Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, March 1899. Various
they seek to change district boundaries in such a way as to keep the opposition in a perpetual minority. Sometimes they have no other motive than the extortion of blackmail from individuals or corporations. Sometimes their object is to throw "sop to Cerberus" – that is, to pacify troublesome reformers within the party, like the prohibitionists and the civil-service reformers. Sometimes they authorize investigations into a department or a municipality with the hope that discoveries will be made that will assist the party in power or injure the party out of power; it happens not infrequently that they are undertaken to smother some scandal, like the mismanagement of the Pennsylvania treasury, or to whitewash some rascal. Sometimes they create commissions, superintendents, or inspectors, or other offices to provide rewards for party hacks and heelers. Finally, there are the appropriation bills. Only a person ignorant of the ways of legislators could be so simple-minded as to imagine that they are miracles of economy, or that they are anything else but the products of that clumsy but effective system of pillaging known as log-rolling, which enables each to get what he wants with the smallest regard for the interests of the taxpayer.
It is, however, during the debates over these wise and patriotic measures that the public is favored with the most edifying exhibition of the universal contempt of the legislator for its interests. They disclose all the scandalous practices of a political campaign. There are misrepresentations, recriminations, and not infrequently, as in the case of Sumner, personal assaults. A perverse inclination always exists toward those discussions that will put some one "in a hole," or enable some one to arouse party passion. For this purpose nothing is so effective as a foreign question, like a Cuban belligerency resolution, or a treaty for the annexation of Hawaii, or a domestic question, like responsibility for the crime of 1873, or the panic of 1893, or a comparison of party devotion to the interests of the "old soldier." Not the slightest heed, as has been shown on several occasions during the past few years, is paid to the shock that may be given to business or to the disturbance of pacific relations with foreign powers. In fact, the greater the danger involved in the discussion of a delicate question, the more prone are the demagogues to mouth it. To such questions as bankruptcy, railroad pooling, and currency reform will they give their time and wisdom only when business interests have almost risen in insurrection and compelled attention to them.
The same policy of hypocrisy, deception, favoritism, and proscription is a dominant trait of the administration of the Government. The object almost invariably in mind is the welfare or injury of some party, or faction, or politician. The interests of the public are the last thing thought of, if thought of at all. Take dismissals and appointments. They may, as has been known to occur even in the United States, be made to better the public service. Even then a careful study of motive will disclose the characteristic purpose of the politician. In a choice between two men of equal ability, or rather of equal inability, which is more commonly the case, preference is given to the one with the stronger "pull." Often, as has been shown within the past year or two, convicted rascals are appointed at the behest of Congressmen and in defiance of the wishes of the business community, and, in spite of the civil-service laws, officials are dismissed because of their politics alone. In the letting of contracts it is not difficult to detect the observance of the same judicious rule. The virtuous formality of letting to the lowest bidder may be gone through with, and the public may be greatly pleased with this exhibition of official deference to its interests. Yet an examination of the work done under the supervision of complaisant inspectors, who may be blinded in various ways to the defects of that of a political friend, or made supernaturally alert to the defects of that of a political enemy, will reveal a trail that does not belong to scrupulous integrity. That is why dry docks, like that in Brooklyn, why harbor works, like those in Charleston, turn out defective; why the Government has to pay more for the transportation of the mails than a private corporation; why the cost of the improvement of the Erie Canal was concealed until nearly all the money voted for the folly had been expended; why of the money expended one million dollars was wasted, if not stolen; why so much of the State Capitol at Albany has been built over again; why the City Hall in Philadelphia has been an interminable job; why the supplies of prisons, asylums, and other public institutions are constantly proving to be inferior to those paid for – why, in a word, everything done by political methods is vitiated by the ethics of war. In the enforcement of laws very little justice or honesty can be found. As a rule, they bear much more harshly on the poor and weak, that is, those with small political influence, than on the rich and strong, that is, those with much political influence. Take the enforcement of liquor laws, health laws, factory laws, and compulsory school laws. If a man with political influence wishes to keep his children at home for any purpose, no truant officer is indiscreet enough to trouble him; if, however, a poor woman, just made a widow, wishes to have her oldest son work in disregard of the statute, in order to keep her and her younger children out of the poor-house, his official zeal is above criticism. Politics poisons even the fountains of justice. Criminals that have sufficient political influence can escape prosecution or obtain pardon after conviction. Prosecuting officers are importuned incessantly, even by "leading citizens," to abandon prosecution of them or to "let them off easily." In the appointment of receivers and referees, judges are much more inclined to give preference to political friends than to political enemies. Finally, if political exigencies require it, there is no hesitation to invoke the latent savagery of a nation. In proof, recall the Venezuelan message of Mr. Cleveland, which "dished" the Republican jingoes, and the German emperor's assault upon Hayti and China to secure the adoption of his naval bill. To make the record complete, I ought to add that for a purpose more odious – namely, the increase of sales – newspapers, always the ready recipients of political patronage, commit the same atrocious crime against civilization.
Since politics is a form of civil war, involving aggressions upon person and property, any extension of its field of operation must be attended by precisely the same moral and economic effects that attend the pursuit of civil war itself. No concession of suffrage to women, nor any legal machinery, however ingenious, that may be invented, will alter that fact. Already we are confronted with alarming manifestations of the decadence of society that have always accompanied civil strife. The public burdens are becoming so great, equaling the per capita rate prevailing at the outbreak of the French Revolution, that people in cities as well as in the country are being driven from their homes by the sale of their property for unpaid taxes. Both classes are joining the ranks of "the disinherited," just as similar classes joined the brigands in France and Italy, and are clamoring for the trial of the thousand absurd schemes for social ills known as populism and socialism, all meaning an increase of the functions of government, still further aggressions upon persons and property, and an aggravation of the evils already complained of. At the same time the moral tone of society is rapidly sinking to a low level. "It is a melancholy reflection," says the report of the New York State tax commission, dwelling upon the desperate efforts of people to escape the aggressions committed on them and disclosing the observance of a code of ethics committed in every walk in life, "that in this Christian age neither the memory of early moral training, nor present religious profession, hopes or fears for the hereafter, the penalties of the law, nor any other possible considerations are sufficient to restrain the average possessor of personal property from forcing other men to pay the taxes for which he is justly liable, by methods unquestionably immoral, if not absolutely criminal." Further evidence of the same startling and deplorable fact, one recalling the cruel indifference of the privileged classes of the ancient régime to the sufferings of the people that bore the burdens that they ought to have shared, is to be found in the universal tendency of people to get public improvements at the expense of others, such as free baths, normal schools, interoceanic canals, etc., and the shocking prevalence of crimes of violence in every part of the country. To be sure, there are coupled with this alarming decadence extraordinary religious, philanthropic, and pedagogic efforts to rescue society from the depths of degradation to which it is sinking. But, as is shown by the history of the unparalleled moral enthusiasm of thousands of ascetics and teachers of the highest character during the decadence of Rome and the disorders of the middle ages, they will be absolutely ineffective as long as the conditions prevail that engender envy, hatred, deception, plunder, and murder, destroying not only morality, but every vestige of fellow-feeling and patriotism. "There is a nation," says Mr. Bodley in his new book on France, bringing out this profound and important truth, "to the members of which Frenchmen are more revengeful than to the Germans, more irascible than to the Italians, more unjust than to the English.