of power was never completely true. It
has always been desired also, as a rule, for the
Sake of display. The cases have been rare in
which rich men have been content to be secretly
or unobtrusively rich. They have always wished
people to know they were rich. It has, also, from
the earliest times, been considered appropriate
that display should accompany power. A power-
ful man who was not wealthy and made no dis-
play, has, in all ages, been considered a strange,
exceptional person. As soon as a man became
powerful, the world has always thought it becom-
ing that he should also be rich, and should furnish
evidences of his riches that would impress the
popular imagination. As a rule, he has sought to
make this impression. He has liked people at
least to see what he could do if he would. Of
312 POLITICA.J., AWD ECOWOMTO. ESSA YS
course, except in the case of rulers, he could
not put his money into armies or fleets. Conse-
quently, as a private man, he has put it into tan-
gible, visible property, things which people could
See and envy, or wonder over. A rich man who
did not do this was always set down as a miser, or
something very like it, in Some way queer or eccen-
tric. He, too, has been held bound to spend his
money in ways in which the public in general ex-
pected him to spend it, and in which it had be-
come usual for men of his kind to expend it. His
expenditure was, therefore, in a certain sense, the
product of the popular manners. If a man in Eng-
land, for instance, expends money like a rich Turk-
ish pacha, or Indian prince, he is frowned on or
laughed at. But if he keeps a great racing-stable,
or turns large tracts of land into a grouse moor or a
deer forest, in which to amuse himself by killing
wild animals, it is thought natural and simple.
But one of the odd things about wealth is the
Small impression the preachers and moralists have
ever made about it. From the very earliest times
its deceitfulness, its inability to produce happi-
mess, its fertility in temptation, its want of connec-
tion with virtue and purity, have been among the
commonplaces of religion and morality. Hesiod
declaims against it, and exposes its bad effects on
the character of its possessors, and Christ makes
THE EXPEND IT’URE OF RICH MEV 313
it exceedingly hard for the rich man to get
to heaven. The folly of winning wealth or car-
ing for it has a prominent place in mediaeval
theology. Since the Reformation there has not
been so much declamation against it, but the rich
man's position has always been held, even among
Protestants, to be exceedingly perilous. His
temptations might not be so great as they used to
be, but his responsibilities were quadrupled. The
modern philanthropic movement, in particular
has laid heavy burdens on him. He is now al-
lowed to have wealth, but the ethical writers and
the clergy Supervise his expenditure closely. If
he does not give freely for charitable objects, or
for the Support of institutions of beneficence, he is
severely criticised. His stewardship is insisted
on. In the Middle Ages this was his own look-
out. If he endowed monasteries, or bequeathed
foundations for widows, or old men, or Orphans,
it was with the view of making provision for his
own soul in the future world, and did not stand
much higher in morals or religion than that old
English legacy for the expenses of burning here-
tics. But in our times he is expected to endow
for love of his kind or country, and gifts for his
soul's sake would be considered an expression of
Selfishness.
In Europe, as I have said, the association of
314 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
displays of wealth with political power has lasted
since states were founded. It was largely made
possible in the ancient world through slavery.
From what we know through architectural remains,
or historic record, there was no length, in that
world, to which a great man could not go in the
display of his possessions. What we hear or see
of Hadrian's villa, or Diocletian's palace at Spala-
tro, makes Versailles seem a mere bauble. The
stories told of the villas of Lucullus, or Maecenas,
even if half true, show that our modern rich men
know but little of the possibilities of luxury.
Pliny’s description of his own villa in his Letters
shows that they were far more than half true, that
not one of Our modern rich men has done one-
quarter of what he might have done for material
enjoyment. Undoubtedly the non-existence of
slavery has been the greatest check on his extrava-
gance. Could he have the same absolute control
over domestic servants, he would probably treat
himself to more extraordinary varieties of luxury
in the matter of habitation and clothing and equi-
pages. The traditions of the Roman Empire in
this matter perished with the Empire. When the
modern rich man came into possession of the
means and appliances of civilization, he found
himself in a new world, in which it was vastly
more difficult to secure steady, uncomplaining per-
TEIE EXPEND ITURE OF RICH MEN 315
sonal service, and in which money was harder to
get hold of. But what was within his reach, he
readily used. The mediaeval noble all over Europe
after the Renaissance, transferred himself to mag-
nificent abodes, and surrounded himself with a
small army of servants. But he did this in obe-
dience, I will not say to public opinion, for there
was no such thing, but to popular notions of the
fitting. It was held, as I have said, but becoming
that a man who occupied his political place, who
counted for so much in the state, whose descent
was considered so illustrious, who owned such
vast tracts of land, should live in a very great
house, and be followed by a great retinue, should
have his gentlemen and pages, and his numerous
servants to wait upon him. When Madame de
Sevigné travelled in the seventeenth century to
Paris from her château in the country, she went
with two carriages, seven horses, and four men
On horseback, and each carriage had four horses;
yet she was only a person of moderate fortune.
Madame de Montespan, when she went to Vichy,
had six horses in her coach ; another behind with
six maids. Then she had two fourgons, or bag-
gage-wagons, six mules, and a dozen men on horse-
back, forty-five persons in all. Once when Madame
de Sevigné's son came home from the army, her
man of business had fifteen hundred men under
316 POLITICAI, A WD ECONOMIG ESSA YS
arms to receive him in the court of the château.
When the Marquis de Lavardin came to see her,
be had officers and guards and trumpets and
twenty gentlemen. The Montmorencis and Roh-
ans and Soubises and Colignys made still greater
display. The same thing went on in England.
The rich men lived and travelled surrounded by
splendor, because they were really great men.
They had power over hundreds and thousands of
fortunes, if not of lives. They had a share in the
government. They were largely above the law.
“God Almighty,” as a pious but well-born French
woman said, “thought twice before damning one
of them.” Down to the end of the last century the
enmity of a peer, as was recently remarked, was ‘tº
enough to ruin a man in England.
All this is now changed in Europe. As power
has left the upper classes, display has ceased. To
be quiet and unobserved is the mark of distinction.
Women of Madame de Sevigné's rank travel in
dark-colored little broughams. Peers in England
are indistinguishable when they move about in
public, from any one else. Distinction is sought
in manners, in speech, in general simplicity of de-
meanor, rather than in show of any kind. An at-
tempt to produce on anybody, high or low, any
impression but one of envy, by Sumptuousness of
living or equipage, would prove a total failure. It
THE EXPEND ITURE OF RICEF MENT 317
may be said, without exaggeration, that the quiet-
ness of every description is now the “note ’’ of the
higher class in all countries in Europe—quietness
of manner, of voice, of dress, of equipages, of, in
short, nearly everything which brings them in con-
tact with their fellow-men. Comfort is the quest
of the “old nobility” generally. Ostentation is
left to the newly enriched, but there can hardly be
a doubt that this is largely due to loss of power.
Wealth now means nothing but wealth. The Eu-
ropean noble was, in fact, everywhere but in Wen-
ice, a great territorial lord. It was incumbent on
him as a mark of his position, as soon as he came
out of his mediaeval “keep,” to live in a great
house, if only for purposes of entertainment. His
retinue required large accommodation; his guests
required more, and more still was added for the
needs of the popular imagination. But the system
of which he was the product, which made his châ-
teau or mansion grow out of the soil like his crops,
was never transferred to this country. The few
large grants which marked our early history never
brought forth large mansions or great retinues.
The great houses of that period, such as those of
the Van Rensselaers or Livingstons on the Hud-
son, or of the planters on the James River, are
simply moderate-sized mansions which, on most
estates in England or France, would be considered
818 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC, ESSA YS
small. Hospitality was in none of them exercised
on anything like the European Scale. None of
them was ever occupied by anybody who exercised
anything more than influence over his fellow-citi-
zens. In fact most of them are to-day mainly in-
teresting as showing the pains taken to put up
comfortable abodes in what were then very out-of-
the-way places.
All this amounts to saying that the building of
great houses was, down to our own time, a really
utilitarian mode of spending wealth. It was in-
tended to maintain and support the influence of
the ruling class by means which was sure to im-
press the popular mind, and which the popular
mind called for. The great territorial owners had
a recognized place in government and Society,
which demanded, at first a strong, and later, an ex-
tensive, dwelling-place. It was, in short, the prod-
uct and indication of contemporary manners as
dwelling-places generally are. If we travel through
a country in which castles and fortified houses
are numerous, as they used to be prior to the four-
teenth century all over Europe, we conclude in-
fallibly that the law is weak, and that neighbors
make armed attacks on each other in the style de-
scribed in the Paston Letters. If we find, coming
down later, as in the Elizabethan period, strong-
holds abandoned for extensive and ornamental res-
THE EXPEND ITURE OF RICH MENT 319
idences with plenty of unprotected windows, we
conclude that the government is Omnipotent and
the great men live in peace. If we go through a
democratic country like Switzerland, and find
moderation in the size of houses and in the man-
ner of living, the custom of the country, we con-
clude that the majority is in power, and that every
man has his say in the management of the state.
In short it may be truly said that dwelling-places,
from the Indian's tepee up to the palace of the
great noble, indicate, far more clearly than books
or constitutions, the political and social condition
of the country.
It is only of late years that we have had among
us a class capable of equalling or outdoing the
European aristocracy in wealth. American fort-
unes are now said to be greater than any of those
of Europe, and nearly, if not quite, as numerous.
But the rich American is face to face with a prob-
lem by which the European was not, and is not,
troubled. He has to decide for himself, what is
decided for the European by tradition, by custom,
by descent, if not by responsibilities, how to spend
his money. The old rich class in Europe may be
said to inherit their obligations of every kind.
When a man comes of age, if he inherits wealth,
and is of what is called “good family,” he finds
settled for him the kind of house he shall live in,
320 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
(
the number of horses and servants he shall keep,
the extent to which he shall entertain. His in-
come is, in truth, already disposed of by will, or
settlement, or custom. There are certain people
he is expected to maintain in a certain way, a cer-
tain style in which he is to live. This has led to,
what appears to the American, the curious reluc-
tance of the Englishman “to lay down his car-
riage.” To certain families, houses, and properties,
to certain social positions, in short, is attached the
obligation of “keeping a carriage.” It is one of
the outward and visible signs of the owner's place
in the state. To the American it is generally a mere
convenience, which some years he possesses and
other years he does not, and the absence of which
excites no remark among his neighbors. If an
Englishman of a certain rank gives it up, it indi-
cates the occurrence of a pecuniary catastrophe. It
advertises misfortune to the world. It says that
he has been vanquished in a struggle, that his posi-
tion is in danger, and his friends sympathize with
him accordingly, partly because the women of his
family do not, as with us, use public conveyances
in the cities.
From all these responsibilities and suggestions
the American, when he “makes his pile,” is free.
He can say for himself how the owner of millions
in a country like this ought to live. He may have
TEIE EXPEND ITURE OF BICH MEV 321
one servant, eat in the basement, sup On Sunday
evenings on scalloped oysters, and sit in his shirt-
sleeves on his own stoop in a One-hundred-thou-
sand-dollar house, and nobody will make any re-
mark. Or he may surround himself with lackeys,
whom he treats as equals, and who teach him how
the master of lackeys should behave, give gorgeous
entertainments to other rich men like himself,
at which his wife will eclipse in finery all other
wives, and nobody will express interest or surprise
except people who long for invitations from him.
Or he may, after a period of such luxury, “burst
up,” sell everything out, and go live in Orange or
Flushing. Or his wife may “tire of housekeeping,”
and they may retire to an expensive apartment in
the Waldorf, or Savoy, after storing their furni-
ture, or selling it at auction. What this indicates
, is simply that great wealth has not yet entered
into our manners. No rules have yet been drawn
to guide wealthy Americans in their manner of
life. Englishmen, Frenchmen, Prussians, Austri-
ans, Swiss, of rank and of fortune, have ways of
spending their money, notions of their own of
what their position and personal dignity require.
But nothing of the kind is yet national in America.
The result is that we constantly see wealthy Ameri-
cans travelling in Europe, without the slightest
idea of what they will or ought to do next, except
21
322 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
get rid of their money as fast as possible, by the
payment of monstrous prices and monstrous fees,
or the committal of other acts which to Europeans
are simply vulgar eccentricities, but which our
countrymen try to cover up by calling them
“American " when “irrational” would be a more
fitting appellation. Some of this confusion of
mind is due, as Matthew Arnold has suggested in
One of his letters, to the absence among us of an
aristocracy to set an example of behavior to our
rich men. In European countries the newly en-
riched drop easily into the ranks of the aristocracy
by a mere process of imitation. They try to dress
and behave in the same way, and though a little
fun may be made of them at first, they and their
sons soon disappear in the crowd.
Ours do not enjoy such an advantage. They
have to be, therefore, their own models, and there
are finesses of manners and points of view in an
aristocracy which are rarely got hold of except by
long contact. By aristocracy I do not mean sim-
ply rich or well-born people, but people who have
studied and long practised the social art, which is
simply another name for the art of being agree-
able. The notion that it consists simply in being
kindly, and doing pleasant things for people, and
having plenty of money, is one of the American
delusions. The social art, like all other arts, is
THE EXPEND ITURE OF RICET MENT 323
only carried to perfection, or to high excellence,
by people who carefully practise it, or pay great
attention to it. It consists largely in what are
called “minor morals,” that is, in doing things in
society which long custom has settled on as suita-
ble for the set of people with whom one associates.
But it is full of what seem trifles, and which often
become absurd if practised as a branch of learning
acquired out of books. Like a large number of
other things in civilized life, to be well practised
it needs to be practised without thought, as some-
thing one is bred to. It is better obtained from
books, or by study, than not at all, but it is most
easily learned by observation. Ease of manner,
taste in dress, tone of voice, insight into the ways
of looking at Small things of well-mannered peo-
ple, are most easily acquired by Seeing them in
others. The benefit of watching adepts in this
art have been enjoyed by but few rich men in
America, and the result is that the rich world
with us can hardly be called a social world at all.
There can hardly be said to be among us what is
called in Europe a “world” or “monde,” in which
there is a stock of common traditional manners
and topics and interests, which men and women
have derived from their parents, and a common
mode of behavior which has assumed an air of
sanctity. Our very rich people are generally sim-
324 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
ply rich people with everything in the way of so-
cial life to learn, but with a desire to learn which
is kept in check by the general belief in the com-
munity that they have nothing at all to learn, and
that it is enough to be rich.
That, under these circumstances, they should, in
somewhat slavish imitation of Europe, choose the
most conspicuous European mode of asserting
social Supremacy, the building of great houses, is
not surprising. But in this imitation they make
two radical mistakes. They want the two princi-
pal reasons for European great houses. One is
that great houses are in Europe signs either of
great territorial possessions, or of the practice of
hospitality on a scale unknown among us. A very .
large house in the country in Europe indicates
either that the owner is the possessor of great es-
tates, or that he means to draw on some great
capital for a large body of guests whom he will
amuse by field sports out-of-doors, or who will
amuse each other in-doors. These are the excuses
for great houses in England, France, or Austria.
The owner is a great landholder, and has in this
way from time immemorial given notice of the
fact. Or he is the centre of a large circle of
men and women who have practised the Social art,
who know how to idle and have the means to idle,
can talk to each other so as to entertain each
THE EXPEND ITURE OF RICH MEW 325
other, about sport, or art, or literature, or politics,
are, in short, glad to meet each other in luxurious
Surroundings.
No such conditions exist in America. In the
first place, we have no great landholders, and there
is no popular recognition of the fact that a great
landowner, or great man of any sort, needs a great
house. In the second place, we have no capital to
draw on for a large company of men and women
who will amuse each other in a social way, even
from Friday to Monday. The absence of any-
thing we can call Society, that is, the union of
wealth and culture in the same persons, in all the
large American cities, except possibly Boston, is
One of the marked and remarkable features of our
time. It is, therefore, naturally what one might
expect, that we rarely hear of Americans figuring
in cultivated circles in England. Those who go
there with Social aspirations desire most to get into
what is called “ the Prince of Wales's set,” in which
their national peculiarities furnish great amuse-
ment among a class of people to whom amusement
is the main thing. It would be easy enough to fill
forty or fifty rooms from “Friday to Monday” in
a house near New York or Boston. But what
kind of company would it be 2 How many of the
guests would have anything to say to each other ?
Suppose “stocks" to be ruled out, where would
326 POLITICAL AND ECOWOMIC ESSA YS
the topics of conversation be found 2 Would there
be much to talk about except the size of the host's
fortune, and that of some other persons present 2
How many of the men would wish to sit with the
ladies in the evening and participate with them in
conversation ? Would the host attempt two such
gatherings, without abandoning his efforts in dis-
gust, selling out the whole concern, and going to
Europe?
One fatal difficulty in the way of such modes of
hospitality with us is the difference of social cult-
ure between our men and women. As a rule, in
the European circle called “society” the men and
women are interested in the same topics, and these
topics are entirely outside what is called “busi-
ness; ” they are literary or artistic, or in some de-
gree intellectual, or else sporting. With us such
topics are left almost entirely to women. What-
ever is done among us for real Society is done by
women. It is they, as a general rule, who have
opinions about music, or the drama, or literature,
or philosophy, or dress, or art. It is they who
have reflected on these things, who know some-
thing and have something to say about them. It is
a rare thing for husbands or sons to share in these
interests. For the most part they care little about
them ; they go into no Society but dinners, and at
dinners they talk stocks and money. A meeting
THE EXPEND ITURE OF RICE MEN 32?
of women for discussion on such subjects would
be a dreadful bore to them. The husband feels
better employed in making money for his wife
and daughters to spend seeing the sights abroad.
This difference in the culture of the sexes, and
in the practice of the social art, is in fact so
great in some parts of the country as to make
happy marriages rare or brief. It makes immense
houses, with many chambers, in town or country,
almost an absurdity in Our present stage of prog-
TéSS.
Another, and the most serious reason against
spending money in America in building great
dwelling-houses, is, as I have already indicated,
that the dwellings of leading men in every country
should be in some sort of accord with the national
manners. If there be what is called a “note” in
American polity, it is equality of conditions, that
there should neither be an immoderate display of
wealth, nor of poverty, that no man should be
raised so far above the generality in outward seem-
ing as to excite either envy, hatred, or malice ;
that, above all things, wealth should not become
an object of apprehension. We undoubtedly owe
to suspicion and dislike of great wealth and dis-
plays of it, the Bryan platform, with its absurdities
and its atrocities. The accumulation of great fort-
unes since the war, honestly it may be, but in
328 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSAYS
ways mysterious or unknown to the plain man, has
introduced among us the greatest of European
curses—class hatred, the feeling among one large
body of the community that they are being cheated
or oppressed by another body. To erect “palatial
abodes” is to flaunt in the faces of the poor and
the unsuccessful and greedy the most conspicu-
ous possible evidence that the owner not only has
enormous amounts of money, but does not know
what to do with it. We know that from the earliest
times there has not been, and we know that there
is not now, the Smallest popular dislike to the suc-
cessful man’s “living like a gentleman,” as the say-
ing is, that is, with quiet comfort, and with a rea-
Sonable amount of personal attendance. But the
popular gall rises when an American citizen ap-
pears, in the character of a Montmorenci, or a
Noailles, or a Westminster, in a gorgeous palace, at
the head of a large army of foreign lackeys. They
ask themselves what does this mean 2 Whither
are we tending? Is it possible we are about to re-
new On this soil, at the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the extravagances and follies of the later Ro-
man Empire and of the age of Louis XIV. 2 What
it does mean, in most cases, is simply that the citi-
Zen has more money than he finds it easy to dis-
pose of. Consequently the only thing he can think
of is building a residence for himself, which, like
THE EXPEND ITURE OF RICH MEN 329
Versailles, shall astonish the world, if in no other
way, by its cost.
All this may be said without denying in the
least the great liberality of American millionnaires.
What colleges, schools, museums, and charities
owe to them is something new in the history of
the world. They have set Europe an example in
this matter which is one of the glories of America.
It is a pity to have them lessen its effect or turn
attention away from it, by extravagance or frivol-
ity, the more so because there is a mode still open
to them of getting rid of cumbersome money,
which is untried, and is full of honest fame and
endless memory. We mean the beautifying of our
cities with monuments and buildings. This should
really be, and, I believe, will eventually become,
the American way of displaying wealth. Consider-
ing what our wealth is and what the burden of our
taxation is, and, as shown by the Chicago Exhi-
bition, what the capabilities of our native archi-
tecture are, the condition of our leading cities as
regards monuments of sculpture or architecture,
is one of the sorrowful wonders of our condition.
We are enormously rich, but except one or two
things, like the Boston Library and the Washing-
ton public buildings, what have we to show? Al-
most nothing. Ugliness from the artistic point of
view is the mark of all our cities. The stranger
330. I?OLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
looks through them in vain for anything but popu-
lation and hotels. No arches, no great churches,
no court-houses, no city halls, no statues, no tombs,
no municipal splendors of any description, nothing
but huge inns.
I fear, too, of this poverty we are not likely soon
to be rid, owing to the character of the govern-
ment. It will always, under the régime of universal
suffrage, be difficult in any city to get the average
tax-payer to do much for art, or to allow art, as we
see in the case of the Sherman Monument, to be
made anything but the expression of his own ad-
miration for somebody. It is almost impossible to
prevent monuments or buildings being jobs or cari-
catures, through the play of popular politics on a
subject which was no more meant for its treatment
by majorities than the standard of value. Govern-
ments in all European countries do much for art.
They erect fine public buildings under the best
artistic conditions. They endow and maintain
picture-galleries and museums. In fact the culti-
vation of art is one of their accepted functions.
Nothing of the kind is known among us. It would
infuriate Populists and Bryanites to know that Our
Treasury was putting tens of thousands of dollars
into books and paintings, or bric-à-brac, or even
into art-education. An Ecole des Beaux Arts, or
National Gallery, seems to be an impossibility for
THE EXPEND ITURE OF RICH MENT 331
us. Whatever is done for beauty in America, must,
it seems, at least for a long time to come, be done
by private munificence. If we are to have noble
arches, or gateways, or buildings, or monuments of
any description, if our cities are to have other at-
tractions than large hotels, it is evident our rich
men must be induced to use for this purpose the
wealth which it seems often to puzzle them to
spend. Such works would be a far more striking
evidence of the owner's opulence than any private
palace, would give his name a perpetuity which
can never be got from a private house, and would
rid him completely from the imputation of selfish-
ness. For our experience with regard to great
houses, hitherto, is that the children of the men
who cause them to be built rarely wish to live in
them, and often have not the means to do so. Such
buildings become after their death either hotels or
some kind of charitable institutions. They are in
no sense memorials in men's minds of anything
but somebody's folly or extravagance. All they
say to coming generations, if they are not pulled
down, is that So-and-so made a fortune.
In erecting public monuments a rich man would
have the great advantage of doing what he pleased.
If the thing were more than a building, were, for
instance, an arch or a fountain, all he would have
to get from the public would be permission to
332 POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC ESSA YS
build, which would be seldom difficult. To obtain
from a popular government large expenditure of
money in a way which artists would approve, es-
pecially a government resting on a public as little
instructed in art matters as ours, is likely to be for
a long time to come at least almost an impossibil-
ity. Men in office are rarely experts in such mat-
ters, and if thoroughly honest, are apt to plume
themselves on their economy and rigid devotion to
utility, rather than on any regard for beauty. The
banker in New York who refused, some time ago,
to give in aid of an Academy of Design, money
which might be used, he said, in Setting “a young
man up in the grocery business,” fairly represented
the state of mind of any official class which we
are likely to have for a good while. Our reliance
for the ornamentation of the new world must there-
fore be mainly on our rich men. They can choose
their subject and their architect, without let or
hindrance, and they have thus far shown them-
selves fully alive to the value of professional ad-
vice and criticism. They have, in fact, before
them a wonderful opportunity, of which we trust
the next generation at least will avail itself, without
servile imitation of a society which is passing away
in the places in which history produced it.
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
GRADUATE LIBRARY
DATE DUE
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