A Saturnalia of Bunk. H. L. Mencken
intelligent men are returned at every election. It must be apparent, however, that such men are nearly always in the minority and that, in consequence, their influence for good is much less powerful than it ought to be. The normal Legislators, like the normal Councilman, remains a fellow of low intelligence and barroom morals. It is only fear that keeps him on the track—fear of his decenter colleagues, of the newspapers, of public indignation, of the penitentiary. Whenever the chance offers to turn a trick, safely and to his profit, he is sure to turn that trick.
There is scarcely need, at this late day, to attempt to show why this is so—why it must always be so. We all know how Legislators and Councilmen are commonly chosen—how it happens that they represent, not the people of their districts, but the professional politicians of their districts—how their training makes it practically impossible for them to regard public service save as a game of grab—how, once they are in office, they quickly yield to the double influence of the bribers who offer them money and the bosses who threaten them with extinction.
The trouble with the average Legislator is not that he is essentially dishonest, but that he is essentially stupid. Representing a small group of electors, he is himself small—a neighborhood notable—a paddler in a little puddle. This rule, of course, is not invariable; like all other generalizations it falls down before exceptional facts. Men of broad intelligence, of large vision, are sometimes candidates for the Legislature, and now and then they are actually elected. But it must be plain that three times out of four the man who aspires to any such lowly and ill-rewarded office is a dwarf. He can understand, perhaps, the needs of his own little mudpuddle, and he may even make a sincere effort to serve those needs, but when it comes to the needs of other mudpuddles he is not interested, and when it comes to the needs of the State as a whole, or of any large section of it, he is unable to grasp them and utterly disinclined to make the attempt.
This explains the sordid drama that is played out at Annapolis at every session of the Legislature. Country legislators, reaching the State capital with their pockets full of local bills, put through those bills—and then lay back and watch the show. Soon there is something going on in each of 10 rings. The city of Baltimore is in conflict with its professional politicians or with half a dozen piratical corporations. A dozen other corporations, menaced by bellringers, roar and sweat blood. The country solon1 cannot understand half of these combats—but in every one his vote will count. So he is approached, tempted, won over. The bait used may be nothing more poisonous than the flattery of some “big” politician. Again it may be cash in hand. But whatever it is—whether the lawmaker himself is paid for his vote directly or his vote is delivered for ready money by some professional manipulator who acquires control of it by promises or threats—the fact remains that a vote has been influenced by corrupt means.
Not every countryman is open to such approaches—nor every city man. But there are always enough fools and rascals in the crowd to make the game worth while. Six votes may be enough to deliver the goods—and it is always possible to buy the six votes.
The same thing happens in City Councils. The average Councilman in the average American city is, if anything, a more stupid and venal man than the average Legislator. He is, speaking generally, either a ward boss himself or the disgusting slave of a ward boss—and the aim of a ward boss, it must be plain, is not to work for the city’s good, but to work for his own good. In most cases he pursues politics as a trade. It is his only means of livelihood. Therefore, it is not astonishing that he should fall with alacrity upon every opportunity to turn his influence into cash. To ask him to neglect or spurn such opportunities would be, indeed, to question his sanity.
The remedy for all this, of course, is plain. Get rid of your small and purchasable men and you will get rid of bribery. But how are you going to get rid of them? By abolishing Legislatures, City Councils and all other such asylums of the ignorant and corrupt. But laws must be made! Some one must run the city and State! Well, why not hire a few first-rate men to do that work—and then watch those men?
That plan, in various forms, has been actually tried by various American cities—and always with great success. In some cities, such as Baltimore, for example, the City Council has been deprived of the absolute power which once made it a cesspool of corruption, and a small and efficient Board of Estimates now does most of its old work. In other cities—nearly 150 of them—the Council has been abolished altogether, and a board of three or four men has taken its place. Membership upon such boards is attractive to first-rate men—men who would not think of entering a City Council. And the people, watching three or four men, can see what each of them is doing. It is difficult to keep tabs upon 30 or 40 councilmen, or 100 Legislators, too often it is impossible to distinguish between an honest vote and a bought vote. But it is easy to keep tabs upon three or four commissioners. [22 May 1911]
USELESS LAWS
The estimable Wegg, of Belair, continues to flood the Harford county hinterland with his tears. Not until the Back River resorts are turned into Chautauquas and the plain people who patronize them are pumped full of pink lemonade will he have done with his wailing and get the sleep he needs. Wegg has never been to Back River—he is, I take it, rather proud of the fact—but that, of course, doesn’t disqualify him as a critic. All day Sunday he broods over the crimes of those happy beer drinkers, flying-horse jockeys, fried-fish eaters, wife-beaters and child-stealers, and by the time night comes he is entirely fluid. But by Monday morning he is always well enough to dispatch, by special courier, an indignant letter to THE EVENING SUN.
One of those letters got into print yesterday, and—to adopt without shame an orthodox lie—it has just been called to my attention. In it Wegg makes the admission that it is not “sin, as such,” that inflames him, but “the open, bare-faced violation, not to say defiance, of statute law.” In other words, the act itself is not so bad, but the fact that it is forbidden by statute makes it heinous. With all due respect to a distinguished moralist I must permit myself the word “bosh!” Certainly the cause of the virtuosi of virtue is in extremis when they must bolster it up with any such idle absurdity.
As a matter of fact, no law carries within itself any mysterious inviolability. The thing which makes a law worthy of respect and which gives it, in practice, the respect of decent men, is its essential reasonableness, its direct and certain appeal to the good sense of the community, its practical social usefulness. One such good law is that which prohibits murder. Now and then the best citizen, for private reasons, may lament that it is on the books and even question its wisdom, but on the whole it is approved by the vast majority of folk without reservation, and they believe that its repeal would work them harm. The man who violates it commits a definite offense against the community: he strikes at that security which is at the bottom of civilization.
But it must be apparent that the statute books of most communities are overloaded with laws which have no such reasonableness behind them—laws which represent, not the community’s sane effort to protect itself, but the bumptious yearning of one part of the community to boss some other part. Of such sort were the sumptuary laws of old England, by which Parliament prescribed, in great detail, just what clothing the common people should wear, and just what victuals they should eat. Of that sort, too, were those Puritan laws of Massachusetts which forbade a man to feed his hogs or kiss his wife on Thanksgiving Day. And of the same sort is that law of Maryland which forbids free citizens to go fishing on Sunday or to look at moving-pictures, or to play baseball, or to buy cigars, or to drink beer (or even soda water), or to do any of 100 other things which, in themselves, are no more indecent or disorderly or anti-social than the act of swatting a fly.
Such laws invade the rights of every citizen whose tastes run to the things they forbid, and so he is perfectly justified in violating them not only occasionally but persistently and as a matter of lofty principle. Wegg himself, I daresay, has bought soda water in his time on Sunday—and yet he must have known that it was unlawful. No doubt he has also bought Sunday newspapers on Sunday, and ice and milk, and perhaps candy for the children—and yet the sale of all these things was and is specifically forbidden. In the same way and in the exercise of the same freedom the folk who go to Back River buy beer and fried fish on Sunday. The act, true enough, is unlawful, but the answer is that the law forbidding it is even more unlawful, in the higher and better sense of that term.
Wegg