I send you, v/ith my grateful regards, 
 this quaint^col.lection cif relics. • 
 
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 cx^yw ©a o^ir On^ts but. fih^^rc Un»t; 
 
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library 
 Gift of Seymour B. Durst Old York Library 
 
Citizens Union 
 
 THE CITY FOR THE PEOPLE 
 
 The UNION is made up of citizens of all opin- 
 ions, all creeds, and all occupations, who believe 
 that the City should be governed by the People 
 and for the People, not by the Bosses nor for the 
 Bosses. It is a union of men in all employments; 
 in business, in the trades, in the professions ; 
 standing on the common ground of good citizen- 
 ship. Honest, efficient, and intelligent city gov- 
 ernment is the object of the UNION. Every 
 voter who believes in that object is asked to 
 join, without regard to his opinion as a Repub- 
 lican, a Gold Democrat, a Silver Democrat, or 
 as a member of any National party whatever. 
 The UNION has no concern with Coinage, 
 Free Trade, or Protection, or with National or 
 State politics in any form. 
 
 The UNION demands an honest and efficient 
 administration, good schools, clean streets, more 
 breathing spaces, better housing in the over- 
 crowded parts of the City, better rapid transit 
 facilities, strict supervision of the City's fran- 
 chises, a full return for public privileges granted 
 to corporations, and a just and fair enforcement 
 of local statutes and ordinances. 
 
 The UNION demands that our City officers 
 shall be chosen BECAUSE they can be trusted 
 to work for these objects only; NOT BECAUSE 
 they are ready and able to promote the aims 
 and ambitions of one or the other of the national 
 parties. In national elections we must have 
 national issues ; but in city elections city issues 
 alone should be considered. 
 
 ENROLLMENT as a member of the UNION 
 does not mean that a voter gives up his party or 
 his individual opinion on national issues. ALL 
 CITIZENS, of whatever party, who desire that 
 the City shall be governed honestly and well, are 
 strongly urged to enroll as members of the 
 UNION. 
 
Citizens Union 
 
 HEADQUARTERS 
 NO. 39 EAST 23D STREET 
 
 Officers 
 
 Robert Fulton Cutting, - - . Chairman 
 Charles Stewart Smith, - - Vice-Chairman 
 J. Kennedy Tod, .... Treasurer 
 John C. Clark, Secretary 
 
 Executive 
 James B. Reyr 
 Joel B. Erhardt 
 Edward D. Page 
 William B. Hornblower 
 Edward A. Drake 
 Henry R. Kunhardt 
 John G. Agar 
 John Claflin 
 James Loeb 
 George Tombleson 
 
 John Frar 
 
 Committee 
 )lds, Chairman 
 
 Charles C. Nadal 
 
 Elihu Root 
 
 John B. Pine 
 
 James W. Pryor 
 
 Hubert Cillis 
 
 Joseph Larocque 
 
 Henry White 
 
 Richard Watson Gilder 
 
 William M. Kingsley 
 kenheimer 
 
 Finance Committee 
 J. Kennedy Tod. Chairman 
 Charles Stewart Smith 
 Jacob H. Schiff 
 Charles T. Barney 
 W. Lanman Bull 
 Woodbury Langdon 
 Charles Lanier 
 R. Somers Hayes 
 
 Sub-Committee on Enrollment and District Organizath 
 John B. Pine, Chairman 
 Charles C. Nadal John Frankenheimer 
 
 Henry R. Kunhardt William M. Kingsley 
 
 [Form 5] 
 
cv-i7J^As irrxoN— riry club 
 
 *»r.T. Alf^xand- r John J. ^fop-p'^r 
 
 T/lllard nrnv.-n 'Win, ^ravora Jfron« 
 
 '-Inoch Hrriry c^rfrifT !T<>wf^TT Martin 
 
 ^. 7nr>tAr Cff»f^. s. Pay /.on 
 
 H*'>bt;* .. . IJr.:i-:3fit Oii.'iS, Shaw 
 
 v~. • • ttj i»- ' An 
 
who 
 
 T-tinKy^'XhrfiH of the m*^)!! ^wliorf In UiJ*? for 
 ?**?.h 7^r>w :md civil llber^.y und ';.1y.U sn'-vic*? '•'ifom in 
 
 to .-:.tn6 to,~»}th'ar r.t th»i Qi'.- ''^lub on ArriX ;e7, X8«>B, 
 nnd /iK^UT"n tO(~«th«r find r-ray fc^ b'^ttwr tines, 
 
 Th*j -IJfcit of th« 2:6 i3 rorth in this little 
 book, 'Vhich has b'j'jn prn^rif^rnd to **Mnlnd yt^n ho*r r:nch 
 pat^'iots nay dlsajTren ar> to rirhts and r#i:n»jdies, 
 
 ?fT", ('rdkin's tjasay h?i3 b»j»in add^d to this 
 coll*iction of t'*act3, not h'^o'->.H*i .'^inybr-dy thirk.- hn is Tv 
 pat«-iot> but bBoausH part vf vhAt h'i 3»i;^s is tn;e, 
 
 J^i-, f?t*jrnQ's tjssai' is 'idd^^d, i>ar^ly -for son« 
 v'^iiih it tfjlls and partly to -^arn yott that his favorite 
 ■"♦jR^dy consists In harassinf; th'j bH""ildHrfid voter -^ith 
 nn^ complications. r>on« of nv- think th?it suoh '~en*idi»}S 
 liS th»^ n'^^v ;'rina''y la'-v ra-J ~inr. ^ity •"•jprw '.»5ntatiiin zr^ 
 'vors«j r,han thH Li«Ha?3«, 
 
 li'p. Sh'jpa'*d» «5 flssay is addfid, partly fc th« 
 triit.h it t'jlls rxnri pa'*tly to '-'■jriind yoi* that ♦7V«n in 
 Brortklyn it ban bK*3n r^r.-ird'jd as qvitn an achitjvjrrjnt 
 to rais^ a f»jM^ thnisand a yoar for th^ f A, ht for lib»^rty, 
 
 ••alf our sr.'-T'.-Mrs ar«^ h^<imaH th'^. T^^'ooklyn 
 oanpai^n -^mnt to Ta/Tiany by d^^ffx^it in 1'>D7, and P'-ooklp'^ 
 v/»int by d*jfault b*icau3»* nobody th^jrn carnd to p>iy an;v'- 
 ihint: for o rf;;^n i nation. 
 
Tw* mn, of '•hoB^ on o-,;r l.Utlu list, criild 
 not oom^i 'io this .l.ln»i«r, Tjhowj^** xho:; h,'ict hwcorafj prric^.l- 
 c^ol patriots. nhriTiHB nrxrrxth J.'csfjs cnuld not con^ 
 
 ^*irH .1tn.lnr vO£:gth«r, ^an nhovijlln,-: coal on th»* N.^h^int. 
 »»U noRt of th'S r«r.n cf u.o not ton*5th*3r. 0\ir d.lnnor tocX 
 plac'i In th'i ?Mrst. ^7«.5jc cf th^i Sparj.toh T/ar; ^m^i ncn^ cf 
 us h;i,i r.hf*n ^ilrfi^i.^y l^jAirnfid how hani It .ts to .lay piAns 
 for ou»- o^vn fr^jHdora ?vh.tl*? our brothnrs and ffi«nd« f.r« 
 gclni:: to th*} front to savn olhnr rvm from wors*- i.]':)rf}S3- 
 lon. B^it l»3t U3 nr* qu.lt»* for^^jt, th« future). In !..lnw of 
 '^ar, pr*ijpar« for pfjace. 
 
*» Y'-'iir land, <r,tr^ri, nrs .Hvn-:;r in ymr prBSfjnc**** 
 If th'i**') had not bH'^n "InifT, unto us ;i v«r;' snail rt*nr,>?int, 
 v«j sho»ld hav'i b^'*^n as 3orlon, n.nd ^« f^houl^i hf*.VH h^nn 
 
 * Thy pr,tnc»??i5 n'^'i x x :< conp'J-ntons of thlf^v^js: 
 
THE 
 
 ATLANTIC MONTHLY: 
 a iHaga?tne of literature, Science, ^xt, anD ^BoUticjJ. 
 
 Vol. LXXXI. — JANUARY, 1898. — No. CCCCLXXXIII. 
 THE GROWTH AND EXPRESSION OF PUBLIC OPINION. 
 
 Public opinion, like democracy itself, 
 is a new power which has come into the 
 world since the Middle Ages. In fact, 
 it is safe to say that before the French Re- 
 volution nothing of the kind was known 
 or dreamt of in Europe. There was a 
 certain truth in Louis XIV.'s statement, 
 which now sounds so droll, that he was 
 himself the state. Public opinion was 
 his opinion. In England, it may be said 
 with equal safety, there was nothing that 
 could be called public opinion, in the mod- 
 ern sense, before the passage of the Re- 
 form Bill. It began to form itself slowly 
 after 1816. Sir Robert Peel was forced 
 to remark in a letter to Croker in March, 
 1820 : — 
 
 " Do you not think that the tone of 
 England, of that great compound of fol- 
 ly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, 
 right feeling, obstinacy, or newspaper 
 paragraphs, which is called public opin- 
 ion, is more liberal — to use an odious 
 but intelligible phrase — than the policy 
 of the government ? Do not you think 
 that there is a feeling becoming daily 
 more general and more confirmed — 
 that is independent of the pressure of 
 taxation, or any immediate cause — in 
 favor of some undefined change in the 
 mode of governing the country ? It 
 seems to me a curious crisis, when pub- 
 lic opinion never had such influence in 
 public measures, and yet never was so 
 dissatisfied with the share which it pos- 
 sessed. It is growing too large for the 
 channels that it has been accustomed to 
 run through. God knows it is veiy dif- 
 
 ficult to widen them equally in propor- 
 tion to the size and force of the current 
 which they have to convey, but the en- 
 gineers that made them never dreamed 
 of various streams that are now strug- 
 gling for vent." 
 
 In short. Peel perceived the growth 
 of the force, and he recognized it as a 
 new force. In America public opinion 
 can hardly be said to have existed before 
 the Revolution. The opinions of leading 
 men, of clergymen and large landholders, 
 wei'e very powerful, and settled most of 
 the affairs of state, but the opinion of the 
 majority did not count for much, and the 
 majority, in truth, did not think that it 
 should. In other words, public opinion 
 had not been created. It was the excite- 
 ment of the Revolutionary War which 
 brought it into existence, and made it 
 seem omnipotent. It is obvious, how- 
 ever, that there are two kinds of public 
 opinion. One kind is the popular belief 
 in the fitness or rightness of something, 
 which Mr. Balfour calls " climate," a be- 
 lief that certain lines of conduct should 
 be followed, or a certain opinion held, by 
 good citizens, or right thinking persons. 
 Such a belief does not impose any duty 
 on anybody beyond outward conformity 
 to the received standards. The kind I 
 am now talking of is the public opinion, 
 or consensus of opinion, among large 
 bodies of persons, which acts as a politi- 
 cal force, imposing on those in authority 
 certain enactments, or certain lines of pol- 
 icy. The first of these does not change, 
 and is not seriously modified in much 
 
2 
 
 The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion. 
 
 less than fifty years. The second is be- 
 ing incessantly modified by the events of 
 the day. 
 
 All the writers on politics are agreed 
 as to the influence which this latter pub- 
 lic opinion ought to have on government. 
 They all acknowledge that in modern con- 
 stitutional states it ought to be omnijjo- 
 tent. It is in deciding from what source 
 it should come that the democrats and 
 the aristocrats part company. Accord- 
 ing to the aristocratic school, it should 
 emanate only from persons possessing a 
 moderate amount of property, on the as- 
 sumption that the possession of property 
 argues some degree of intelligence and 
 interest in public affairs. According to 
 the democratic school, it should emanate 
 from the majority of the adult males, on 
 the assumption that it is only in this way 
 that legislators can be made to consult 
 the greatest good of the greatest num- 
 ber, and that, in the long run, the major- 
 ity of adult males are pretty sure to be 
 right about public questions. President 
 Lincoln came near defining this theoiy 
 when he said, " You can fool part of the 
 people all the time, and all the people 
 part of the time, but you cannot fool 
 all the people all tlie time." This prob- 
 ably meant that under the democratic 
 system public opinion forms slowly, and 
 has to be clarified by prolonged discus- 
 sion, but it is sure to prove correct even- 
 tually. 
 
 What appears most to concern us in the 
 tendencies of democratic government is 
 not so much the quality of public opin- 
 ion, as the way in which it exercises its 
 power over tlie conduct of afFairs. I was 
 struck recently by a remark in a private 
 letter, that " public opinion is as sound 
 as ever, but that the politicians " — that 
 is, the men in control of affairs — " pay 
 just as little attention to it as ever." 
 There is an assumption here that we can 
 get at public opinion in some other way 
 than through elections ; that is, that we 
 may know what the public tiiinks on any 
 particular question, without paying atten- 
 
 tion to what men in power, who seek to 
 obey the popular will, do or say as a con- 
 dition of their political existence. Is this 
 true of any democratic country ? Is it 
 true, in particular, of the United States 
 of America ? 
 
 There are only two ways in which pub- 
 lic opinion upon political questions finds 
 expression, or is thought to find it. One 
 is the vote at elections, the other is jour- 
 nalism. But public opinion declares it- 
 self through elections only at intervals 
 of greater or less length : in England, 
 once in five or six years ; in America, 
 once in two years, or at most in four ; in 
 France, once in four years. It is only at 
 these periods that public opinion must be 
 sought ; at others, it is consulted at the 
 will of the minister or sovereign, and he 
 rarely consults it when he can help it if 
 he thinks that its decision will be against 
 him, and that the result will be a loss of 
 power. The imperfection of elections, 
 however, as a means of making public 
 opinion known, is very obvious. It is 
 seldom, indeed, that a definite issue is 
 submitted to the public, like the Swiss 
 refei-endum, and that the voters are asked 
 to say yes or no, in answer to a particu- 
 lar question. As a rule, it is the general 
 policy of the party in power, on all sorts 
 of subjects, which appears to determine 
 the action of the voters. The bulk of 
 them, on both sides, vote for their own 
 party in any event, no matter what course 
 it has pursued, on the principle that if 
 what it has done in a particular case is 
 not right, it is as nearly right as circum- 
 stances will permit. The remnant, or 
 " independents," who turn the scale to 
 one side or the other, have half a dozen 
 reasons for their course, or, in other 
 words, express by their vote their opin- 
 ions on half a dozen subjects, besides 
 the one on which the verdict of the ma- 
 jority is sought. During the last thirty 
 years, for instance, in the United States, 
 it would have been almost useless to con- 
 sult the voters on any subject except the 
 tariff. No matter what question might 
 
The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion. 
 
 3 
 
 have been put to them, it would almost 
 surely have been answered with refer- 
 ence mainly to the effect of the answer 
 on the tariff. All other matters would 
 have been passed over. In like manner, 
 it has probably been impossible in Eng- 
 land, for ten or twelve years, to get a real 
 expression of opinion on any subject ex- 
 cept Irish home rule. To the inquiry 
 what people thought about the Armenian 
 massacres, or education, or liquor regu- 
 lation, the voters were pretty sure to an- 
 swer, " We are opposed to Irish home 
 rule." Accordingly, after every election 
 there are disputes as to what it means. 
 The defeated party seldom acknowledges 
 that its defeat has been due to the mat- 
 ters on which the other side claims a vic- 
 tory. The great triumph of the Conser- 
 vatives in 1894 was ascribed by them to 
 home rule, but by the Liberals to local 
 option and clerical hostility to the com- 
 mon schools. Similarly, the Republican 
 defeat in America in 1890 was due, ac- 
 cording to one party, to the excesses of 
 the McKinley tariff, and, according to 
 the other, to gross deceptions practiced 
 on the voters as to its probable effect on 
 prices. 
 
 What are called " electioneering de- 
 vices " or " tricks " are largely based on 
 this uncertainty. That is, they are meant 
 to influence the voters by some sort of 
 matter irrelevant to the main issue. This 
 is called " drawing a red herring across 
 the scent." A good example of it is to 
 be found in the practice, which has pre- 
 vailed during nearly the whole tariff agi- 
 tation, of citing the rage, or disgust, or 
 misery of foreigners due to our legisla- 
 tion, as a reason for persisting in it, — 
 as if any legislation which produced this 
 effect on foreigners must be good. But, 
 obviously, there might be much legisla- 
 tion which would excite the hostility of 
 foreigners, and be at the same time inju- 
 rious to this country. In voting on the 
 tariff, a large number of voters — the 
 Irish for instance — might be, and doubt- 
 less were, influenced in favor of high du- 
 
 ties by the fact that, to a large extent, 
 they would exclude British goods, and 
 thus they appeared to be approving a 
 protective policy in general. Nobody be- 
 lieves that in Germany the increasing 
 Socialist vote represents Socialist ideas 
 — properly so called. It expresses dis- 
 content generally with the existing re- 
 gime. In Ireland, too, the vote at a gen- 
 eral election does not express simply an 
 opinion on the question which has dis- 
 solved Parliament. Rather, it expresses 
 general hostility to English rule. In It- 
 aly elections mostly turn on the question 
 of the temporal power of the Pope. In 
 fact, wherever we look at the modes of 
 obtaining expressions of public opinion, 
 we find that elections are not often re- 
 liable as to particular measures, except 
 through the referendum. In all demo- 
 cratic countries, it is the practice of the 
 bulk of the voters to indicate by their 
 votes rather their confidence in, or dis- 
 trust of, the party in power, than their 
 opinions on any particular measure. It 
 is the few who turn the scale who are 
 really influenced by the main question 
 before the voters. The rest follow their 
 party prepossessions, or rely on the party 
 managers to turn the majority, if they 
 secure it, to proper account. 
 
 In England some reliance is placed on 
 what are called "bye elections," — or 
 elections caused by vacancies occurring 
 between two general elections, — as in- 
 dications of the trend of public opinion 
 touching the acts or policy of the min- 
 istry. But these elections very seldom 
 show more than slight diminution or 
 slight increase of preceding majorities, 
 and the result, as an instruction, is very 
 often made uncertain by local causes, 
 such as the greater or less popularity of 
 one of the candidates. They may, and 
 generally do, reveal the growing or de- 
 clining popularity of the party in power 
 in the constituency in which they occur, 
 but rarely can be held to express the 
 opinion of the majority on any particu- 
 lar matter. There are several ways of 
 
4 
 
 The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion. 
 
 accounting for any changes which have 
 occurred in the total vote, all equally 
 plausible. In America town or county 
 elections serve somewhat the same pur- 
 pose. They are watched, not so much 
 with reference to their influence on local 
 affairs, as with reference to the light they 
 throw on the feelings of the voters to- 
 ward the administration for the time be- 
 ing. It is taken for granted that no local 
 wants or incidents will prevent the bulk 
 of the voters from casting their ballots 
 as members of federal parties. 
 
 It is, probably, this disposition to vote 
 on the general course of the administra- 
 tion, rather than on any particular pro- 
 posal, which causes what it is now the 
 fashion to call the " swinging of the pen- 
 dulum," — that is, the tendency both in 
 England and in America to vote in a dif- 
 ferent way at alternate elections, or never 
 to give any party more than one term 
 in power. If public attention were apt 
 to be concentrated on one measure, this 
 could hardly occur so frequently. It 
 doubtless indicates, not positive condem- 
 nation of any particular thing, so much 
 as disapproval or weariness of certain 
 marked features of the government poli- 
 cy. The voters get tired both of praise 
 and of blame of particular men, and so 
 resolve to try others ; or they get tired 
 of a particular policy, and long for some- 
 thing new. It is a little difficult to fix 
 on the exact cause of such changes, but it 
 seems pretty certain that they cannot be 
 considered definite expressions of opin- 
 ion on specific subjects. And then, owing 
 to the electoral divisions through which 
 every country chooses legislators, a far 
 greater change may often be made in the 
 legislature than the vote in the separate 
 constituencies warrants. For instance, a 
 President may readily be chosen in the 
 United States by a minority of the popu- 
 lar vote ; and in England, an enormous 
 majority in the House of Commons may 
 rest on a very small aggregate majority 
 of the electors. There never was a more 
 striking illustration of the difficulty of 
 
 getting at popular opinion than the de- 
 feat of the Disraeli ministry in 1880. It 
 was the confident belief of all tlie more 
 instructed portion of the community — 
 the gentry, the clergy, and the profession- 
 al class — that, rightly or wrongly, public 
 opinion was on the side of the ministry, 
 and approved what was called its " im- 
 perial policy," — the provocation given 
 to Afghanistan, and the interference in 
 the Russo-Turkish War on the side of 
 Turkey. One heard, it was said, nothing 
 else in the clubs, the trains, the hotels, 
 and the colleges. But the result showed 
 that these indications were of little value, 
 that the judgment of the classes most oc- 
 cupied in observing political tendencies 
 was at fault, and that the bulk of the con- 
 stituencies had apparently taken quite a 
 different view of the whole matter. 
 
 A striking example of the same thing 
 was afforded in the State of New York 
 in 1892. The leaders of the Democratic 
 party at that time were men of more than 
 usual astuteness and political experience. 
 It was of the last importance to them to 
 learn the popular judgment on the more 
 recent acts of the party, particularly on 
 the mode in which it had secured control 
 of the state Senate. Up to the day of 
 election they seem to have had the utmost 
 confidence in an overwhelming popular 
 verdict in their favor. The result, how- 
 ever, was their ovei-whelming defeat. 
 They apparently had but a very slight 
 knowledge of the trend of public opinion. 
 In truth, it may be said that the great 
 political revolutions wrought by elections, 
 both in England and in America, have 
 been unexpected by the bulk of observers, 
 either wholly or as to their extent. No 
 change at all was looked for, or it was 
 not expected to be so great a change. 
 
 Why this should be so, why in a demo- 
 cratic society people should find so much 
 difficulty in discovering beforehand what 
 the sovereign power is thinking, and what 
 it is going to do, is not so difficult to ex- 
 plain as it seems. We must first bear 
 in mind that the democratic societies 
 
T'he Growth and Expression of Public Opinion. 
 
 5 
 
 prodigiously increased in size almost at 
 the moment at which they acquired con- 
 trol of the State. There was no previous 
 opportunity for examining their tastes, 
 prejudices, weaknesses, or tendencies. 
 Most of the descriptions of democracies 
 within the present century, as I have 
 already pointed out, have been only 
 guesses, or deductions from the history 
 of those of antiquity. Nearly every mod- 
 ern writer on this subject has fallen into 
 mistakes about democratic tendencies, 
 merely through a priori reasoning. Cer- 
 tain things had happened in the ancient 
 democracies, and were sure to happen 
 again in the modern democracies, much 
 as the conditions had changed. Singu- 
 larly enough, the one absolutely new 
 difficulty, the difficulty of consulting a 
 modern democracy, has hardly been no- 
 ticed. This difficulty has produced the 
 boss, who is a sufficiently simple phenom- 
 enon. But how, without the boss, to 
 get at what the people are thinking, has 
 not been found out, though it is of great 
 importance. We have not yet hit on the 
 best plan of getting at " public opinion." 
 Elections, as we have seen, are the medi- 
 um through which this force manifests 
 itself in action, but they do not furnish 
 the reason of this action, the considera- 
 tions which led to it, or all the conse- 
 quences it is expected to produce. More- 
 over, at best they tell us only what half 
 the people are thinking ; for no party 
 nowadays wins an electoral victory by 
 much over half the voters. So that we 
 are driven back, for purposes of obser- 
 vation, on the newspaper press. 
 
 Our confidence in this is based on the 
 theory, not so much that the newspapers 
 make public opinion, as that the opinions 
 they utter are those of which their read- 
 ers approve. But this ground is being 
 made less tenable every year by the fact 
 that more and more newspapers rely on 
 advertising, rather than on subscriptions, 
 for their sujjport and profits, and agree- 
 ment with their readers is thus less and 
 less important to them. The old threat 
 
 of " stopping my paper," if a subscriber 
 came across unpalatable views in the edi- 
 torial columns, is therefore not so formi- 
 dable as it used to be, and is less resorted 
 to. The advertiser, rather than the sub- 
 scriber, is now the newspaper bogie. He 
 is the person before whom the publisher 
 cowers and whom he tries to please, and 
 the advertiser is very indifferent about 
 the opinions of a newspaper. What in- 
 terests him is the amount or quality of 
 its circulation. What he wants to know 
 is, how many persons see it, not how many 
 persons agree with it. The consequence 
 is that the newspapers of largest circu- 
 lation, published in the great centres of 
 population where most votes are cast, are 
 less and less organs of opinion, especially 
 in America. In fact, in some cases the 
 advertisers use their influence — which 
 is great, and which the increasing com- 
 petition between newspapers makes all 
 the greater — to prevent the expression 
 in newspapers of what is probably the 
 prevailing local view of men or events. 
 There are not many newspapers which 
 can afford to defy a large advertiser. 
 
 Nothing is more striking in the read- 
 ing public to-day, in our democracy, than 
 the increasing incapacity for continuous 
 attention. The power of attention is one 
 that, just like muscular power, needs cul- 
 tivation or training. The ability to listen 
 to a long argument or exposition, or to 
 read it, involves not only strength but 
 habit in the muscles of the eye and the 
 nerves of the ear. In familiar language, 
 one has to be used to it, to do it easily. 
 
 There seems to be a great deal of 
 reason for believing that this habit is 
 becoming much rarer. Publishers com- 
 plain more and more of the refusal of 
 nearly every modern community to read 
 books, except novels, wiiich keep the at- 
 tention alive by anmsing incidents and 
 rapid changes of situation. Argument- 
 ative works can rarely count on a large 
 circulation. Tliis may doubtless be as- 
 cribed in part to the multiplicity of the ob- 
 jects of attention in modern times, to the 
 
6 
 
 The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion. 
 
 opportunities of simple amusement, to the 
 large area of the world which is brought 
 under each man's observation by the tel- 
 egraph, and to the general rapidity of 
 communication. But this large area is 
 brought under observation through the 
 newspaper ; and that the newspaper's 
 mode of presenting facts does seriously 
 affect the way in which people perform 
 the process called " making up their 
 minds," especially about public questions, 
 can hardly be denied. The nearest ap- 
 proach we can make to what people are 
 thinking about any matter of public in- 
 terest is undoubtedly by " reading the 
 papers." It may not be a sure way, but 
 there is no other. It is true, often lam- 
 entably true, that the only idea most 
 foreigners and observers get of a nation's 
 modes of thought and standards of duty 
 and excellence, and in short of its man- 
 ners and morals, comes througli reading 
 its periodicals. To the outsider the news- 
 paper press is the nation talking about 
 itself. Nations are known to other na- 
 tions mainly through their press. They 
 used to be known more by their public 
 men ; but the class of public men who re- 
 present a country is becoming every day 
 smaller, and public men speak less than 
 formerly ; with us they can scarcely be 
 said to speak at all. Our present system 
 of nomination and the loss of the habit 
 of debating in the legislature have almost 
 put an end to oratory, except during 
 exciting canvasses. Elsewhere than in 
 England, the names of the leading men 
 are hardly known to foreigners ; their 
 utterances, not at all. If I want to learn 
 the drift of opinion in any country, on 
 any topic, the best thing I can do, there- 
 fore, is to read the papers ; and I must 
 read a large number. 
 
 In America more than in any other 
 countiy, the collection of " news " has be- 
 come a business within half a century, 
 and it has been greatly promoted by the 
 improvements in the printing-press. Be- 
 fore this period, " news " was generally 
 news of great events, ^ that is, of events 
 
 of more than local importance ; so that if 
 a man were asked, " What news ? " he 
 would try, in his answer, to mention 
 something of world - wide significance. 
 But as soon as the collection of it became 
 a business, submitted to the ordinary laws 
 of competition, tiie number of things that 
 were called " news " naturally increased. 
 Each newspaper endeavored to outdo its 
 rivals by tlie greater number of facts it 
 brought to the public notice, and it was 
 not very long before " news " became 
 everytliing whatever, no matter how un- 
 important, which the reader had not pre- 
 viously heard of. The sense of propor- 
 tion about news was rapidly destroyed. 
 Everything, however trifling, was consid- 
 ered worth printing, and the newspaper 
 finally became, what it is now, a collec- 
 tion of the gossip not only of the whole 
 world, but of its own locality. Now, 
 gossip, when analyzed, consists simply 
 of a collection of actual facts, mostly of 
 little moment, and also of surmises about 
 things, of equally little moment. But 
 business requires that as much impor- 
 tance as possible shall be given to them 
 by the manner of producing each item, 
 or what is called " typographical dis- 
 play." Consequently they are presented 
 vrioh separate and conspicuous headings, 
 and there is no necessary connection be- 
 tween them. They follow one another, 
 column after column, without any order, 
 either of subject or of chronology. 
 
 The diligent newspaper reader, there- 
 fore, gets accustomed to passing rapidly 
 from one to another of a series of inci- 
 dents, small and great, requiring simply 
 the transfer, from one trifle to another, 
 of a sort of lazy, uninterested attention, 
 which often becomes sub-conscious ; that 
 is, a man reads with hardly any know- 
 ledge or recollection of what he is read- 
 ing. Not only does the attention be- 
 come habituated to frequent breaches in 
 its continuity, but it grows accustomed 
 to short paragraphs, as one does to pass- 
 ers-by in the street. A man sees and 
 observes them, but does not remember 
 
The Groioih and Expression of Public Opinion. 
 
 7 
 
 what he sees and observes for more than 
 a minute or two. That this should have 
 its effect on the editorial writing is what 
 naturally might be expected. If the 
 editorial article is long, the reader, used 
 to the short paragraphs, is apt to shrink 
 from the labor of perusing it ; if it is 
 brief, he pays little more attention to it 
 than he pays to the paragraphs. When, 
 thei'efore, any newspaper turns to seri- 
 ous discussion in its columns, it is diffi- 
 cult, and one may say increasingly diffi- 
 cult, to get a hearing. It has to contend 
 both against the intellectual habit of its 
 readers, which makes prolonged atten- 
 tion hard, and against a priori doubts 
 of its honesty and competency. People 
 question whether it is talking in good 
 faith, or has some sinister object in view, 
 knowing that in one city of the Union, 
 at least, it is impossible to get published 
 any criticism on the larger advertisers, 
 however nefarious their doings ; know- 
 ing also that in another city there have 
 been rapid changes of journalistic views, 
 made for party purposes or through sim- 
 ple changes of ownership. 
 
 The result is that the effect of newspa- 
 per editorial writing on opinion is small, 
 so far as one can judge. Still, it would 
 be undeniably large enough to possess 
 immense power if the press acted unani- 
 mously as a body. If all the papers, or 
 a great majority of them, said the same 
 thing on any question' of the day, or told 
 the same story about any matter in dis- 
 pute, they would undoubtedly possess 
 great influence. But they are much di- 
 vided, partly by political affiliations, and 
 partly, perhaps mainly, by business rival- 
 ry. For business purposes, each is apt 
 to think it necessary to differ in some 
 degree from its nearest rivals, whether 
 of the same party or not, in its view of 
 any question, or at all events not to sup- 
 port a rival's view, or totally to ignore 
 something to which it is attaching great 
 importance. The result is that the press 
 rarely acts with united force or expresses 
 a united opinion. Nor do many readers 
 
 subscribe to more than one paper ; and 
 consequently few readers have any know- 
 ledge of the other side of any question 
 on which their own paper is, possibly, 
 preaching with vehemence. The great 
 importance which many persons attach to 
 having a newspaper of large circulation 
 on their side is due in some degree to its 
 power in the presentation of facts to the 
 public, and also to its power of annoy- 
 ance by persistent abuse or ridicule. 
 
 Another agency which has interfered 
 with the press as an organ of opinion 
 is the greatly increased expense of start- 
 ing or carrying on a modern newspaper. 
 The days when Horace Greeley or Wil- 
 liam Lloyd Garrison could start an influ- 
 ential paper in a small printing-office, 
 with the assistance of a boy, are gone 
 forever. Few undertakings require more 
 capital, or are more hazardous. The most 
 serious item of expense is the collection 
 of news from all parts of the world, and 
 this cannot be evaded in our day. News 
 is the life-blood of the modern newspa- 
 per. No talent or energy will make up 
 for its absence. The consequence is that 
 a very large sum is needed to establish a 
 newspaper. After it is started, a large 
 sum must be spent without visible return, 
 but the fortune that may be accumulat- 
 ed by it, if successful, is also very large. 
 One of the most curious things about it 
 is that the public does not expect from 
 a newspaper proprietor the same sort of 
 morality that it expects from persons in 
 other callings. It would disown a book- 
 seller and cease all intercourse with him 
 for a tithe of the falsehoods and petty 
 frauds which it passes unnoticed in a 
 newspaper proprietor. It may disbe- 
 lieve every word he says, and yet profess 
 to respect him, and may occasionally 
 reward him ; so that it is quite possible 
 to find a newspaper which nearly every- 
 body condemns, and whose influence 
 most men would repudiate, circulating 
 very freely among religious and moral 
 people, and making handsome profits. 
 A newspaper proprietor, therefore, who 
 
8 
 
 The Growth and Exj)ression of Public Opinion. 
 
 linds that his profits remain high, no 
 matter what views he promulgates and 
 what kind of morality he practices, can 
 hardly, with fairness to the community, 
 be treated as an exponent of its opinions. 
 He will not consider what it thinks, when 
 he finds he has only to consider what 
 it will buy, and that it will buy his paper 
 without agreeing with it. 
 
 But it is as an exponent of the na- 
 tion's feeling about other nations that 
 the press is most defective. The old 
 diplomacy, in which, as Disraeli said, 
 " sovereigns and statesmen " regulated 
 international affairs in secret conclave in 
 gorgeous salons, has all but passed away. 
 The " sovereigns and statesmen " and 
 the secret conclave and the gorgeous sa- 
 lons remain, but of the old indifference 
 to what the world outside thought of 
 their work not very much remains. Now 
 and then a king or an emperor gratifies 
 his personal spites, in his instructions to 
 his diplomatic representatives, like the 
 Emperor of Germany in the case of the 
 unfortunate Greeks ; but most govern- 
 ments, in their negotiations with foreign 
 powers, now listen closely to the voice of 
 their own people. The democracy sits 
 at every council board, and the most con- 
 servative of ministers, consciously or un- 
 consciously, consults it as well as he can. 
 He tries to find out what it wishes in 
 any particular matter, or, if this be im- 
 possible, he tries to find out what will 
 most impress its imagination. Whether 
 he brings peace or war, he tries to make 
 it appear that the national honor has been 
 carefully looked after, and that the na- 
 tional desires, and even the national weak- 
 nesses, have been considered and provid- 
 ed for. But it is from the press that 
 he must learn all this ; and it is from 
 the press, too, that each diplomatist must 
 learn whether his opponent's country is 
 really behind him. The press is never 
 silent, and it has the field to itself ; any 
 one who wishes to know what the people 
 are feeling and thinking has to rely on 
 it, for the want of anything better. 
 
 In international questions, however, 
 the press is often a poor reliance. In 
 the first place, business prudence prompts 
 an editor, whether he fully understands 
 the matter under discussion or not, to 
 take what seems the patriotic view ; and 
 tradition generally makes the selfish, 
 quarrelsome view the patriotic view. 
 The late editor of the Sun expressed 
 this tersely by advising young journal- 
 ists " always to stand by the Stars and 
 Stripes." It was long ago expressed 
 still more tersely by the cry, " Our 
 country, right or wrong ! " All first-class 
 powers still live more or less openly, 
 in their relations with one another, 
 under the old dueling code, which the 
 enormous armaments in modern times 
 render almost a necessity. Under this 
 code the one unbearable imputation is 
 fear of somebody. Any other imputa- 
 tion a nation supports with comparative 
 meekness ; the charge of timidity is in- 
 tolerable. It has been made more so by 
 the conversion of most modern nations 
 into great standing armies, and no great 
 standing army can for a moment allow 
 the world to doubt its readiness, and even 
 eagerness, to fight. It is not every dip- 
 lomatic difference that is at first clearly 
 understood by the public. Very often, 
 the pros and cons of the matter are im- 
 perfectly known until the correspondence 
 is published, but the agitation of the 
 popular mind continues ; the press must 
 talk about the matter, and its talk is 
 rarely pacific. It is bound by tradition 
 to take the ground that its own govern- 
 ment is right ; and that even if it is not, 
 it does not make any difference, — the 
 press has to maintain that it is right. 
 
 The action of Congress on the recent 
 Venezuelan complication well illustrated 
 the position of the press in such matters. 
 When Mr. Cleveland sent his message 
 asking Congress to vote the expense of 
 tracing the frontier of a foreign power. 
 Congress knew nothing of the merits of 
 the case. It did not even know that 
 any such controversy was pending. As 
 
The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion. 
 
 9 
 
 the message was distinctly one that 
 might lead to war, and as Congress was 
 the war-making power, the Constitution 
 presumptively imposed on it the duty of 
 examining the causes of the dispute thor- 
 oughly, before complying with the Presi- 
 dent's request. In most other affairs, 
 too, it would have been the more dis- 
 posed to discharge this duty because the 
 majority was hostile to Mr. Cleveland. 
 But any delay or hesitation, it feared, 
 would be construed by the public as a 
 symptom of fear or of want of patriot- 
 ism, so it instantly voted the money with- 
 out any examination whatever. The 
 press was in an almost similar condition. 
 It knew no more of the merits of the case 
 than Congress, and it had the same fear 
 of being thought wanting in patriotism, 
 so that the whole country in twenty-four 
 hours resounded with rhetorical prepa- 
 ration for and justification of war with 
 England. 
 
 As long as this support is confined to 
 argumentation no great harm is done. 
 The diplomatists generally care but little 
 about the dialectical backing up that they 
 get from the newspapers. Either they 
 do not need it, or it is too ill informed 
 to do them much good. But the news- 
 papers have another concern than mere 
 victory in argument. They have to main- 
 tain their place in the estimation of their 
 readers, and, if possible, to increase the 
 number of these readers. Unhappily, in 
 times of international trouble, the easiest 
 way to do this always seems to be to in- 
 fluence the public mind against the for- 
 eigner. This is done partly by impugn- 
 ing his motives in the matter in hand, 
 and partly by painting his general char- 
 acter in an odious light. Undoubtedly 
 this produces some effect on the public 
 mind by begetting a readiness to pun- 
 ish in arms, at any cost, so unworthy an 
 adversary. The worst effect, however, 
 is that which is produced on the ministers 
 conducting the negotiations. It fright- 
 ens or encourages them into taking ex- 
 treme positions, in putting forward im- 
 
 possible claims, or in perverting history 
 and law to help their case. The applause 
 and support of the newspapers seem to 
 be public opinion. They umst bring hon- 
 or at home, no matter how the controver- 
 sy ends. In short, it may be said, as a 
 matter of history, that in few diplomatic 
 controversies in this century has the press 
 failed to make moderate ground difficult 
 for a diplomatist, and retreats from un- 
 tenable positions almost impossible. The 
 press makes his case seem so good that 
 abandonment of it looks like treason to 
 his country. 
 
 Then there is another aspect of the case 
 which cannot be passed without notice, 
 though it puts the press in a less honor- 
 able light. Newspapers are made to sell ; 
 and for this purpose there is nothing bet- 
 ter than war. War means daily sensation 
 and excitement. On this almost any kind 
 of newspaper may live and make money. 
 Whether the war brings victory or defeat 
 makes little difference. The important 
 thing is that in war every moment may 
 bring important and exciting news, — 
 news which does not need to be accurate 
 or to bear sifting. What makes it most 
 marketable is that it is probable and 
 agreeable, although disagreeable news 
 sells nearly as well. In the tumult of a 
 great war, when the rules of evidence 
 are suspended by passion or anxiety, in- 
 vention, too, is easy, and has its value, 
 and is pretty sure never to be punished. 
 Some newspapers, which found it difficult 
 to make a livelihood in times of peace, 
 made fortunes in our last war ; and it may 
 be said that, as a rule, troublous times 
 are the best for a newspaper proprietor. 
 
 It follows from this, it cannot but fol- 
 low, that it is o«ly human for a newspa- 
 per proprietor to desire war, especially 
 when he feels sure that his own country 
 is right, and that its op2)onents are ene- 
 mies of civilization, — a state of mind 
 into which a man may easily work him- 
 self by writing and talking much during 
 an international controversy. So that I 
 do not think it an exaggeration or a 
 
10 
 
 The Growth and Expression of Puhlic Opinion. 
 
 calumny to say that the press, taken as a 
 whole, — of course with many honorable 
 exceptions, — has a bias in favor of war. 
 I'li would not stir up a war with any coun- 
 try, but if it sees preparations made to 
 fight, it does not fail to encourage the 
 combatants. This is particularly true of 
 a naval war, which is much more striking 
 as a spectacle than a land war, while it 
 does not disturb industry or distribute 
 personal risk to nearly the same extent. 
 
 Of much more importance, however, 
 than the manner in which public opinion 
 finds expression in a democracy is the 
 manner in which it is formed, and this 
 is very much harder to get at. I do not 
 mean what may be called people's stand- 
 ing opinion about things in general, which 
 is born of hereditary prejudice and works 
 itself into the manners of the country as 
 part of each individual's moral and in- 
 tellectual outfit. There is a whole batch 
 of notions about things public and pri- 
 vate, which men of every nation hold be- 
 cause they are national, — called "Ro- 
 man " by a Roman, " English " by an 
 Englishman, and " American " by an 
 American, — and which are defended or 
 propagated simply by calling the oppo- 
 site " un-English " or " un-American." 
 These views come to people by descent. 
 They are inherited rather than formed. 
 What I have in mind is the opinions 
 formed by the community about new sub- 
 jects, questions of legislation and of war 
 and peace, and about social needs or sins 
 or excesses, — in short, about anything 
 novel which calls imperatively for an im- 
 mediate judgment of some kind. What 
 is it that moves large bodies or parties 
 in a democracy like ours, for instance, to 
 say that its government should do this, 
 or should not do that, in any matter that 
 may happen to be before them ? 
 
 Nothing can be more difficult than 
 an answer to this question. Every wri- 
 ter about democi'acy, from Montesquieu 
 down, has tried to answer it by a priori 
 predictions as to what democracy will 
 say or do or think under certain given 
 
 circumstances. The uniform failure nat- 
 urally suggests the conclusion that the 
 question is not answerable at all, owing 
 largely to the enormously increased num- 
 ber of influences under which all men 
 act in the modern world. It is now very 
 rare to meet with one of the distinctly 
 defined characters which education, con- 
 ducted under the regime of authority, 
 used to form, down to the close of the last 
 century. There are really no more " di- 
 vines," or " gentlemen," or " Puritans," 
 or " John Bulls," or " Brother Jona- 
 thans." In other words, there are no 
 more moral or intellectual moulds. It 
 used to be easy to say how a given in- 
 dividual or community would look at a 
 thing ; at present it is well-nigh impos- 
 sible. We can hardly tell what agency 
 is exercising the strongest influence on 
 popular thought on any given occasion. 
 Most localities and classes are subject to 
 some peculiar dominating force, and if 
 you discover what it is, you discover it 
 almost by accident. One of the latest 
 attempts to define a moral force that 
 would be sure to act on opinion was the 
 introduction into the political arena in 
 England of the " Nonconformist con- 
 science," or the moral training of the dis- 
 senting denominations, — Congregation- 
 alists, Methodists, and Baptists. In the 
 discussions of Irish home rule and vari- 
 ous cognate matters, much use has been 
 made of the term, but it is difficult to 
 point to any particular occasion in which 
 the thing has distinctly made itself felt. 
 One would have said, twenty years ago, 
 that the English class of country squires 
 would be the last body in the world, 
 owing to temperament and training, to 
 approve of any change in the Enghsh 
 currency. We believe they are to-day 
 largely bimetallists. The reason is that 
 their present liabilities, contracted in good 
 times, have been made increasingly heavy 
 by the fall in agricultural produce. 
 
 The same phenomena are visible here 
 in America. It would be difficult to-day 
 to say what is the American opinion, pro- 
 
The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion. 11 
 
 perly so called, about the marriage bond. 
 One would think that in the older States, 
 in which social life is more settled, it 
 would strongly favor indissolubility, or, 
 at all events, great difficulty of dissolu- 
 tion. But this is not the case. In Con- 
 necticut and Rhode Island divorce is as 
 easy, and almost as little disreputable, as 
 in any of the newer Western States. In 
 the discussion on the currency, most ob- 
 servers would have predicted that the 
 power of the government over its value 
 would be most eagerly preached by the 
 States in which the number of foreign 
 voters was greatest. As a matter of fact, 
 these States proved at the election to be 
 the firmest friends of the gold standard. 
 Within our own lifetime the Southern or 
 cotton States, from being very conserva- 
 tive, have become very radical, in the 
 sense of being ready to give ear to new 
 ideas. What we might have said of them 
 in 1860 would be singularly untrue in 
 1900. One might go over the civilized 
 world in this way, and find that the pub- 
 lic opinion of each country, on any given 
 topic, had escaped from the philosophers, 
 so to speak, — that all generalizing about 
 it had become difficult, and that it was no 
 longer possible to divide influences into 
 categories. 
 
 The conclusion most readily reached 
 about the whole matter is that authority, 
 whether in religion or in morals, which 
 down to the last century was so power- 
 ful, has ceased to exert much influence 
 on the affairs of the modern world, and 
 that any attempt to mould opinion on re- 
 ligious or moral or political questions, by 
 its instrumentality, is almost certain to 
 prove futile. The reliance of the older 
 political winters, from Grotius to Locke, 
 on the sayings of other previous writers 
 or on the Bible, is now among the curi- 
 osities of literature. Utilitarianism, how- 
 ever we may feel about it, has fuUy taken 
 possession of political discussion. That 
 is to say, any writer or speaker on po- 
 litical subjects has to show that his pro- 
 position will make people more comfort- 
 
 able or richer. This is tantamount to 
 saying that historic experience has not 
 nearly the influence on political affairs it 
 once had. The reason is obvious. The 
 number of persons who have something 
 to say about political affairs has increased 
 a thousandfold, but the practicfe of read- 
 ing books has not increased, and it is in 
 books that experience is recorded. In 
 the past, the governing class, in part at 
 least, was a reading class. One of the 
 reasons which are generally said to have 
 given the Southern members special in- 
 fluence in Congress before the war is that 
 they read books, had libraries, and had 
 wide knowledge of the experiments tried 
 by earlier generations of mankind. Their 
 successors rarely read anything but the 
 newspapers. This is increasingly true, 
 also, of other democratic countries. The 
 old literary type of statesmen, of which 
 Jefferson and Madison and Hamilton, 
 Guizot and Thiers, were examples, is rap- 
 idly disappearing, if it has not already 
 disappeared. 
 
 The importance of this in certain 
 branches of public affairs is great. — the 
 management of currency, for example. 
 All we know about currency we learn 
 from the experience of the human race. 
 What man will do about any kind of 
 money. — gold, silver, or paper, — under 
 any given set of conditions, we can pre- 
 dict only by reading of what man has 
 done. What will happen if, of two kinds 
 of currency, we lower or raise the value 
 of one, what will happen if we issue 
 too much irredeemable paper, why we 
 must make our paper redeemable, what 
 are the dangers of violent and sudden 
 changes in the standard of value, are all 
 things which we can ascertain only from 
 the history of money. What any man 
 now thinks or desires about the matter 
 is of little consequence compared with 
 what men in times past have tried to do. 
 The loss of influence or weight by the 
 reading class is therefore of great im- 
 portance, for to this loss we undoubtedly 
 owe most of the prevalent wild theories 
 
12 The Growth and Exprt 
 
 about currency. They are the theories 
 of men who do not know that their ex- 
 periments have been tried already and 
 have failed. In fact, I may almost ven- 
 ture the assertion that the influence of 
 history on politics was never smaller 
 than it is to-day, although history was 
 never before cultivated with so much 
 acumen and industry. So that authority 
 and experience may fairly be ruled out 
 of the list of forces which seriously 
 influence the government of democratic 
 societies. In the formation of public 
 opinion they do not greatly count. 
 
 The effect of all this is not simply to 
 lead to hasty legislation. It also has an 
 injurious effect on legislative decision, in 
 making every question seem an " open " 
 or " large " question. As nothing, or 
 next to nothing, is settled, all problems 
 of politics have a tendency to seem new 
 to every voter, — matters of which each 
 man is as good a judge as another, and 
 as much entitled to his own opinion ; he 
 is likely to consider himself under no 
 special obligation to agree with anybody 
 else. The only obligation he feels is that 
 of party, and this is imposed to secure 
 victories at the polls rather than to in- 
 sure any particular kind of legislation. 
 For instance, a man may be a civil ser- 
 vice reformer when the party takes no 
 action about it, or a gold man when 
 the party rather favors silver, or a free- 
 trader when the party advocates high 
 tariff, and yet be a good party man as 
 long as he votes the ticket. He may 
 question all the opinions in its platform, 
 but if he thinks it is the best party to 
 administer the government or distribute 
 the offices, he may and does remain in 
 it with perfect comfort. In short, party 
 discipline does not insure uniformity of 
 opinion, but simply uniformity of action 
 at election. The platform is not held to 
 impose any line of action on the voters. 
 Neither party in America to-day has any 
 fixed creed. Every voter believes what 
 is good in his own eyes, and may do 
 so with impunity, without loss of party 
 
 non of Puhlic Opinion. 
 
 standing, as long as he votes for the pai"- 
 ty nominee at every important election. 
 
 The pursuit of any policy in legisla- 
 tion is thus, undoubtedly, more difficult 
 than of old. The phrase, well known to 
 lawyers, that a thing is " against public 
 policy " has by no means the same mean- 
 ing now that it once had, for it is very 
 difficult to say what " public policy " is. 
 National policy is something which has 
 to be committed to the custody of a few 
 men who respect tradition and are fa- 
 miliar with recoi'ds. A large assembly 
 which is not dominated by a leader, and 
 in which each member thinks he knows 
 as much as any other member, and does 
 not study or respect records, can hardly 
 follow a policy without a good deal of dif- 
 ficulty. The disappearance from the gov- 
 ernments of the United States, France, 
 and Italy of commanding figures, whose 
 authority or character imposed on minor 
 men, accordingly makes it hard to say 
 what is the policy of these three coun- 
 tries on most questions. Ministers who 
 do not carry personal weight always seek 
 to fortify themselves by the conciliation 
 of voters, and what will conciliate voters 
 is, under every democratic regime, a mat- 
 ter of increasing uncertainty, so free is 
 the play of individual oj)inion. 
 
 Of this, again, the condition of our cur- 
 rency question at this moment is a good 
 illustration. Twenty-five years ago, the 
 custody and regulation of the standard 
 of value, like the custody and regulation 
 of the standard of length or of weight, 
 were confided to experts, without objec- 
 tion in any quarter. There was no more 
 thought of disputing with these experts 
 about it than of disputing with mathe- 
 maticians or astronomers about problems 
 in their respective sciences. It was not 
 thought that there could be a " public 
 opinion " about the comparative merits of 
 the metals as mediums of exchange, any 
 more than about the qualities of triangles 
 or the position of stars. The experts met 
 now and then, in private conclave, and 
 decided, without criticism from any one 
 
The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion. 13 
 
 else, whether silver or gold should be the 
 legal tender. All the public asked was 
 that the standard, whatever it was, should 
 be the steadiest possible, the least liable 
 to fluctuations or variations. 
 
 With the growing strength of the de- 
 mocratic regime all this has been changed. 
 The standard of value, like nearly every- 
 thing else about which men are con- 
 cerned, has descended into the political 
 arena. Every man claims the right to 
 have an opinion about it, as good as that 
 of any other man. More than this, 
 nearly every man is eager to get this 
 opinion embodied in legislation if he 
 can. Nobody is listened to by all as an 
 authority on the subject. The most emi- 
 nent financiers find their views exposed 
 to nearly as much question as those of 
 any tyro. The idea that money should 
 be a standard of value, as good as the 
 nature of value will permit, has almost 
 disappeared. Money has become a means 
 in the hands of governments of alleviat- 
 ing human misery, of lightening the 
 burdens of unfoi-tunate debtors, and of 
 stimulating industry. On the best mode 
 of doing these things, every man thinks 
 he is entitled to his say. The result is 
 that we find ourselves, in the presence 
 of one of the most serious financial pro- 
 blems which has ever confronted any na- 
 tion, without a financial leader. The 
 finances of the Revolution had Alexan- 
 der Hamilton, and subsequently Albert 
 Gallatin. The finances of the civil war 
 had first Secretary Chase, and subse- 
 quently Senator Sherman, both of whom 
 brought us to some sort of conclusion, if 
 not always to the right conclusion, by 
 sheer weight of authority. To Senator 
 Sherman we were mainly indebted for 
 the return to specie payment in 1879. 
 At present we have no one who fills the 
 places of these men in the public eye. 
 No one assumes to lead in this crisis, 
 though many give good as well as bad 
 advice, but all, or nearly all, who advise, 
 advise as politicians, not as financiers. 
 Very few who speak on the subject say 
 
 publicly the things they say in private. 
 Their public deliverances are modified 
 or toned down to suit some part of the 
 country, or some set or division of vot- 
 ers. They are what is called " politically 
 wise." During the twenty years follow- 
 ing the change in the currency in 1873 
 no leading man in either party disputed 
 the assertions of the advocates of silver 
 as to the superiority of silver to gold as 
 a standard of value. Nearly all politi- 
 cians, even of the Republican party, ad- 
 mitted the force of some of the conten- 
 tious of those advocates, and were willing 
 to meet them halfway by some such mea- 
 sure as the purchase of silver under the 
 Sherman Act. The result was that when 
 Mr. Bryan was nominated on a silver 
 platform, his followers attacked the gold 
 standard with weapons drawn from the 
 armory of the gold men, and nearly every 
 public man of prominence was estopped 
 from vigorous opposition to them by his 
 own utterances on the same subject. 
 
 It is easy to see that under circum- 
 stances like these a policy about finance 
 — the most important matter in which a 
 nation can have a policy — is hardly pos- 
 sible. There are too many opinions in 
 the field for the formation of anything 
 that can be called public opinion. And 
 yet, I cannot recall any case in history, 
 or, in other words, in human experience, 
 in which a gi-eat scheme of financial re- 
 form was carried through without having 
 some man of force or weight behind it, 
 some man who had framed it, who un- 
 derstood it, who could answer objections 
 to it, and who was not obliged to alter 
 or curtail it against his better judgment. 
 The great financiers stand out in bold 
 relief in the financial chronicles of every 
 nation. They may have been wrong, 
 they may have made mistakes, but they 
 spoke imperiously and carried their point, 
 whatever it was. 
 
 Whether the disposition to do without 
 them, and to control money through popu- 
 lar opinion, which seems now to have 
 taken possession of the democratic world, 
 
14 The Growth and Expression of Public Opinion. 
 
 will last, or whether it will be abandoned 
 after trial, remains to be seen. But one 
 is not a rash prophet who predicts that it 
 will fail. Finance is too fuU of details, 
 of unforeseen effects, of technical condi- 
 tions, to make the mastery of it possible, 
 without much study and exi^erience. 
 There is no problem of government 
 which comes so near being strictly " sci- 
 entific," that is, so dependent on prin- 
 ciples of human nature and so little 
 dependent on legislative power. No gov- 
 ernment can completely control the me- 
 dium of exchange. It is a subject for 
 psychology rather than for politics. De- 
 mocracy has apparently been taken pos- 
 session of by the idea, either that a 
 perfect standard of value may be con- 
 trived, or that the standard of value 
 may be made a philanthropic instrument. 
 But in view of the incessant and rapid 
 change of cost of production which every- 
 thing undergoes in this age of invention 
 and discovery, gold and silver included, 
 the idea of a perfect standard of value 
 must be set down as a chimera. Every 
 one acknowledges this. What some men 
 maintain is that the effects of invention 
 and discovery may be counteracted by 
 law and even by treaty, which is simply 
 an assertion that parliaments and con- 
 gresses and diplomatists can determine 
 what each man shall give for everything 
 he buys. This proposition hardly needs 
 more than a statement of it for its refuta- 
 tion. It is probably the most unexpected 
 of all the manifestations of democratic 
 feeling yet produced. For behind all 
 proposals to give currency a legal value 
 differing from the value of the market- 
 place lies a belief in the strength of law 
 such as the world has never yet seen. 
 All previous regimes have believed in the 
 power of law to enforce physical obedi- 
 ence, and to say what shall constitute the 
 legal payment of a debt, but never until 
 now has it been maintained that govern- 
 ment can create in each head the amount 
 of desire which fixes the price of a com- 
 modity. 
 
 In short, the one thing which can be 
 said with most certainty about demo- 
 cratic public opinion in the modern 
 world, is that it is moulded as never be- 
 fore by economic rather than by reli- 
 gious or moral or political considera- 
 tions. The influences which governed 
 the world down to the close of the seven- 
 teenth century were respect for a reign- 
 ing family, or belief in a certain form 
 of religious worship and horror of oth- 
 ers, or national pride and correspond- 
 ing dislike or distrust of foreigners, or 
 commercial rivalry. It is only the last 
 which has now much influence on public 
 opinion or in legislation. There is not 
 much respect, that can be called a politi- 
 cal force, left for any reigning family. 
 There is a general indifference to all 
 forms of religious worship, or at least 
 sufficient indifference to ])revent strong 
 or combative attachment to them. Re- 
 ligious wars are no longer possible ; the 
 desire to spread any form of faith by 
 force of arms, which so powerfully in- 
 fluenced the politics of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, has completely 
 disappeared. It is only in Spain and in 
 Turkey that this feeling can now be said 
 to exist as a power in the state. 
 
 The growth of indifference to what 
 used to be called political liberty, too, 
 has been curiously rapid. Political lib- 
 erty, as the terra was understood at the 
 beginning of this century, was the power 
 of having something to say in the election 
 of all officers of the state, and through 
 them of influencing legislation and ad- 
 ministration ; or, in other words, of en- 
 forcing strict responsibility for its acts 
 on the part of the governing body to- 
 wards the people. There is apparently 
 much less importance attached to this 
 now than formerly, as is shown by the 
 surrender of the power of nomination to 
 " the bosses " in so many States ; and 
 in New York by the growing readiness 
 to pass legislation without debate under 
 direction from the outside. Similarly, 
 socialism, which seems to be the political 
 
The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West. 15 
 
 creed which has strongest hold on the 
 working classes to-day, is essentially a 
 form of domination over the whole in- 
 dividual by the constituted authorities, 
 without consulting him. The only choice 
 left him is one of an occupation, and of 
 the kind of food he will eat and the 
 kind of clothes he will wear. As there 
 is to be no war, no money, no idleness, 
 and no taxation, there will be no poli- 
 tics, and consequently no discussion. 
 In truth, the number of men who would 
 hail such a form of society with delight, 
 as relieving them from all anxiety about 
 sustenance, and from all need of skill or 
 character, is probably large and increas- 
 ing. For similar reasons, the legisla- 
 tion which excites most attention is apt 
 to be legislation which in some way 
 promises an increase of physical com- 
 fort. It is rarely, for instance, that a 
 trades union or workingman's associa- 
 tion shows much interest in any law 
 except one which promises to increase 
 wages, or shorten hours of labor, or 
 lower fares or the price of something. 
 Protection, to which a very large num- 
 ber of workingmen are attached, is only 
 in their eyes a mode of keeping wages up. 
 " Municipal ownership " is another name 
 for low fares ; restrictions on immigra- 
 tion are a mode of keeping competitors 
 out of the labor market. 
 
 All these things, and things of a sim- 
 
 ilar nature, attract a great deal of in- 
 terest ; the encroachments of the bosses 
 on constitutional government, compara- 
 tively little. The first attempt to legis- 
 late for the economical benefit of the 
 masses was the abolition of the English 
 corn laws. It may seem at first sight 
 that the enactment of the corn laws was 
 an economical measure. But such was 
 not the character in which the corn laws 
 were originally advocated. They were 
 called for, first, in order to make Eng- 
 land self-supporting in case of a war with 
 foreign powers, a contingency which was 
 constantly present to men's minds in the 
 last century ; secondly, to keep up the 
 country gentry, or " landed interest," as 
 it was called, which then had great po- 
 litical value and importance. The aboli- 
 tion of these laws was avowedly carried 
 out simply for the purpose of cheapen- 
 ing and enlarging the loaf. It was the 
 beginning of a series of measures in va- 
 rious countries which aim merely at in- 
 creasing human physical comfort, what- 
 ever their effect on the structure of the 
 government or on the play of politi- 
 cal institutions. This foreshadowed the 
 greatest change which has come over the 
 modern world. It is now governed 
 mainly by ideas about the distribution 
 of commodities. This distribution is not 
 only what most occupies public opinion, 
 but what has most to do with forming it. 
 
 E. L. Godkin. 
 
 THE WILD PARKS AND FOREST RESERVATIONS OF THE WEST. 
 
 " Keep not~ standing fix'd and rooted, 
 
 Briskly venture, briskly roam ; 
 Head and hand, where'er thou foot it, 
 
 And stout heart are still at home. 
 In each land the sun does visit 
 
 We are gay, whate'er betide : 
 To give room for wandering is it 
 
 That the world was made so wide." 
 
 The tendency nowadays to wander in 
 wildernesses is delightful to see. Thou- 
 
 sands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civi- 
 lized people are beginning to find out that 
 going to the mountains is going home ; 
 that wildness is a necessity ; and that 
 mountain parks and reservations are 
 useful not only as fountains of timber 
 and irrigating rivers, but as fountains of 
 life. Awakening from the stupefying 
 effects of the vice of over-industry and 
 
16 The Wild Parks and Forest Reservations of the West. 
 
 the deadly apathy of luxury, they are 
 tiying as hest they can to mix and en- 
 rich their own little ongoings with those 
 of Nature, and to get rid of rust and dis- 
 ease. Briskly venturing and roaming, 
 some are washing off sins and cobweb 
 cares of the devil's spinning in all-day 
 storms on mountains ; sauntering in i-os- 
 iny pinewoods or in gentian meadows, 
 brushing through chaparral, bending 
 down and parting sweet, flowery sprays ; 
 tracing rivers to their sources, getting in 
 touch with the nerves of Mother Earth ; 
 jumping from rock to rock, feeling the 
 life of them, learning the songs of them, 
 panting in whole-souled exercise and re- 
 joicing in deep, long-drawn breaths of 
 pure wildness. This is fine and natural 
 and full of promise. And so also is the 
 growing interest in the care and preser- 
 vation of forests and wild places in gen- 
 eral, and in the half-wild parks and gar- 
 dens of towns. Even the scenery habit 
 in its most artificial forms, mixed with 
 spectacles, silliness, and kodaks ; its de- 
 votees arrayed more gorgeously than 
 scarlet tanagers, frightening the wild 
 game with red umbrellas, — even this 
 is encouraging, and may well be regard- 
 ed as a hopeful sign of the times. 
 
 All the Western mountains are still 
 rich in wildness, and by means of good 
 roads are being brought nearer civiliza- 
 tion every year. To the sane and free 
 it will hardly seem necessary to cross the 
 continent in search of wild beauty, how- 
 ever easy the way, for they find it in 
 abundance wherever they chance to be. 
 Like Thoreau they see forests in orchards 
 and patches of huckleberry brush, and 
 oceans in ponds and drops of dew. Few 
 in these hot, dim, frictiony times are 
 quite sane or free ; choked with care 
 like clocks full of dust, laboriously do- 
 ing so much good and making so much 
 money, — or so little, — they are no 
 longer good themselves. 
 
 When, like a merchant taking a list of 
 his goods, we take stock of our wildness, 
 we are glad to see how much of even 
 
 the most destructible kind is still un- 
 spoiled. Looking at our continent as 
 scenery when it was all wild, lying be- 
 tween beautiful seas, the starry sky 
 above it, the starry rocks beneath it, to 
 compare its sides, the East and the West, 
 would be like comparing the sides of a 
 rainbow. But it is no longer equally 
 beautiful. The rainbows of to-day are, 
 I suppose, as bright as those that first 
 spanned the sky ; and some of our land- 
 scapes are growing more beautiful from 
 year to year, notwithstanding the clear- 
 ing, trampling work of civilization. New 
 plants and animals are enriching woods 
 and gardens, and many landscapes wholly 
 new, with divine sculpture and architec- 
 ture, are just now coming to the light of 
 day as the mantling folds of creative gla- 
 ciers are being withdrawn, and life in 
 a thousand cheerful, beautiful forms is 
 pushing into them, and new-born rivers 
 are beginning to sing and shine in them. 
 The old rivers, too, are growing longer 
 like healthy trees, gaining new branches 
 and lakes as the residual glaciers at their 
 highest sources on the mountains recede, 
 while their rootlike branches in their 
 flat deltas are at the same time spread- 
 ing farther and wider into the seas and 
 making new lands. 
 
 Under the control of the vast mys- 
 terious forces of the interior of the 
 earth all the continents and islands are 
 slowly rising or sinking. Most of the 
 mountains are diminishing in size under 
 the wearing action of the weather, though 
 a few are increasing in height and girth, 
 especially the volcanic ones, as fresh 
 floods of molten rocks are piled on their 
 summits and spread in successive layers, 
 like the wood-rings of trees, on their 
 sides. And new mountains ai'e being 
 created from time to time as islands in 
 lakes and seas, or as subordinate cones 
 on the slopes of old ones, thus 'in some 
 measure balancing the waste of okl beau- 
 ty with new. Man, too, is making many 
 far-reaching changes. This most influ- 
 ential half animal, half angel is rapidly 
 
Penelope s 
 
 How wer\we to know that it was near 
 this fatal Itjchcaldy? If you think it 
 best, we will hold no communication 
 with the place, iijid Mr. Macdonald need 
 never know you are here." 
 
 I thought Francesca looked rather 
 g^rtled at this proposition. At all events 
 she s«iid hastily, " Oh well, let it go ; we 
 could not avoid each othei^r long, anyway, 
 though is very awkward, of course ; 
 you see, w^ did not part friends." 
 
 " I thought I had never seen you on 
 more cordial terms," remarked Salemina. 
 
 " But you were n't there," at\swered 
 Francesca unguardedly. \ 
 
 " Were n't where ? " \ 
 
 " Were n't there." \ 
 
 " Where ? " \ \ 
 
 " At the station." \ 
 
 " What station ? " 
 
 " The station in Edinburgh from which 
 I started for the Highlands." 
 
 "You never said that be came to see 
 you off." 
 
 " The matter was too unimportant for 
 notice ; and the more I think of his being 
 here, the less I mind it, after all ; and so, 
 dull care, begone ! When I first meet 
 him on the sands or in the loaning, I 
 shall say, ' Dear me, is it Mr. Macdon- 
 ald ! What brought you to our quiet 
 hamlet ? ' (I shall put the responsibility 
 on him, you know.) ' That is the worst 
 of these small countries, — people are 
 continually in one another's Way ! When 
 we part forever in Ameri^, we are able 
 to stay parted, if we wisK-' Then he will 
 say, ' Quite so, quite so ; but I suppose 
 even you. Miss Monroe, will allow that 
 a minister may not move his church to 
 please a lady.' ' Certainly not,' I shall 
 reply, ' eespecially when it is Estaib- 
 lished ! ' Then he will laugh, and we 
 shall be better friends for a few mo- 
 ments ; and then I shall tell him my latest 
 story about the Scotchman who prayed, 
 ' Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouklst 
 give me wealth ; only show me where it 
 is, and I will attend to the rest.' " 
 
 Salemina moaned at the delightful pro- 
 
 Progress. 103 
 
 spect opening before us, while I went to 
 the piano and caroled impersonally : — 
 
 " Oh, wherefore did I cross the Forth, 
 
 And leave my love behind me ? 
 Why did I venture to the north 
 
 With one that did not mind me ? 
 I 'm sure I 've seen a better limb 
 
 And twenty better faces ; 
 But still my mind it runs on him 
 
 When 1 am at the races I " 
 
 Francesca left the room at this, and 
 closed the door behind her with such 
 energy that the bust of Sir Walter rocked 
 on the hall shelf. Running upstairs she 
 locked herself in her bedroom, and came 
 down again only to help us receive Jane 
 Grieve, who arrived at eight o'clock. 
 
 In times of joy, Salemina, Francesca, 
 and I occasionally have our trifling dif- 
 ferences of opinion, but in hours of afflic- 
 tion we are as one flesh. An all-wise 
 Providence sent us Jane Grieve for fear 
 that we should be too happy in Pettybaw. 
 Plans made in heaven for the discipline 
 of sinful human flesh are always success- 
 ful, and this was no exception. 
 
 We had sent a " machine " from the 
 inn to meet her, and when it drew up at 
 the door we went forward to greet the 
 rosy little Jane of our fancy. An aged 
 person, wearing a rusty black bonnet and 
 shawl, and carrying what appeared to be 
 a tin cake-box and a baby's bath-tub, de- 
 scended i-heumatically from the vehicle 
 and announced herself as Miss Grieve. 
 She was too old to call by her Christian 
 name, too sensitive to call by her sur- 
 name, so Miss Grieve she remained, as 
 announced, to the end of the chapter, and 
 our rosy little Jane died before she was 
 actually born. The man took her curi- 
 ous luggage into the kitchen, and Sale- 
 mina escorted her thither, while Fran- 
 cesca and I fell into each other's arms 
 and laughed hysterically. 
 
 " Nobody need tell me that she is Mrs. 
 M'Collop's sister's husband's niece," 
 she whispered, " though she may possi- 
 bly be somebody's grandaunt. Does n't 
 she remind you of Mrs. Gummidge ? " 
 
104 Political Inmiguration of the Greater Neio York. 
 
 Saleraina returned in a quarter of an 
 hour, and sank dejectedly on the sofa. 
 
 " Run over to the inn, Francesca." she 
 said, " and order us bacon and eggs at 
 eight-thirty to-morrow morning. Miss 
 Grieve thinks we had better not break- 
 fast at home until she becomes accus- 
 tomed to the surroundings." 
 
 " Had we better allow her to become 
 accustomed to them ? " I suggested. 
 
 " She came up from Glasgow to Ed- 
 inburgh for the day, and went to see 
 Mrs. M'Collop just as our telegram ar- 
 rived. She was living with an ' ex- 
 es 
 
 tremely nice family ' in Glasgow, and 
 only broke her engagement in order to 
 try Fifeshire air for the summer ; so she 
 will remain with us as long as she is 
 benefited by the climate." 
 
 " Can't we pay her for a month and 
 send her away ? " 
 
 " How can we ? She is Mrs. M'Col- 
 lop's sister's husband's niece, and we in- 
 tend returning to Mrs. M'Collop. She 
 
 {To he c 
 
 has a nice ladylike appearance, but 
 when she takes her bonnet off she looks 
 seventy years old." 
 
 " She ought to keep it off, then," re- 
 turned Francesca, for she looked eighty 
 with it on. We shall have to soothe her 
 last moments, of course, and pay her 
 funeral expenses. Did you offer her a 
 cup of tea and show her the box-bed ? " 
 
 " Yes ; but she said the coals were so 
 poor and hard she couldna batter them 
 oop to start a fire the niclit, and she would 
 try the box-bed to see if she could sleep 
 in it. I am glad to remember that it 
 was you who telegraphed for her, Penel- 
 ope." 
 
 Let there be no recriminations," I 
 responded ; " let us stand shoulder to 
 shoulder in this calamity, — is n't there 
 a story called Calamity Jane ? We 
 might live at the inn, and give her the 
 cottage for a summer residence, but I 
 utterly refuse to be parted from our cat 
 and the 1602 lintel." 
 
 Kate Dougilas Wiggin. 
 
 itinned.) 
 
 POLITICAL INAUGURATION OF THE GREATER NEW YORK. 
 
 The day after the candidate of Tam- 
 many Hall was chosen mayor of the 
 greater New York, last November, the 
 city turned to another event significant 
 of much in American civilization. Even 
 the first election of the reorganized and 
 consolidated metropolis was to many of 
 its citizens hardl)' less interesting than 
 the opening of tiie largest hotel in the 
 world, the most sumptuous, perhaps, of 
 all large hotels. An English visitor, 
 though he wrote with the Philistine 
 glories of Thames Embankment hotels 
 before his eyes, has ventured to give this 
 latest aspect of New York life the grue- 
 some name of Sardanapalus. No doubt 
 Americans have not very much to learn 
 
 from the rest of the world in the matter 
 of lavish display within the dwellings of 
 their rich men and the hotels and other 
 places of resort of the well-to-do. One 
 maynovv find there all that moderns know 
 of inlaid marbles, rugs, mural paintings, 
 French and German canvases, and syba- 
 ritic indulgences of the table. Semi- 
 barbarous, perhaps, it all is, and surely 
 far enough from the modest amenities 
 of hostelries like the Revere House and 
 residences of Washington Square a half 
 century ago. The vast hotel palace tow- 
 ering to the skies in New York does 
 represent, however, something more than 
 the mere accumulation of wealth in the 
 greater cities of America and its doubt- 
 
Political Inauguration of 
 
 ful ostentations. It exhibits superb en- 
 ergy and skill in mechanical arts, and an 
 able and now thoroughly disciplined de- 
 termination to triumph in the devices for 
 physical well-being as weU as the appoint- 
 ments of magnificence. 
 
 Still, one's reflections on this triumph 
 are not altogether cheerful. So signal 
 an illustration of what New York can 
 do in hotel-keeping, coming when it did, 
 threw into a painful depression many 
 sensible citizens of New York, who loved 
 their city, or would love it if they could. 
 Its success in achievements of sheer luxu- 
 ry cast into deeper shade for them that 
 seeming failure of American democracy 
 to produce order, disciplined ability, and 
 honor in the government of cities which 
 the Tammany victory had just demon- 
 strated. That their country succeeds as 
 it does in grosser things brings them no 
 comfort, when they see, as they think, 
 its complete and final failure in munici- 
 pal administration, — a failure the more 
 lamentable that it comes at the time 
 when municipal administration has be- 
 come the greatest function of the modern 
 state. 
 
 Perhaps they ought not to care for 
 " abroad," but they do cai'e for it, and 
 all the more when the most patriotic 
 pride cannot save them from humiliating 
 admissions. They find it irksome to hear 
 the British premier ask the citizens of 
 London, as he did a few days after tiie 
 New York election, " Do you want to be 
 governed like New York ? " Or to hear 
 another and equally important member 
 of the British cabinet, Mr. Cliamberlain, 
 in his very able speech at Glasgow on the 
 8th of November last, explain " the whole 
 secret of the failure of American local 
 institutions," and admonish the British 
 workingmen that if they should aban- 
 don the businesslike and honorable sys- 
 tem upon which — so he declared, and 
 seemingly without danger of contradic- 
 tion — British public work is conduct- 
 ed, they might "fall at last as low" as 
 
 1 London Spectator of October 30, 1897. 
 
 the Greater New York. 105 
 
 their " cousins unfortunately have done." 
 Since they had agreed with English jour- 
 nals, before the result, that a Tammany 
 victory would " make of New York a rot- 
 ten, hopeless sink, . . . whose existence 
 would prove the standing insoluble pro- 
 blem of American life," ^ they cannot, 
 with any satisfaction to themselves, take 
 refuge in belligerent anglophobia when 
 they read, after the result, that it casts 
 " a lurid glow on the conditions of Amer- 
 ican institutions, and the failure of the 
 world's most democratic people to solve 
 a problem vital to the well-being of so- 
 ciety." Americans whose buoyancy has 
 survived Lecky's powerful summing up 
 against democracy read with a pang the 
 foreign assertions that now " democratic 
 ideals . . . must be relegated to the lira- 
 bo of exploded fancies and buried hopes, 
 wliither so many fond illusions of the 
 enthusiast have been consigned." 
 
 There is about it all a wearing kind 
 of grief, such as men feel when their 
 religious convictions are undermined. 
 Every one knows that democracy is to 
 prevail in the United States ; every one 
 knows that there will be no turning back. 
 This much is inexorabla. So when those 
 who have doubted the beneficence of de- 
 mocracy now have their doubts turned 
 into disbelief, and when those who have 
 disbelieved now find a complete demon- 
 stration of the evils of democratic gov- 
 ernment, the air becomes heavy with po- 
 litical melancholy. The century is in- 
 deed ending in sorrow. 
 
 Is it not worth while to ask whether 
 all this be justified ? Did not the future 
 of their free institutions seem, to patri- 
 otic and intelligent Americans, to be quite 
 as gloomy, to say the least, during the 
 half dozen years after the revolutionary 
 war, and just before the splendid success 
 of the federal Constitution ? Were not 
 Americans more humiliated at the bar of 
 foreign opinion and of their own con- 
 science by the triumph of the slave pow- 
 er and the seeming meanness of our na- 
 
 2 London Economist of October 30, 1897. 
 
106 
 
 Political Inauguration of the Greater New York. 
 
 tional career in the few years before the 
 noble awakening of 1861 ? Is there any- 
 thing to-day quite as sodden and hopeless 
 as the triumph of public crime in New 
 York, and the acquiescent submission 
 of its reputable classes, when, in 1870, 
 Tweed carried the city by a great ma- 
 jority, — and this but a few months prior 
 to the uprising of its citizens in 1871 ? 
 If wise Americans ought not to shut 
 their eyes to the public evils from which 
 their great cities suffer, and which have 
 made urban growtli seem to be in many 
 respects a calamity, ought they, on the 
 other hand, to help increase the self-in- 
 dulgent temper of inefficient pessimism, 
 of which we have quite too much ? Is 
 not the large and true test of the re- 
 sult of the election in the greater New 
 York the chai-acter of the general pro- 
 gress which it indicates, rather than the 
 mere inferiority of the municipal admin- 
 istration of New York for the next four 
 years to what it might have been had 
 the election gone differently ? I ven- 
 ture to say that when the election is 
 treated in this way, when it is rationally 
 compared with the past, there appears 
 in it a real progress in American poli- 
 tics towards better, that is to say towards 
 more vigorous and honest and enlight- 
 ened administration. No doubt another 
 opportunity to reach an immediate and 
 practical good has been lost, and lam- 
 entably ; and we are all growing older. 
 But, on the other hand, far more plain- 
 ly than ever before do our municipal 
 politics show a powerful and wholesome 
 tendency. 
 
 Let us first look at the present loss. 
 Many of the pictures drawn of Ameri- 
 can "machines" of every political name 
 fail of their effect because some of the 
 colors used are impossible. The pictures 
 are therefore believed to be altogether 
 false by many wlio know from a per- 
 sonal knowledge that they are false in 
 part. It was difficult to indict a whole 
 people ; it is no less difficult and unrea- 
 sonable to indict a majority of the vot- 
 
 ers of New York. Every sensible man 
 practically familiar with the situation 
 knows that the plurality which has re- 
 turned Tammany Hall to power includes 
 thousands of honest, good citizens, and 
 even citizens both intelligent and hieh- 
 minded ; that under its restored admin- 
 istration some things — probably many 
 things — will be well and fairly done ; 
 that the masses of its voters have not 
 deliberately intended to surrender their 
 city to corruption or incompetency ; that 
 even among its politicians are men whose 
 instincts are sound and honorable. The 
 picture might as well be made true ; it 
 is surely dark enough without exaggera- 
 tion. For, after making just allowance, 
 it cannot be denied tiiat nine tenths of 
 the organized jobbery of the city sought 
 Tammany success either directly, or 
 through the indirect but no less practical 
 alliance of the Republican organization, 
 — a machine more Anglo-Saxon, per- 
 haps, in its equipment, but not a whit 
 better in morals, than its rival. Tam- 
 many Hall will in the future appoint to 
 office some men having energy, skill, and 
 character fit for their places as it has done 
 in the past ; but so, no doubt, will it put 
 into the hands of brutal, reckless, igno- 
 rant, and grossly dishonest men an enor- 
 mous and varied power over their fellow 
 citizens. The scandals and crimes of the 
 past will not return in full measure, for 
 the rising standard of public morality af- 
 fects even political machines. We are 
 bound, however, to assume that they 
 will return in a most corrupting and in- 
 jurious measure. 
 
 For the argument of the reformers, it 
 is unnecessary to deny that the Tamma- 
 ny candidates for the two great offices 
 of mayor and comptroller are personal- 
 ly well disposed ; for it is notorious — 
 there was not the slightest concealment 
 of the fact during the Tammany cam- 
 paign — that they were not chosen for 
 their own equipment in ability, in expe- 
 rience for the duties of really great and 
 critical offices requiring statesmanship 
 
Political Inauguration of the Greater New York. 107 
 
 of the highest order, or in public confi- 
 dence earned by any past public service. 
 As sometimes, though very rarely, has 
 happened with successful candidates of 
 the machine, it is possible that after all 
 they may have the necessary ability, and 
 may have the sense of right and force 
 of character to use it in the public in- 
 terest. If that turn out to be the case, 
 those who selected them will be as much 
 shocked as the community will be re- 
 joiced. They were chosen from among 
 the large body of men counted upon to 
 do absolutely, and without troublesome 
 protest, the will of the powerful politi- 
 cians, with no official responsibility, who 
 nominated them, and who are tolerably 
 skillful in judgment of this kind of hu- 
 man nature. But subject to that condi- 
 tion Tammany Hall preferred for candi- 
 dates men having as much personal and 
 pojjular respect, or at least as little pop- 
 ular dislike or disrespect, as public men 
 could have who should seem fully to 
 meet so unworthy a test. 
 
 Nor is it helpful to sketch with in- 
 credible lines the politcians who made 
 these nominations. It would be unjust 
 and untrue to say of all of them, as is 
 sometimes said truly of powerful politi- 
 cians, that conscious concern for the 
 honor or welfare of their community, 
 distinct from sheerly selfish personal in- 
 tent, enters their heads as rarely as a 
 pang for a dead private soldier struck 
 the heart of Napoleon. It is both just 
 and true, however, to say of many of 
 those politicians that they never know 
 that conscious concern. The first and 
 supremely dominant motive of most of 
 them — as the most generous observer 
 is compelled to concede — is personal 
 gain and advantage, with no more re- 
 gard for the trust obligations of public 
 life than is coerced by the fear of public 
 opinion, or rather by the fear that such 
 public opinion may become dangerous to 
 their private or public safety. They are 
 quite as bad in this respect as the mem- 
 bers of the cabal of Charles II., or the 
 
 Loughboroughs and Newcastles of a cen- 
 tury later, or even as the objects of the 
 Crimean investigation of 1855. Careers 
 like theirs have made the personal cor- 
 ruption and incompetence of aristocratic 
 government, and its disloyalty to public 
 welfare, primary object lessons in the 
 politics of generations far from ancient, 
 and every land lying between the Atlan- 
 tic and the Caucasus. 
 
 It would not be just to say that the 
 Tammany campaign was one of pretense, 
 even skillful pretense. The absence of 
 necessity for pretense in that campaign 
 ought of itself to arouse a deep anxiety. 
 Except now and then in a perfunctory 
 mention of tax rates or inadequate school 
 accommodation and the like, and except, 
 of course, in the traditional forms of 
 speech about the rights of the people, 
 Tammany Hall was tolerably frank. It 
 deliberately refused to virtue the tribute 
 of the cant that it too desired those bet- 
 ter things which the " reformers " af- 
 fected to seek. Not only was it daunt- 
 less under the flaming exhibition of its 
 police and police courts made in 1894, 
 but it stood with exjjllcit and bad cour- 
 age upon that very record which had 
 received a damning popular judgment 
 not only in the decent homes of New 
 York, but at the polls of the city. Its ora- 
 tors admitted, or rather they insisted, 
 that the powers of the new municipality 
 would be and ought to be used for the 
 benefit of its organization ; nor was it 
 seriously denied, or thought necessary to 
 deny seriously, that they would also and 
 largely be used for the personal gain of 
 a very few men. As to that, it seemed 
 a sufficient answer to make it clear that 
 if the Tammany victory meant great 
 personal gain to a few men, it likewise 
 meant lesser gain to large numbers of 
 men throughout the city, who would find 
 their advantage in violations of law and 
 in sacrifices of public interest. 
 
 Since, then, the successful candidates 
 were chosen as they were ; since the 
 worst forces of the metropolis earnestly 
 
108 Political Inauguration of the Greater JVew York. 
 
 promoted their success ; since such are 
 the ideals, the character, and the prin- 
 ciples of the powerful but irresponsible 
 politicians who have chosen them, and 
 who, ten chances to one, will absolutely 
 control them ; and since they have been 
 chosen with no embarrassing public com- 
 mittal to any specific measure of econo- 
 my or efficiency, it is no doubt difficult 
 to hope that their administration will be 
 either enlightened or useful. New York 
 seems doomed to a low standard of civic 
 administration till the end of 1901. 
 
 Nor was this all the grief of the " re- 
 formers." Most of them suffered keen 
 disappointment. And indeed there was 
 good reason to hope at least for a better 
 result. The greater New York had be- 
 fore it an exalting opportunity. This 
 was to be the first election since the con- 
 stitutional separation of municipal from 
 national elections, and fi'om state elec- 
 tions excejjt in the choice of judges and 
 of members of the lower house of the 
 legislature. Public attention was almost 
 exclusively directed, so far as law could 
 direct it, to the welfare of the city. 
 Then there was the consolidation which 
 interested the world ; the election was to 
 be on a grander scale than any city had 
 yet known, — it surely must touch the 
 imagination as never before. Whatever 
 the faults of the charter, it did create the 
 second municipality of the world in pop- 
 ulation and in wealth, — a city unsur- 
 passed the world over in natural advan- 
 tages, and in the energy, intelligence, 
 and morality of its citizens. It was not 
 unnatural for reformers to think that the 
 inspiration of all this must reach and 
 control most citizens. 
 
 The elections from 1893 to 1896 had 
 shown widespread independence among 
 the Democrats, who constituted the great 
 majority of the voters of New York. 
 All Republicans, or nearly all, it was 
 assumed, would be enemies of Tammany 
 Hall. Besides, it seemed too plain to be 
 forgotten by the builders and mechanics 
 of New York, its manufacturers and the 
 
 great classes engaged in transportation 
 on its harbor and bounding rivers, that 
 their interests required a higher standard 
 of administration than either political 
 machine could or would give. The news- 
 paper press, tlie pulpit, and the chief re- 
 presentatives of the business and social 
 life of the city stood overwhelmingly for 
 the new departure. Then there was 
 great hope — and, as it turned out, not 
 without reason — that Tammany would 
 not completely hold the poorer quarters 
 of the city, as it had held them for years. 
 Since its defeat in 1894, less fortunate 
 citizens, under Mayor Strong, had se- 
 cured a far larger share of the benefits 
 of good administration than ever before ; 
 and the benefits were such as could not 
 be overlooked even by a casual passer-by. 
 Under Colonel Waring's vigorous and 
 popular control of the street-cleaning and 
 the wise distribution of the still meagre 
 provision for good paving, many densely 
 crowded districts had lost their aspect 
 of public squalor. 
 
 Moreover, much had been done at the 
 very foundation of public sentiment by 
 the University Settlement and other noble 
 and thriving societies. James B. Rey- 
 nolds and his associates had been admi- 
 rably successful in the popularization of 
 sound politics. For a full year the dis- 
 cussions of the plan of a greater New 
 York had been so incessant and so elo- 
 quent that it seemed incredible that po- 
 litical light should not have permeated 
 the entire city. In short, it was per- 
 fectly reasonable to believe that, what- 
 ever might be the difficulties of the new 
 charter, the popular intelligence was at 
 last alert, the popular conscience at last 
 deeply stirred and responsive to popular 
 feeling. The reformers were fond of 
 saying that the revolution in municipal 
 politics was at last upon us. The seem- 
 ing reasonableness of all this hope added 
 material bitterness to the result. 
 
 Even this does not sum up the disap- 
 pointment. It grew more poignant when 
 the reformers recalled the immediate 
 
Political Inauguration of the Greater New YorJc. 109 
 
 thing which the city rejected. It could 
 have had its executive administration in , 
 the hands of Seth Low, and its financial 
 administration in the hands of Charles 
 S. Fairchild. Those men represented, 
 in their training, their careers, and their 
 ideals, the very best of American public 
 life ; and no public life in the world has 
 anything better. Mr. Fairchild had held 
 with distinguished honor the high office 
 of Secretary of the Treasury of the 
 United States, and had been attorney- 
 general of the state. He had exhib- 
 ited courage and energy of the first 
 order as a political leader. The candi- 
 dates represented a rational measure of 
 enthusiasm. They believed that public 
 life could be made better. They believed 
 that enormous improvement could be 
 made, and made now, in the administra- 
 tion of American cities. Without this 
 belief nothing very good was likely to 
 be accomplished. But further, they had 
 demonstrated by practical experience in 
 great affairs that they were not visiona- 
 ries ; that they could, as well as would, 
 improve the standard of administration. 
 
 The problems of that administration, 
 ready for immediate solution, and capa- 
 ble of solution by Mr. Low and Mr. 
 Fairchild, were admirably presented in 
 the brief declaration of the Citizens' 
 Union. Its members proposed to make 
 of municipal administration a business, 
 to be carried on with the zeal and loy- 
 alty and skill which a highly competent 
 man brings to the transaction of his own 
 business. They were ready to continue 
 the substitution of the best of modern 
 pavements for those which had so long 
 disgraced the city. They were ready to 
 enforce sanitary regulations that are of 
 real consequence to all, but of vital con- 
 sequence to the least fortunate in a large 
 city. They proposed the establishment 
 of public lavatories, the almost complete 
 absence of which in New York seems 
 to any one familiar with great foreign 
 cities an incredible and stupid disgrace. 
 They proposed a rational treatment of 
 
 the problem of parks and of transit fa- 
 cilities. They gave a pledge, which 
 everybody knew to be honest, that pub- 
 lic franchises would not be surrendered 
 into the hands of private persons ; that 
 the city would not, as it had done in 
 the past, give up the common property 
 and profit of all in the streets to the 
 enrichment of a few. Above all, they 
 promised — and everybody knew they 
 would keep the promise — that if the 
 great powers of the mayoralty and comp- 
 troUership should come to them, those 
 powers would be used solely in the pub- 
 lic interest, without that personal prosti- 
 tution of the offices of the city to which 
 we have become so lamentably used, or 
 that political prostitution of them to the 
 real or fancied exigencies of national 
 politics. 
 
 We have never known a more cred- 
 itable campaign than theirs. If it did 
 not command a majority of the votes, it 
 did command a substantial and univer- 
 sal respect. It rendered a lasting ser- 
 vice to American politics. Ordinarily 
 the defeated head of a ticket has lost his 
 " availability ; " but to-day Seth Low, 
 it is agreeable to see, occupies a more 
 enviable position than he has ever held, 
 or than is held by any other American 
 now active in politics. He has the de- 
 served good fortune to stand before the 
 country for a cause which, to the aver- 
 age American, is largely embodied in 
 his person. What was believed before 
 his nomination was confirmed at the elec- 
 tion : he was plainly the strongest can- 
 didate who could have been chosen to 
 represent his cause. He polled 40,000 
 votes more than his ticket ; that is to 
 say, there were that number of citizens 
 to whom the cause meant Seth Low, and 
 no one else, or who were willing to leave 
 the tickets of their respective machines 
 only on the mayoralty, that they might 
 cast their votes for him. He has come 
 out of the campaign far stronger than he 
 entered it. 
 
 So much for the disappointments of 
 
110 Political Inauguration of the Grtater New York. 
 
 the election. There were, on tlie other 
 hand, some conditions recognized in ad- 
 vance as distinctly unfavorable to suc- 
 cess. For several reasons, it was seen, 
 — and upon this Tammany Hall openly 
 counted, — the test at the polls would 
 not represent the full strength of the re- 
 form cause. The trend of independent 
 sentiment in New York was distinctly 
 away from the Republican party ; and 
 the independent Democrats had become 
 so hostile to what they considered to be 
 Republican misdoing that they were ani- 
 mated by a really intense desire to cast 
 the most efifective vote against the Re- 
 publican ticket. For months before the 
 election of 1897, the temper of even 
 the most liberal of the Gold Democrats 
 was raw. They were inclined — doubt- 
 less too much inclined — to forget mis- 
 behavior of their own party. But this 
 was natural. In 1896 they had made 
 serious political sacrifices by repudiation 
 of the Chicago candidates and platform. 
 To most of them opposition to a protec- 
 tive tariff was the fii"st political cause 
 save one, the preservation of the finan- 
 cial honor of the country by a firm 
 adherence to the gold standard. They 
 were glad to be known as Gold Demo- 
 crats. The Republican administration, 
 though it came to Washington by their 
 votes, promptly treated them, as tliey 
 thought, with a sort of contumely. They 
 saw no effort made to establish the 
 national finances upon the sound basis 
 of intrinsic and universally recognized 
 value ; instead they were affronted by the 
 Wolcott mission to Europe in the inter- 
 est of the free coinage of silver. The 
 administration, they felt, had left them 
 little party excuse for supporting it. 
 The Dingley bill seemed to them the 
 sum of tariff iniquities. And then, de- 
 scending from greater things to less, the 
 Democratic federal office-holders who 
 were not protected by the civil service 
 law, and who in 1896 had stood for 
 sound money, were treated in the old 
 prescriptive fashion. 
 
 If the Republican national adminis- 
 tration had become obnoxious to Demo- 
 crats of this temper, the Republican ad- 
 ministration at Albany since January 1, 
 1897, seemed nothing less than detest- 
 able. In tlie opinion of the independent 
 body of voters in the state, nothing 
 worse, nothing more barbarous or ig- 
 norant, had been known before in the 
 executive control of the state. The gov- 
 ernor's appointment of men of scanda- 
 lous record to great places, and his detei"- 
 mined and measurably successful attempt 
 to defeat the civil service reform article 
 of the new constitution, had gone a long 
 way toward making it seem the first 
 political duty of good citizens to punish 
 him and the party organization which 
 stood behind him. How could this be 
 done, according to American political 
 usage, except by voting " tJte Demo- 
 cratic ticket " ? And this, under the in- 
 fluence of such real or fancied wrongs 
 and affronts, independent Democrats felt 
 an eager desire to do. 
 
 The Republican machine in New York 
 contributed all in its power to augment 
 this feeling. No defeat of Tammany 
 Hall was possible, as it well knew, un- 
 less with the support of 70,000 or 80,000 
 Democrats. Yet it industriously made 
 it difficult for the most liberal of Demo- 
 crats to vote against the nominee of their 
 party convention, if that vote would add 
 to the probability of Republican success. 
 It is, or ought to be, a political axiom 
 that a political party should carefully 
 avoid the hostility of strong feeling upon 
 any subject irrelevant to the matter in 
 hand. Such a course is foolish in the 
 extreme ; and there has been no better 
 illustration of the folly than in the be- 
 havior of the Republican machine. The 
 Republican convention declared that the 
 " one great issue before the people at 
 this time " — that is to say, in the mayor- 
 alty campaign of New Yoi-k — was " the 
 issue created by the Chicago platform." 
 It presented candidates who, if they 
 were chosen, could have in their official 
 
Political Inauguration of the Greater New York. 
 
 Ill 
 
 relations no national function whatever, 
 whose measures and official acts could 
 be in no way related to the tariff or cur- 
 rency or foreign affairs. Could anything, 
 therefore, be more grotesque than tiie 
 following sentences in the platform upon 
 which General Tracy was nominated? 
 " We indorse the St. Louis platform. 
 . . . We indorse the patriotic and suc- 
 cessful administration of William Mc- 
 Kinley. He was truly the ' advance 
 agent of prosperity.' We congratulate 
 the people upon the passage of a Repub- 
 lican protective tariff bill. . . . No duty 
 can be so obvious as that of the people 
 of this commercial city to sustain the 
 party which has so completely and so 
 surely rescued the country from the finan- 
 cial depression into which it had been 
 plunged by Democratic follies." 
 
 To the intense desire of every Demo- 
 crat to strike the most effective blow 
 possible at the Republican party was due, 
 no doubt, a material part of the Tam- 
 many plurality. This, however, is only 
 palliation. To vote for the Tammany 
 candidate on this account, rather than 
 for Seth Low, may have been natural ; 
 but it was the height of unreason to vote 
 for one wrong because of irritation at 
 another wrong. An impeachment of de- 
 mocracy for folly and incompetence is 
 hardly less formidable than for moral 
 wrong. 
 
 Before proceeding to judgment, how- 
 ever, we have to consider temporally con- 
 ditions which have prevailed in New 
 York, which had nothing to do with de- 
 mocracy, but which enormously helped on 
 the result. The first of these was its cos- 
 mopolitan character. Of its present pop- 
 ulation, one third are foreign-born, and 
 another third are children of foreign-born 
 parents. Of the third who are Ameri- 
 cans, a very large proportion came to 
 New York after reaching manhood. Still, 
 it is not the large existing Irish or Ger- 
 man or Scandinavian population which 
 is the serious factor, or even the continu- 
 ous addition of the distressed and de- 
 
 moralized from foreign lands. It is prob- 
 able that either the Americans, or the 
 Irish, or the Germans, or the Scandina- 
 vians, by themselves and separate from 
 the others, would make a far better 
 city government. The European or 
 American cities which are held up as 
 models to New York have homogeneous 
 populations ; the foreigners are only vis- 
 itors or small colonies having no share 
 in political power. New York, in reality, 
 consists of several great communities, 
 essentially foreign to one another, which 
 share the government between them with 
 many struggles and rivalries. Every 
 nmnicipal ticket must have at least its 
 American and Irish and German candi- 
 dates. For a complete union of these 
 various strains of population we need 
 not years, but generations. Mere birth 
 and residence within the limits of New 
 York do not give that root in the soil 
 which makes the citizen a firm and use- 
 ful member of the community. He does 
 not belong to the whole city if he be one 
 of a body of citizens foreign to all other 
 citizens. 
 
 Venerable in years as New York is 
 coming to be, it still retains many fea- 
 tures of a shifting camp. Its population 
 comes and goes. There is within its lim- 
 its not a single square mile, or probably 
 half that territory, a majority of whose 
 inhabitants or of their parents were there 
 twenty-five years ago. Political rela- 
 tions, social relations, neighborhood re- 
 lations, have been changing with a ra- 
 pidity unknown in the great urban 
 communities of western Europe. This 
 condition is highly inconsistent with good 
 politics or sound and steady public sen- 
 timent, whatever the form of govern- 
 ment. If it be said that in Philadelphia 
 and in other cities where the American 
 population is preponderant there is great 
 corruption, it must be answered that in 
 them precisely the same condition ex- 
 ists, although to a smaller degree. In 
 Philadelphia the overpowering and con- 
 spicuously present interests of the pro- 
 
112 
 
 Political Inauguration of the Greater New York. 
 
 tective system have stifled the local con- 
 science. There patriotism becomes " the 
 last refuge of a scoundrel." Sound local 
 politics depend upon the kind of con- 
 tinuous local life illustrated in quarters 
 of London which, a century ago, were 
 eligible for superior residences, and are 
 still eligible, or in the quarters of what 
 are called lower middle class residences, 
 where one still sees the house-fronts and 
 methods of living described in Dickens's 
 earlier novels, and the children and 
 grandchildren of his characters. 
 
 A further demoralizing influence which 
 has prevented any municipal election in 
 New York from fairly and directly re- 
 presenting its public sentiment has been 
 its enervating dependence upon the le- 
 gislature at Albany. The great majori- 
 ty of that body are ignorant of the city. 
 Their habits and prejudices are foreign 
 to it ; and they look with more or less 
 animosity upon its large accumulations 
 of wealth. The city has been ruled by 
 special legislation, — and this, it is lam- 
 entable to say, with the moral support 
 of much of its intelligence. Its inhabit- 
 ants have been trained to suppose tlie 
 true cure of a political evil to be an ap- 
 peal, not to political bodies or forces at 
 home, but to legislation in a city one 
 hundred and fifty miles distant. The 
 charter of greater New York is bad 
 enough in this respect, but the charter 
 under which New York has lived for 
 generations has been even worse. Nearly 
 all its provisions have been in perpetual 
 legislative flux ; its amendment has usu- 
 ally been unrelated to the public senti- 
 ment of the city, and has frequently vio- 
 lated it. No system can be imagined 
 better fitted to destroy intelligent, popu- 
 lar self-reliance, — and this whether the 
 distant power be democratic, or aristo- 
 cratic, or autocratic. 
 
 To all of these conditions which have 
 made popular elections in New York city 
 unrepresentative of the ideal of govern- 
 ment held by its electors — to all of these 
 conditions seriously inconsistent with any 
 
 good politics — have for generations 
 been added the intensely and almost ex- 
 clusively commercial and business tem- 
 per of its population. It has been to the 
 last degree difficult to secure from its 
 business men systematic, continuous, and 
 unselfish attention to public affairs ; such 
 attention, for instance, as is given by the 
 same classes to the government of Ham- 
 burg, or as has been given, even in New 
 York, within the past generation by two 
 very remarkable men, Samuel J. Tilden 
 and Abram S. Hewitt. The situation 
 has been little helped by the sporadic 
 participation in machine politics of a 
 few rich men, — generally young men, 
 — whose notion of public life is the mere 
 possession and prestige of official title, 
 rather than any moral or real political 
 power, or any constructive or useful ex- 
 ercise of public influence. By their i-e- 
 f usal to stand for any good cause except 
 as permitted by the " boss," they have 
 made contemptible the politics of the 
 jeunesse doree and the " business man in 
 politics." On the other hand, the ad- 
 mirable body of younger men who have 
 come into activity in New York and 
 Brooklyn within ten or fifteen years have 
 not constituted a political force contin- 
 uous or disciplined, until very recently, 
 although more than once they have done 
 signal service, like the establishment by 
 Theodore Roosevelt, when a member of 
 the lower house at Albany, of the mayor's 
 sole responsibility for appointments of 
 departmental heads. These, however, 
 are exceptions. The complete separation 
 of political life from business and com- 
 mercial life has been the rule, and in a 
 modern democracy nothing is more in- 
 consistent with good administration. 
 
 We are looking a long way back, but 
 the efficient causes of what is discredit- 
 able in the New York election are a 
 long way back. The result was deter- 
 mined principally by deep and slowly 
 changing conditions, not by skill or man- 
 agement or bribery on one side, or by 
 lack of organization on the other. De- 
 
Political Inauguration of the Greater New York. 113 
 
 mocratic government in a city means 
 free elections by its citizens, but it does 
 not imply or necessitate incompetence 
 or dishonor. The result was due not 
 to the democracy of the city, but to its 
 shifting and camplike character, the 
 heterogeneity of its population, and the 
 lack of political continuity in its life, — 
 all necessarily incident to its enormous 
 and rapid growth, while it has been the 
 entrance gate of America for all the 
 races of men, and to a signal indiffer- 
 ence to the government of the city on 
 the part of its business and representa- 
 tive men. The not unfriendly com- 
 ments of friends in England and the 
 patriotic fears of those of our own house- 
 hold have no deep or permanent foun- 
 dation in fact. Democracy certainly is 
 not responsible for the ui'ban phenomena 
 of Constantinople or the corruptions and 
 oppressions of great Russian cities. On 
 the other hand, municipal corruption and 
 incompetence subsist and have subsisted 
 with an abiding and homogeneous popu- 
 lation governed autocratically or by an 
 " upper class." Democracy was not re- 
 sponsible for local administration in Eng- 
 land one or two centuries ago. In Eng- 
 lish cities of to-day, however, where the 
 population is abiding and homogeneous, 
 and where governmental power is almost 
 sheerly democratic, we see municipal 
 administration at a very high point of 
 honor and efficiency. So in many of 
 the New England cities and some of the 
 smaller cities of the South we see far 
 less disparity between the standards of 
 public and private life than in New York. 
 Not that the democracy of their govern- 
 ment is less, but that the steadiness and 
 homogeneity of their populations are 
 greater. 
 
 The one and perhaps the only feature 
 characteristic of American democracy 
 which tends to inefficient and corrupt 
 municipal administration is the dispar- 
 agement of public life which has gone 
 so far since the civil war. This has 
 been a national misfortune. But its in- 
 
 VOL. LXXXI. — NO. 483. 8 
 
 fluence is seen no more in cities than 
 in other political communities. It has 
 been, to say the least, quite as conspicu- 
 ous a feature of administration at Wash- 
 ington as at New York. This of itself 
 is a large subject, which can be dealt 
 with now but casually. While the popu- 
 lar ideal of a man qualified to liold an 
 , important public office, requiring the 
 most powerful and disciplined facul- 
 ties, is the '• plain man, like all the rest 
 of us," one out of ten thousand or a 
 million ; while it is left to private cor- 
 porations and great business interests 
 to observe the rule that exceptional gifts 
 and training in chief administrative of- 
 ficers are necessary to the safety and 
 profit of the business, we must expect 
 public administration to be on a stan- 
 dard lower than the administration of 
 private affairs. 
 
 A labor representative in the British 
 Parliament was quoted by Joseph Cham- 
 berlain, in his recent speech at Glasgow, 
 as saying that nobody is worth more 
 than £500 a year. On this text Mr. 
 Chamberlain, not without reason, at- 
 tributed what he called " the failure of 
 American local institutions," first to the 
 jealousy of superior qualifications and 
 reward in the great and critical places 
 of government, and, next, to a tendency 
 to give compensation far beyond value 
 in lower and more numerous places. 
 The result of this tendency, he as- 
 serted, is to create a privileged class of 
 workmen, to whom public place is in 
 itself a distinct advantage, instead of 
 letting them share the conditions of other 
 men doing, in private life, the same 
 amount and character of work. The 
 jealousy of personal superiority in places 
 of superior power and responsibility in- 
 evitably leads, on the other hand, to the 
 exclusion from those places of the very 
 talents which are necessary to the trans- 
 action of the business. Mr. Chamber- 
 lain acutely pointed out that the chief 
 sufferers from this system are the masses 
 of wage-earners not in public employ, — 
 
114 Political Inavguration of the Greater New York. 
 
 they standing in the position of the share- 
 holders, and not emijloyees, of a pri- 
 vate corporation, the principal officers 
 of which are incompetent, and the ma- 
 jority of whose employees are overpaid. 
 No doubt the inadequacy of compensa- 
 tion in more important governmental 
 offices as compared with private employ- 
 ment is really injurious to the standard 
 of public service. Private employment 
 withdraws ability from public life. It is 
 common nowadays in the United States 
 for public place to be valued by really 
 able men as a useful and legitimate 
 means of advertisement of their fitness 
 for great private trusts. But so strong is 
 the attractiveness of public service where 
 it really brings both honor and power 
 that, in our country at least, the inade- 
 quacy of compensation is not very disas- 
 trous. The really serious thing is the 
 sort of disparaging contempt with which 
 the exercise of great powers of govern- 
 ment is treated. The disparagement of 
 public life ought to be the topic of many 
 essays and sermons. But the evil is not 
 peculiar to cities. 
 
 So much for the dai'ker side of the 
 New York election. So much by way 
 of explanation of the result in past causes 
 whose effects we may believe are only 
 temporary. Are we not bound to turn 
 to the other side, and ask. What is the 
 promise for the future ? 
 
 In the first place, the conditions for 
 good politics have at last begun to mend. 
 The population of New York grows more 
 homogeneous. The addition from for- 
 eign immigration has long been relatively 
 declining. The proportion of native- 
 born citizens has already increased, and 
 will henceforth go on increasing. The 
 second generation begins to be American 
 in type ; the third generation is quite 
 American. The foreign strains of popu- 
 lation mingle more and more. If the 
 children of German parents learn Ger- 
 man, it is not their vernacular. The 
 American politics of children of parents 
 born in Ireland become less dependent 
 
 upon the wrongs of that afflicted land. 
 There are districts of the greater New 
 York which begin to have a settled neigh- 
 borhood feeling ; that condition will rap- 
 idly increase. The dependence of New 
 York upon Albany legislation is not, alas, 
 at an end ; but the discussions over the 
 new charter, and the great increase in the 
 numerical weight of the city, in the legis- 
 lature, will make that interference more 
 difficult. New York is certain in the 
 future to be more jealous of its own 
 autonomy. Public sentiment, irregular, 
 imperfect, sometimes unreasonable, as it 
 is and always will be, grows steadier and 
 more intelligent. Neither Tammany 
 Hall nor any other political machine can 
 escape its influence. The pavements of 
 New York have begun to be better; the 
 streets have begun to be cleaner ; the im- 
 provement will not stop, but will go on ; 
 and every well-paved and well-cleaned 
 street is the best kind of political mis- 
 sionaiy. We are a vast distance from 
 the filthy New York described by Mrs. 
 TroUope and Charles Dickens. Sanitary 
 administration has been improved. The 
 beneficent work of organizations like the 
 tenement-house commission has grown 
 remarkably fruitful ; and it gives noble 
 promise for the future. The discredit- 
 able poverty of New York and Brook- 
 lyn in their provision of parks, and es- 
 pecially of small parks near populations 
 which cannot resort to distant pleasure- 
 grounds, has at last yielded to better 
 ideals. There is nothing more cheering 
 in New York to-day than Mulberry Bend 
 Park and the streets around it, which 
 have taken the place of the unutterable 
 squalor and degradation of the Five 
 Points of one or two generations ago. 
 The city is better, far better lighted. 
 The supply of water is better. If there 
 be more gross immorality in evidence 
 than there was in the village days of 
 New York, the increase is not due to the 
 general deterioration of the body politic 
 or of private morals, but to the inevitable 
 conditions of crowded populations and 
 
Political Inauguration of the Greater New York. 115 
 
 resorts of strangers, — conditions which 
 produce precisely the same result, and 
 sometimes a more aggravated result, in 
 London. It may be that property and 
 life are not safer in New York than they 
 were sixty years ago, although about that 
 much might be said. But without any 
 doubt property and life are far safer, and 
 the administration of justice is more trust- 
 worthy, than they were in New York thir- 
 ty years ago, at the time when its suffer- 
 ing from the shifting and varied character 
 of its population had reached its height. 
 Indeed, if the well-groomed citizen of 
 New York who indulges in the luxury 
 of the laudator teniporis acti will ask 
 himself whether, on the whole, the aver- 
 age private life of the average honest in- 
 dustrious citizen of New York in almost 
 any calling be not better to-day, in all 
 respects of well-being which its govern- 
 ment can affect, than it was a generation 
 ago, he will, I am sure, answer in the 
 affirmative. If he do not, he is a very 
 ignorant man. And pray what higher 
 test is there of the merit of political in- 
 stitutions than the well-being of average 
 private life, than the proof that, if gov- 
 ernment have not produced such well- 
 being, it has at least protected and per- 
 mitted it ? Is not this tlie real, even the 
 sole end, which justifies political insti- 
 tutions ? By what other fruit shall we 
 know them ? There is, perhaps, greater 
 moral depression in our time, but that 
 belongs to every advance in the ideals of 
 life. It is not that things are worse, but 
 that people require better things. 
 
 We now come more specifically to 
 the question. What is the tendency to 
 greater good or greater evil exhibited by 
 the New York election ? It can be an- 
 swered easily and surely. Beyond rea- 
 sonable doubt it showed a remarkable 
 and cheei'ing improvement in the politi- 
 cal temper of the metropolis. The mu- 
 nicipal election of 1897 was the most 
 signal demonstration ever known in its 
 history of the growth of rational voting. 
 The antiphony between rival poUtical 
 
 bodies, neither of them observing any 
 very high standard, which has been the 
 type of its politics, has at last begun to 
 yield to a new and dominant note. The 
 interest of the commercial and business 
 classes in local politics has enormously 
 increased. From among the masses of 
 hard-worked labor there has come a new 
 and wholesome influence represented ef- 
 fectively, even if without much theoretic 
 logic, by the candidacy of Henry George. 
 The feature of the result first noticed, 
 and the only feature thought of by many, 
 is the plurality of 80,000 votes by which 
 Tammany Hall, representing the " regu- 
 lar democracy," elected its ticket. Yet 
 this is really far less significant than 
 the fact that in November, 1897, with 
 all the political trend in favor of the 
 ticket of the Democratic party, the Tam- 
 many vote was a minority. Of the 
 510,000 votes for mayor, its candidate 
 received but 234,000 as against 276,000. 
 Not, indeed, that one must count all the 
 other votes as votes for good administra- 
 tion. Of the 100,000 votes cast for the 
 Republican candidate, it is the plain 
 truth to say that a large number were as 
 really cast for bad administration as 
 wei'e any votes of Tammany Hall. 
 Whether the Republican or Tammany 
 proportion of voting for a low standard 
 were the greater is of little moment. If 
 we content ourselves with the 151,000 
 votes for Mr. Low and the 22,000 votes 
 for the younger George, being together 
 173,000, as representing an enlightened 
 determination to vote for methods of 
 municipal administration intrinsically 
 good, there is reason for encoui-agement. 
 Never before in our generation has a 
 movement without the organized support 
 of one of the two national jjarties had 
 so great or nearly so great a vote as that 
 given to Mr. Low. That his ticket should 
 not only be second in the field, but should 
 have a support much stronger than the 
 Republican machine ticket, of itself de- 
 monstrates the improvement in political 
 ideals held by the citizens of New York. 
 
116 
 
 Political Inauguration of the Greater Neiii Yorl: 
 
 Other figures are significant. The 
 vote in the greater New York for Judge 
 Parker, the Democratic candidate for 
 chief judge of the state, was about 280,- 
 000, but the vote for the Tammany- 
 candidate for mayor was only 234,000. 
 About 46,000 Democrats, who otherwise 
 adhered to their party, repudiated Tam- 
 many control upon the municipal ques- 
 tion. Perhaps a third as many more 
 voted the city ticket alone, ignoring their 
 state party ticket, so that in all jjrobably 
 60,000 Democrats voted for Mr. Low. 
 His Republican vote was about 90,000. 
 Nearly one half of the total Republican 
 vote of the greater New York, and more 
 than one fifth of the Democratic vote, was 
 cast for sound municipal administration. 
 
 New York has not known in our day 
 another such vote for that cause. There 
 had not been any serious candidacy since 
 the civil war, except in alliance with one 
 or the other of the political machines. 
 In 1892, within the limits of former New 
 York, the Tammany candidate received 
 173.500 votes as against 98,000 cast for 
 the Republican candidate. With a large 
 increase in the total vote, the Tammany 
 candidate in the same boroughs received 
 in 1897 only about 144,000 votes. The 
 progress of voting in the borough of 
 Brooklyn is no less encouraging. The 
 Tammany candidate for mayor received 
 there about 76,000 votes as against 98,000 
 votes cast for the Democratic ticket in 
 1892. The 1897 vote was smaller rela- 
 tively to the total vote than the vote of 
 the Brooklyn machine in 1893, when it 
 suffered an overwhelming defeat inci- 
 dent to its complete discredit, nearly one 
 third of the Democrats voting against 
 it. In 1897 the Tammany vote in Brook- 
 lyn was a minority vote, the vote for Mr. 
 Low and the Republican candidate to- 
 gether outnumbering the Tammany vote 
 by upwards of 25,000. 
 
 When examined in greater detail, the 
 Seth Low vote gives more specific pro- 
 mise to those who intend to persist in 
 political well-doing. He received more 
 
 votes than either of the other candidates 
 in several uptown districts including a 
 marked preponderance of middle class 
 citizens. Far more significant, however, 
 and a very rainbow of promise, is the 
 vote of nearly 15,000 which he received 
 in the densely populated districts south 
 of Fourteenth Street. In the fifth as- 
 sembly district, stretching back from the 
 East River between Stanton and Grand 
 streets, a region of tenement houses hav- 
 ing a large foreign population, he re- 
 ceived about 2700 as against 3000 for 
 the Tammany candidate and 1800 for the 
 Re2:)ublican candidate. In the Brooklyn 
 borough his vote in wards along the wa- 
 ter-front, where the tenement population 
 is large, was very considerable ; while in 
 the districts of modest two-story houses, 
 his vote was far larger than that of either 
 of the other candidates, or even of both 
 together. 
 
 These facts bring their real encourage- 
 ment, however, only when they are com- 
 pared with the past. In the former city 
 of New Yoi'k,the borough of Manhattan,^ 
 we can only make an inference ; for as the 
 vote for good local administration has al- 
 ways been merged with the machine vote 
 on one side or the other, we have no pre- 
 cise measure, though the inference is a 
 reasonably sure one. Such was the case 
 when the Tammany Hall of Tweed was 
 overthrown in 1871, and the Tammany 
 Hall of Croker in 1894. But in the 
 Brooklyn borough there had been at least 
 two such tests. In 1885, at the expira- 
 tion of Mr. Low's four years of mayor- 
 alty, each of the two machines presented 
 a situation which ought to have been un- 
 endurable to good citizens. A third nomi- 
 nation was made by citizens, which re- 
 ceived 13,600 votes as against 49,000 
 for the candidate of the Democratic ma- 
 chine and 37,000 for the candidate of the 
 Republican machine. The 13,600 votes 
 were probably made up of about 4600 
 
 1 The territory now called the borough of 
 Bronx became a part of New York by several 
 recent annexations. 
 
Political Inauguration of the Greater Xew York. 117 
 
 Democrats and 9000 Republicans. In- 
 stead of being encouraged by so substan- 
 tial a beginning, the movement of the citi- 
 zens fell to pieces, partly perhaps because 
 of the real temporary improvement which 
 it compelled in machine management on 
 both sides. Ten years later, in 1895, a 
 strictly Democratic revolt was organized, 
 and a municipal ticket was then run, not 
 with the idea of securing the obvious im- 
 possibility of an election as against the 
 two machine candidates, but to recom- 
 mence the definite assertion that Ameri- 
 can cities must have local government 
 which is good in itself, and must not be 
 shut up to a mere choice between two 
 evils. The candidate of the revolting 
 Brooklyn Democrats received, and with- 
 out material Republican support, up- 
 wards of 9500 votes. There were, per- 
 haps, as many more citizens who would 
 have preferred his success, but who felt 
 that they could not '• tlu'ow away their 
 votes." This modern and better view 
 did not then have the sympathy of more 
 than ^0,000 voters in Brooklyn. In 
 1897 precisely the same sentiment was 
 supported by upwards of 65,000 votes, al- 
 most twice as many as were given the Re- 
 publican machine, and less than 12,000 
 below the number cast for the Tammany 
 candidate. 
 
 In view of the whole situation, the vote 
 in the greater New York for the Low 
 ticket in 1897 must be accounted the 
 most encouraging vote ever cast in a 
 great American city on the exclusive 
 proposition that the city ought to be 
 well and honestly governed. Machine 
 politics in the United States has not re- 
 ceived a more serious blow than the 
 treatment accorded the Republican can- 
 didate for mayor, although he was him- 
 self a man of the highest character, of 
 distinguished ability, and of long and 
 valuable public service. But for his 
 alliance he would have been worthy of 
 the mayoralty of the city. The 60.000 
 Democrats and the 90,000 Republicans 
 who voted for Seth Low are a reasonably 
 
 solid and sure foundation of the best hope 
 for the future. 
 
 If it be a time for anxiety, as no 
 doubt it is, it is likewise a time for hope. 
 When Tammany Hall reached its grand 
 climacteric with its overwhelming ma- 
 jority of 1892, there again revived the 
 belief really held by some intelligent 
 men that its power must last forever. 
 Citizens of wealth and cultivation had 
 twenty-five years before espoused the 
 cause of Tweed as a sort of buffer of 
 corruption and cunning against the more 
 brutal dangers of tlie proletariat. In 
 1892 not only they, but even scholars, be- 
 gan to defend the Tammany method as 
 a form of municipal administration both 
 inevitable and beneficent. They pointed 
 out that Tammany Hall was not impos- 
 sibly bad ; that every great and long con- 
 tinuous political body must liave some 
 elements of soundness ; that from time to 
 time it put into places of power, as it has 
 of late put upon the judges' bench, men 
 who were able and honorable, althougli 
 still remaining in warm and active sym- 
 pathy with Tammany Hall. Their de- 
 fense was not far removed from the po- 
 litical philosophy of one of the greatest of 
 Americans. Alexander Hamilton, shar- 
 ing the eighteenth-century English view, 
 deliberately insisted that corruption was 
 a necessary cement of well-ordered free 
 political institutions. Too many Amer- 
 icans of our day, who are really high- 
 minded, look upon some sort of conces- 
 sion to the deviltries of a large city and 
 some sort of alliance with its political 
 corruptions as inevitable, and no moi'e 
 discreditable than the bribery of a con- 
 ductor of an English railway train. 
 
 The administration of Mayor Strong, 
 who was elected in November, 1894, has 
 been a good administration, in spite of its 
 defects, some of which have been serious. 
 If, notwithstanding its merits, it be fol- 
 lowed by Tammany Hall, it ought to be 
 remembered that New York has had other 
 experiences of the kind. It was in 1859 
 that Fernando Wood, of unspeakable po- 
 
118 Political Inauguration of the Greater New York. 
 
 litical memory, was reelected mayor of 
 New York after an intervening term of 
 a most respectable " reformer." It was 
 to Wood the reply was made, when, in 
 solemn demagogy, he declared that he had 
 a " single eye to the public good," thatgood 
 citizens were chiefly concerned about his 
 other and more important eye. For sev- 
 eral years before 1871 the chief ruler of 
 New York was AVilliam M. Tweed, who, 
 after the completest exhibition made of 
 his crimes, and when he was under civil 
 and criminal prosecution, was elected 
 state senator by an overwhelming major- 
 ity. No one ought to belittle the later 
 iniquities of Tammany ; but it is irra- 
 tional to forget that they were mild com- 
 pared with those of the Tweed-Sweeney- 
 Connolly administration, or that, with the 
 support of much wealth and respectabil- 
 ity, that administration was approved in 
 1870 by a large majority. 
 
 If one look back over the history for 
 the last forty years of the two great 
 American cities now united in one, he is 
 bound, no doubt, to admit that the gen- 
 eral aspect has too often been one of 
 cynical and indolent acquiescence in stu- 
 pid, barbarous, and brutal maladminis- 
 tration ; that the natural advantages of 
 the city, and especially and irretrievably 
 those of Brooklyn, have been ruthlessly 
 sacrificed by such administration ; and 
 that the masses of less fortunate people 
 in these cities have suffered and now 
 suffer the chief results of it all. But, to 
 recur to the principal note of this arti- 
 cle, he is bound likewise to admit that 
 the evils have been growing less and 
 less ; that Tammany Hall will be less 
 evil in 1898 tlfan it was in 1890, and vast- 
 ly less evil than the Tammany Hall of 
 1870 ; and that the fundamental condi- 
 tions of municipal life will grow better. 
 The new and decent paving and clean- 
 ing of the streets cannot cease ; they 
 will go on, the best missionaries, as I 
 have said, of good politics. The public 
 sentiment which has endured the obstruc- 
 tion of crowded streets and the diminu- 
 
 tion of their light and air by elevated rail- 
 roads will no longer endure them. It will 
 cease to assume ugliness as a necessary 
 element of our highways. The schools 
 must increase ; their methods will grow 
 better. The preaching — some more 
 reasonable, some less reasonable, but all 
 helpful — of the thousand agitatoi's for 
 better things will go on. Their instruc- 
 tion, reaching from one end of the city to 
 the other, is of deeper consequence than 
 organized political leadership, vitally 
 necessary in practice as that is. The 
 population grows more homogeneous, 
 more stable. The fatigue and chagrin 
 incident to the present defeat will dis- 
 appear. There will be another and an- 
 other and another political campaign in 
 assertion of the needs and duty of good 
 municipal administration ; and each will 
 be held under more promising conditions 
 of general city life than its predecessor. 
 
 Must good citizens, then, in optimistic 
 fatalism, abandon political activity, and 
 rest content with the general upward 
 trend of human society ? Are we, to give 
 up the noble art of statesmanship that 
 leads and orders political progress ? Ai'e 
 we to accept as final the dull and op- 
 pressive mediocrity which even friendly 
 critics say belongs to the public life of 
 democracy ? Not at all. No better thing 
 has been accomplished by the stirring and 
 elevating mayoralty camjiaign of New 
 York than the creation, among masses 
 of men hitherto indifferent, of an enthu- 
 siastic interest in political affairs. But 
 this will not suflice without the disci- 
 pline and continuity of organized politi- 
 cal work. That work now needs, in New 
 York and in every great American city, 
 to be directed towards three different 
 and practical preliminary results. When 
 they are attained, as they can be, and at 
 no distant day, we shall no longer fear 
 Tammany victories. 
 
 The support of the merit system of 
 appointment to office is first and fore- 
 most. Of the specific political diseases 
 which we have known in the United 
 
Political Inauguration of the Greater New York. 119 
 
 States, the spoils system has been the 
 mostpi'ofoundly dangei'ous and far-reach- 
 ing. Its destruction is an essential con- 
 dition of sound public life in New York 
 and in the United States. Civil sei'vice 
 reform has been a slow growth, but a 
 fairly sure one. When ofBce-holding 
 and office-seeking are no longer the main- 
 spring of political action and the chief 
 and always corrupting support of politi- 
 cal organization, it will be easier to use 
 with creditable results the democratic 
 method of successive popular judgments 
 upon the fitness of rival candidates and 
 parties for the exigencies of municipal 
 administration. The methods of the 
 Tammany or Republican machines can- 
 not survive the destruction of this their 
 principal support. 
 
 A corollary of the refor-m of the civil 
 service ought to be and will be the re- 
 fusal to continue disparaging public life. 
 When public life shall no longer involve 
 patronage-mongering, either wholesale 
 or retail, eminent fitness for the real du- 
 ties of rational public life will neither 
 avoid it nor be excluded from it. If 
 only gi-eat ability and the highest char- 
 acter are tolerated in private employ- 
 ment of the highest grade, nothing less 
 ought to be tolerated in public life. 
 The worn-out absurdity of the " plain, 
 sensible man," without equipment in ex- 
 perience or in native or acquired gifts 
 for difficult and critical work, will dis- 
 appear. Good citizens must refuse a 
 mere choice between the rival evils to 
 which political machines would constrain 
 them. They must vote for positively 
 good administration, even at the risk 
 that the less of two evils shall be de- 
 feated by the greater for the lack of their 
 support. If they be steadfast in this, the 
 American democracy will return to its 
 earlier and better view of fitness for 
 important places in the public service. 
 
 Last, but not least, is the duty active- 
 ly maintaining sound political organi- 
 zations between political campaigns. It 
 is easy to arouse interest, to form clubs. 
 
 to gather meetings during the few weeks 
 before election day. But when such or- 
 ganized activity begins in the September 
 preceding the election, the cause is prob- 
 ably either won or lost already. The 
 decision of the jury is reached nine times 
 out of ten before the learned counsel 
 sums up ; he can do little more than give 
 the jurymen in sympathy with him, if 
 any, arguments to use with dissenting 
 associates. If the evidence have not 
 been produced so as to make the case 
 clear, but little hope of success remains. 
 So with the political campaign. It is 
 impossible to create or gather the public 
 sentiment or the organization necessary 
 for a political campaign during a few 
 weeks. It is amazing to observe the re- 
 luctance of liberal and intelligent citi- 
 zens during the rest of the year to yield 
 support, whether in work or in money, 
 to the wholesome political organizations 
 upon which alone they can rely to pro- 
 mote the causes that are dear to them. 
 In Brooklyn, for instance, such an organ- 
 ization doing work over the entire city, 
 reaching or seeking to reach in some 
 measure upwards of a million of people, 
 requires, as I happen to know, perhaps 
 $10,000 a year for effective work. But 
 even that sum of money, less than tlie 
 cost of many single entertainments given 
 in New York every winter, and an insig- 
 nificant percentage of public waste every 
 year, which sound politics would check, 
 can be got only by compelling the very 
 small number found to bear the burden 
 of the work to bear the expense as well. 
 Tammany Hall does not sleep from 
 November until September. Its most 
 fruitful work is done then. The cam- 
 paign of the New York Citizens' Union 
 in 1897 was effective chiefly because it 
 began early. The thoroughness and in- 
 terest in English parliamentary elec- 
 tions follow in part from the habit 
 of having for years before each election 
 more or less systematic discussion look- 
 ing to the coming dissolution, although 
 it be far off. Without such activity 
 
120 
 
 The Present /Scope of Government. 
 
 enlightened political methods will not 
 prevail in the greater New York or in 
 other populous cities. 
 
 In conclusion, I avow, even at this 
 time, untoward as it seems to many, a 
 profound confidence that the democratic 
 experiment here on trial will work out 
 well even in great cities. The disorder- 
 ly, undisciplined, slatternly features of 
 our politics and public work represent 
 shifting and temporary conditions. They 
 will disappear as those conditions cease. 
 In the very dear school of experience, 
 the mass of people will learn to insist upon 
 exceptional ability and character in pub- 
 lic administration, and to vote for no- 
 thing else, realizing that without them 
 that administration must be contempti- 
 ble. They will find, even if they find it 
 slowly, and even if, for many, life must 
 be too short for the fruition, that the 
 heavy and often cruel burdens of politi- 
 cal incompetence and dishonor fall chief- 
 
 ly upon those very masses of which and 
 for which democratic government is con- 
 stituted. When preference for good ad' 
 ministration shall have been developed 
 into a powerful popular instinct, as it is 
 being rapidly developed in the collisions 
 and misfortunes of our politics, the in- 
 stitutions of sound government will find 
 in the United States even a broader 
 foundation than the marvelous advance 
 of democracy has given them in Eng- 
 land. When the scaffolding is taken 
 down from the structure, when the work- 
 men are gone and the grounds are 
 cleared, we shall find, I believe, that all 
 the turmoil and humiliation of our polit- 
 ical experience, all the disorders and 
 disgraces of our political career, have 
 worked out, in a sort of survival of the 
 fittest, that firm, practical political com- 
 petence among the masses of men which 
 is the best and broadest safety, and 
 which will be the glory of democracy. 
 
 Edward M. Shepard. 
 
 THE PRESENT SCOl 
 
 To get an every-day basis for discuss- 
 ing the present scope of government in 
 America, let us view rapidly the experi- 
 ences'of an imaginar}' Bostonian during 
 a day differing in no respect from or- 
 dinary days ; in short, an average daily 
 record of an average man. 
 
 He begins the day by bathing in wa- 
 ter supplied by the public through an 
 elaborate system of public pumps and 
 reservoirs and pipes. After it has been 
 used, the water escapes through the citi- 
 zen's own plumbing system ; but this pri- 
 vate plumbing system has been construct- 
 ed in accordance with public regulations, 
 is liable to inspection by public officials, 
 and empties into sewers constructed and 
 managed by the public. When he has 
 dressed himself in clothing of which every 
 article is probably the subject of a na- 
 
 l OF GOVERNM^jrf^ 
 
 tional tariff inteiided to affect production 
 or price, our Bostonian goes to his break- 
 fast-table, and finds there not only ta- 
 ble linen, china, glass, knives, forks, and 
 spoons, each of them coming under the 
 same national protection, but also food, 
 almost all of which has been actually or 
 potentially inspected, or otherwise regu- 
 lated, by the national or state or muni- 
 cipal government. The meat has been 
 liable to inspection. The bread has been 
 made by the baker in loaves of a certain 
 statutory weight. The butter, if it hap- 
 pens to be oleomargarine, has been packed 
 and stamped as statutes require. Tlie 
 milk has been furnished by a milkman 
 whose dairy is officially inspected, and 
 whose milk must reach a certain statu- 
 tory standard. The chocolate has been 
 bought in cakes stamped in the statutory 
 
 \ 
 
THE EECONQUEST OF NEW YOEK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 At the November election of 1894, tlie citizens of the city of New 
 York, under the leadership of the Committee of Seventy, wrested from 
 Tammany Hall the control of government, and elected as mayor a gen- 
 tleman of good repute as merchant and bank president. The legis- 
 lature armed this officer with all the needful authority promptly to 
 remove the appointed heads of the departments which had previously 
 been filled by Tammany adherents, and to place others in their stead. 
 With the exception of the head financial ofiicer of the city, all or nearly 
 all, the old chief officials of the city government were changed by the 
 newly elected mayor ; and the Tammany organization, which had been 
 responsible for the officers in power, was thus stripped of all patronage. 
 Then was inaugurated what was supposed to be a new era in municipal 
 administration of efficient, honest, and faithful public service. 
 
 An investigation before a legislative committee had proved the ad- 
 ministration of the Police Department of the city under Tammany rule 
 to be lamentably corrupt. It had also proved the administration of 
 justice by the lower tribunals having criminal jurisdiction to be lax and 
 in sympathy with the Police Department; and, though it was not di- 
 rectly demonstrated, it was generally believed that a like inquiry into 
 other departments administered by the adherents of the Tammany or- 
 ganization would have resulted in a like display of inefficiency and mal- 
 administration. The escape of the citizens of New York in 1894 from 
 the thraldrom of bad government almost tempted them to proclaim Elec- 
 tion Day thereafter as an annual special holiday, like Evacuation Day, 
 which commemorates the removal of the British troops from New York 
 soil. Yet, in the short period of three years, that same Tammany or- 
 ganization, banded together in the main for the purpose of maintaining 
 its members directly and indirectly by public office and from the pro- 
 ceeds of compulsory taxation, and under the same leader and general 
 officers, triumphantly returns to power by a plurality over the candi- 
 date of the Citizens' Union of 82,457 votes ; its total vote of 233,997 
 representing nearly a majority of all the electors of the greater city as 
 created by the new charter. 
 
554 
 
 THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 This result, accomplished by Tammany without the element of pat- 
 ronage to assist it, would seem to confirm the views of those who look with 
 distrust upon democratic institutions, — particularly in their application 
 to urban populations, — and would seem to support the disparaging 
 • opinions as to the intellectual and moral condition of the New York 
 electors ex])ressed by so reputable and high an authority as the London 
 " Economist " in its issue of November 6 last, which says : — 
 
 "It is perfectly vain to talk about remedies. There is no remedy for a bad 
 democracy except its conversion to a better mind ; and nobody knows how that is 
 to be effected." 
 
 That periodical sums up with the remark that a majority of the 
 electors not only represents the community, but, for all purposes of col- 
 lective action, is the community itself, and adds :— 
 
 " If New York has deliberately chosen a corrupt government, as is alleged, 
 New York, be the cause as it may, is itself corrupt. ... It is nonsense to say, as 
 Americans say, that England is greedy, and France vainglorious, and Germany 
 given over to militarism, and then to say, in the same breath, that New York is a 
 respectable city because only the majority sanctions disreputable things. What 
 city or state is there on earth, even in Africa, in wliich the minority is not com- 
 paratively decent and well-intentioned ? " 
 
 These views, in so far as they imply a deliberate preference for Tam- 
 many rule, are deplorably wrong. Had the municipal election of thi-ee 
 years ago gone amiss, there would have been ground for such criticism, 
 which is not justified by the loss of the election of 1897. 
 
 The causes of the reconquest of the city of New York by Tammany 
 in 1897 will be found in the history of the economic and political 
 conditions of the city during the three years of Mayor Strong's adminis- 
 tration, in the State legislative proceedings during those three years, and 
 in the use which was made by the citizens of New York and by the city 
 administration of the opportunities for better government afforded by 
 the election of 1894. 
 
 The tax-rate in the city of New York, which is mainly gathered from 
 real estate, both improved and unimproved, was, during the last year of 
 Tammany administration, $1.79 per $100. This was a large enough 
 exaction from the thrifty and industrious part of the people, whose 
 moneys are invested in real property, and who had the well-grounded 
 expectation that the savings which would be occasioned by the bank 
 president's administration of the affairs of the city, as against the Tam- 
 many administration, — particularly as he was free from obligation to any 
 
THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 555 
 
 organization for place and power, — would result either in a consider- 
 ably lower expenditure of money and thereby in a reduction of the tax- 
 rate, or in an enormous increase in the efficiency of all the departments 
 at no greater expenditure. In this expectation, the citizens of New York 
 were lamentably disappointed. During the first year of Mayor Strong's 
 administration, the tax-rate went np to $1.91, though the assessed 
 valuations of property had increased $13,616,625. The debt increased 
 $6,672,165. The charge was made that the increase of the debt was due 
 to Tammany having, in order to make it appear that the Reform ad- 
 ministration was extravagant, artfully delayed the issue of bonds and 
 thus accumulated a floating debt which had to be provided for by such 
 bond issue in the first year of Mayor Strong's term. 
 
 Were that charge true, it would account for the increase of the 
 funded indebtedness in the year 1895 ; but it has been disputed, and has 
 been shown to be true only to a very limited extent. 
 
 Whatever the facts may be as to 1895, this charge does not excuse 
 or explain the large increase of the debt in tlie two subsequent years. 
 Tiie increase in 1896 over 1895 amounted to $8,260,505, and in 1897, 
 to November 30, amounted to $8,310,832 over that of 1896. Further- 
 more, this matter of debt represents expenditures in addition to the 
 general budget of the various departments for each year. The increase 
 of these ordinary expenses in years of great financial stringency and 
 distress in almost every department was a sore and serious disappoint- 
 ment to the taxpayer, because he argued, in the rough and tumble 
 fashion of popular logic, that either it was true that the prior Tammany 
 government was an extravagant and a dishonest one, and that therefore 
 the amount of expenditure in these departments was ridiculously in ex- 
 cess of actual needs ; or it was not true, and that the money expended 
 by them was a necessary expenditure ; or, as a tliird alternative, that the 
 new administration, from which so much good was hoped, was, for some 
 cause too occult for him to understand, incapable of afiiording relief. 
 
 The second year after the Reform administration came into power, 
 the tax-rate rose to $2.14, the assessed valuation of real and personal 
 property having been increased $89,537,243 over that of the previous 
 year, and $103,152,868 over 1894, — the last year of Mayor Gilroy's ad- 
 ministration. During the third and last year of the Reform administra- 
 tion, the tax-rate was $2.10, though the assessment had been increased 
 $62,150,951 over that of 1896 and $165,303,819 over that of 1894. 
 This rate was fixed upon despite the fact that during those three years 
 the actual values of property had, through the erection of huge office- 
 
556 THE RECONQUEST OP NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 buildings, been more largely increased than during any previous period 
 in the history of the city. Such legitimate increase of the basis of tax- 
 ation should have reduced the average tax-rate. 
 
 What should have been done immediately after Mayor Strong came 
 into office was to appoint a commission to investigate every department 
 of the city government, with the view of reducing the number ol offi- 
 cials necessary to accomplish the work in hand, by the discharge of 
 many who held sinecures or quasi-sinecures at large salaries. The legis- 
 lature and the city government had for years vied with each other 
 in multiplying offices so as to strengthen the political organization in 
 power, or, when the party in control of the State differed from that in 
 the city, in adding to such offices so as to divide, between the party 
 in control of the State and the political organization in power in 
 the city, the incumbency of the new offices thus created. It was the 
 duty of the Reform administration to get rid of all these useless and ex- 
 pensive additions of office-holders and clerical force, to make an official 
 day of actual labor in the public offices six or seven hours instead of 
 three or four, and in every way to diminish and reduce the expenses of 
 the various departments of the city of New York to reasonable busi- 
 ness limits. This should have been done. What was done was to put 
 into every office originally created for mere purposes of expenditure a 
 follower of one of the factions or organizations which made up the 
 army of the Reform movement of 1894 ; to increase instead of diminish 
 many salaries in the departments ; and to make a more lavish distri- 
 bution of public moneys for new construction of highways and build- 
 ings than had theretofore been made. 
 
 Another duty of the Reform administration was to exercise a most 
 rigid economy so as to make the people feel that the affairs of the mu- 
 nicipality were conducted upon strictly business principles and without 
 fear or favor, and thus to accustom the public mind to the receipt of 
 full value for the exactions by way of taxation imposed upon the pub- 
 lic ; thereby sharply differentiating the new administration from every- 
 thing which, for a number of years preceding its advent, had been in 
 operation. This duty was particularly strong in bad business years. 
 
 The rapid-transit underground work was in contemplation, and steps 
 had been taken to make it a fact, when Mayor Strong entered office. 
 The work could obviously only be carried forward, under the law, if the 
 city was careful not to overstep the limit of its constitutional debt-cre- 
 ating power after including the amount necessary to accomplish this 
 great purpose as part of the debt. Yet, during the years of the Reform 
 
THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 551 
 
 administration a large number of other improvements was undertaken 
 at great cost. The Dock Department received mOlions of dollars for im- 
 provements of the water-front. This was doubtless a sound economic 
 investment, and probably will ultimately yield a larger return than the 
 expenditure incurred. From some points of view, it is free from adverse 
 criticism ; but from another point of view it is subject to the following 
 criticism, which may fairly be made. Under the contemplated rapid- 
 transit scheme, to carry out which the payment must be made out of an 
 issue of bonds within the constitutional debt limitation, it was the duty 
 of the city government to see to it that there should be no increase of 
 the debt (even for expedient improvements if they could be delayed), 
 which might by any possibility interfere with the success of a method 
 of cheap and rapid means of transit other than the surface-roads and 
 elevated railways. And all schemes such as dock improvements, the 
 buildings of additional bridges over the Harlem Eiver, such as that at 
 145th Street, but ten or twelve blocks from the new Macomb's Dam 
 Bridge ; the laying out of a great number of driveways in the annexed 
 district, at a possible expenditm-e of $5,000,000 ; the asphalting of many 
 of the streets of the city, should have been delayed until the much- 
 needed relief by rapid transit had been accomplished. So that the 
 point which will ultimately have to be determined by the courts is now 
 already mooted, whether, since the rapid-tranelt question was presented 
 for popular adoption, the municipal debt has not been already so much 
 increased, in the issue of bonds for other purposes during the past three 
 years, that the money needed for this great improvement is no longer 
 adequately available to the city. 
 
 A municipal household has to be conducted very much like a pri- 
 vate business. The necessary expenditures should be met first ; and each 
 expenditure should have a relative importance to all the others. It is 
 no justification to say that an expenditure is useful when, because of 
 it, a very much greater boon to the community must be postponed. It 
 will be a great check to the prosperity of the city of New York should 
 its citizens fo;:- many years be deprived within city limits of true rapid 
 transit, from which so much in the way of comfort and addition to 
 values has been hoped for. 
 
 It is true that in one department of the city administration — that of 
 Street Cleaning — owing to the happy selection of its head officer, a de- 
 gree of eflS.ciency was attained theretofore unknown in the city of New 
 York ; also that the administration of the Police Justices' Courts was 
 raised in dignity by the selection of a higher order of incumbents. 
 
558 
 
 THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 Had the superior efficiency in the street-cleaning work been attained 
 without the expenditure of an additional dollar beyond what the Street- 
 Cleaning Commissioner had at his disposal when the department was 
 under Tammany rule, it would have been a rather complete demon- 
 stration of both the corruption and inefficiency of Tammany, as com- 
 pared with the work of a Eeform administration. It did, however, 
 involve an expenditure for the past three years of an average of about 
 $500,000 per year more. No one begrudges that expenditure, because 
 it produced a markedly beneficial result. 
 
 The same thing is true of the Department of Education. It would 
 have been a fine object-lesson if the removal of the public schools from 
 improper influences, and their conduct upon a high plane of efficiency 
 and up-to-date educational requirements, could have been had at an 
 expense no greater than that which had been indulged in under the 
 waste and knavery of Tammany rule. But the superior efficiency of 
 the schools was attained at an expenditure in 1895 of $266,770 
 in excess of that made in 189-i by Tammany ; in 1896 of $1,028,887 in 
 excess of that made in 189-1. In 1897, the appropriation was $1,437,501 
 in excess of the expenditure of 1891. This, without counting additions to 
 expenditures provided for by bonds. The citizens of New York would 
 have found no fault with these expenditures if in other departments 
 corresponding savings had been made, because they argued that if 20 
 per cent of the $34,000,000 theretofore annually expended by the city, 
 exclusive of the interest payable on the public debt and New York's 
 proportion of State taxation, was wasted under Tammany control, there 
 should have been a saving of almost $7,000,000 a year, out of which 
 these beneficial additional expenses for education and cleaning public 
 highways could have been made, and still leave $4,000,000 to go to the 
 credit of the taxpayers and in reduction of their taxes. The expendi- 
 tures of public moneys in the various departm.ents during the three years 
 of the term of Mayor Strong, who stood before the community for de- 
 cency as compared with the professional politicians banded together un- 
 der the name of Tammany, were, with some few exceptions, as large as, 
 if not larger than, in the years which had preceded his incumbency. 
 
 Furthermore, a set of non-economic, socialistic, and philanthropi- 
 cal tendencies, involving considerable expenditure of money and great 
 irritation, was let loose upon the community with the inauguration of 
 Mayor Strong on January 1, 1895. There is probably no other city in 
 the world with a less homogeneous population than that of the city of 
 New York. There is probably no other place in which the demands for 
 
THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 559 
 
 helpfulness and cbarity are so numerous, and where, on the whole, they 
 have, from the humanitarian side, been so faithfully listened to and an- 
 swered as in this self-same city of New York. There is probably no 
 other city where there is so large a dependent and defective class. 
 There are few cities in civilized countries where there is a larger delin- 
 quent and dangerous class. With the latter, the public arm, through the 
 administrative machinery of criminal justice, is called upon to deal. The 
 duty of dealing and caring for the dependents and defectives is divided 
 among three classes : (1) Where the defectives or unfortunates belong 
 to a family of well-to-do people, or where there is an active producer 
 who earns beyond his own needs and who is imbued with a high sense 
 of duty, such defectives and unfortunates are taken care of without call- 
 ing upon organized private or public charities. (2) Where the deserv- 
 ing poor or unfortunates and defectives have racial or denominational 
 ties, they are taken care of by the denominational and private charitable 
 institutions which depend upon voluntary contributions and endow- 
 ments for their support. (3) Where the unfortunates and defectives have 
 no such advantages or claims to bring them under the foregoing cate- 
 gories, and may be termed "nobody's poor," — which means every- 
 body's poor, — thej must fall, and should properly fall, under the care 
 of the general taxpayer and be a charge upon the public treasury. 
 
 It is in the interest of civilization that as little as possible of chai"itable 
 work should be done at the expense of the taxpayers, because the pub- 
 lic officials have neither the machinery nor the thoughtfulness to dis- 
 criminate properly as to the objects of charity, and the result of such work 
 is usually degrading, and necessarily so, to its recipients. The amounts 
 expended by most producers, of kindly disposition, in strictly private and 
 cooperative private contributions, together with their annual subscrip- 
 tions to the privately organized charities, equal sums which at times 
 raise the question in the minds of the thrifty and provident whether 
 self-denial pays when so much of the proceeds of the self-denial goes to 
 those who are thriftless and improvident. Yet all this is, to a large ex- 
 tent, a voluntary burden, and has a tendency, morally, to improve the 
 giver ; but when, in addition to this, there is imposed a constantly in- 
 creasing expense by way of taxation to provide for an enormously large 
 class of people defective and deficient in industrial capacity or morals, 
 and for another large class of unthrifty and reckless persons, it is in- 
 cumbent upon the city administration to see to it that that burden shall 
 not be so excessive as to take from the provident, thrifty, and useful 
 members of society, by a socialistic distribution of their means, an un- 
 
560 THE RlCONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 reasonably great part of the reward of their virtues. It is no answer to 
 the criticism here made to say that charity, like mercy, is twice blessed, 
 — blessing him that gives and liim that takes. By all this is implied 
 voluntary charity. The charity extorted by the tax-levy can scarcely 
 be called " twice blessed " ! 
 
 Immediately after Mr. Strong's administration commenced, the pro- 
 fessional philanthropists attempted, with varying, but on the whole con- 
 siderable, success, to shift upon the public treasury a portion of the 
 burden borne by private individuals in taking care of the dependents ; 
 so that although the State had relieved the city from the care of the 
 insane poor, the expense of which formed a considerable proportion of 
 the total outlay for charities, yet, on the whole, at the end of the year 
 1896, the two departments of Charities and of Correction, which took 
 the place of the one department theretofore existing, had expended, not- 
 withstanding prior waste and extravagance, about as much as under 
 Tammany rule. In addition there has been expended from the public 
 purse upon private asylums, reformatories, and charitable institutions 
 a sum in excCwSs of the $1,275,426 spent in 1894 under Tammany rule ; 
 viz., in 1895, $1,314,654; in 1896, $1,302,217. In 1897, the sum of 
 $1,527,051 was appropriated for the same purpose. 
 
 The story on the financial side is, after all, told by the city's total ex- 
 penditures (exclusive of assessments), which were in 1894, $38,395,094, 
 with an increase for every year from that time until it reached $48,229,- 
 555 in 1897, estimated by the appropriation for that year, which was an 
 increase of almost $10,000,000 since 1894. From this there should in 
 fairness be deducted an increase of about $2,500,000 in the State taxes 
 and about $400,000 for increase of interest on public debt; making an 
 increase of about $3,000,000 which is independent of the budget on 
 household account. Deducting this $3,000,000 from the $10,000,000, 
 there is an increase of about $7,000,000 in the general expenditures. 
 To this should be added the very serious consideration of the increase of 
 the public debt during these three years. The net debt of the city at the 
 close of 1894 was $105,777,855 ; at the end of 1895 it was $112,450,020, 
 being an increase of $6,672,165 ; at the end of 1896 it was $120,710,- 
 525, being an increase of $14,932,670 over 1894; and at the close of 
 November, 1897, it was $129,021,357, or a total increase of $23,243,502 
 during the three years of Mayor Strong's administration. 
 
 These figures, showing the basis of the citizens' disappointment at 
 the administration of Mayor Strong, can by no means be interpreted as 
 a defence of Tammany. No one doubts that the control of the city by 
 
THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 561 
 
 Tammany was accompanied by flagrant misrule ; and it is especially un- 
 fortunate, therefore, that no serious effort has been made to prove that 
 it was so, by the introduction of economy and by reducing such elements 
 of expenditures as were not absolutely essential to the, public weal, — 
 thus bringing home to the public mind the great advantage of placing the 
 government in the hands of citizens organized otherwise than as regular 
 political parties. So much was expected in this regard from the Strong 
 administration, and so little performed, that a condition of resentment 
 was aroused in the public mind which did much to defeat the citizens' 
 movement of 1897, that was so earnestly undertaken and carried for- 
 ward with such a vast expenditure of labor and energy, and which on its 
 merits was so deserving of success. 
 
 Inspired by the success of the legislative investigation conducted by 
 Mr. Goff and the reputation thereby acquired by him, quite an aimless 
 lot of investigations of simple and minor social abuses were set in mo- 
 tion. These efforts were directed to the object of making people, by 
 force of law, thoughtful, considerate and kind to their fellow- beings. 
 The laws following them resulted in interfering with people in the con- 
 duct of their business, and produce considerable irritation. 
 
 New building laws were enacted ; — improvements no doubt on those 
 theretofore existing ; — but they were enforced with a rigor previously 
 unknown, and with such strictness that many builders of tenements and 
 second-class apartment-houses, whose motives were unquestionably of 
 the highest character, abandoned the idea of constructing tenements ; 
 thus depreciating the values of property in this city. These laws and 
 the manner of their enforcement added much to the general irritation. 
 
 Before the Strong administration, the heads of the city government 
 answered the charge of extravagance by the excuse that the expendi- 
 tures were imposed by legislative enactment. Some of the expendi- 
 tures are still remnants of that condition ; but, simultaneously with the 
 inauguration of the administration of Mayor Strong, there came into force, 
 a constitutional amendment which subjected any bill involving expen- 
 ditures by the city government to the Mayor's veto, reserving to the 
 legislature, however, the right to pass the bill over such veto. The ex- 
 penditures involved since 1894 in such legislation met with the approval 
 of the Mayor, and are fairly chargeable to the outgoing administration. 
 
 It may from the foregoing be therefore justly said that from the 
 
 economic side the administration inaugurated in 1895 has not been a 
 
 success. It was still less of a success from the political side. Early in 
 
 the year 1895, the legislature passed a bi-partisan police bill which was 
 36 
 
562 THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 of sucli character that it aroused the adverse criticism of almost every 
 conservative element which aided in the election of Mr. Strong. It 
 continued in force that feature of police management which theretofore 
 had divided responsibility and aided corruption. It was, in the opinion 
 of experts, worse than the law for which it was substituted. It was 
 approved by the Mayor. 
 
 The passage of the Greater New York Bill carried with it the pos- 
 sibility, which is now an actuality, that for a number of years the great 
 powers of taxation and appropriation of public moneys in the city of 
 New York and the surrounding districts might be handed over to a 
 sinister organization, and that it would, in any event, — even under 
 favorable political results,- — operate injuriously upon the finances of 
 New York City, as constituted before consolidation, for the benefit of 
 the neighboring towns and congeries of population. The injury was 
 inflicted for no other ostensible purpose than merely to add to the 
 numerical count of the citizens of New York. The Bill was permitted 
 to be advanced and its active promotion was participated in by the 
 Mayor, who gave no warning to the community as to the possible ef- 
 fects of the measure. After the report of the Charter Commission, and 
 when the passage of the Bill was imminent, every conservative interest 
 in the city of New York was awakened to the danger then impending, 
 and made protest against its enactment ; but no sign of cooperation to 
 save New York City from such a danger came from its chief executive. 
 
 When the Bill was passed by the legislature, the Mayor, after a hear- 
 ing upon it before him, declined to sign it, basing his objection on some 
 minor points ; but his opposition came too late for any effective purpose, 
 and the Bill was repassed over his veto by practically the same vote that 
 had originally passed it. 
 
 The Commission to draft the Greater New York charter seemed to 
 recognize the fact that without minority representation in the municipal 
 legislative boards, the Greater New York experiment would be danger- 
 ous. They expressed a doubt, however, about the constitutionality of 
 such a provision — in my opinion an unjustifiable doubt — and yet, despite 
 its importance in the scheme of government, no serious effort was made, 
 either on their recommendations or by the city authorities, to postpone 
 the adoption of the charter until minority representation could be con- 
 stitutionally secured in the Boards of Councilmen and Aldermen, so 
 that should the city be recaptured, as it has been, by Tammany, a very 
 substantial proportion of political power could still be retained by the 
 better class of the citizens of New' York. The matter was disposed of 
 
THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 563 
 
 by the Commission, of which the Mayor was a member, by a recom- 
 mendation that the legislature pass a constitutional amendment 
 providing for minority representation in municipal bodies. This 
 recommendation was wholly disregarded by the legislature. The char- 
 ter was promptly passed, and through its instrumentality the hold of the 
 powers that work for evil upon the city treasury and upon the appropri- 
 ating of other people's moneys, was strengthened instead of loosened. 
 The term of office of the Mayor was lengthened to four years, and his 
 power greatly enlarged ; the incumbents of office were made more de- 
 pendent upon the Mayor ; the length of the terms of office of heads of 
 departments was increased ; and no safeguard was placed anywhere in 
 anticipation of the event that might happen, of a sinister and dangerous 
 organization once again taking political possession of the city of New 
 York. 
 
 The larger street-railway companies of the city seemed to have 
 greater immunity from the control of the departments than ever before, 
 and obtained the right to change motive power without anything like 
 a proper return in money for the additional fraiichises they exercised. 
 They subjected the city's inhabitants to great distress in consequence 
 of the extensive physical changes they made in such motive power, in- 
 volving the tearing up of the leading thoroughfares simultaneously ; 
 and they produced a greater disturbance of comfort than had ever before 
 been suffered in the history of the city. Whilst this work was being 
 prosecuted by the railway companies, the Commissioner of Public 
 Works also saw fit to tear up the great avenues of the city which had 
 not been torn up by the railway companies, so as to conclude within 
 his own probable term of office a public work which should take years 
 for its completion. These two instrumentalities, operating at the same 
 time, spread discomfort and occasioned zymotic disease through the 
 length and breadth of the city, and alienated another host of voters 
 from the support of anything in the shape of a Heform movement. 
 
 The liquor law, passed during Tammany's control of the city, was 
 enacted with the view of not being strictly enforced in a cosmopolitan 
 city like New York, and probably also with the view of a corrupt ac- 
 quiescence in its breach. During Mayor Strong's administration, and 
 in the hottest of the summer months, Mr. Koosevelt, the President of the 
 Police Board, ordered this law to be strictly and rigidly enforced, and 
 in this course received the full support of the Chief Executive of the 
 city. This action alienated from the Eeforra movement, and from fur- 
 ther adherence to its banner, thousands upon thousands of followers 
 
564 
 
 THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 who regarded such strict enforcement as an impairment of their personal 
 liberty and a senseless and needless aggravation of their discomforts 
 during a protracted period of extreme heat in 1895. 
 
 Finally, the Eepublican party, within those three years, placed 
 upon the statute book a most rigorous and unreasonable excise law, 
 the enforcement of which went far beyond Mr. Roosevelt's perform- 
 ances during the summer of 1895, and thereby interfered with the 
 personal liberty of a large proportion of the electors of the city, and 
 with the habits of the Germans to a greater extent than had there- 
 tofore been attempted. The latter met the taunt, that they should not 
 allow Sunday beer to be of more importance to them than good gov- 
 ernment, by the answer that they should not be asked to sacrifice the 
 exercise of their innocent indulgences to puritanical legislation; that 
 the question of their personal liberty was quite as important, as a matter 
 of principle, as good government in the city. Whether they were right 
 or wrong in their reasoning is beside the question. As regards munici- 
 pal matters it produced in a large class of the voting population a feeling 
 of positive hatred against everything that was labelled "Republican" 
 and told with great force against Mr. Low, the candidate of the Citi- 
 zens' Union, who was known to be a Republican. 
 
 Therefore, when the question was agitated in the summer of 1897 
 of nominating a Citizens' Union candidate for the mayoralty of 
 New York, account had to be taken of a widespread feeling of re- 
 sentment and disappointment against the existing regime, which per- 
 meated many classes of electors ; and it required the utmost delicacy 
 and generalship to overcome the vast masses of opposition which had 
 been accumulating by these successive events and mistakes, and to 
 weld them again into a united host against Tammany. Under the pres- 
 ent system of representative government, which recognizes majorities 
 or pluralities only, and without the acceptance of the principle of Mi- 
 nority Representation, a community has no means of formulating and 
 making its protest against misrule effective, except to vote for those in 
 opposition. Such a vote, therefore, can in no way be held to imply 
 sympathy with or confidence in the organization helped by such a pro- 
 test Of the 233,997 voters for Tammany's candidate, not one-half, it 
 may be safely said, were in sympathy with Tammany. A very large 
 proportion of this vote — how large it is impossible to say — represented 
 the voters' disappointment at the measures which, and resentment at 
 the men who during the last three years had oppressed and disap- 
 pointed them. Unfortunately, Mr. Low's candidacy was publicly sup- 
 
THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY, 565 
 
 ported by many of the men in close affiliation with Mayor Strong's 
 administration, and by the Mayor himself, and also by a number of 
 gentlemen who had very vague, but very large, sympathies with the 
 defective and dependent portion of the community, and were willing, 
 if chance were afforded them, to play the part of beneficent providence 
 to the needy through the pockets of the taxpayers. Thrift and enter- 
 prise are as much checked and possibly destroyed by well-meaning 
 communistic distribution out of public funds, which have to be raised 
 and replenished by the taxpayer, as by knavery. Therefore, move- 
 ments to take from the provident and thrifty the means whereby they 
 live, and to compel their expenditure upon persons whose needs they 
 wish to see provided for by voluntary contributions, and not through 
 force, are looked upon with great fear by the provident of an electorate, 
 who are the good middle- class of the community. An increase in the 
 tax-rate means positive hardship to them and to their families and 
 those near and dear to them, for whom they have striven earnestly to 
 lay by the means to prevent the possibility of their being compelled to 
 become the recipients of private and public charity. Many voters 
 hesitated to put their property into the hands of persons, who, even 
 from good motives, threatened, in bad times, to continue an era of 
 vicarious philanthropy at the expense of the taxpayer. The philan- 
 thropist has his proper function in making men more conscious of 
 their duties to each other, and inducing them voluntarily to contrib- 
 ute from their abundance to supply the needs of those less fortunate 
 or less intelligent; bat he ought not to be placed in charge of the pub- 
 lic purse. It was feared, perhaps groundlessly, that in the event of 
 Mr. Low's election, some provision by way of appointment to office 
 would be made for certain men who had very pronounced tendencies 
 to use the public moneys in charitable directions. 
 
 The result, therefore, in 1897 — the reconquest of New York by Tam- 
 many — is no indication of the breakdown of American institutions or 
 of free government. It was the better element of New York that an- 
 tagonized the voters who would normally have been in favor of good 
 government. Their mistakes resulted in the weakening of the garrison 
 and the opening of the gates for the entrance of the enemy whom they 
 had ejected three years before. 
 
 New York has not, as the London " Economist " charges, deliber- 
 ately chosen a corrupt government ; and the inference, that New York 
 must itself be corrupt, is unwarranted. New York was resentful at 
 the miscarriage of its efforts three years before. No people living 
 
566 THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 
 
 under Democratic institutions as now organized, and without true 
 minority representation in full operation, has an opportunity afforded 
 it to exhibit such resentment except by inflicting upon itself another 
 wound; and that was the unfortunate situation in the city of New 
 York in the autumn of 1897. It may be true that the wound need 
 not have been inflicted had the Republican organization been under 
 more patriotic and wiser leadership. But had it been under more patri- 
 otic and wiser leadership, there would have been no oppressive Excise 
 Bill and there would have been no Greater New York measure. The 
 death of Henry George during the campaign may also have had some 
 effect ; but his following was grossly exaggerated, and, whatever it may 
 have been, was probably insuflicient to have changed the result 
 
 The greatest misfortune of the situation lies in the fact that Tam- 
 many is secure in its position for four years and has complete control of 
 every department of the city government. If the election had been for 
 incumbents of but a year or two, Tammany might very readily have been 
 made to feel within a reasonable period of time that the victory it gained 
 was not because a large plurality of the citizens of New York like to live 
 under Tammany rule. But of this privilege of promptly ejecting the 
 incoming administration, the citizens of New York are deprived, not by 
 Tammany, but by those who figured before the community as the most 
 active political adversaries of that institution and who have fastened 
 upon it the existing chai'ter for the government of Greater New York. 
 
 Had an intelligent appreciation of the effect of minority representa- 
 tion existed in the minds of the promoters of the new charter, and of 
 the legislature which passed it, and provisions securing its benefits been 
 incorporated therein, let us see how much could have been done to 
 weaken and practically nullify the recapture of the city by Tammany 
 Hall, — a contingency which never seems to have presented itself to these 
 charter-makers. We will assume that 500,000 votes were cast for 
 councilmen and aldermen in Greater New York. This assumption is 
 made because it is easier to prove the situation by round figures than 
 by odd numbers. Let us assume the proportions as they substantially 
 stood, and that 220,000 votes of these 500,000 were cast for the Tam- 
 many candidates, 140,000 for the candidates of the Citizens' Union, 
 110,000 for the candidates of the Republicans, and 80,000 for the can- 
 didates of all other organizations. Sixty aldermen and 28 councilmen 
 were to be elected. The vote cast would have given, in round figures, an 
 electoral quota for aldermen of 8,000 votes, and for councilmen 18,000 
 votes. This would have given the Tammany organization under minority 
 
THE RECONQUEST OF NEW YORK BY TAMMANY. 567 
 
 representation 26 aldermen of the 60, and 12 councilmen of the 28, a 
 minority of the whole number in each body, instead of the 48 in the 
 Board of Aldermen out of 60 and the 26 in the Council out of 28 which 
 they obtained under the existing system of representation and by which 
 they have absolute control of both chambers. The Citizens' Union 
 would, under a proper application of the principle of minority repre- 
 sentation, have obtained at the last election 16 of the aldermen and 8 
 of the councilmen. The Republicans would have obtained 14 of the 
 aldermen and 6 of the councilmen, while if the votes of all the other 
 organizations had been concentrated, 4 aldermen and 2 councilmen 
 would have been elected by them. In both municipal chambers a clear 
 majority against Tammany would thus have been elected instead of 
 an overwhelming majority in its favor. This Anti-Tammany majority 
 would have been able to hold the Tiger in leash during the ensuing 
 four years of the administration of the city government. 
 
 The writer of this article hesitated for some time as to the wisdom 
 of setting before the community the facts herein stated, he having par- 
 ticipated in every Reform movement undertaken in the city of New 
 York from Tweed's day down to and including the advocacy of the 
 election of Seth Low as Mayor, and sharing with his fellow-members of 
 the Committee of Seventy of 1894, the responsibility for the election of 
 Mayor Strong. He felt however that inasmuch as the battle of muni- 
 cipal reform must be fought again and again until success is achieved, 
 such success, when achieved, could be made permanent only by a clearer 
 understanding of, and no illusions about, the causes of the failure of the 
 friends of good government in the campaign of 1897. Any contribu- 
 tion to public discussion having that end in view must ultimately have 
 beneficial results. Simon Sterne. 
 
THE POLITICAL OUTLOOK 
 
 I. 
 
 The aspects which frown upon the practical politician at this mo- 
 ment are full of perplexity and contradiction. The practical politician 
 is nothing if not a thick-and-thin partisan. His main reliance is the 
 party discipline. His stock in trade are the offices. Regularity his 
 shibboleth, the party label at once the source aod the resource of his 
 authority and power, he is equally without imagination and convictions. 
 If the way be not straight before him, he finds himself in the dilemma 
 of the poor boy of the fable, who, having neglected to learn his letters, 
 could not read the sign-board when he came to the crossing of the 
 roads. 
 
 In the political campaign just ended, whilst the genii who are sup- 
 posed to obey the summons of the practical politicians did their duty 
 by Mr. Croker in New York, they failed to respond with their accus- 
 tomed promptitude and assiduity to Mr. Gorman, in Maryland, and 
 denied the call of Mr. Piatt altogether. Even Mr. Hanna, with the Ad- 
 ministration at his back, could have wished for better service in Ohio. 
 In Kentucky, — one hundred thousand voters remaining away from 
 the polls, — the Silver Democrats had it all their own way. 
 
 Truly, the independent vote, representing a constant but uncertain 
 state of rebellion in the public mind, becomes an ever-increasing and 
 all-unknown quantity. Whether the obstruction it raises to the per- 
 spective of the drill-masters, and the derangement Ijius brought into 
 the process of estimating party forces and forecasting elections, be merely 
 an incident of the time, or a new and fixed element in American poli- 
 tics, may not be stated with assurance. Nor can it b^ intelligently 
 considered unless we go back a little and bring up some arrearages of 
 political experience ; for this is the pivotal point of contemporary spec- 
 ulation, the riddle to be unravelled by the practical politicians, the 
 problem to be solved by thoughtful people. What does it mean ? 
 Where is it going ? If one could find a definite answer to these ques- 
 tions, he would be well upon his journey along that highway which, 
 
 I