Tammany Points the Way

PERHAPS it would not be premature to say that the question of municipal misgovermiient. in the United States has come to a head. What is the remedy ? Is there any remedy ? If any be found, it will probably be only by the concurrence of many minds and wills, only after many experiments have failed, and very likely by some combination of influences or circumstances which is not dreamed of at present. Nevertheless, it should be possible to clear the ground ; to discover, if not how the thing can be done, at least how it cannot be done ; to ascertain some of the conditions essential to success.

In the first place, experience has made plain, what common sense might have told beforehand, that the most cunningly devised system of city government will avail nothing as a protection against corruption or inefficiency. It was thought at one time by many, and it is still the belief of a learned few. that all would go well in municipal affairs if only a proper system of checks and counterchecks could be established. Such a system was established in St. Louis some years ago. The mayor was played off against the aldermen, the aldermen against the common councilmen. Every official had some other official as a watch and a drag upon him. The collection and payment of moneys were regulated so ingeniously that if any went astray, the guilty person —so it was thought — would inevitably be discovered. But alas ! it was only a short time before this elaborate machinery broke down, and the St. Louis government became, as before, notorious for corruption. Chicago has to-day almost as good a charter as could be devised ; the mayor’s responsibility for appointments is undivided, and the Australian ballot law is in force. Still, we have the word of Chicago herself for it that her government is corrupt and inefficient.

Some persons, again, cling to the notion that this or that change in the machinery of nominating or of electing city officers would work a revolution. An enthusiastic reformer, who made a speech not long ago, based his hopes upon the reform of the “primary.” “This is,” he cried, “ the one safe foundation on which we can build up, by the Hudson and by the Delaware, great cities which shall fitly represent and be the glory of America.” What could be more fatuous ! Alexander Hamilton himself could not devise a primary which Tammany would fail to assimilate. Even civil service reform, applied to city offices, would be of little or no avail, in the present state of public opinion. That is to say, if the law were enacted, it would be disregarded and annulled in practice. Civil service reform has been established by law in the departments at Washington, but it is not obeyed there. During the Harrison administration, Secretary (then Senator) Carlisle publicly declared that the law was systematically evaded in the governmental departments, or in some of them. Recently, Senator Lodge has made the same statement in regard to the present administration. There is no doubt that both statements were true ; and if civil service reform is little better than a mockery at Washington, what would it be in New York or Chicago!

Others, again, believe that we have only to adopt the charters and practices of the model cities of Europe—of Berlin, London, or Birmingham — to obtain at a bound good municipal government. But the conditions in this country differ so widely from those which obtain abroad that there is but the faintest analogy between them.¹ Mr. Leo S. Rowe, who has made a special study of foreign municipalities, declares : “ As regards mere administrative forms, foreign cities have but little to teach us. The two best governed cities in the world. — Birmingham and Berlin. — when judged from a purely administrative standpoint, are open to much of the adverse criticism bestowed upon American municipalities. . . . The form transplanted to American soil would, under present conditions, beget evils far greater than those we now complain of.”

The truth is that no change in the form of city government, or in the form of nominating or electing city rulers, or of filling the various city offices, can be of any substantial or permanent avail. The trouble lies deeper than that. The trouble lies with the voters themselves: they do not properly discharge the function required of them ; they elect unfit men. When we come to inquire why this is so. we find a remarkable diversity of opinion. The reformers, to use a homely phrase, pull and haul in opposite directions. Perhaps the reason is that they differ, tacitly for the most part, upon some fundamental points, and chiefly in their view of the common, the uneducated people.

Reformers, as a rule, distrust the people : they put their faith in what is called the educated class : they are committed to the old fallacy, disproved by experience a thousand times, that knowledge is virtue, and they believe that good city government can be obtained by “education,” through an “ enlightened self-interest.” through the public schools, by taking power away from the illiterate. A very brilliant and accomplished reformer exclaimed in a recent address, “ See to it that your librarians are men of ideas and of public spirit! Who can estimate what men like ” Folio of Worcester, Primer of Providence, and Vellum of St. Louis “have done for the reforms which we have at heart ! ” And he added, “ If we cannot have culture, broad and well-directed intelligence in control, then we shall have anarchy.”

All this proceeds upon the assumption that the only safety is in education ; that the “ uneducated.”the mass of the people, are a dangerous element. Folio of Worcester, Primer of Providence, and Vellum of St. Louis ! — worthy men, no doubt: conscientious recommenders of historical and ethical works, perhaps even writers of “ leaflets. “ But what are they among so many ? Not Folio, nor Primer, nor Vellum, nor a thousand like them, could produce any appreciable effect upon the voters of this country. To rely upon Folio and Primer and Vellum is to be an aristocrat, an oligarch, in theory. But this is a country of universal suffrage, a country governed by the people, the mass of whom are. and must ever remain “ uneducated,” in any real sense. And yet. uneducated as they are, our institutions will stand or fall according as they are honest and true, or dishonest and false.

Moreover, it is precisely the “educated ” class who are most remiss in their civic duties. It is the “ educated ” who stay away from the polls in New York, and who pay tribute to Tammany rather than go to the trouble and expense of asserting their civic rights. The same thing is true of Chicago. Mr. Franklin MacVeagh, of that city, after describing at the Philadelphia conference for good city government what an excellent charter, what excellent laws, have been given to Chicago, said: “ Now, Mr. Chairman, what is our trouble? If this environment is all right, if all these institutions are right, what is it that we lack ? Our trouble, sir, is your trouble. — the indifference and the neglect of the socalled good citizens.” Thus utterly and quickly breaks down the assumption that “ education ” is going to produce good government, or that the educated class are more honest or conscientious than the uneducated. The converse is the fact. The superiority lies the other way.

Of course I do not mean to say that a man is necessarily better or a better citizen for being ignorant. Education, of itself (“instruction” would be the more exact word), certainly does tend in some degree to make men honest. It enables them to see more clearly and to grasp more firmly the difference between honesty and dishonesty. Undoubtedly, also, a really “ liberal ” education, such as college graduates and professional students sometimes receive, has a certain elevating effect. A man who knows the history of the world, or has attained to a correct view of the course of nature, or has pondered upon justice, such a man will have acquired some strong arguments in favor of honesty. But this effect of a liberal education is perhaps not very binding : and the liberal education itself is totally beyond the reach of the great mass of the people. When we speak of “ educating ” the people, we mean giving them a “ common school ” education, and the very slight tendency toward honesty which such an education confers is far more than counterbalanced by the increased opportunities and motives for dishonesty which it indirectly furnishes. Our common schools, our newspapers, the stories and novels most commonly read, have little to do with religion or morality. Moreover, the temptations to be dishonest which the richer and more instructed people experience, as compared with those of the laboring class, are very great. Competition in modern mercantile life is so fierce as almost to compel men to be dishonest. This is just as true of wholesale merchants as of retail merchants. A day laborer, on the other hand, has none of these temptations. His honesty, like the virtue of a poor woman, is almost the only thing of which he can be proud. He has no wealth, no knowledge, no cleverness, no fine clothes or equipages, upon which to plume himself. Honesty and courage are his only jewels, and he values them accordingly.

As to the charity, the generosity, the sympathy, of the “ uneducated ” and the poor, there is no question. It is notorious that the poor give of their poverty more freely than the rich give of their abundance. We may deplore the foolishness of a laborer who goes out on a “ sympathetic ” strike, but there can be no doubt about his generosity. There is a deep-seated instinct in the laboring man to stand by his fellows. A profound student of modern social problems remarked the other day, “ The laboring class will have this one immense advantage in the approaching struggle between the rich and the poor : it is the only class in the community the individuals in which are willing to sacrifice themselves for the good of the whole.”

In an after-dinner speech at the Philadelphia conference, Mr. Bonaparte, of Baltimore, made a notable reply to the advocates of “ education “ as the source of good citizenship. He said : “ What do you mean by education ? When you break a horse to fit him for his part in life, you make him a different kind of animal from what he was when you took him in hand. Now, let your schools make men and women fit for the work before them, not by merely pumping into them a certain amount of instruction, but by developing those elements of character which they must have to discharge creditably the duties which you have imposed upon them.”

The point is that such training or such education as Mr. Bonaparte spoke of is, to a certain extent, derived by a day laborer from the experience, from the toils, from the privations of his life ; but it is not derived from schools or colleges, from books, plays, or lectures. Let the idle and dissolute lads who are graduated annually at our public high schools testify to the value of “ education as a factor in good citizenship. Are they or their ignorant and hardworking fathers the better citizens ?

THE second line of cleavage between those persons who have good city government at heart is furnished by tbe theory that city government is purely a matter of business. It has been a frequent assertion of late years by the members of a certain school that the government of a city should be as purely a business matter as is the government of a railroad, a bank, or a factory ; that there ought to be no “ sentiment ” about it. In a sense, of course, but in a very restricted sense, this is true. The technical employees of a city, such as the architect, the engineer, the superintendent of streets, ought to be selected for their technical capacity, and the best results can be obtained only when they hold office for life, or at least for a long term. But in no other sense is the government of a city a purely business matter. The very people who are loud and constant in their assertion that there is no difference between a municipality and a factory are, as a rule, the same people who hold up for our imitation the model cities of Europe. But in those foreign cities the theory that a city corporation is simply a business corporation is unknown. In Berlin, a citizen who is called to public office is bound by law to assume the obligation, under penalty of losing his franchise and of incurring a substantial increase in taxation. In Birmingham, public office is looked upon as an honor; and accordingly, the best and ablest citizens are proud to take office under the city. It was so in Athens, it was so in Rome ; it used to be so in every town in New England ; and wherever the notion that no honor attaches to the holding of public office obtains, wherever, in short, the theory that government is a mere form of “ business ” prevails, there we have political decadence and disgrace, inefficiency and corruption. What follows from the principle that a city corporation is purely a business corporation ? Why, this : that there is no moral obligation upon any citizen to make it better.

There was mentioned lately the instance — and it is only one of a thousand similar cases—of a rich citizen in New York, a Republican by conviction, who pays several hundred dollars annually to Tammany in order to be “ let alone.” Why should he not do so, if city government is a mere matter of business ? It is not for the interest of any rich resident in New York to set about the purification of the city government. It is cheaper and easier and in every way more convenient for him to pay blackmail, even to pay excessive tax rates (they are not very excessive), rather than to expend his valuable time and energies in political efforts. As Mr. Bonaparte (whom I am forced to quote so often) remarked, k’ It is perfectly hopeless, ladies and gentlemen, to found any moral movement upon self-interest.”

Here, then, is another fundamental point upon which it behooves the reformers to clear up their ideas, to range themselves upon one side or upon the other. Will they make it their business to convince men that good city government is a matter of self-interest, or to persuade them that it is a matter of duty ? Is it a question of dollars and cents, or a question of morality and patriotism? I see nothing absurd in the following statement of the functions of a city government : “ Business corporations exist for money-earning and profitsharing, but a city has a higher purpose. It lives not only to protect all its children, but especially to restrain the wayward, to guard the defenseless, to care for the needy and unfortunate, remembering that they are all the children of God.” ²

I have suggested two lines of cleavage between those who have at heart the improvement of city government ; but it is probable that in most cases these two lines will be found to coincide. That is, the men who believe in the moral efficacy of education and “ culture ” and the public schools, and who do not believe in the plain people, are also, generally speaking, those who consider that the government of a city is merely a matter of business. The type is a well-known one ; it is found almost exclusively in our Eastern cities.

But as for us (I venture to put the reader in the same category with myself) who have no confidence in the moral efficacy of “ culture ; ” who do not expect to see the world reformed by Folio of Worcester, nor by Primer of Providence. nor even by Vellum of St. Louis, — upon what shall we base our hopes (if we have any) of ultimate good government in American cities ? Perhaps we can base them upon certain old qualities in human nature which have accomplished great things in the past; perhaps we can base them upon the feeling of loyalty, upon sympathy, upon that passion for a totem which has moved whole nations, inspired wars, and operated as an immense dynamic force in the history of the world.

I cannot describe what I mean better than by quoting the words of a reformer who has expressed the very opposite notion. He said, and he spoke with undisguised contempt: “ The people will not come out for a principle, but they will for a man. ... It is possibly true that average character and intelligence are so low in some cities that there is nothing but personal leadership and some temporary and attractive coup that will further the cause of reform ; but, as a rule, I think the leagues of the country should take higher ground, in deference to the superior popular intelligence and character,” etc.

Now, the fact is that since the dawn of history “ average character and intelligence” have been “ so low,” and they are so low to-day, that nothing but “personal leadership” “ will further the cause of reform ” or any other cause. The great theologians tell us that religious truth itself has little practical effect until it is illustrated and made alive by personal example and leadership. Personal leadership has made men march fifty miles in a day, who otherwise would have dropped to the ground after, let us say, thirty miles. Personal leadership has carried forlorn hopes. All the great political battles in this and in every other country have been won and lost under personal leadership. Give your voters the right sort of personal leadership, and instead of dragging them to the polls in carriages you will not be able to keep them from the polls with shotguns. This is the first powerful motive which might be made of beneficent use in the government of cities.

The second great motive upon which we can rely is that of the totem, —some bond, that is, however trivial or irrational in itself, which binds men together, which leads them to make common cause, which inspires them with a contagious enthusiasm. Political parties are totems, and nine times out of ten they are, to the individuals composing them, nothing more than totems. How many Republicans or Democrats could give an intelligible or logical reason for the faith that is in them! They are Republicans or Democrats, in most cases, by pure accident ; but this fact serves rather to increase than to diminish their party spirit. They are ready to break their opponents’ heads, or to have their own heads broken, for the sake of “ the party,” the totem. If two trains on parallel railroads happen to run along together for a time, every passenger on each train identifies himself with that train ; is jubilant when it forges ahead, or mortified if it falls behind. It becomes for the time being his train, his locomotive, his railroad. A totem has sprung into being, and a temporary bond connects the drummer in the smoking-car, the brakeman on the platform, and the lady in her seat.

The same thing is seen conspicuously in the case of professional ball games. Nine hireling players are dubbed with the title “ New York ” or “ Boston,” and they contend against nine other hirelings as loosely affiliated with Some different city. Five thousand men will go out to witness the contest, and will shriek themselves hoarse if their nine wins, or will strive to mob the umpire if their nine is in danger of being beaten. Here is an immense force in human nature, which, so far as concerns the good government of cities, is absolutely running to waste, — like a mighty river which could be made to turn the wheels of a thousand mills, but which in fact is allowed to find its way, unemployed and unrestrained, to the sea.

Nor is it a mark of weakness for a man to submit to a leader, and to be swayed by an honest enthusiasm which he shares with his fellows. We hear a great deal about the beauty of independence, about freedom and equality ; but the sense of loyalty is a more noble, a more potent thing than the sense of freedom or the sense of equality. Loyalty is an emotion founded on some of the plainest, most striking facts in human nature. Napoleon is estimated, I believe, to have been equal in war to a hundred thousand ordinary men, more or less. His superiority was indeed excessive; but men differ so greatly in capacity, in force of character and of intellect, that a few are always fitted by nature to lead, and the many are fitted to obey. The instinct of loyalty is based upon this difference ; in a word, it is based upon the truth. So, also, the passion for a totem is, in the main, a normal, wholesome passion ; it takes a man out of himself, and makes him capable of sacrifices and exertions which neither self-interest nor the hare sense of duty could ever command.

But all this, it might be objected, is very much in the air. There is, to be sure, the great power of personal leadership ; there is the great power of common enthusiasm, of a party, of a totem ; and Tammany itself is a proof that these powers, or the second of them at any rate, can be employed to immense effect in the misgovernment of cities. But how can they be employed for the good government of cities ? I do not know; perhaps nobody knows. Yet it is easy to imagine various ways in which they might thus be utilized; and it is impossible to conclude that permanent good government in our cities can ever be obtained except by means of them. They are, after all, the elemental political forces, — the coherent, dynamic forces which only can knit men together, and inspire them with the necessary heat and fury.

Mr. Edmond Kelly, of New York, gives us a hint of what might be done in the direction that I have indicated: “The difference between their system [that of the Tammany Clubs] and ours is this : that their philanthropy goes hand in hand with their polities, whereas our philanthropy is cunningly devised so as to leave behind it little gratitude, little sense of obligation, and not a single political principle. Is this wise or right ? The immigrant voter is a stranger in a strange land, speaking a strange language, with no political sense and no political education : into whose hands is he to fall ? Into those of machine politicians who can only corrupt him, or into the hands of an intelligent propaganda which will lift him out of his needs into a sense of his personal dignity and of his political responsibilities. I do not believe in divorcing philanthropy from politics. ... I believe the municipal evil to be a many-headed one ; we must simultaneously attack all the heads, or while we are subduing one we shall become victims to the other. I see the forces tending towards evil cooperating with fatal concentration ; I see those tending towards good dissipated with fatuous indifference. I contend that when we take the hand of a fellow-creature, to lift him out of want, poverty, or crime, we should not let go his hand till we have raised him to the level of the franchise which he is destined to exercise. And this is what I believe to be the ultimate mission of our Good Government Clubs.”

Why should there not be a big political club in every large city, taking in all ranks and conditions of men, holding out rewards and honors, and opportunities for friendship and society with clubhouses in every part of the city ; a club in which the rich should help the poor, and in which rich and poor should be united by ties of self-interest, of fellowship, of loyalty to common leaders, of devotion to a common purpose ? Why should there not be two such clubs, rivals for the control of the city ? Why should not the two great political parties maintain organizations of this sort in every large city ? It matters not that state or national political issues have nothing to do with the policy of a city. It was said by a learned man, “ To elect a city magistrate because he is a Republican or a Democrat is about as sensible as to elect him because he believes in homœopathy or has a taste for chrysanthemums.” This statement, taken literally, is true; and yet the implication which it contains is utterly untrue. If all the citizens in a city could be divided into two parties, each eager for success, and each prepared, in case of defeat, to keep the successful party up to the mark, why, then good government would be insured (at least government as good as we get in state or national affairs), and it would make no difference what was the line of division, — whether it were Republicanism, or homœopathy, or chrysanthemums.

Perhaps the most obvious objection to the existence of such clubs as I have imagined is that they imply, practically, a form of municipal government which is certainly not the democratic and the constitutional form. That is true. But the democratic form of government has been tried in our great cities, and it has failed. In New York it has ceased to exist. For twenty years, New York has been governed by a very different form: it has been governed by the leader of a club, by a man called a “ boss,” who exercises more power in his jurisdiction than is enjoyed by any sovereign in Europe, with the possible exception of the emperor of Russia.

However, I am not concerned to defend city government by means of such clubs as I have vaguely suggested. Possibly they would not work ; possibly they would involve evils worse than those which we now endure. But the point upon which I insist, and which, I think, will be clear, upon reflection, to every fair-minded man, is that good government in cities can never be obtained, as a permanent thing, except through the forces of personal leadership, and of such sympathy and enthusiasm as are aroused by a common cause. Neither mere self-interest nor mere sense of duty will make men vote; much less will it make them vote right. There must be something more : there must be a leader and a totem.

The reformers, in general, believe that the thing can be done without a leader and without a totem. They believe, some that self-interest, others that the sense of duty, will be or might become sufficient. They would be right if all men were like themselves. But the great mass of men — fortunately or unfortunately, as we may think-are very different from the typical reformer. The trouble with the reformer is, therefore, not that he has a wrong conception of government, but that he has a wrong conception of human nature. The majority of men, and especially the uneducated, are both better and worse than what I call the typical reformer supposes them to be ; they are more honest and more generous than he thinks, bul less easily moved by abstract ideas and impersonal motives.

As to the men of “ culture,” the “good” citizens, they are so far outnumbered that it matters little whether they vote or not ; and it is possible that a vague realization of this fact is, partly at least, at the bottom of their muchcondemned indifference. The really important function of this class is to supply leadership. The people are not only willing to be led, they like to be led ; but their leader must be one who can sympathize with them. He must be of a type very different from that of the typical reformer. It would seem that in cities of half a million people and upwards, a few such men might be produced now and then; and the example of Tammany Hall shows how great is the scope of their possible exertions.

Tammany furnishes the best object lesson in city government which this generation has seen; and it would be wiser to take a leaf out, of her book than to content ourselves with condemning her course. The rank and file of Tammany are, in the main, honest men, good citizens. They do not share the plunder; the enormous sums raised by blackmail go into the pockets of a few leaders. Nor do they all hold office, or desire office. The rank and file number about two hundred thousand, and the places number only about twenty-seven thousand. What, then, holds Tammany together, — what but the power of personal leadership and the power of the totem ?

Henry Childs Merwin.