Yet where did the sin begin? Shall the blame fall on the English Parliament, which countenanced and even encouraged the trade in human bodies, or shall it fall on the Southern States, which kept the slaves in ignorance, and even threatened to punish any one who should instruct them? Or shall it fall on the Northern States, which were chiefly responsible for immediately granting to the freedmen, for the sake of party politics, all prerogatives of fellow-citizenship? Or shall the fault be put on the negro himself, who saw in his freedom from slavery an open door to idleness and worthlessness?
For generations the white man has regarded the black man as merchandise, has forcibly dragged him from his African jungles to make him work in ignorance and oppression on the cotton, rice, and tobacco fields of a white master. Then all at once he was made free and became an equal citizen in a country which, in its abilities, its feelings, its laws, and its Constitution, had the culture of two thousand years behind it. How has this emancipation worked on these millions? The first decade was a period of unrest and of almost frightened awakening to the consciousness of physical freedom, in the midst of all the after-effects of the fearful war. The negro was terrified by Southern secret societies which were planning vengeance, and confused by the dogmas of unscrupulous politicians who canvassed the states which had been so savagely shaken by the war, in order to gather up whatever might be found; and he was confused by a thousand other contradictions in public sentiment. Nowhere was there a secure refuge. Then followed the time in which the negroes hoped to employ their political power to advantage; the negroes were to be prospered by their ballot. But they found this to be a hopeless mistake. Then they believed a better way was to be found in the public schools and books. But the negro was again turned back; he needed not knowledge but the power to do, not books but a trade. So his rallying-cry has shifted. The blacks have never lost heart, and in a certain sense it must in justice be added the whites have never lacked good-will. And yet, after forty years of freedom, the results are highly discouraging.
On the outside there is much that speaks of almost brilliant success. The negroes have to-day in the United States 450 newspapers and four magazines; 350 books have been written by negroes; half of all the negro children are regularly taught in schools; there are 30,000 black teachers, school-houses worth more than $10,000,000, forty-one seminaries for teachers, and churches worth over $25,000,000. There are ten thousand black musicians and hundreds of lawyers. The negroes own four large banks, 130,000 farms, and 150,000 homes, and they pay taxes on $650,000,000 worth of real and personal property. The four past decades have therefore brought some progress to the freedman. And yet, in studying the situation, one is obliged to say that these figures are somewhat deceptive. The majority of negroes are still in such a state of poverty and misery, of illiteracy and mental backwardness, that the negroes who can be at all compared with the middle class of Americans are vanishingly few. Even the teachers and the doctors and pastors seem only very little to differ from the proletariat; and although there is many a negro of means, it is still a question whether he is able to enjoy his property, whether the dollar in his hand is the same as in the hand of a white man.
A part of the black population has certainly made real progress, but a larger part is humanly more degraded than before the slaves were freed; and if one looks at it merely as a utilitarian, considering only the amount of pleasure which the negroes enjoy, one cannot doubt that the general mass of negroes was happier under slavery. Their temperament is crueller to them than any plantation master could have been. The negro—we must have no illusions on that point—has partly gone backward. The capacity for hard work which he acquired in four generations of slavery, he has in large part lost again during forty years of freedom; although, indeed, the tremendous cotton harvests from the Southern States are gathered almost wholly by negro labour. It must be left to anthropology to find out whether the negro race is actually capable of such complete development as the Caucasian race has come to after thousands of years of steady labour and progress. The student of social politics need not go into such speculations; he faces the fact that the African negro has not had the thousands of years of such training, and therefore, although he might be theoretically capable of the highest culture, yet practically he is still unprepared for the higher duties of civilization. Under the severe discipline of slavery he overcame his lazy instincts and learned how to work both in the field and in the shop, according as the needs of his master required, and became in this way a useful member of society; but he was relieved of all other cares. His owner provided him with house and nourishment, cared for him in illness, and protected him like any other valuable piece of property.
All this was suddenly changed on the great day when freedom was declared; no one compelled the negro to work then; he was free to follow his instinct to do nothing; no one punished him when he gave himself over to sensuality and indolence. But on the other side nobody now took care of him; in becoming his own master he remained his own slave. He was suddenly pushed into the struggle for existence, and the less he was forced to learn the less he was ready for the fight. There thus grew up an increasing mass of poverty-stricken negroes, among whom immorality and crime could thrive; and oftentimes the heavy weight of this mass has dragged down with it those who would have been better. Worst of all, it has strengthened the aversion of the whites a hundred-fold, and the best members of the negro race have had to suffer for the laziness, the sensuality, and the dishonesty of the great masses.
The real tragedy is not in the lives of the most miserable, but in the lives of those who wish to rise, who feel the mistakes of their fellow-negroes and the injustice of their white opponents, who desire to assimilate everything high and good in the culture about them, and yet who know that they do not, strictly speaking, belong to such a culture. The negroes of the lower type are sunk in their indifference; they while away the hours in coarse enjoyments, and are perfectly content with a few watermelons while they dance and sing. The onlooker is disheartened, but they themselves laugh like children. The better negroes, on the other hand, feel all the hardship and carry the weight of the problem on their souls. They go through life fully conscious of an insoluble contradiction in their existence; they feel that it is denied them to participate immediately in life, and that they must always see themselves with the eyes of others, and lead in a way a double existence. As one of them has recently said, they are always conscious of being a problem.
They themselves have not chosen their lot, they did not come of their own accord from Africa, nor gladly take on the yoke of slavery; nor were they by their own efforts saved from slavery. They have been passive at every turn of fortune. Now they wish to commence to do their best and to give their best, and they have to do this in an environment for which they are wholly unprepared and which is wholly beyond them in its culture They have not themselves worked out this civilization; they belong historically in another system, and remain here at best mere imitators. And the better they succeed in being like their neighbours, the more they become unlike what they ought naturally to develop into.
This feeling of disparateness leads directly to the feeling of embitterment. In the general masses, however, it is the feeling of incompetence to support the struggle for existence successfully which turns necessarily into a bitter hatred of the whites. And the more the lack of discipline and the laziness of the black cause the whites to hold him in check, so much the more brightly burns this hatred. But all students of the South believe that this hatred has come about wholly since the negro was declared free. The slave was faithful and devoted to his master, who took care of him; he hated work, but did not hate the white man, and took his state of slavery as a matter of course, much as one takes one’s inability to fly. A patriarchal condition prevailed in the South before the war, in spite of the representations made by political visionaries. Indeed, it is sometimes difficult not to doubt whether it was necessary to do away with slavery so suddenly and forcibly; whether a good deal of self-respect would not have been saved on both sides, and endless hatred, embitterment, and misery spared, if the Northern States had left the negro question to itself, to be solved in time through organic rather than mechanical means. Perhaps slavery would then have gone gradually over into some form of patriarchal relation.
It is too late to philosophize on this point; doctrinarianism has shaped the situation otherwise. The arms of the Civil War have decided in favour of the North. It is dismal, but it must be said that the actual events of the ensuing years of peace have decided rather in favour of the view of the South. To comprehend this fully, it is not enough to ask merely, as we have done so far, how the negro now feels; but more specially to ask what the American now thinks.
What is to-day the relation between the white man and the negro? There is a difference here between the North and the South, and yet one thing is true for both: the American feels that the cleft between the white and black races is greater now than ever before. So far as the North is concerned, the political view of the problem has probably changed very little. Specially the New England States, whose exalted ethical motives were beyond all doubt—as perhaps is not so certain of the Middle States—still sympathize to-day with the negro as a proper claimant of human rights. But unfortunately one may believe in the negro in the abstract, and yet shrink from contact with him in the concrete. The personal dislike of the black man, one might even call it an æsthetic antipathy, is really more general and wide-spread in the North than in the South. South of Washington one can scarcely be shaved except by a negro, while north of Philadelphia a white man would quite decline to patronize a coloured barber. A Southerner is even not averse to having a black nurse in the house, while in the Northern States that would never be thought of. Whenever the principle is to be upheld, the negro is made welcome in the North. He is granted here and there a small public office; he delivers orations, and is admitted to public organizations; he marches in the parades of war veterans, and a few negroes attend the universities. And still there is no real social intercourse between the races. In no club or private house and on no private occasions does one meet a negro. And here the European should bear specially in mind that negroes are not seldom men and women whose faces are perhaps as white as any Yankee’s, and who often have only the faintest taint of African blood.
At the very best the Northerner plays philanthropist toward the negro, takes care of his schools and churches, helps him to help himself, and to carve out his economic freedom. But even here the feeling has been growing more and more in recent years that the situation is somehow fundamentally false, and that the North has acted hastily and imprudently in accepting the emancipated negro on terms of so complete equality. The feeling of dissatisfaction is growing in the North, and it is not an accident that the negro population of the North grows so slowly, although the negro is always ready to wander, and would crowd in great numbers to the North if he might hope to better his fortunes there. The negro feels, however, intensely that he is still less a match for the energetic Northerner in the industrial competition than for the white man of the South, and that it is often easier to endure the hatred of the Southerner than the coldly theoretical sufferance of the Northerner when joined, as it is, with a personal distaste so pronounced.
In the South it is quite different. There could hardly be an æsthetic aversion for the race, when for generations blacks and whites have lived together, when all the servants of the home have been coloured, and the children have grown up on the plantations with their little black playmates. There has been a good deal in the easy good-nature of the negro which the Southern white man has always found sympathetic, and he responded in former times to the disinterested faithfulness of the slaves with a real attachment. And although this may have been such fondness as one feels for a faithful dog or an intelligent horse, there was in it, nevertheless, no trace of that physical repulsion felt by the Northerner. The same is fundamentally true to-day, and the rhetorical emphasis of the physical antipathy toward the black which one finds in Southern speeches is certainly in part hypocritical. It is true that even to-day the poorest white man would think himself too good to marry the most admirable coloured woman; but the reason of this would lie in social principles, and not, as politicians would like to make it appear, in any instinctive racial aversion, since so long as the negroes were in slavery the whites had no aversion to such personal contamination.
The great opposition which now exists is two-fold: it is on the one hand political and on the other social. The political situation of the South has been indeed dominated in the last forty years by the negro question. There have been four distinct periods of development; the first goes from the end of the Civil War to 1875. It was the time when the negro had first received the suffrage and become a political factor, the most dreary time which the South ever knew. It was economically ruined, was overrun with a disgusting army of unscrupulous politicians, who wanted nothing but to pervert the ignorant coloured voters for the lowest political ends. The victorious party in the North sent its menials down to organize the coloured quarry, and by mere numbers to outdo all independent activities of the white population.
One can easily understand why a Southern historian should say that the Southern States look back without bitterness on the years of the war, when brave men met brave men on the field of battle; but that they are furious when they remember the years which followed, when the victors, partly out of mistaken philanthropy, partly out of thoughtlessness and indifference, and partly out of evil intent, hastened to put the reins of government into the hands of a race which was hardly out of African barbarism; and thus utterly disheartened the men and women who had built up the splendid culture of the Old South. Perhaps there was no phase of American history, he says, so filled with poetry and romantic charm as the life of the South in the last ten years before the war; and certainly no period has been so full of mistakes, uncertainties, and crime as the decade immediately following. A reaction had to come, and it came in the twenty years between 1875 and 1895. The South betook itself to devious methods at the ballot-box. It was recognized that falsification of election returns was an evil, but it was thought to be a worse evil for the country to be handed over to the low domination of illiterate negroes. The political power of the negro has been broken in this way. Again and again the same method was resorted to, until finally the public opinion of the South approved of it, and those who juggled with the ballot-box were not pursued by the arm of the law, because the general opinion was with them.
There has been another and more important fact. Slowly all party opposition between the whites vanished, and the race question became the sole political issue. To be sure, there have been free-traders and protectionists in the South, and representatives of all other party principles; but all genuine party life flagged and all less important distinctions vanished at the ballot-box when the whites rallied against the blacks, and since the negroes voted invariably with the Republican party, which had set them free, the entire white population of the South has become Democratic. By this political consolidation, the power of the negro has been further restricted.
People have gradually become convinced, however, that political life stagnates when large states have only the one fixed idea, as if hypnotized by the race issue. The need has been felt anew of participating once more in all the great problems which interest the nation and which create the parties. The South looks back longingly on the time when it used to furnish the most brilliant statesmen of the nation. The South has become also aware that so soon as public opinion allows a systematic corruption of the ballot-box, then every kind of selfishness and corruption has an easy chance to creep in.
Let once the election returns be falsified in order to wipe out a negro majority, and they may be falsified the next time in favour of some commercial conspiracy. An abyss opens up which is truly bottomless. So a third period has arrived. In place of nullifying the negro suffrage by illegal means, the South has been thinking out legal measures for limiting it. The Constitution prescribes merely that no one shall be deprived of his vote by reason of his colour, but it has been left to the several states to determine what the other conditions shall be which govern the right to vote. Thus any state is free to place a certain property condition, or to require a certain degree of education from every man who votes; but all such conditions must apply to all inhabitants of the state alike; thus, for instance, in four states, and only in those four, do women enjoy the suffrage. Now the Southern States have commenced to make extensive use of this state privilege. They are not allowed to exclude the negro as a negro since the Northern States have added the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, and there would be no hope of altering this. But so long as the educational status of the negro is so far behind that of the white man, the number of those who cannot read is still so large that a heavy blow is struck at negro political domination when a state decides to restrict the suffrage to those who can read and understand the Constitution. It is clear that at the same time the test of this which necessarily has to be made leaves the coveted free-play to the white man’s discretion.
The last few years have witnessed a great advance of this new movement. The political power of the negro is less than ever, and the former illegal measures to circumvent it are no longer needed. It cannot be denied that in two ways this works directly in the interests of civilization. On the one hand, it incites the negro population to take measures for the education of its children, since by going to school the negro can comply with the conditions of suffrage. On the other hand, it frees Southern politics from the oppressive race question, and allows real party problems to become once more active issues among the whites. The political contrast is, therefore, to-day somewhat lessened, although both parties regard it rather as a mere cessation of hostilities; since it is by no means certain that Northern political forces at Washington will not once more undo this infringement on the negroes’ rights, and whether once more, in case of a real party division between the Southern whites, the negroes will not have the deciding vote. If the doctrinarianism of the North should actually prevail and be able to set aside these examinations in reading and in intelligence which have been aimed against the negro, on the ground that they are contrary to the Constitution, it would indeed frustrate a great movement toward political peace. When the abolitionists at the end of the Civil War granted the suffrage to the negroes, they were at least able to adduce one very good excuse; they claimed that the Southern States would continue in some new form to hold the negro in subjection if he was not protected by either a military guard or by his right to vote, and since the army was to be disbanded the right to vote was given him. To-day there is no such danger; the legal exclusion of the Southern negro from the ballot-box must be accounted an advance.
The social question, however, is even more important to-day than the political one, and it is one which grows day by day. We have said already that the Southerner has no instinctive aversion to the negro race, and his desire for racial purity is not an instinct but a theory, of which the fathers of the present white man knew nothing. To be sure, the situation cannot be simply formulated, but it probably comes nearest to the truth to say that the white man’s hatred is the inherited instinct of the slave-holder. In all his sentiments the Southerner is dominated by the once natural feeling that the negro is his helpless subject. The white man is not cruel in this; he wants to protect the negro and to be kind, but he can allow him no will of his own. He has accustomed himself to the slavish obedience of the negro, as the opium-eater is accustomed to his opium. And to give up the paralyzing drug is intolerable to his nervous system.
The everywhere repeated cry that the purity of the race is in danger, if social equality is established, is only a pretext; it is in truth the social equality itself which calls forth the hysterical excitement. No white man, for instance, in the South would go into the dining-room of a hotel in which a single negro woman should be sitting; but this is not because a mere proximity would be disagreeable, as it would actually be to the Northerner, but because he could not endure such appearance of equality. So soon as a little white child sits beside the negro woman, so that she is seen to be a servant and her socially inferior station is made plain, then her presence is no longer felt to be at all disagreeable.
In his fight against social equality with the negro, the Southerner resorts to more and more violent means; and while he works himself up to an increasing pitch of excitement by the energy of his opposition, the resulting social humiliation increases the embitterment of the negro. That no white hotel, restaurant, theatre, or sleeping-car is open to the black is a matter of course; this is virtually true also in the North. But it has contributed very much to renewed disaffection, that also the ordinary railroad trains and street cars begin to make a similar distinction.
The South is putting a premium on every kind of harsh social affront to the black man, and relentlessly punishes the slightest social recognition. When the president of a negro college was the guest of a Northern hotel and the chamber-maid refused to put his room to rights and was therefore dismissed, the South got together, by a popular subscription, a large purse for this heroine. It is only from this point of view that one can understand the great excitement which swept through the South when President Roosevelt had the courage to invite to his table Booker T. Washington, the most distinguished negro of the country. Professor Basset, the historian, has declared, amid the fierce resentment of the South, that, with the exception of General Lee, Booker Washington is the greatest man who has been born in the South for a hundred years. But who inquires after the merits of a single man when the principle of social inequality is at stake? If the President had worked for several months from early to late at his desk with Booker T. Washington, the fact would have passed unnoticed. But it is simply unpardonable that he invited him to the luncheon table, and even very thoughtful men have shaken their heads in the opinion that this affront to the social superiority of the white man will very sadly sharpen the mutual antagonism.
We must not overlook in this connection the various minor circumstances which have strengthened the lingering feeling of the slave-owner. First of all, there is the unrestrained sensuality of the negro, which has led him time after time to attempt criminal aggressions on white women, and so contributed infinitely to the misery of his situation. It is a gross exaggeration when the Southern demagogue reiterates again and again that no man in the South can feel that his wife, his sister, or daughter is secure from the bestiality of the blacks; and yet it cannot be denied that such crimes are shockingly frequent, and they are the more significant, since the continual fear of this danger seriously threatens the growth of farming life with its lonely farm-houses. Here the barbarities of lynch law have come in, and the rapid growth of racial hatred may be seen in the increased number of lynchings during recent years. But every lynching reacts to inoculate hatred and cruel ferocity in the public organism, and so the bestial instincts and the lawless punishments work together to debase the masses in the Southern States.
It is not only a question of the immorality of the negro and the lynch courts of the white man, but in other ways the negro shows himself inclined to crime, and the white man to all sorts of lawless acts against him. The negroes are disproportionately represented in Southern prisons, although this comes partly from the fact that the black man is punished for the slightest misdemeanour, while the white man is readily let off. In fact, it is difficult in the South to find a jury to convict a white man of any crime done against a negro. This application of a two-fold standard of justice leads quickly to a general arbitrariness which fits only too well with the natural instincts of the slave-holder. Arbitrary privileges in place of equal rights have always been the essential point in his existence, and so it happens that even where no negroes are in question Southern juries hand down verdicts which scandalize the whole country. Indeed, there is no doubt that secret attempts have even been made, in all sorts of devious forms, to re-establish the state of slavery. For some small misdemeanour negroes are condemned to pay a very heavy fine, and to furnish this they have to let themselves out to some sort of contract labour under white masters, which amounts to the same thing as slavery. Here again the whole country is horrified when the facts come to be known. But no means have yet been thought of for lessening the bitter hatred which exists, and so long as the sharp social contrast remains there will continue to be evasions and violations of the law, to give vent to the hatred and bitter feeling.
What now may one look for, that shall put an end to these unhappy doings? The Africans have had their Zionists, who wish to lead them back to their native forests in Africa, and many people have recently fancied that the problem would be solved by forcible deportation to the Philippines. These dreams are useless; nine million people cannot be dumped on the other side of the ocean, cannot be torn from their homes. Least of all could they be brought to combine with the entirely different population of the Philippines. More than that, the South itself would fight tooth and nail against losing so many labourers; it would be industrially ruined, and would be more grievously torn up than it was after the Civil War, if in fact some magic ship could carry every black to the negro republic of Liberia, on the African coast. For the same reason it is impracticable to bring together all negroes in one or two Southern States and leave them to work out their own salvation. In the first place, no state would be willing to draw this black lot, while the white population of the other Southern States would suffer fully as much. The student of social politics, finally, cannot doubt for a moment that the negro progresses only when he is in constant contact with white men, and degenerates with fearful speed when he is left to himself.
Among those negroes who have been called to be the leaders of their people, and who form an independent opinion of the situation, one finds two very different tendencies. One of these is to reform from the top down, the other from the bottom up. The energies of Dubois are typical of the first tendency, Booker Washington’s of the second. Dubois, and many of the most educated and advanced negroes with him, believe in the special mission of the negro race. The negro does not want to be, and ought not to be, a second order of American, but the United States are destined by Providence to develop two great and diverse but co-operating peoples, the Americans and the negroes. It is therefore the work of the African not simply to imitate the white man’s culture, but to develop independently a special culture suited to his own national traits. They feel instinctively that a few great men of special physiognomy, two or three geniuses coming from their race, will do more for the honour of their people and for the belief in its possibilities, than the slow elevation of the great mass. They lay strong emphasis on the fact that in his music, religion, and humour the negro has developed strongly individual traits, and that the people who forty years ago were in slavery have developed in a generation under unfavourable circumstances a number of shining orators, politicians, and writers. Thus they feel a most natural ambition to make away for the best and strongest, to elevate them, and to incite them to their highest achievements. The ideal is thus, in the work of the most gifted leaders to present to the world a new negro culture, by which the right of independent existence for the black race in America may be secured.
Booker Washington and his friends wish to go a quieter road; and he has with him the sympathies of the best white people in the country. They look for salvation not from a few brilliantly exceptional negroes, but from the slow and steady enlightenment of the masses; and their real leaders are to be not those who accomplish great things as individuals, but rather they who best serve in the slow work of uplifting their people. These men see clearly that there are to-day no indications of really great accomplishments and independent feats in the way of culture, and that such things are hardly to be looked for in the immediate future. At the very best it is a question of an unusual talent for imitating an alien culture.
If, then, one can hardly speak of brilliant genius in the upper strata—and it is to be admitted that Booker Washington himself is not a really great, independent, and commanding personality—it would be on the other hand much more distorted to estimate the negro from his lowest strata, from the lazy and criminal individuals. The great mass of negroes is uneducated and possesses no manual training for an occupation; but it is honest, healthy, and fit social material, which only needs to be trained in order to become valuable to the whole community. First of all, the negro ought to learn what he has once learned as a slave—a manual trade; he should perfect himself in work of the hands or in some honest agricultural occupation, not seek to create a new civilization, but more modestly to identify his race with the destinies of the white nation by real, honest, thoughtful, true, and industrious labour. Brilliant writers they do not need so much as good carpenters and school-teachers; nor notable individual escapades in the tourney-field of culture so much as a general dissemination of technical training. They need schools for manual training and institutes for the development of technical teachers.
Booker Washington’s own institution in Tuskegee has set the most admirable example, and the most thoughtful men in the North and South alike are very ready to help along all his plans. They hope and believe that so soon as the masses of coloured people have begun to show themselves somewhat more useful to the industry of the country as hand-workers, expert labourers, and farmers, that then the mutual embitterment will gradually die out and the fight for social equality slowly vanish. For on this point the more thoughtful men do not deceive themselves; social equality is nothing but a phrase when it is applied to the relation of millions of people to other millions. Among the whites themselves no one ever thinks of any real social equality; the owner of a plantation no more invites his white workmen in to eat with him than he would invite a coloured man. And when the Southern white replies scornfully to any one who challenges his prejudices, with the convincing question, “Would you let your sister marry a nigger?” he is forgetting, of course, that he himself would not let his sister marry nine-tenths of the white men of his community. Social equality can be predicated only of small groups, and in all exactness only of individuals.
Thus it might be said that peace is advanced to-day chiefly by the increasing exertions for the technical industrial education of the black workman. But it is not to be forgotten that the negro himself, and with him many philanthropists of the North, comprehends the whole situation very differently from the Southern supporters of the movement. These latter are contented with recent tendencies, because the negro’s vote is curtailed in the political sphere, and because he comes to be classed socially with the day-labourer and artisan. The negro, however, looks on this as a temporary stage in his development, and hopes in good time to outgrow it. He is glad that the election returns are no longer falsified on his account, and that legal means have been resorted to. But of course he hopes that he will soon grow beyond these conditions, and be finally favoured once more with the suffrage, just as any white man is.
It is much the same in the social sphere. He may be satisfied for the present that the advantages of manual training and farm labour are brought to the fore, but this must only be to lead his race up step by step until it has developed from a mere working class to entire social equality. That which the negro approves for the moment is what any white man in the Southern States would fix as a permanent condition. And so it appears that even in this wise no real solution of the problem has been reached, although a cessation of hostilities has been declared. But all these efforts on the part of leaders and philanthropists, these deliberations of the best whites and blacks in both the North and South, are still far from carrying weight with the general public; and thus, although the beginnings toward improvement are good, it remains that on the outside the situation looks to-day darker than ever before.
Whoever frees himself from theoretical doctrines will hardly doubt that the leading whites of the Southern States have to-day once more the better insight, since they know the negro better than the Northerners do. They demand that this limitation of the negro in his political rights and in his daily occupation shall be permanent, and that thus an organic situation shall come about in which the negro, although far removed from an undeserved slavery, shall be equally far from the complete enjoyment of that civilization which his own race has not worked out. That is, he is to be politically, economically, and socially dependent. If this had happened at the outset, the mutual hatred which now exists would never have been so fierce; and if the African succeeds materially he will hardly notice the difference, while the white man will feel with satisfaction that his superiority has been vindicated. The condition of the island of Jamaica is a good instance in point. Its inhabitants are strikingly superior to the debased negroes of the Republic of Hayti.
But it is not to be forgotten that history has repeatedly shown how impossible it is for a people numbering millions, with limited rights, to dwell in the midst of an entirely free race. Oppression and injustice constantly arise from the limitation of rights, and thence grow retaliation and crime. And the hour in which the American people narrow down the rights of ten million blacks may be the starting-point for fearful struggles. The fact remains that the real solution of the question is nowhere in sight. The negro question is the only really dark cloud on the horizon of the American nation.
CHAPTER NINE
Internal Political Problems
The problems of population, especially those concerning the immigration and the negro, have taken considerable of our attention. We shall be able to survey problems of internal politics more quickly, since we have already met most of them in considering the American form of government. The insane programme of those who desire no government at all, that is, anarchy, is one of the American’s political problems only when the deed of some foreign assassin gives him a sudden fright. Then all sorts of propositions are on foot to weed out anarchism stem and root; but after a little time they subside. One sees how difficult it is to draw the lines, and the idea of suppressing free political speech is too much against the fundamental principles of the American democracy. But the fundamental principles of anarchism, or rather its fundamental confusions, have so little hope of influencing the conservative ideas of the Americans, that there need be no fear of anarchism creeping into the national mind. In so far as there is any such problem in America, it is connected solely with the question of immigration. Up to the present time, the government has been content to forbid acknowledged anarchists to land; but this involves such an un-American intermeddling with private convictions that the regulation will hardly be tolerated much longer. The true American, in any case, believes in state ordinances and loves his governmental machinery.
This apparatus itself of government has many details which offer problems, indeed, and are much discussed. Some of its elements have been added recently by President Roosevelt; the most important of them is the newly created Department of Commerce and Labour. This new division of the government, with over ten thousand officials, embraces also the Bureau of Corporations, which is designed to collect statistics regarding trusts and the overcoming of their influence; but the struggle promises to be a two-sided one. To the present administration belongs also the creation of a general staff for the Army, and on this head there seems to be a unanimous opinion that the Army is distinctly benefited by the measure. In some other directions, moreover, the make-up of the Army has become more similar to European models; new schools of war have been founded and the plan of holding great manœuvres introduced. The weakness of the military system is that preferments go according to seniority. It is clear to all that a merely mechanical advancement of officers is not advantageous to the military service; and yet everybody is afraid, if the uniform principle is given up and personal preferment is introduced, that all sorts of regrettable political and social influences will be brought to bear in the matter. Many persons see a difficult problem here; the young officer has almost no incentive to-day to special exertions.
The government has more and various plans with regard to the Navy. There, too, it seems as if a general staff similar to that of the Army is indispensable. The steady growth of the Navy itself is assured, since everyone recognizes that America could not carry out its present policy without a strong fleet. The fleet, which dates virtually from 1882, won the hearts of the imperialistic public by its victories at Manila and Santiago; and its growth is nowhere seriously opposed. Likewise, the Navy is introducing more large manœuvres. The real difficulty lies in lack of men; it becomes more and more difficult to get officers and sailors; and even in the question of manning a ship, the inevitable negro question plays a part.
There are many open questions also in regard to the diplomatic and consular service. The United States maintains an uncommonly large number of consuls, whose enterprise is nowhere contested, but whose preparation, tact, and personal integrity often leave a good deal to be desired. Their remuneration through fees contributes a good deal toward creating unwholesome conditions. The personnel of the diplomatic service is perhaps still more unequal than that of the consular. Since early times the United States has had the discernment to send some of its most distinguished men to fill important ambassadorial positions. At a time when the international relations of the country were still insignificant, such a position was often given to distinguished authors and poets, who represented their country at a foreign court in an intellectual and cultivated way, and contributed much to its esteem. This can happen no longer, and yet America has had again and again the good fortune to send to diplomatic positions men of uncommon caliber; scholars like Andrew D. White, statesmen like John Hay, and brilliant jurists like Choate. The danger still subsists, however, that men who are merely rich, and who have done small services to Senators, expect in return a diplomatic appointment, for the sake of the social glory. There is a growing desire to make the diplomatic service a regular career, in which a man progresses step by step.
As to the postal service, the foremost problem is now that of free delivery in rural districts. The tremendous extent of the country and the thinness of its population had at first made it a matter of course that the farmer should fetch his own mail from the nearest village. The rural letter-carrier was unknown, as he is still unknown in small towns; every man in the village goes to the post-office to get his newspapers and letters. But like every country at the present time, the United States is trying to check the continual afflux of population into the cities. It is obvious that specially with the intellectual make-up of the American, every effort must be made to make rural life less monotonous and tiresome, and that it is necessary most of all to establish ready communication between the remote farm-houses and the rest of the world. The more frequently and easily the farming people receive their letters and magazines, so much the less do they feel tempted to leave the soil. For this reason the very expensive rural delivery has spread rapidly. In the last year nine thousand new appointments were made in this service. Another important problem connected with the Post-Office is the fact that it does not pay for itself, because it carries printed matter at unprofitably low rates, and in this way has stimulated to an extraordinary degree the sending of catalogues and advertising matter. One can see how far this goes from the fact that a short time ago a factory for medicine sent out so many copies of a booklet advertising its specific through the so-called “testimonials,” that a railway train with eight large freight cars was necessary to carry them to the nearest post-office. Part of the difficulty comes from the private ownership of the railroads, whose contracts with the government for carrying the mails involve certainly no loss to the stockholders.
In similar wise, all of the great departments of government have their problems, large or small, and the most important of these must be dealt with when we come to speak of the economic situation. But there is one problem that is common to all branches of the government; it is the most important one which concerns internal affairs, and although it is discussed somewhat less actively to-day than in former years, it continues none the less in some new form or other to worry the parties, the government, and more especially public opinion. It is the question of civil-service reform.
We have touched on this question before when we spoke of the struggles between parties, and of the motives which bring the individual into the party service. Some things remain to be said by way of completely elucidating one of the most important problems of American public life. To commence with, if we abstract from the civil service in city and state—although the question is much the same there—that is, if we take into account only the federal service—we find over a hundred thousand official appointments: and the question is—Shall these appointments, with their assured salaries, be distributed to adherents of the party in power, chiefly with reference to their services to the party, or shall these positions be removed from all touch with the parties and given to the best and ablest applicants? It is clear that the problem could easily be so exhibited that the appointment of the best and most capable applicant, without reference to his party, should seem to be absolutely and unequivocally necessary, and as if any other opinion could proceed only from the desire to work corruption. The situation is not quite so simple, however.
In the first place, every one is aware that the highest administrative positions are invariably places of confidence, where it is very necessary that the incumbent shall be one in thought and purpose with the Executive; and this is more than ever necessary in a democracy composed of two parties. If the majority of the people elects a certain President in order to carry out the convictions of one party in opposition to the other, the will of the people would be frustrated if the upper members of the governmental staffs were not to be imbued with the same party ideas. A Republican President could not work together with a Democratic Secretary of State without sacrificing the efficiency of his administration, and struggling along on such compromises as would ultimately make meaningless the existence of two organized parties. A Republican Secretary of State must have, however, if he is to be spared a good deal of friction, an assistant secretary of state with whom he is politically in harmony; and so it goes on down.
But if we begin at the bottom and work up, the situation looks different. The book-keeper to the ministry, the small postal clerk, or the messenger boy in the treasury, has no opportunity to realize his personal convictions. He has merely his regular task to perform, and is not immediately concerned whether the policy of state is Republican or Democratic, imperialistic or anti-imperialistic. We have then to ask—Where lie the boundaries between those higher positions in which the private convictions of the incumbents ought properly to be with the administration, and those lower positions where party questions are in no way involved?
Opinions vary very widely as to where this boundary lies. Some put it rather low, and insist that the American by his whole political training is so thoroughly a creature of the party, that true harmony in state offices can be had only if the whole service from top to bottom is peopled with adherents of the ruling party; and this opinion, although it may be refuted on good grounds, is neither absurd nor dishonest. The population of Germany is divided to-day into a civil and a social-democratic party, and it appears to the dominant civil party by no means unnatural to exclude the social-democrats so far as possible from participation in the public service.
It is quite possible, moreover, for each party to furnish competent incumbents for all the leading positions; and so long as capable men can be found who will acquit themselves well in office, there is of course no reason for charging the party with greed or spoils-gathering, as if the public funds were a pure gift, and it were unworthy to accept an official appointment given in recognition of services to the party. We have already emphasized how extremely German conceptions differ from American on this point, and how the customary reiteration in Germany of the unfavourable comments made by certain American reform enthusiasts, leads to much misunderstanding. It is well-known that Germany has, for instance, for the university professors a system of state appointment, which rests wholly on personal recommendation; this in sharp contrast to England, where the candidates for every vacant chair must compete, and where no one can be called who does not compete; or with France, where the positions are awarded on the basis of an examination.
The considerations which we have stated are not at all to be taken as an argument against civil-service reform, but only as an indication that the problem is complicated and has its pros and cons. In fact, the grounds for the widest possible extension of a civil-service independent of party are many and urgent. In the first place, the service itself demands it. The appointments by party are really appointments on the basis of recommendations and wishes of political leaders. The Senators, for instance, from a certain state advise the President as to who should be appointed for postmasters in the most important post-offices; and the smaller positions are similarly filled on the recommendation of less influential politicians.
Therefore, it is only to a limited extent that there is any real estimation of the capacity and fitness of the proposed incumbent. Public opinion is always watchful, however, and the politician is generally afraid to press an appointment which he knows would be disapproved by public opinion, or which would later be seen to be absurd, would damage his own political credit, and perhaps even wreck his political future.
It is equally true that the political parties have become expert in sifting human material and finding just the right people for the places; and that, moreover, the American with his extraordinary capacity for adaptation and organization easily finds himself at home in any position and fills it creditably. And yet it remains, that in this way the best intentioned appointer works in the dark, and that a technical examination would more accurately select the fittest man from among the various candidates.
Most of all, by this method of appointment on the ground of political influence, where the petitions of the incumbent’s local friends, commendatory letters from well-known men, and the thousand devices of the wire-puller play an important part, the feeling of individual responsibility is always largely lost. The head of the department must rely on local representatives, and these politicians again know that they do not themselves actually make the appointments; and the candidate is put into office with no exertion on his own part—almost passively.
It is not to be denied that in this way many an unworthy man has come to office. The very lowest political services have been rewarded with the best positions. Political candidates have had to promise before their election to make certain appointments to office which had nothing at all to do with the fitness of the appointee; and such appointee, when actually instated, has not only neglected his office, but sometimes criminally misused it for embezzlement and fraudulent contracts, for government deals in which he has had some personal advantage, or for the smuggling in of friends and relatives to inferior positions. Politicians have too often sought to exact all sorts of devious personal and political services from those whom they have previously recommended for office in order to hush them up. Through the intrigues of such men all sorts of unnecessary positions have been created, in order to provide for political friends from the public treasury; and the contest for these personal nominations has consumed untold time and strength in the legislative chambers. No one can fail to see that such sores will develop over and over in the political organism so long as the principle is recognized of making official appointments on the basis of party allegiance. While criminal misuse of such a practice is the exception, and the honourable endeavour to pick out the best candidates and their honest performance of duty are the rule, nevertheless every thoughtful friend of the country’s welfare must wish to make all such exceptions impossible.
There is another unfavourable effect which such a system must have, within the party itself. A man who is put into office by politicians, unless he is a strong man, will labour in the interests of his benefactors, will carry party politics into places where they do not belong, and be ready to let the party rob him of a certain portion of his salary as a contribution to the party treasury, as has been customary for a long time. In this way salaries have been increased in order that a considerable portion might redound to the party treasury, and thus the means be won for bringing the party victoriously through the next elections; and in this way the official has been able to assure himself as good an office, or perhaps a better one, in the future. The same thing happens once more in city politics where the funds levied on city officials have made a considerable share of the party’s assets. There has been good reason, therefore, why public opinion has for a long time demanded, and with increasing energy, an entire change in such a state of things; and aside from the positions of actual confidence, in which in fact only men of a certain political faith could be of any service, it has demanded that public offices be put on a non-partisan basis and given out with a view solely to the efficiency of the appointee.
Such a problem hardly existed during the first forty years of American constitutional government; officials were appointed in a business-like way. A man in office stayed there as long as he did his duties well, and the advent of a new party in the higher positions had very little influence on the lower ones. It was deemed tyranny to dismiss a competent official in order to put a party adherent in his position. The statistics show that at that time not more than forty-two changes on the average were made on such political grounds every year. The opposite practice first arose in the cities, and especially in New York, whence it spread to the state, where in 1818 a whole regiment of party followers was established in the government offices of the state by Van Buren. And under President Jackson the principle finally became adopted in the federal government. About the year 1830, it became an unwritten law that official positions should be the spoils of victory at the elections and go to the favoured party. People were aware that there was no better way of getting party adherents to be industrious than to promise them positions if they would help the party to gain its victory. The reaction commenced at about the middle of the last century, closely following on a similar movement in England.
As the power of the English Parliament grew, popular representatives had demanded their share in the distributing of offices, and an obnoxious trading in salaries had become prevalent. When at last the abuses became too frequent, just before the middle of the last century, England instituted official examinations in order to weed out the obviously unfit candidates. It was not really a true competition, since the candidate was still appointed to office by the politicians. But the examination made sure of a minimal amount of proper training.
The American Congress followed this example during the fifties. Certain groups of minor positions were made, for which appointment could be had only after an examination. England now went further on the same course, and America followed her lead. On both sides of the ocean the insignificant examination of the candidate who had backing, became a general examination for all who wished to apply; so that the position came to be given to the best candidate. The Civil-Service Commission was instituted by President Grant, and for thirty years its beneficent influence has steadily grown, and it has made great inroads on the old system. The regular politicians who could not endure being deprived of the positions which they wished to pledge to their campaign supporters have naturally tried time after time to stem the current, and with some success. In 1875 Congress discontinued the salaries which had been paid the Commissioners; then competitive examinations were given up, and in their stead single examinations instituted for candidates who had been recommended by political influence.
But here, if anywhere, public opinion has been stronger than party spirit. Under President Hayes, and then under Garfield and Arthur, the competitive system was partly reinstated, and while the number of positions which were open only to those who had successfully passed the public examinations increased, at the same time the reprehensible taxation of officials for party ends was finally stopped. This did not prevent a certain smaller number of positions from retaining their partisan complexion; and the opinions and party creed of these incumbents continued to be important, so that whenever one party succeeded another, a certain amount of change was still necessary. So there remain two great divisions of the public service—the political offices which the President fills by appointment in co-operation with the Senate, and the so-called “classified” offices which are given out on the basis of public examinations. Public opinion and the sincere supporters of civil-service reform, among whom is President Roosevelt himself, are working all the time for an increase in the number of classified positions and a corresponding decrease in the political group.
The open opponents of this movement, of whom there are many in both parties, are hard at work in the opposite direction, and are too often supported by the faint-hearted friends of the reform, who recognize its theoretical advantages, but have some practical benefit to derive by pursuing the methods which they decry. There is no doubt that again in the last ten years some steps have been taken backward, and on various pretexts many important positions have been withdrawn from the classified service and restored to Senatorial patronage.
The actual situation is as follows. There are 114,000 non-classified positions, with a total salary of $45,000,000, and 121,000 classified positions which bring a salary of $85,000,000. Among the former, where no competition exists, over 77,000 are postmasterships; then there are consular, diplomatic, and other high positions, and a large number of places for labourers. In the classified service, there are 17,000 positions for officials who live in Washington, 5,000 of which are in the treasury. The committees on the commission have about 400 different kinds of examinations to give. Last year 47,075 persons were examined for admission to the civil service; 21,000 of these for the government service, 3,000 for the customs, and 21,000 for the postal service. There were about 1,000 examinations more for advancements in office and exchange from one part of the service to another, and 439 persons were examined for service in the Philippines. Out of all these applicants 33,739 passed the examinations, and of these 11,764 obtained positions which are theirs for life, independent of any change which may take place at the White House. It is a matter of course that the security which these positions give of life-long employment is the highest incentive to faithful service and conscientious and industrious labour.
The difference between the two services was again clearly brought out in the last great scandal, which greatly stirred up the federal administration. The Post-Office Department had closed a number of contracts for certain utensils from which certain officials, or at least their relatives, made considerable profits. Everything had been most discreetly hidden, and it took an investigation of several months to uncover the crookedness. But when everything had come out, it appeared that the officials who were seriously involved all belonged to the unclassified service, while the classified service of the Post-Office was found to be an admirable example of conscientious and faithful office-holding. Certain it is that such criminal misuse, even among the confidential positions, is a rare exception; it is no less sure that the temptations are much greater there. A man who holds office, not because he is peculiarly fitted for it, but because he has been generally useful in politics, knowing as he does that the next time the parties change places his term of office will be up, will always be too ready to use his position for the party rather than for the country, and finally for himself and his pocket-book rather than for his party.
Now, if civil-service reform is to spread or even to take no steps backward, public opinion must be armed for continual battle against party politicians. But it is an insult to the country when, as too often happens, some one tries to make it appear that the opponents of reform are consciously corrupt. The difficulty of the problem lies just in the fact that most honourable motives may be uppermost on both sides; and one has to recognize this, although one may be convinced that the reformer has the better arguments on his side. The filling of positions by party adherents, as a reward for their services, puts an extraordinary amount of willing labour at the service of the party. And undoubtedly the party system is necessary in America, and demands for its existence just such a tremendous amount of work. The non-classified positions are to the American party politicians exactly what the orders and titles which he can award are to the European monarch; and the dyed-in-the-wool party leader would in all honesty be glad to throw overboard the whole “humbug” of civil-service reform, since he would rather see his party victorious—that is, his party principles acknowledged in high federal places—than see his country served as economically, faithfully, and ably as possible. In fact, the regular party politician has come to look on the frequent shake-up among office-holders as an ideal condition. Just as no President can be elected more than twice, he conceives it to be unsound and un-American to leave an official too long in any one position.
The full significance of the problem comes out when one realizes that the same is true once more in the separate state, and again in every municipality. The states and cities have their classified service, appointment to which is independent of party allegiance, as of governor or mayor, and in addition to this confidential positions for which the governor and legislature or the mayor and city council are responsible. Municipal service has attracted an increasing amount of public attention in recent years, owing to the extremely great abuses which it can harbour.
Fraudulent contracts, the grant of handsome monopolies to street railway, gas, electric-light, telephone, and pier companies, the purchase of land and material for public buildings, and the laying out of new streets—all these things, owing to the extraordinarily rapid growth of municipalities, afford such rich opportunities for theft, and this can be so easily hidden from the state attorney, that frightfully large numbers of unscrupulous people have been attracted into public life. And the more that purely municipal politics call for a kind of party service which is very little edifying or interesting to a gentleman in frock and silk hat, so much the more other kinds of men force their way into politics in large cities and get control of the popular vote, not in order to support certain principles, but to secure for themselves positions from the winning party, of which the salary is worth something and the dishonest perquisites may be “worth” a great deal more. Even here again the service to the city is not necessarily bad, and certainly not so bad as the scandal-mongering press of the opposite party generally represents it. Most of the office-holders are decent people, who are contented with the moderate salary and modest social honour of their positions. Nevertheless, a good deal that is impure does creep in, and the service would be more efficient if it could be made independent of the party machine. Public opinion is sure of this.
Each party is naturally convinced that the greatest blame belongs with the other, and in strict logic one can no more accuse one party of corruption than the other. The Republican party in a certain sense whets the general instinct for greed more than the Democratic, so that its opponents like to call it “the mother of corruption.” It is a part of the Republican confession of faith, in consequence of its centralizing spirit, that the state cannot leave everything to free competition, but must itself exert a regulating influence; thus the Republican does not believe in free-trade, and he thinks it quite right for an industry or any economic enterprise which is going badly, or which fancies that it is not prospering enough, or which for any reason at all would like to make more money, to apply to the state for protection, and to be favoured at the expense of the rest of the community. The principle of complete equality is here lost, and the spirit of preference, of favours for the few against the many, and of the employment of public credit for the advantage of the avaricious, is virtually recognized. And when this spirit has once spread and gone through all party life, there is no way of preventing a situation in which every one applies to the public funds for his own enrichment, and the strongest industries secure monopolies and influence the legislatures in their favour by every means which the party has at its disposal.
The Democrats, on the other hand, desire equal rights for all, and free competition between all economic enterprises; they approve of all centrifugal and individualistic tendencies. And yet if the state does not exert some regulative influence, the less moral elements of society will misuse their freedom, and they will be freer in the end than the citizens who scrupulously and strictly govern themselves. And the spirit of unrestraint and immorality will be ever more in evidence. The Democratic party will be forced to make concessions to this idea if it desires to retain its domination over the masses, and any one who first begins to make concessions to individual crookedness is necessarily inoculated. Thus it happens that in the Republican party there is a tendency to introduce corruption from above, and in the Democratic party from below.
If in a large town, say, the Republican party is dominant, the chief public enemies will be the industrial corporations, with their tremendous means and their watered securities; but if the Democratic party is uppermost, the worst enemies will be the liquor dealers, procurers, and gamblers. Correspondingly, in the former case, the honour of the city council which closes huge contracts with stock companies will succumb, while in the latter it will be the conscience of the policeman on the corner who pockets a little consideration when the bar-keeper wants to keep open beyond the legal hour. And since the temptation to take small bribes are ten thousand times more frequent than the chances for graft on a large scale, the total damage to public morals is about the same in both cases. But we must repeat once more that these delinquencies are after all the exception rather than the rule, and happily are for the most part expiated behind the bars of a penitentiary.
Most of all, it must be insisted that public opinion is all the time following up these excrescences on party life, and that public opinion presses forward year by year at an absolutely sure pace, and purifies the public atmosphere. All these evil conditions are easy to change. When Franklin came to England he was alarmed to see what fearful corruptions prevailed in English official life; such a thing was unknown at that time in America. Now England has long ago wiped out the blot, and America, which fell into its political mire a half-century later, will soon be out again and free; just as it has got rid of other nuisances. Every year brings some advance, and the student of American conditions should not let himself be deceived by appearances.
On the surface, for instance, the last mayoralty election in New York City would seem to indicate a downward tendency. New York two years previously had turned out the scandalous Tammany Hall gang with Van Wyck and his brutal extortionist, Chief of Police Devery, by a non-partisan alliance of all decent people in the city. New York had elected by a handsome majority Seth Low, the President of Columbia University, to be its mayor, and thereby had instated the principle that, the best municipal government must use only business methods and be independent of political parties. Seth Low was supported by distinguished reformers in both parties, and was brilliantly successful in placing the entire city government on a distinctly higher level. The public schools, the general hygiene, the highways, and the police force were all thoroughly cleansed of impure elements and reformed without regard to party, on the purest and most business-like principle.
And then came the day for another election. Once more the independent voters, including the best men in both parties, the intellectual leaders and the socially dominant forces of the city, were banded together again to save their city of three million inhabitants from party politics, and to insure by their co-operation a continuance of the honest, business-like administration. They made Seth Low their candidate again; he was opposed by McClellan, the candidate of Tammany Hall, the party which loudly declares that “To the victors belong the spoils,” and that the thousands of municipal offices are to be the prey of party adherents. This was the candidate of the party which admitted that all the hopes of the worst proletariat, of prostitution and vagabondage, depended on its success; the candidate of a party which declared that it would everywhere rekindle the “red light,” that it would not enforce the unpopular temperance laws, and that it would leave the city “wide open.” On the day of election 251,000 votes were cast for Mayor Low, but 313,000 for Colonel McClellan.
Now, does this really indicate that the majority of the city of New York consists of gamblers, extortioners, and criminals? One who read the Republican campaign literature issued before the election might suppose so. After reading on every street corner and fence and on giant banners the campaign cry, “Vote for Low and keep the grafters out,” one might think that 300,000 pick-pockets had united to force out a clean administration and to place corruption on the throne. But on looking more closely at the situation one must see that no such thing was in question. Seth Low had furnished a clean administration, yet not a perfect one, and his mistakes had so seriously disaffected many citizens that they would rather endure the corruption of Tammany Hall than the brusqueness and various aggravations which threatened from his side.
Of these grievances, a typical one was the limitation of German instruction in the public schools. From the pedagogical point of view, this was not wholly wrong; and leading educationists, even German ones, had recommended the step. But at the same time the great German population was bitterly offended, and the whole discussions of the school board had angered the German citizens enough to cool off considerably their enthusiasm for reform. Then on top of this, Low’s administration had rigorously enforced certain laws of Sunday observance which the German part of the population cordially hated. Here, too, Mayor Low was undoubtedly right; he was enforcing the law; but when two years previously he had wished to win over the German vote, he had promised more than he could fulfill. But, most of all, Seth Low was socially an aristocrat, who had no common feeling with the masses; and whenever he spoke in popular assemblies he displayed no magnetism. Every one felt too keenly that he looked down on them from his exalted social height.
Against him were the Tammany people, of whom at least one thing must be said: they know the people and their needs. They have grown up among the people. In contrast to many a Republican upstart who, according to the European fashion, is servile to his superiors and harsh with his inferiors, these Tammany men are harsh to their superiors—that is, they shake the nerves of the more refined—but are servile before the masses and comply with every wish. And most of all, they are really the friends of the populace, sincerely true and helpful to it. Moreover, just these great masses have more to suffer under a good administration than under the corrupt government which lets every one do as he likes. These people do not notice that the strict, hygienic administration reduced the death-rate and the list of casualties, and improved the public schools; but they notice when for such improvements they have to pay a cent more in taxation, or have to put safer staircases or fire-escapes on their houses, or to abandon tottering structures, or if they are not allowed to beg without a permit, or are forbidden to throw refuse in the streets. In short, these people notice a slight expense or an insignificant prohibition, and do not see that in the end they are greatly benefited. And so, when the day of reckoning comes, when the election campaigns are fought, in which distinguished reformers deliver scholarly addresses on the advantages of a non-partisan administration while the candidates of the people excite them with promises that they shall be free from all these oppressive burdens—it is no wonder that Seth Low is not returned to the City Hall, and that McClellan, who by the way is a highly educated and cultured politician, is entrusted with the city government.
Such an outcome is not a triumph for vice and dishonour. In two years the reformers will probably conquer again, since every administration makes its enemies and so excites opposition. But there can be no doubt that even on this occasion public opinion, with its desire to reform, has triumphed, although the official friends of reform were outdone; such a man as the former Chief of Police, Devery, will be impossible in the future. Public opinion sees to it that when the two parties stand in opposition the fight is fought each successive time on a higher level. And Tammany of to-day as compared with the Tammany of years gone by is the best evidence for the victory of public opinion and the reformers.