The Causes of Pennsylvania's Ills

THAT Pennsylvania was settled by Quakers, and that her present political condition is a subject of grave solicitude to her best friends within and without the state, are statements which cannot be controverted. The attempt to connect them by a chain of cause and effect is a tempting project of historical inquiry. Political conditions, like a rainstorm or a cold wave, do not arise spontaneously, but the causes are often too remote or too complicated to make causation evident or speculation profitable.

In common parlance Philadelphia is the Quaker city, and its representatives, whether in political conventions or ball fields, are Quakers. In some occult way, the characteristics of city and state, green shutters, rectangular streets, building societies, coal mines, the Pennsylvania Railroad, John Wanamaker and Matthew Stanley Quay, are logical descendants of George Fox. To this list, according to “ A Pennsylvanian ” in the October Atlantic, we must add the political iniquities as coming directly from the same prolific origin. In support of this he quotes Theodore Roosevelt in a passage from his Life of Benton, which passage the author has since modified or explained, but which is reputed, according to “A Pennsylvanian,” to have cost him fifty thousand votes out of a total Quaker population of one hundred and twenty thousand, nearly all of whom, as a matter of fact, supported the Republican electors. This tribute to the extent of Quaker influence does the Society of Friends too much honor, and needs to be seriously examined.

William Penn was an idealist, and was far removed from mercenary considerations in the founding of his state. A disappointed would-be purchaser of trading rights says, with surprise, “ I believe truly he does aim more at justice and righteousness and spreading of truth than at his own particular gain.” He was an enthusiast for liberty, for justice, and for peace, and to these causes he sacrificed a noble inheritance of money and station, and the quiet and comfort of his life. Many of his coreligionists did not at first appreciate the wisdom of his generous plans. To one of these who had argued for special privileges for Quakers he objects, “We should look selfish and do that which we have cried out upon others for, namely, letting nobody touch with government but those of their own way ; ” and again, with a note of exultation, he says, “ I went thither to lay the foundation of a free colony for all mankind that should go thither.” His Fundamental Constitutions, recently discovered in his own handwriting, the first announcement of his plan of government, was liberal beyond any previous publication of serious practical import, and was toned down by friends to suit supposed necessities.

It can hardly be claimed that the rank and file of his followers rose to the standard of his conceptions. They were mainly English yeomen, who had been for years under the fire of severe persecution, and were seeking peace and freedom for themselves in Penn’s Woods. Yet from the very nature of their religious views they could not do otherwise than embrace rather broad principles of liberty, fraternity, and equality. The divine message directly committed to the custody of human agency knew no bounds of wealth, learning, or sex. He or she who received it was set apart by no permanent canonization. There was perfect equality of spiritual opportunity, and perfect liberty of spiritual action. Even the smaller peculiarities were testimonies to universal fellowship. The thee and the thou were applied to all, instead of being addressed, as was the custom of the age, to inferiors only. The refusal to take off the hat was a protest against the obsequiousness which had recently been imported from the Continent. The offer to till out the terms of imprisonment of suffering brethren, even when the prison would be the grave, was made again and again in all seriousness, while the feeling toward the persecutors was entirely devoid of malignity.

This people learned well the lesson that human rights were the inheritance of all men, and not of those only who held “ the truth.” When they came to America, it was not to found a little reservation, built upon their own ideas of Biblical authority and ecclesiastical propriety, and then to keep it sacred by imprisoning and whipping and hanging dissenters. They generalized from their own condition, and enacted for all the liberties they wished to enjoy themselves. The first clause of every charter of Penn — including that of 1701, which lasted till the Revolution — was a full grant of freedom of worship to all “who confess and acknowledge Almighty God.” There was, however, what then amounted to a small restriction in officeholding to those who “ profess to believe in Jesus Christ.” This restriction was increased by legislative action to include subscription to a test which barred Catholics from official life, and so matters remained during provincial days. There were no restrictions on worship, and a Catholic church was in nearly continuous exercise of its functions ; but the government could be carried on by Protestant Christians only. No other founder, except Roger Williams, grasped even approximately this large truth, now so universally accepted. It was more than toleration. Dissenting sects were more than endured : they held with the dominant body, on terms of equality, all civil and political rights.

This did not abolish denominational intensity. Presbyterian and Quaker differed bitterly in dogma and method, and their zeal against each other threw them into opposing political parties. They were keenly alive to each other’s iniquities, and profoundly assured of their own rectitude. Political equality did not seem to breed indifference to moral obliquity, nor was official malfeasance — any more than under the exclusive hierarchy of Massachusetts — a matter not to be rigorously combated. In addition to righteous government this sentiment of equality gave the people a clear moral insight, which made witchcraft and other crazes impossible.

The theory conquered. Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and Maryland became the models in managing religious differences. The makers of the federal and state Constitutions chiseled into them imperishably the doctrines of civil and religious liberty.

The other principle which the Pennsylvania settlers had at heart — peace — had no such triumphant career. Yet it doubtless seemed to Penn, in his enthusiasm, no less important and no less likely to succeed than liberty. When he said, “ There may be room there, if not here, for such a Holy Experiment,” it is probable that he had most clearly in mind the separation from warlike spirit and impulses and neighbors. Justice to the Indians, though right in itself, became doubly important to him in maintaining pacific relations within the colony. The famous treaty under the elm tree, in its descriptions more artistic than historic, symbolized not only honest dealings, but also the elimination of forts, soldiers, and guns from the list of colonial necessities, — a condition which continued for seventy years.

It conveys a wrong impression to call these Quakers non-resistants and noncombatants. They did not hold the views of which Tolstoi is now the most distinguished exponent. They believed in fairness, in insistence on reason and its forcible presentation, and on force up to the point where force used criminal methods. During all the colonial period they constituted the liberty party of the province, and wrung from successive governors one concession after another. They showed ability to resist bravely and successfully whenever their rights were invaded. In the struggles with the Crown and Parliament which preceded the Revolution, they were united in opposition, and adopted heartily the measures of non-importation and protest which characterized the policy of John Dickinson. There are good reasons for believing that during the war the sympathies of the great majority were with the Americans, and several hundred of them, though under the disapprobation of their ecclesiastical bodies, gave active aid to the Revolutionary cause.

The opposition was to methods, not to resistance itself. They held that differences could generally be settled by common sense and forbearance; that moral resistance, to its fullest extent, was better than suffering iniquity to prevail; and that a citizen’s duty was to oppose vigorously, and,if need be, suffer bravely, rather than to condone wrong in others or do it himself. They had achieved a memorable triumph in England the previous century, and secured, with some completeness, their civil and religious rights there, by methods demanding great endurance and strenuous resistance to persecution, and they were not convinced that the same methods would not be successful in America. They stopped at war, because they thought it was a crime; that the hatred, the killing, the stealing, and all the immoralities which cluster around war were wrong in themselves, and could not be justified by results to be gained, or the supposed inadequacy of right means to meet the situation. Such was Quaker non-resistance. That it would tend to make men tolerant of evil or indifferent to its effect is, at the mildest, a doubtful proposition.

Quaker rule was unquestioned in the popular Assembly up to 1756. Every legislature contained not less than a three-fourths majority. Even in October, 1755, after Braddock’s defeat, when the Indians were let loose on the frontiers, and the whole question of military resistance was at issue, twenty-eight out of the thirty-six members elected were Quakers. They were then in a minority of the population, but that population trusted in their methods of solving the difficulty.

They did not control the executive, however, and the governor declared war. Then they resigned their places in the government, never, in any considerable numbers, to resume them.

It may be conceded that the province was saved from some difficulty by its Episcopalian governors. The Quaker Assembly would not interfere with calling out voluntary militia and other warlike operations, if they were not themselves involved and no consciences were forced. Possibly they felt like the Quaker boat captain of later date, who was being crowded out by more aggressive competitors at the Delaware wharves, and who, in despair, called to his mate, “ Thee will have to come here and use some of thy language.” It may be a question in casuistry how far a man is justified in allowing others to do things innocently against which his own conscience protests. There was not much of this, however, and as a matter of fact they managed affairs, without defenses or arms or martial display, for two generations.

As a result, to a very large extent, of the prevalence of these ideas of liberty and peace, the Quaker colony greatly prospered. “ It is not to the fertility of our soil,” said Speaker Andrew Hamilton, a man much respected and a nonQuaker, in 1739, “ that we ought chiefly to attribute the great progress this province has made. ... It is practically and almost wholly owing to the excellency of our Constitution.” Founded later than any of the original colonies except Georgia, it grew more rapidly than any, and at the Revolution was among the first three in wealth and population. It was the only one whose paper currency never depreciated. It had absolute security from Indian invasion and internal broils while Quaker rule lasted. Its free thought created the soil upon which alone science could grow. Franklin, tired of the dogmatism of Massachusetts, found a congenial atmosphere in Pennsylvania. Priestley, driven from England, found sympathy and a home on the banks of the Susquehanna. Rittenhouse, Bartram, Audubon, Rush, Marshall, and many others constituted a conclave of scientists unequaled elsewhere in America. Philadelphia was the best governed, most enterprising, and most important city of the colonies at the beginning of the Revolution.

But Pennsylvania did not have a homogeneous population of Quakers. It is doubtful if there were ever more than forty thousand of them in the colony at any one time, with perhaps eight thousand voters. That this little group could stamp a state so as to resist or greatly modify the vast development of the succeeding century is in itself improbable. There was the German immigration, far exceeding them in numbers, which gave them political allies, but which brought in a different sort of people. There was the Scotch-Irish immigration, also their numerical superiors, and always restive under their control, — restive to the extent of demanding with great acrimony separate statehood for western Pennsylvania. In the north the Connecticut settlers claimed the whole length of the state for New England, and defended their claim by guns and forts, — a controversy which was not settled till 1782. This heterogeneous population prevented the unity of feeling and state pride possible elsewhere, and may account for the fact that the worst side of Pennsylvania is always shown to the world, — that her weaknesses and iniquities are heralded in their fullness by her own sons whenever they tell against a rival party.

The determining factors of the present conditions, however, have arisen since the Revolution. They have overridden the influences of race and religion, and have worked the same political results among the militant Presbyterians of the west as among the peaceful Quaker-settled counties of the southeast. They are products of geography and mineralogy, and would have wrought their consequences, with some modifications, had the province of Pennsylvania been settled by the Puritans of New England, the Cavaliers of Virginia, or the Creoles of Louisiana.

The line of travel to and from the west lay across the state for four hundred miles. The stream of emigration, and later the returning stream of produce, when menaced by the Erie Canal, demanded great concerted business organizations. The state itself undertook to solve the problem, and built canals and horse and “ portage ” railways connecting the Ohio with the Delaware. The debt mounted up to forty million dollars, and the political evils were even more serious. After the panic of 1837, when trade almost ceased and the objects of state taxation became unremunerative, the treasury staggered along a little time, and then paid interest in promissory notes. Sydney Smith’s brilliant diatribes and Wordsworth’s milder reproaches have advertised Pennsylvania’s disgrace to the world. But they wrote too soon. Every dollar of the debt was paid, with interest on the delayed interest. Not only so, but the demand to sell the unprofitable and demoralizing investment was too strong for politicians to resist, and there was a not discreditable settlement of the whole matter.

But the need for the line still remained. There was only a transference from management by the state itself to management by companies deriving their powers from the state. The legislature was still the source of wealth and power.

At the same time came the development of the unrivaled mineral resources of the state. Canals, and afterward railways, were run in every direction. Individual fortunes were unable to open and work the mines of coal and iron, and to develop the raw material into an available shape for practical use. A state of farmers, or of small textile manufacturers, or of diversified industries would have no temptation to connect politics and business ; a state with the wealth of the world within its reach, but dependent on legislative favor, was drawn by irresistible allurements to give a mercenary tone to its public life, and lose sight of high ideals in an intoxicating commercial prosperity.

Prior to the Civil War the tariff question did not affect politics. Pennsylvania, normally Democratic, wanted a tariff, and both parties were willing to grant it. But when the cause became identified with the fortunes of the Republican party, majorities of two or three hundred thousand were easy. Workmen had noticed that low rates were coincident with low wages, scanty work, and suffering. Whether right or not, they concluded that coincidence meant consequence, and went bodily into the Republican ranks. There has been no steady healthy opposition in Pennsylvania or Philadelphia since the war. So it has come to pass that the wealth of natural resources, the coal and iron of the hills, and their inevitable connection with legislation, have been the undoing of political morality. They have made Pennsylvania rich beyond the dreams of our grandfathers, and have brought a reliable and abiding commercial prosperity. Men with vast interests confided to their care, to be worked for their own and their clients’ benefit, and with golden prospects before them, have adjudged their duty to these interests to be superior to their duty to the state and to morality, or they have argued that attention to business prosperity was their duty to the state and to morality.

These facts are explanations, not excuses. The vast natural wealth of the state has often been a stronger force than the virtue of its people, but in many issues of the past that virtue has triumphed. It did when the people sold the lines of transportation, when they stopped all special legislation, when they made offices elective by themselves instead of by the legislature, and in hundreds of minor matters. The great state evil of the present, appropriations to charities and schools, in which money is squandered and favor and silence purchased, is raising against itself a sentiment which will ultimately prevail. They who write the permanent disgrace of Pennsylvania are probably premature.

Whether it is a sinner more than any other state may not be known, but the world knows the worst. The bitterness of faction in each of the parties has told every discreditable thing that is true, and much that is not true. The truth is dark enough. At each end of the state is a large city, and in each politics is a question of contracts. The prevailing management in one allies itself with the Quay faction of the Republican party, in the other against it. One of them, and probably both, has carefully studied its lessons in the Tammany laboratory. They have undertaken to buy some of the voters, to deceive others, and to keep others asleep. Vast sums of money have been spent in securing nominations and elections of members of the legislature, with reference to the senatorial choice, the most of it corruptly. Corporations with tremendous financial concerns at stake have swelled the funds. A gentleman who knows the conditions as well as any one in the state estimates the purchasable material in the legislature of two hundred and fifty-three members to be about fifty. Men of wealth and education, the natural leaders of reform movements, are directors of hospitals and asylums and schools of various grades, and do not take their right places in politics lest they should imperil their worthy institutions. But there are those who believe that it would be better for the state if every one of these charities and schools, with all its inmates, was sunk in the sea, rather than that moral considerations should be made subordinate to mercenary. Again, Pennsylvania is a state of corporations. The highest business talent is involved in their management. Many of them have secured all they need from the state, but they must preserve, they argue, the interests of their stockholders, which are at the mercy of adverse legislative or councilmanic action. A threat of blackmail makes them the silent witnesses, if not the active participants, of the triumph of iniquity, and deprives good government of their potent leadership. But there are those who would not accept a directorship or hold stock in companies which thrive on the profits of evil doing. This may truly be said: that the commonwealth has a tough fight on its hands against the natural consequences of its own riches, and that, when virtue and honor prevail, as they will in the future and as they have repeatedly in the past, it will be in the face of a stronger opposition than confronts the party of righteousness in almost any other state. Meantime, the few Quakers left in Pennsylvania are working, almost to a man, for clean politics, and are profoundly skeptical when they are told that the devotion of their ancestors to high ideals of peace and moral purity is responsible for present corruption and selfishness.

A Pennsylvania Quaker.