Political Campaigning in England and America

AMERICANS admittedly are much more frequently at the polls than Englishmen. In municipal, state, and federal elections they mark at least ten ballot papers for the Englishman’s one; for nowadays, when school boards in England are no longer elected by direct popular vote, an Englishman is seldom called upon to mark more than seven ballots in the course of six years. He may be called upon once a year to vote at a municipal election. Parliamentary general elections occur about once in every six years; and when a city-dwelling Englishman has voted for the member of the municipal council for his ward and for the member of the House of Commons for his parliamentary constituency, his duties as regards voting are at an end. He is never called upon to vote in the election of mayor or alderman. The choice of these lies exclusively with the city council. Elections of judges are unknown in England. All judges, whether of the local police court, the recorder’s court, the county court, the court of quarter sessions, or the higher courts that go on circuit or sit permanently in London, are appointed by the Crown, on the nomination of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, who is a member of the Cabinet. municipal council, an English elector would not be called upon to vote more than seven times for men to serve his ward or his parliamentary constituency. The probability is that in these six years the English elector would do nothing more than reelect his representative, both on the municipal council and in the House of Commons. Municipal councilors are reelected again and again, and are not infrequently in the civic service for half a lifetime. If their record for efficiency and loyalty to municipal work is satisfactory they look to reelection, until they are chosen as aldermen by the municipal council, and occasion for popular election is at an end.

Among local executive officers, municipal auditors are about the only officials who are elected directly by popular vote. All other municipal officers are appointed by the city council, and are answerable to the city council for the faithful discharge of their duties. In an average period of six years in a constituency where a parliamentary by-election does not occur, and in a ward in which death or resignation causes no vacancy on the

The English electoral system, municipal and parliamentary, and the extraconstitutional machinery which has become necessary to its easy working, makes infinitely less call on the time of Englishmen than does the electoral system of the United States — municipal, state, and federal — and the elaborate and complicated machinery which has long been necessary to its working. Yet while this is so, while the American spends much more time in elections, I think it will be conceded by any one who is familiar with political life and thought in the two countries, that in England the general level of popular political education, of women as well as of men, is much higher than it is in the United States. Interest in politics — municipal and national — is keener and more continuous in all classes of society than it is in this country; and this in spite of the fact that the great majority of the parliamentary voters to-day have possessed the right to vote only since 1885.

It was 1867 before workmen living in the parliamentary boroughs were enfranchised; and another eighteen years elapsed before agricultural laborers and miners who dwell outside of the larger municipalities were able to vote for members of the House of Commons. The widespread interest in national politics in England seems at first sight all the more remarkable when it is remembered how late in the nineteenth century the working classes were enfranchised. But this fact in itself helps to explain much of the present popular interest in politics. From the American Revolution to 1885 there was never a time in England when there was not a movement on foot for the parliamentary enfranchisement of the working classes; and the interest of the working classes in rural and urban England in politics was kept alive and stimulated for more than a century by the piecemeal fashion in which the parliamentary franchise was extended.

Had Grey and Russell and the other Whig leaders who constituted the administration of 1830-32, made the parliamentary franchise in 1832 as wide and inclusive as it is to-day, when every man out of the workhouse or jail can exercise it who has a settled abode, it is probable that to-day there would be less popular interest in Parliament and its proceedings. But the Whigs of 1830-32 were cautious. They were anxious to impair as little as possible the political power of the governing classes — of those who had ruled England since the Revolution of 1688. Only the fairly well-to-do middle classes were admitted to the parliamentary franchise by the Reform Act of 1832; and the royal assent had scarcely been given to that famous enactment before there was begun another agitation for the extension of the franchise to the working classes. Out of this agitation developed the Chartist movement; and after much delay came the Reform Act of 1867. This applied only to the larger boroughs; and it admitted to the franchise the working classes only in those constituencies. The artisan in rural communities, the agricultural laborer and the miner, were left by the Act of 1867 where they had been left by the Reform Act of 1832. Nothing was done for them; and the consequence was that there was soon another popular agitation for the enfranchisement of the working classes in rural England.

The third agitation resulted in the Reform Act of 1885, which put the parliamentary franchise on its present democratic basis. Thus for more than a century there was an almost continuous agitation for the extension of the parliamentary franchise. During all these years the working classes were interested in Parliament because it was in its power to bestow on them a right which they were anxious to possess. From the American Revolution to the Reform Act of 1885 the working classes were looking to Parliament for this right. They were continuously in an expectant mood. The attitude of Parliament towards parliamentary reform, from the time that the question was first brought before the House of Commons by Pitt, in 1785, to the act which Gladstone carried through Parliament in 1885, was of direct and personal moment to them, — a fact which served to give them a keen and continuous interest in politics.

Foreigners visiting England towards the close of the eighteenth century frequently noted the interest of the working classes in politics, and the zest with which politics was discussed. This interest of the working classes was obvious even in the days when the stage-coach men and the carriers were the principal purveyors of news, and long before newspapers came generally into service; before the London daily and weekly newspapers, which cost seven or eight pence a copy, were passed from hand to hand until they were so thumbed and worn that they would scarcely hold together. Even after newspapers were published at a cheaper rate, and every large town had its daily, weekly, or semi-weekly journal, politics — national and municipal — filled most of the newspaper space; for it was not until the eighties of last century that sport began to obtain its present foothold in English daily and weekly newspapers, and began the contest with politics for preeminence and right-of-way in the newspaper world.

Widespread popular interest in polities in England can be dated at least as far back as the American Revolution. For more than a century this interest was intensified by each new agitation for parliamentary reform, and with each extension of the parliamentary and municipal franchise. These extensions of the franchise, of necessity, involved the creation of some machinery for parliamentary and municipal elections. But the machinery has not become so intricate or so elaborate as to overshadow the elections, and the questions and principles at issue in parliamentary or municipal contests.

There has not grown up in England, what has long existed in this country, one small and interested class exclusively intent on working the electoral machinery, and another and enormously larger class, much more loosely held together, which does little more than march to the polls to vote for the men whom the smaller and more interested class — really the governing class — has nominated for election. Hence the wholly different meaning of the word politician in this country and in England. In this country my understanding of the word politician is a man who is closely, continuously, and actively concerned in the working of the machine, or who holds an office, or is a perpetual candidate either for elective or appointive office. The word has no such narrow significance in England. It implies a man or woman who is interested in political questions and principles, — who is a student of politics in this wider sense.

There are many men in this country who would resent being described as politicians; who would regard such a designation as derogatory to their dignity and social standing. In England no man or woman who is known to be interested in political questions would in the least resent being spoken of as a politician. Few English people to-day recall, if they ever knew, Dr. Arnold’s dictum that the desire to take an active share in the great work of government is the highest earthly desire of a ripened mind. But there are people beyond count in England, in all walks of life, with whom interest in politics is as intense and as continuous as it was with Dr. Arnold. Tens of thousands of these people have no expectation of ever being of the House of Commons, or even of a municipal council. Politics is chiefly an intellectual interest with them, put into active exercise only when they go to the polls. But no man or woman in England ever apologizes for being a politician; just as no one in this country ever apologizes for being of a Browning or a Dante society, or for a love of music.

There are, and there must be, men in England who are actively interested in the organization and working of the machinery of elections. Registration of voters must be continuously attended to by party agents. At elections the vote must be got out, just as in this country. The law, however, rigorously limits the number of men who can be engaged for pay; and there are practically no remunerative offices, either in the national or municipal civil service, that can be bestowed as rewards upon party workers. These workers, paid and voluntary, form but an infinitesimal group in any electorate; and in a campaign, whether national or municipal, much less reliance is placed upon their efforts than upon the work of the men of the machine at elections in this country.

An election in England, whether for the House of Commons or for a municipal council, is chiefly an educational campaign, in which the spoken and the printed word are the far-reaching and all-powerful weapons. Every candidate must make clear to the constituency from which he would be elected the principles for which he stands, and the policies in national or municipal economy which he advocates. If he has been of the House of Commons and is seeking reelection, he must justify the votes he has given in the Parliament that has come to the end of its term, and also the policies of the government which he has supported. He must also make popularly and generally understood the measures and policies he is prepared to support in the event of his return to the House of Commons.

It is much the same in municipal politics. A candidate seeking reelection to a municipal council must give an account of his stewardship during his three years in office, and must also inform the electors of his ward of the line that he expects to take in the ensuing three years’ work of the council.

In this country, except for the campaign buttons and the banners that are stretched across the streets — banners on which are displayed only the names of the party and its candidates, — there are usually few out-door indications, even in a presidential year, that an electoral canvass is in progress. In an English city during a parliamentary election, whether a general election or a byelection, a new-comer could not get half a dozen blocks from the railway station at which he had arrived without opportunities of ascertaining who were the candidates, what claims they had on the suffrage of the constituency, and what were the political issues on which the election was being fought. An American who should arrive in Liverpool during a parliamentary contest could fully and accurately inform himself on all these points in a walk from the landing-stage to Exchange or Lime Street Station.

The printed word, in its largest and most outstanding form, still survives in English electioneering, in all its glory and splendor of coloring. On all the billboards, from the time the electoral campaign begins until the returning officer’s writ is in the possession of the successful candidate, are the portraits of the candidates, the addresses of the candidates to the electors, the record of the government that is seeking a renewal of its lease of power, the criticisms of that record by its political opponents, and the promises of the party that is seeking to dislodge the government and to take its place.

All other advertising disappears from the bill-boards during an election. The politicians are in exclusive possession. Proprietary-goods men and other trade advertisers willingly surrender their rights in the bill-boards; for they know that at election times it is a waste of good money to attempt to dispute possession with the politicians. For two weeks the public is solely occupied with politics; and at these times the bill-board has nearly as great an educational value as the platform or the newspaper press. These factors in an election are used as assiduously as the bill-board. So is the post-office; but the bill-board, while it commands the attention of people who read the newspapers, attend political meetings, and receive electioneering literature by mail, also reaches people who do none of these, and in this way all classes in the community are brought within the influence of the educational machinery of a parliamentary election.

It is now twenty-four years since I first went through a presidential election in the United States. It was my first visit to the United States; but even yet I have not got over my surprise at the complete absence of bill-board electioneering literature in the city of St, Louis, in the Blaine-Cleveland campaign of 1884, and at the meagreness and indefiniteness of what are called “ cards,” that were issued by congressional and state candidates in Missouri at that election. The English elector expects much more than a card from his parliamentary candidate. He knows without a card to which political party a candidate belongs; and he expects from a candidate who is seeking his vote a carefully written and detailed manifesto in which the candidate must set out without equivocation his position on all the political questions which at the time of election are agitating the country. In England these election addresses from individual candidates, as they appear in the press, frequently run to threequarters of a column in newspaper type and measure. They are additional or supplementary to the manifestoes which are issued by the parliamentary leaders of the several political parties.

At an English municipal election, procedure is much the same. Each candidate for the municipal council issues his election manifesto. It is published in the newspapers and on the bill-boards; and, as is the case with the parliamentary candidate, he elucidates or amplifies it at the public meetings of the electors which he is called upon to address. There is no such far-reaching educational work in most municipal elections in this country.

At the time I write a municipal canvass of much significance is in progress in my home city of Hartford. But the bill-boards are exclusively occupied by the theatre men, and the proprietarygoods advertisers; and I have not been able to find in print a signed and detailed electoral address from either of the candidates who are in the contest for the mayoralty. My home is in one of the largest wards, but not a single one of the five Republican candidates for the city council has made an appearance on the platform in the ward. The candidates were nominated at a party caucus which was so formal and perfunctory that all the business was transacted in twelve minutes; and although three or four of the candidates were seeking reëlection, not one of them thought it incumbent on him to give the meeting any account of his stewardship, or any indication of his attitude towards municipal policies. The candidates did not even stand up in caucus to allow the electors to make the acquaintance of the men who were asking their electoral support.

It is a constant complaint from the press and the pulpit of this country that electors are indifferent to the caucuses. The complaint is at least as old as my acquaintance with American politics. I do not remember the time when it was not made. But I am not surprised that the caucuses arouse so little interest after my experience of municipal caucuses in Hartford. English electors would not turn out for caucuses such as I have attended here. English electors are keenly interested, not so much in the men for whom they are to vote, as in what the men stand for in national and municipal life.

Election contests in England owe their vitality and interest, not to the men who are the candidates, but to the questions and principles that are at issue in the election. The municipal candidates for my ward in Hartford, had they been contesting a ward in an English city, would have had to hire a hall, and address meetings open to Liberals and Conservatives, to women as well as men, and even to boys and girls of the upper grades of the grammar schools. It is by such methods as these that the municipal spirit, so characteristic of provincial England, has been developed since 1835; and it seems to me that municipal spirit in this country will not reach the high level of England until there is less of machine, less of exclusively partisan activity, and more of mass meeting and of other influences that are distinctly educational, and concerned rather with questions and policies than with the mere election to office of this or that man, and the success of the machine of one party over the machine of the opposing party.

It has always seemed to me that the public political meeting in England is much more educational than the political mass meeting in this country. I will concede that Americans in attendance at a political meeting behave with more propriety and decorum than English people. I have attended many political meetings in this country at which the principal speaker was given a hearing as uninterrupted and respectful as would be accorded to a king’s chaplain or an archbishop in a chapel royal in London. But this characteristic of an American audience obviously has its disadvantages as regards popular political education.

From this point of view my preference is for the English political meeting, even with its occasional tendency to rowdiness, to platform storming, and to marksmanship practice with antique eggs. But these features are only occasional. They break out at seasons of intense political excitement, and have their usefulness in testing the nerve of the ushers and policemen. The English political meetings at which there are interruptions of the speaker by impromptu interjections of query, approval, or dissent from the audience, are not occasional. Meetings so interrupted are the rule at election times. Interruptions and interjections are expected by a speaker. Usually they are welcome, because they show the mood and bias of the audience, whether the speaker is holding their attention, and whether he is carrying the meeting with him.

Time and again I have been sorry for a political speaker in this country who has addressed an audience for an hour or more without eliciting from it any indication of sympathy or of disapproval. This decorous propriety of American political gatherings — such for instance as I witnessed when Mr. Secretary Taft spoke for an hour to an audience of two thousand in the Foot Guards Hall in Hartford — would chill the heart of an English political speaker, and result in a serious self-examination as to whether it was worth his while to continue his canvass.

For the audience as well as the speaker the English style of public meeting has its advantages. It enables the audience to carry the speaker outside the lines he might have set for his speech, and to direct him to aspects of a political question other than those he had in mind when he prepared his speech. Moreover, the English style enlivens a meeting and adds to its interest and educational value. Furthermore, it results in better newspaper reporting than is the fortune of American political speakers.

In this country it is a common practice for a speaker of verbatim importance in the newspaper world to give a typewritten duplicate of his speech to the Associated Press or the local newspaper, and it is printed as written, with no indications interwoven in the text of the reception which was accorded to it by the audience. Neither of a speech delivered in Parliament, nor of one delivered on the platform, does an English statesman ever hand over his manuscript to the press. It would not be safe to print such a speech; because the marshaling of the subjects, the phraseology, and much of the content of the speech might be completely changed by the questions and interjections from the audience.

All great speeches in England are taken down verbatim by the reporters and telegraphed all over the country from the place where they are delivered. Every cheer, every expression of approval or dissent, and every question addressed to the speaker, goes on the reporter’s note, and is reported in the newspaper the next day; so that newspaper readers are fully informed of what actually happened, and not of what the speaker proposed to say when his speech was put into manuscript.

English newspaper readers want to know what a speaker said, not what a reporter conceived that he might have said; and it is for this reason that, in spite of many changes in the last ten or twelve years, — not all by any means adding to the civic value of the English press, — the ability to take a verbatim note and transcribe it with accuracy is still a sine qua non for most reporters on the staffs of responsible English newspapers. Shorthand writing is belittled in the newspaper world of this country; but the importance of the four generations at least of newspaper reporters who have written shorthand cannot be over-estimated in appreciating popular political education in England.