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THE POLITICAL PROBLEM 
 
 BY 
 
 ALBERT STICKNEY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "democratic GOVERNMENT" ETC. 
 
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 or THi ^ 
 
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 C/' ;^.-^r^ 
 
 NEW YORK 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 
 
 1890 
 
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 1. 
 
 '^'\ 
 
 Copyright, 1889, by Albert Stickney. 
 
 All riglits reserved. 
 
si 
 
 "The men are ripe of Saxon kind 
 To build an equal state." — Emerson. 
 
 "And contemporaneously with all this, the American 
 nation came upon the scene, eC[uipf^ed as no other nation 
 had ever been for the task of combining sovereignty with 
 liberty, indestructible union of the whole with indestrcutible 
 life in all the parts."— Fiske. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introductory 1 
 
 Chap. I, The Theory op Our Political System . 6 
 
 Chap. II. The Practical Results 14 
 
 Chap. III. The Changes Needed 67 
 
 Some General Considerations 177 
 
\ 
 
 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Caeeful observers of the drift of public af- 
 fairs must have seen of late a deep and increas- 
 ing discontent, in Europe and in this country, 
 with the practical working of existing forms of 
 democratic government. Even among the friends 
 of democracy it is easy to see indications of doubt 
 as to the succe'ss of democratic institutions, con- 
 sidered as the mere machinery for the transac- 
 tion of public business. While they are still firm 
 in their belief that democratic institutions, of 
 some form, are essential for the security of the 
 liberties of the citizen and the people, yet they 
 are also often ready to concede that democratic 
 institutions may yet not furnish the most suc- 
 cessful working political machinery, considered 
 from a standpoint purely administrative. 
 
 But we may go even further. 
 
 The essential idea of democracy is that the su- 
 1 
 
2 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 preme power in the State is in the hands of the 
 people. 
 
 That is the theory. 
 
 But how is it with us, at the present day, in 
 practice ? In this country will any one say that 
 public men and public methods are under the su- 
 preme control of the people? Do the people 
 really select their own public servants ? Do the 
 people control those servants after the servants 
 are selected? 
 
 In short, does this American people, at this 
 day, under its present political system, have any- 
 thing more, m practice^ than a right of revolu- 
 tion ? It is, no doubt, the fact that when any 
 particular body of professional politicians too far 
 outrages the public sense of decency, the people 
 can revolt, and for a time remove certain indi- 
 viduals from certain public places. But, when 
 that has been done, how often do we succeed in 
 getting any substantial or lasting improvement 
 in public men or public methods ? 
 
 Our present political system is one of legalized 
 revolution. Once in four years, in our national 
 government, we have a revolution — a great strug- 
 gle, conducted, it may be, under the strictest com- 
 pliance with the requirements of the law, for the 
 possession of the highest public places and the 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 3 
 
 public treasury — between the men who are in 
 office and the men who are out of office. In 
 form, this struggle is one between two or more 
 great political " parties," as they are termed. In 
 fact, the struggle is quite as often between dif- 
 ferent factions of one party. Almost always 
 the contest is one, between persons, for places. 
 
 In these great contests all reasonable men 
 agree that incidentally great harm is done to the 
 highest public interests. The highest efforts of 
 our highest public servants, that should be given 
 to the service of the people, are in fact given to 
 the service of persons. The highest public places, 
 which should be filled with men carefully selected 
 with a view only to their fitness for those places, 
 are often virtually bought and sold — for money. 
 The public service lacks efficiency and stabihty. 
 Pubhc servants lack ability and experience. 
 
 It is no doubt possible that these defects are 
 necessary, are unavoidable. It may be that it is 
 not practicable to secure any large degree of po- 
 litical liberty and political activity for the citi- 
 zen, and at the same time secure vigor and effi- 
 ciency of administration. 
 
 However that may be, there is no doubt that 
 there is at present deep discontent with the act- 
 ual Avorking of our political institutions. Think- 
 
4 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 ing men are considering whether there is not 
 some remedy, at least partial, for existing polit- 
 ical evils. Many of them are beginning to de- 
 spair as to the practical success of democratic 
 institutions. 
 
 But are we not somewhat hasty if we con- 
 elude that democratic institutions have yet 
 reached their full development ? Is it altogeth- 
 er reasonable to suppose that our ancestors, one 
 hundred years ago, when they made the very 
 first experiment in the world's history in demo- 
 cratic government on any large scale, created 
 and organized a great political system that was 
 perfect, in which there was no possibility of im- 
 provement ? Considering their work then in 
 hand, they were a mere group of political theo- 
 rists. The members of the Constitutional Con- 
 vention of 1787 were merely laying down on 
 paper the lines of a political experiment. No 
 one of them professed to feel any degree of cer- 
 tainty as to what would be the results of that 
 experiment. Each one of them, as far as I am 
 aware, as to those results had the deepest doubt 
 and distrust. Is it possible, then, that their work 
 was perfect — was finished for all time ? 
 
 Such a supposition would be most absurd. It 
 is certain that time must have shown defects in 
 
INTRODUCTOKY. 5 
 
 auv political macliinery, and that those defects 
 can be discovered, from a careful study of its 
 actual working results. 
 
 Is it not, too, at least possible, that the same 
 careful study will not merely discover the defects, 
 but will also give us some light as to possible im- 
 provements that are now practicable ? 
 
 If, too, it is now possible, in the light of our 
 past experience, to discover some possible im- 
 provements in our political machinery, can there 
 be any matter more interesting or more impor- 
 tant for the public thought ? 
 
 I propose, therefore, to here submit the ideas 
 of a single individual, on these public questions, 
 for public consideration. They are only the ideas 
 of one person. If they have value they will 
 receive due consideration. They may need great 
 modification — or, indeed, they may be entirely 
 unsound. As to that, time will show. 
 
 In this examination of the pohtical problem, 
 in the solution of which the American people is 
 now engaged, I shall consider, first, the theory 
 of our present political system ; then, its actual 
 working results ; and thereafter, the changes 
 that w^ould seem to be necessary in our political 
 machinery, in the light of our past political ex- 
 perience. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE THEORY OF OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 The main idea on which our political system 
 has thus far been developed has been that of se- 
 curing the rights and hberties of the individual 
 citizen. 
 
 We have not, thus far, attempted to work out, 
 in practical shape, the idea of a large people, or- 
 ganized as a single corporate body, having its 
 different organs and members, its own brain and 
 will, for the administration of its own public af- 
 fairs. A government, too, has generally been 
 considered rather as a body of rulers who were 
 to be largely feared and distrusted, who might 
 possibly become tyrants, than as an organized 
 body of public servants. 
 
 The idea, therefore, has been, on the one hand, 
 to avoid the concentration of power in the hands 
 of single public officials, or single bodies of pub- 
 lic officials, and to keep the supreme power in 
 the State, the selection and the control of the 
 
THE THEORY OF OTTR POLITICAL SYSTEM. 7 
 
 highest piibhc officers, as far as possible in the 
 hands of the individual citizens. These individ- 
 ual citizens, too, under the letter and the theory 
 of the law, were merely to be counted, not 
 weighed. One man's voice was to count for as 
 much as that of another. Pubhc questions were 
 to be decided by the vote of a mere majority — 
 by count — of the votes of individuals. The po- 
 litical action thus taken, though often called the 
 action of the people, has really been, and has 
 been considered, the action only of numbers of 
 individual citizens. Popular government has 
 been, in theory, a government of masses and 
 majorities. 
 
 Xo theory of democratic government is practi- 
 cable under which the public w^ork of any large 
 people is to be actually done, indiscriminately, or 
 by turns, by the individual citizens themselves. 
 The utmost that has been attempted, in the way 
 of giving the individual citizen a direct personal 
 part in the management of public affairs, has 
 been to give him a direct vote in the selection 
 and control of some of the higliest public offi- 
 cials, who are actually to do the work. That 
 work cannot be actually done by all the citizens, 
 in their own persons, with their own hands. Nor 
 can they all take turns at it — except in the case of 
 
8 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 small peoples of small numbers. Wherever the 
 numbers of a people are large, the real work of 
 government must be done by men specially se- 
 lected. In the affairs of a small town or village 
 it is, no doubt, a possibility to avoid specialization 
 in public work to some extent. The work is 
 small ; in a small country town it is jpossible to 
 have every man make and repair the roads in 
 front of his own land; to have the teacher of 
 the district school live by turns in different fam- 
 ilies ; even the teaching of the school can be 
 virtuall}^ taken by turns ; it can be put in the 
 hands of the daughter of one citizen for one 
 period, and then in the hands of another daugh- 
 ter for another period. In the same way the 
 few other public offices can be held by turns. 
 And it may be, in very small peoples, that all 
 the public work can be done on the rotatory 
 system, l^o doubt the work will be done badly. 
 Teaching the district school, the nursery of 
 statesmen and of the fathers and mothers of 
 statesmen, is one of the most important works 
 in the State ; it demands a rare combination, of 
 temperament, knowledge, and experience, if the 
 work is to be done well — if the sons and daughters 
 of poor men are to have a good common-school 
 education. But public work can he done^ and 
 
TUE THEORY OF OTTR POLITICAL SYSTEM. 
 
 endured, in a very small to^vn or village, on the 
 system of turn and turn about. When, however, 
 we come to the public affairs of large peoples, 
 of large cities, large states, and large nations, 
 then thinking men must agree that public ser- 
 vants must be men who are in some way spe- 
 cially selected, for their fitness, to do the act- 
 ual public work. It can no longer be done by 
 every one, or it will be done by no one. With 
 peoples of large numbers, therefore, the utmost 
 that is possible, in the way of giving power to 
 the individual citizen, is to give him his one voice 
 in the selection and control of those men by whom 
 the public work is actually to be done. 
 
 The mere 23oint of selection of those public ser- 
 vants seems, at first sight, comparatively simple 
 and easy. It seems, at first thought, a simple 
 and easy matter to select a mayor, or a governor, 
 or even a president, by a mere majority vote of 
 the citizens, even if the numbers of the people 
 be very large. 
 
 But, though there seems to be no difficulty in 
 the matter of selection, vrhen we come to the 
 point of control, and consider the question of 
 how the individual citizens are to control, not 
 merely one or two officials, but the entire gov- 
 ernment, the solution is not so easy. In prac- 
 
10 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 tice, it has been attempted to secure this point 
 of control by the use of the same process — this 
 process of popular election, so-called — using it 
 for a large number of officers, at short and fixed 
 intervals of time, that is, for short and fixed terms 
 of office. The theory is, by having terms of 
 office short and elections frequent, to keep the 
 official under the control of the citizen all the 
 time — or as nearly so as is possible. The result is 
 a use of this process of so-called popular election 
 to a large extent and for diverse purposes, not 
 merely for the selection of the highest public of- 
 ficials, but also for the purpose of controlling 
 them. The intention has been, not that the of- 
 ficial shall hold his office for only one short term 
 of years, for that would make it impossible for 
 public servants to gain experience, but that the 
 official is to continue to hold his office, for one 
 term after another, so long as a majority of the 
 citizens shall see fit to re-elect him? In other 
 words, the highest public officials are to hold 
 their offices on the tenure bv election. In this 
 way it has been assumed that not merely the se- 
 lection of the highest officials, but the substantial 
 control of their official action, would be in the 
 hands of the individual citizens. 
 
 A necessary result of this attempt to keep 
 
THE THEORY OF OUR POLITICAL SYSTEM. H 
 
 power in the hands of the individual citizen, to 
 have him take a direct part, in his own person, 
 in the selection and control of a large number of 
 the highest public officials, is the general disuse 
 of the public meeting ; that is, the disuse of the 
 public meeting as the organ for the political ac- 
 tion of the citizens themselves. It is retained in 
 the cases of legislatures and boards and commis- 
 sions. But, as the organ for the action of the 
 citizens themselves, it necessarily falls into disuse 
 wherever the numbers of the citizens are large, if 
 each citizen is to act in his own person. A pub- 
 lic meeting of ten million voters, or of any large 
 number of voters, for the purpose of common de- 
 liberation, is not a practicable thing. Experience 
 shows that the largest number of men that can 
 meet in one body, and conduct rational, calm de- 
 liberation, as a single body, cannot much exceed 
 five hundred. "With numbers much larger than 
 that, common deliberation becomes impossible. 
 It is no doubt possible to have 7nass meetings, of 
 large numbers of men, where great orators can 
 excite great enthusiasm by appeals to the feel- 
 ings. But for the purpose of common conference 
 and common thought, where men of different 
 ways of thinking can quietly hear one another's 
 views, yield to the influence of rational argu- 
 
12 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 ment, and come to an agreement as to a common 
 course of action, any meeting of much more 
 than ^Ye hundred men is unmanageable. The 
 attempt, therefore, in any people of large num- 
 bers, to have all the individual citizens take a 
 direct personal part in political action must nec- 
 essarily involve the use of the individual paper 
 ballot, and the disuse of the public meeting. 
 
 In practice still another result has ensued: 
 The theory has been that freedom of political 
 action meant that the action of the individual 
 citizen should be free from the influence of other 
 men. This theory, in practice, has taken the 
 form of having the action of the citizen secret, 
 of having the citizen declare his will, on public 
 questions of men and measures, by a paper bal- 
 lot that is secret. 
 
 The general idea of our present political sys- 
 tem, then, is that the supreme control of all pub- 
 lic affairs, of the entire nation, of the states, 
 cities, towns, and villages, is to be in the hands 
 of the mass of individual citizens, who are to use 
 the individual secret ballot, without the public 
 meeting, for the selection of the highest public 
 officials, and that these highest officials are not 
 only to be selected by this process, but that the 
 same process is to fix their official tenure. The 
 
THE THEORY OF OUR TOLITICAL SYSTEM. 13 
 
 theory is, that thus the supreme control of all 
 public affairs will be in the hands of the individ- 
 ual citizens, and that they will also thus secure 
 complete freedom of individual political action. 
 
 That is the theory. 
 
 Careful thought will, however, suggest that 
 the system, as carried out in practice, involves a 
 very large use of this process of so-called popu- 
 lar election. 
 
 It might be surmised that, in practice, this 
 system of tenure by election, used for so many 
 offices, at such short intervals of time, and over 
 such large areas of territory, might cause pub- 
 lic servants to give their time and thought to 
 carrying elections instead of doing their official 
 work — in other words, that government might 
 be turned into an election machine. 
 
 But we have the theory. 
 
 Let us now turn our attention to the practical 
 results. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 
 
 The theory has a good sound. 
 
 This idea of having the individual citizen 
 utter his individual judgment, once in each year 
 or term of years, on the conduct of affairs by his 
 public servants, who are selected by himself, b}^ 
 his exercise of the franchise vested in him as a 
 citizen of a great republic, and as one of a great 
 brotherhood of men, each one of whom is born 
 free, and who is the peer of each one of his mill- 
 ions of fellow citizens, quite stirs one's blood. 
 This theory of making the highest public ser- 
 vants of a great nation directly responsible to 
 the individual citizen, through this process of fre- 
 quent popular election, is quite impressive and 
 quite plausible — as a theory — on paper. 
 
 Let us see how it works. 
 
 The hard, practical experience of one hundred 
 years has now definitely established, as to the 
 actual working of our present political system, 
 certain fundamental political facts. Among them 
 are the following : 
 
THE rHACTICAL RESULTS. 15 
 
 1. The system creates a privileged class. 
 
 In one sense any fomn of government must be 
 a government by a class ; that is, it must be a 
 government by a body of men who are in some 
 way specially selected for the public service. 
 
 But the theory of a democratic government is 
 that at least the men at the head of the govern- 
 ment are to be chosen for their worth, on their 
 merits, by the people. 
 \ But this is not the practical result that our 
 )resent system gives. What I mean when I say 
 that our present political system creates a privi- 
 J^ed class is, that it brings into existence, natu- 
 rally and necessarily, though not by any express 
 provision of law, a class of men who are selected, 
 not by the people, but by themselves, who virtu- 
 ally to a large extent control the selection and 
 action of all our public officials. 
 
 Bear in mind that under our present political 
 system the highest places in the government, na- 
 tional, state, and local, in other words, the prizes 
 of public life, are to be won by carrying elections. 
 / This work of carrying elections is very large, 
 and recurs at regular and very short intervals. 
 To state it more correctly, the work never ends. 
 Here is a very large number of public offices. 
 The terms of office are very short. Every year 
 
16 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 there is a large number of vacancies to be filled 
 by this process of election ; and it is known 
 precisely what those vacancies are to be. This 
 large amount of election work must be done by 
 some one. The doing of it has the possibility of 
 great rcAvards. J^aturally and certainly it finds 
 men ready to do it, and usually their readiness to 
 do the work is caused by the prospect of the re- 
 wards that the work promises. These men who 
 do election work make it their regular profession, 
 their business. In that profession they gain great 
 skill. They organize. In time it comes to be 
 virtually impossible for any man to be elected to 
 a public ofiice except by their permission and 
 with their active support. These organizations of 
 professional electioneering agents virtually con- 
 trol the selection, and therefore largely control 
 the official action, of nearly all our highest pub- 
 lic officials in the entire country, national, state, 
 and local. It is no doubt the fact that our pub- 
 lic officials, in the large majority of cases, intend 
 to perform their official duties to the best of their 
 ability. As a class, even under the great disad- 
 vantages under which they now labor, they do 
 their work as well as they can. But they are not 
 free. Most of them depend on the professional 
 politicians for their next nomination, and there- 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 17 
 
 fore for their next election, to their public posi- 
 tions ; in other words, they depend on the pro- 
 fessional politicians for their official lives and for- 
 tunes. It is certain, therefore, that they will be 
 largely controlled by those politicians. The pro- 
 fessionals too, no doubt, are, to some degree, in- 
 iiuenced by public opinion. But this influence 
 has its limits. ]^o doubt, too, the professionals, 
 in a large majority of cases, so far as is allowed 
 by their personal interests, endeavor to select 
 fairly good men for office. But for every office 
 there are many seekers. Election work must be 
 done, and it must be paid for. So long as the 
 highest officials are dependent for the continu- 
 ance of their official existence on that work, it is 
 and will be paid for with the people's offices. 
 Whatever may be the general wishes and pur- 
 poses of the leaders of these great organizations, 
 however much they may wish, as many of them 
 do, to follow public opinion and serve public in- 
 terests, they are compelled, by the necessities of 
 their otncial existence, to pay their followers 
 with the people's offices ; in other words, to use 
 the people's offices for their own personal ends.^y 
 These large organizations become virtually stand- 
 ing armies, engaged in a constant struggle for 
 the spoils of public office and the control of the 
 2 
 
18 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 public treasury. Their leaders become a very 
 peculiar specimen of a privileged class. They 
 are not selected by the people. They are not rec- 
 ognized by the letter of the law. They come into 
 existence outside the law, as a certain and neces- 
 sary fruit of a political system in which a large 
 number of the highest public places are regularly 
 and frequently put up as the prizes to be won in 
 a great contest where large moneyed interests are 
 at stake and where there are large constituencies. 
 Such a system may serve fairly well for the 
 administration of communities that are small and 
 poor. It will certainly be a failure with peoples 
 that are large and rich. With such peoples it 
 will necessarily and surely result in the creation 
 of a privileged class of professional election work- 
 ers who to a large extent control the selection of 
 public servants and the administration of public 
 affairs. 
 
 2. The system bars the best citizens from the 
 public service. 
 
 / The best citizens neglect this work of carrying 
 elections. 
 
 They neglect it, because they are compelled to 
 do so. They cannot take the time that it re- 
 quires. The best class of citizens are the men 
 
THE PRACTICAL EESULTS. 19 
 
 who Tvork, who arc driven with work, because 
 their services are in demand, for the reason that 
 thev have been found to be honest and indus- 
 trious. Their time has vahie. Their private 
 work must be done ; and it is their habit to do 
 it well. The time needed to do this present vast 
 mass of election work is greater than they can 
 possibly afford to give. They cannot give it, 
 and they will not. 
 
 It is not that our citizens do not take a suffi- 
 cient interest in public affairs, that they are not 
 patriotic, or that they are unwilling to make sac- 
 rifices to serve public interests. This American 
 people has very many and very recent proofs of 
 the readiness of its individual citizens to make 
 personal sacrifices in the cause of the people. 
 But this work of carrying elections is too great, 
 too continuous, and too engrossing. Those men 
 in the community who have their own way to 
 make, their own living to earn, by their own 
 labor, cannot take the time that is necessarv to 
 do the mass of election work that now comes on 
 the community. 
 
 The result is that, in this work of arranging 
 nominations and carrying elections, the busy 
 men, the working men in the community, find 
 themselves at a hopeless disadvantage. Many 
 
20 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 of them at times make a sincere and earnest 
 effort to do what they deem their duty to the 
 State, and to use their just influence in the selec- 
 tion of fit public servants. But the men who 
 regularly betake themselves to this work of car- 
 rying elections do so to make money. In that 
 work they have a direct personal pecuniary in- 
 terest. At that work they get great skill. With 
 them, in their own field, the ordinary lay citizen 
 can never cope. It is the old story of the amateur 
 against the professional, and the professional wins. 
 It is the law of nature. It is needless to say that 
 the amateur sooner or later withdraws from a con- 
 test so unequal, attended with defeat so uniform, 
 and the professionals have the field to themselves. 
 
 I assume, what I believe to be the fact, that 
 the large majority of citizens really wish to select 
 the best men for their public servants. That is 
 for their interest. It saves their money, lessens 
 their taxes, makes life easier and more comfort- 
 able — and that they know. 
 
 I assume, also, what I believe to be the fact, 
 that the professional politicians who are in office, 
 the large majority of them, honestly try to give 
 us as honest and efficient administration of pub- 
 he affairs as they can — under existing circum- 
 stances. 
 
THE PKACTICAL EESULTS. 21 
 
 \ Eiit the professional politicians naturally, as 
 Jio all men, look out for their own personal in- 
 Vtgl^sts. They are compelled to do so. Tliey 
 nominate and elect men on whom they can de- 
 pend to serve those personal interests. The pol- 
 iticians need men who are pliable, and they get 
 them. But the men who will best guard the 
 interests of the public are not pliable. They are 
 made of firm stuff. As a rule they are not men 
 who are what is termed " ^oopular." They are the 
 men who will do what they think is demanded 
 by a full regard to public interests, with little or 
 no regard to interests that are purely personal. 
 
 The result is that the politicians, who have the 
 power, who substantially select all our highest 
 public officials, sooner or later throw aside the 
 men who will not serve personal ends. At times 
 the professional election workers are compelled, 
 under the stress of peculiar circumstances, to 
 nominate and elect very valuable men. But in 
 time — however well single public officers may 
 serve the people, however often professional pol- 
 iticians may make concessions to public opinion 
 in occasional nominations of popular men — these 
 politicians will in the end succeed in quietly elim- 
 inating from public life men who are independent 
 and serve only the interests of the public. The 
 
22 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 ft 
 
 best men, whether they wish it or not, are grad- 
 ually retired, or are put in places where they 
 have no real power. 
 
 It is, no doubt, the fact that many individuals, 
 who are fairly efficient public servants, in one way 
 and another, under circumstances more or less 
 exceptional, do succeed in keeping their places 
 in the public service — for a time. But in gen- 
 eral the tendency is (and the tendency works it- 
 self out with great success) to keep and drive the 
 best citizens out of the public service. They find 
 it hard to get in — and, as a rule, impossible to 
 stay in for any long time. 
 
 I am here considering ordinary times, times of 
 peace, times when no unusual call is made on the 
 citizen for the sacrifice of his private interests. 
 When war comes, when it is a question of life 
 and death to the nation, then this American peo- 
 ple has thus far found many men willing to risk 
 their lives and fortunes in the service of the peo- 
 ple. So too, in times of great popular political 
 excitement, in times that may properly be termed 
 revolutionary, many of the best citizens make 
 large sacrifices of time and money, to effect, if 
 possible, the election of competent and honest 
 men to high public office. 
 
 But in ordinary times men do not feel called 
 
THE TKACTICAL RESULTS. 23 
 
 on to make sacrifices so large. Then most men 
 prefer their own ease and comfort, and wish to 
 look after tliemselves and their families. In 
 those ordinary times the men whose labor is 
 valuable, who command good wages and steady 
 employment, are not willing to take the risks 
 and discomforts of depending for their livelihood 
 on the contingencies of popular elections, as those 
 elections must necessarily be carried on under 
 our present pohtical system. They cannot afford 
 it, unless they are men of independent fortune, or 
 are willing to steal. They must, can, and will 
 have security for steady employment, at reason- 
 able rates of compensation. A man who is mak- 
 ing a fair income, in a reputable calling, may be 
 willing, for a single year, to neglect his private 
 affairs. He may do so even for two years. But 
 to undertake the duties of any ordinary public 
 office for a term of four, or five, or ten years is 
 ordinarily beyond his power. To do so for a 
 stiU longer term, if he is to perform his official 
 duties with thoroughness, is too much to ask. 
 At the end of so long a time his place in private 
 affairs will be probably filled, and he will be 
 compelled, in a measure, to begin life anew, under 
 great disadvantages, when he is well on in years. 
 Such risks will not be taken by prudent men. 
 
24 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 Such men rightly require greater security of 
 regular employment than they can now have 
 under our political system. Eich men and 
 needy adventurers are, as a rule, now the only 
 classes of men who can afford to go into " poli- 
 tics." But men without fortunes, who are com- 
 pelled to earn their own incomes, cannot afford 
 the effort to enter public life. It is no doubt the 
 fact that many young men, and many estimable 
 men, from very praiseworthy motives, give much 
 time to the practical work of carrying elections. 
 But men of prudence, who have their fortunes still 
 to make, cannot at present afford to touch politics. 
 
 There is a further consideration. 
 
 The getting of public office, under our present 
 system, by our present processes of nomination 
 and popular election, generally requires either the 
 doing of a large amount of dirty work, or the 
 payment of large amounts of money for the do- 
 ing of it by other men. All this work, of con- 
 ventions and nominations, brass bands, parades, 
 and election literature, with the support of the 
 professional politicians, without whose support 
 no man can now obtain any public office, must 
 be paid for, either in money or in kind. Candi- 
 dates for office must, as a rule, hold themselves 
 more or less at the beck and call of very dis- 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 25 
 
 agreeable people. They must do a large amount 
 of very disagreeable work. They must talk with 
 the politicians ; they must talk with individual 
 voters ; they must talk with any one who wishes 
 to talk with them ; they must offend no one ; 
 they must make themselves " popular." 
 
 At times these experiences, which are not 
 agreeable to men of independence, may be 
 avoided by the contribution of considerable 
 amounts of money. Nearly always candidates 
 must make, in one way or another, a considerable 
 money outlay. Some of this money, the candi- 
 dates perfectly well know, must be used, directly 
 or indirectl}^, in one form or another, to buy 
 nominations and votes. It is not usually the 
 case that candidates go so far as to pay, or agree 
 to pay, any fixed amount of money for a nomi- 
 nation or a vote. They perfectly well know, how- 
 ever, that nominations and votes will be bought 
 in their behalf, by other men, with money. And 
 if they supply money, as they almost invari- 
 ably must and do, they are morally certain that 
 their own money, or the money of other men 
 which they repay, is used virtually for the pur- 
 poses of bribery. They may not themselves 
 technically commit the precise legal offence. 
 They do, in effect, morally become parties to the 
 
26 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 commission of the offence by others. Turn and 
 twist the matter as we may, this work of carry- 
 ing elections, under our present system, or under 
 any pohtical system where the highest pubhc of- 
 ficers hold their offices by the tenure of popular 
 election, becomes largely the buying and selling 
 of nominations and votes for places and money. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. My belief is 
 that the process of popular election, if used in 
 such a form and manner as will secure the for- 
 mation and utterance of a people's real judgment, 
 and if used within the proper limits, is the best 
 means yet devised for selecting the highest pub- 
 lic officials. But that is a very different mat- 
 ter from putting those officers on the tenure by 
 election after they are chosen. Especially is it a 
 different matter from having the ^^olitical life of 
 the mass of citizens consist of a never-ending se- 
 ries of elections — of all kinds of officers, great 
 and small. 
 
 While, therefore, I am a firm believer in the 
 use of the process of popular election, in its right 
 form and within proper limits, for the mere selec- 
 tion of the highest public officials, I still say that 
 our experience shows that the tendency, under 
 any system where there are regular and frequent 
 elections, for large numbers of offices, with large 
 
THE TEACTICAL EESULTS. 27 
 
 constituencies, necessarily and surely is to bar 
 the best citizens from the public service. 
 
 3. The system takes power out of the hands 
 of the people. 
 
 It is not meant that the people has no power 
 whatever, or that the professional politicians can 
 utterly, and without limit, disregard public opin- 
 ion. Even under an absolute monarchy at the 
 present day, with the press, and steam, and the 
 telegraph, there are limits, somewhere, which 
 the monarch must observe in his disregard of 
 public opinion. So it is, too, with an oligarchy. 
 
 What I mean is that the power of the j)eople 
 in matters of State is very far below what it 
 ought to be, and is so slight and indirect as to 
 make the name of democratic government, as 
 applied to our present government, quite out 
 of place. The theory is that in our govern- 
 ment the will of the people is supreme at all 
 times ; that at each election the people really 
 makes its own choice of its own servants, in ac- 
 cordance with its own independent judgment; 
 and that, in and by its selection of public men, 
 it exercises a real judgment and control over 
 public measures. 
 / But the fact is that public officials, nearly all 
 
28 THE POLITICAL PEOBLIJM. 
 
 of them, are virtually appointed by the profes- 
 sional election brokers. Except in times of un- 
 usual excitement, the process of popular election 
 becomes merged in that of nomination, and the 
 process of nomination is entirely under the con- 
 trol of the professionals^/ "We may say this 
 ought not to be so. That is very immaterial. 
 We have to deal Avith what is, and with what 
 will be, so long as we keep this system. It may 
 be said that this fact is the result of neglect of 
 their political duties on the part of the citizens. 
 But, so long as we have an amount of election 
 work so vast (and it is constantly increasing), cit- 
 izens will continue to neglect their political duties. 
 But it cannot properly be termed neglect. 
 Citizens perform their political duties as well as 
 the system will allow them ; as well as they can. 
 The theory on which the system was put into 
 operation was a mistaken theory. Practical ex- 
 perience has proved it. , The system makes 
 greater drafts on the time of the citizen than he 
 can afford to meet. Just so long as we insist on 
 keeping the system, and the other conditions re- 
 main as they now are, the results will continue 
 to be what they now are. Human beings, the ma- 
 jority of them, will not give their time and labor 
 to efforts that bring nothing but repeated failure. 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 29 
 
 While the numbers of our citizens remained 
 small, Avhile the number of elective offices was 
 comparatively small, and the contents of the 
 public treasury Avere small, the inducements 
 were less to make " politics " a trade ; the ordi- 
 nary citizen stood more nearly on an equality 
 with the politicians, and he made a nearer ap- 
 proach to having his legitimate weight in the 
 public councils. But as years went by, as the 
 numbers and wealth of the people increased, our 
 political system came to work out more fully its 
 natural and necessary results ; the evolution of 
 the professional politician became more com- 
 plete, the power of the people gradually de- 
 creased, and that power is now so slight that it 
 is not, I submit, a proper use of words to say 
 that we have a really democratic government. 
 
 It may be said that these professional poli- 
 ticians are divided into factions, or " parties," 
 and that the people has at least its choice be- 
 tween the candidates and politics of at least two 
 organizations of professional politicians. 
 
 That is no doubt the fact. 
 
 But is not that a somewhat poor apology for 
 a democratic government ? Can a government, 
 for which that is all that can be said, under 
 which that is the real state of affairs, be correct- 
 
30 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 ly called "democratic"? Is that the best gov- 
 ernment — the most democratic government — 
 the one which gives to the people the fullest 
 possible measure of control — that we can devise ? 
 Is this the final outcome, the highest result of 
 the efforts of civilized man, in the evolution of 
 free political institutions ? 
 
 I think not. 
 
 Meantime thinking men must agree that un- 
 der this system the control of its public affairs, 
 which the people actually has, is not continuous 
 or supreme. 
 
 4. The system prevents the free political 
 thought and free political action of the individ- 
 ual citizen. 
 
 The theory of our institutions is that the indi- 
 vidual citizen should form his own judgment, on 
 the merits of public men and public measures ; 
 that the selection of those men and measures 
 should be a selection made, deliberatel}^, by a 
 majority of those individual judgments ; in other 
 words, that the men and measures of the govern- 
 ment should really be the outcome of the thought 
 of the citizens themselves. 
 
 But that is not the practical result. 
 /' The practical result is that every citizen who 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 31 
 
 needs to earn his own livelihood in some ordi- 
 nary calling is simply compelled to cast a vote 
 for the appointee of one or the other of the two 
 or three large organizations of professional poli- 
 ticians. Otherwise he loses his vote altogether. 
 Attempts at independent political action have no 
 permanent effect. Sooner or later they result in 
 the citizen joining, or rejoining, one or another 
 of the great election armies. He becomes one of 
 the pawns in the game of politics played by the 
 adroit and experienced professionals. Whatever 
 may be the thoughts or wishes of the individual 
 citizen before election, on the day of election, as 
 it is termed, he finds himself reduced to the ne- 
 cessity of makino^ a mere selection between tAVO 
 or more lists of names selected by the different 
 commanders of the different election armies./ He 
 has, no doubt, in his privilege of deserting his 
 own political army and joining another, a slight 
 degree of indirect control over the otherwise ir- 
 responsible tyranny of the political generals. 
 But that is very far from having an independent 
 initiative in the selection of public men — and 
 through them of public measures. 
 
 But it may be said that though in form the 
 citizen is driven to join one or another of these 
 organizations, yet in effect and in substance this 
 
32 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 opportunity of selecting his organization, and of 
 leaving it, gives him some degree of freedom, and 
 gives him all the freedom that he can expect. 
 
 To this I answer, that, no doubt, it does give 
 him freedom to some degree — but to a very 
 small degree. Whether or not it gives him all 
 the freedom he can expect remains to be seen, 
 and will be considered later. All that I say as 
 yet is, that he does not have the degree of free- 
 dom that is commonly implied in the term " gov- 
 ernment by the people," and that ought to be 
 implied in that term. What he has is the right 
 of desertion. He has, and can have, under our 
 present system of government, no substantial 
 voice in the selection of his generals. In both, 
 or all, these election armies, the citizens, the rank 
 and file, have virtually no power in selecting 
 their leaders. They can desert, and join the lead- 
 ers of another army. But, in either army, the 
 leaders are selected by the men who make poli- 
 tics their profession. They are in all the armies 
 selected, by the same processes, by men of the 
 same quahty, who use the same methods. Which- 
 ever army the citizen may join, or abandon, his 
 right of desertion gives him no substantial con- 
 trol of either men or measures, and is far from 
 being the right of free deliberate action that he 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 33 
 
 has been commonly supposed to possess under a 
 government that has any right to be termed 
 " democratic." 
 
 Moreover, even this right of desertion is one 
 that the citizen will, in fact, seldom use. Most 
 men do not like to desert ; most men do not like 
 deserters. Most men, too, however much they 
 may disapprove the conduct of the professionals 
 of their own army, generally have a great and 
 controlling fear and distrust of the professionals 
 of the opposing army. So that when the day of 
 election comes, the worMng result usually is, that 
 the citizen marches, gravely and sadly, after the 
 same old political bell-wethers, into the same old 
 political sheep-pen. There is this further very sig- 
 nificant and almost grotesque feature. Experi- 
 ence shows that many men inherit their political 
 organizations from their fathers, die in them, and 
 transmit the same valuable political inheritance 
 to their sons./ That is human nature. Boys 
 grow up, hearing continually from their fathers 
 and their fathers' political associates praise of one 
 " party " and abuse of the others. The leaders of 
 their fathers' parties they learn to trust ; the lead- 
 ers of other parties they learn to distrust. It is a 
 most singular anomaly, or apparent anomaly, this 
 luw of inherited opinion or prejudice, which so 
 3 
 
34 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 largely controls the political action of the citizen, 
 which is, in theory, supposed to be entirely free, 
 and which should be free, in order to make dem- 
 ocratic government the practical success that, 
 when rightly organized, it can and will become. 
 
 But taking it as it is, as it now actually works, 
 under the form in which we have thus far devel- 
 oped it, in one of its primary stages of growth — 
 will any one say that the American citizen, whose 
 functions at present are reduced substantially to 
 being the tool of political schemers, in the selec- 
 tion of whom he has virtually no voice, has the 
 full measure of political freedom that it is possi- 
 ble for him to secure ? 
 
 For one, I venture, on this point, to have a sin- 
 gle individual doubt. 
 
 5. The system prevents freedom of political 
 thought and political action on the part of the 
 people. 
 
 It is impossible that there should be anything 
 that deserves the name of freedom of thought 
 and action on the part of a people, under any po- 
 litical system that takes away that freedom from 
 the individual citizen. 
 
 But the thought of " a people," the judgment 
 of " a people," under any correct use of terms, is 
 
^ 
 
 THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 35 
 
 something very different from a mere collection 
 of the judgments of individual citizens, on a sin- 
 gle question submitted to them beforehand, to 
 which they can only answer " Yes " or " No." 
 
 This, however, is all that it is possible to get, 
 from the so-called action of a large collection of 
 individual citizens, who are not brought together 
 in one meeting, where it is possible to bring for- 
 ward new names and new measures. Where cit- 
 izens are so separated, and are thus deprived of 
 the opportunity for common conference, the only 
 thing that is possible for the individual citizen is 
 to say ''Yes" or " No " to some specific name or 
 specific measure submitted to Mm beforehand. 
 
 How is it possible to dignify the result so ob- 
 tained, from such a process, with the name of a 
 " declaration of the judgment of the people " ? 
 
 The political histories of this country, of Eng- 
 land, and in late years of France, furnish many 
 illustrations of the fact that, wherever there are 
 frequent elections and large constituencies, the 
 people loses all substantial freedom of political 
 thought, and is compelled to swell the ranks of 
 the election armies which are under the leader- 
 ship and control of a new kind of lords. In form, 
 each separate citizen, and the combined people, 
 retains complete freedom of political action. In 
 
36 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 fact, and in substance, the people has nothing that 
 deserves to be called by that name. It has, at 
 most, the right of revolution — under the forms of 
 law — with a new kind of weapon, the paper ballot. 
 
 These so-called elections become only period- 
 ical struggles for place, between the leaders of 
 the different professional armies. In these strug- 
 gles, as they are now conducted, there is a large 
 number of processions, and banners, and brass 
 bands, and so-called political meetings. A great 
 deal of money is spent, and a great many speech- 
 es are made. The end of these struggles, which 
 are very properly termed '' campaigns," is at best 
 a choice between two or more sets of appointees, 
 each selected by the professionals. Yery seldom, 
 if ever, do we now have anything that can be 
 correctly called a selection by the " judgment of 
 the people," if words are to be used with a due 
 regard to their real meaning. 
 
 'Nov is any other result possible. So long as 
 the mass of election work is so large, and so long 
 as that work controls the disposition of the high- 
 est public offices, and of the public money, so 
 long will these so-called popular elections con- 
 tinue to be mere struggles for place between op- 
 posing political armies, and the people will be 
 unable to really think, judge, and act on its 
 
THE TKACTICAL RESULTS. 37 
 
 jiulgment, as to real public questions of men or 
 measures. 
 
 Little thought has been given, in our political 
 past, to the question how a people is to think — as 
 a people — to form and utter a judgment — as a 
 people — having one being and one organization. 
 
 But certainly these processes that we term 
 popular elections, as now conducted, judged by 
 any proper standard, cannot be called processes 
 of thought, or deliberation ; they cannot be said 
 to result in " judgments." 
 
 The situation is most singular. The purpose 
 of our political system is to secure the highest 
 possible degree oi freedom for the individual, and 
 thereby for the people. But we have tried to 
 accomplish too much. The individual is over- 
 burdened. He is given, under our present or- 
 ganization of the State, a work far transcending 
 his possibilities. In form he has perfect freedom ; 
 in fact, in substance, he is in chains. The chains 
 would be thrown off at once were they forged 
 by a foreign power, or a power apparently hos- 
 tile. But they have been forged, and riveted, by 
 the people itself — by its own free act. 
 
 It is a most singular phenomenon. Here is a 
 government — in form most free — under which 
 public and private property are really often at 
 
38 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 the mercy of adventurers as devoid of principle, 
 and of any real consideration for popular rights, 
 as were the worst of the old feudal barons. 
 
 Yet we call this " democratic government " ; 
 and so it is, to some extent — in a way — inasmuch 
 as we have, under the letter of the present law, 
 the power to change it, and it stands by our own 
 free will. 
 
 Still the people, as a people, under the system as 
 it now stands, has not freedom of political action. 
 
 6. The system prevents the eflBcient adminis- 
 tration of public affairs. 
 
 In all human affairs men aim for the prizes. 
 
 Election work, then, being the work that cap- 
 tures the prizes, the men who make politics a 
 profession will, in general, give their time and 
 thought to this work of carrying elections. The 
 simple, prosaic, every-day work of their offices will, 
 in general, bring to public officials little money 
 and less fame. They will naturally and certainly 
 give their time and thought to the work that pays. 
 
 If, indeed, men had already become perfect, 
 we might assume that they would always do 
 simply their official duty, without regard to the 
 greater rewards to be obtained in what we are 
 now pleased to term "politics." But the men 
 
THE PK ACTIO AL RESULTS. 39 
 
 who operate our political machinery are only hu- 
 man. They Avill seek those greater rewards ; 
 they will use the means by which those rewards 
 can be secured : they will do election work. 
 
 These questions would be of comparatively 
 little importance if public affairs were small, and 
 public treasuries were poor, as Avas the case with 
 us when our political system was estabUshed, and 
 before its evils became apparent. 
 
 But our public affairs are now large. They 
 involve the handling of large bodies of men and 
 large amounts of money and material. They re- 
 quire for their successful administration men of 
 large ability and large experience — especially of 
 large experience in public affairs. When our 
 country was hardly anything more than a fron- 
 tier, the duties of public officers and legislators 
 were comparatively simple ; experience, and the 
 knowledge that comes from experience, were of 
 comparatively little importance. There were less 
 differences in the values of men. Men were, in 
 fact, more nearly equal. In these later years 
 public affairs, as well as private affairs, have be- 
 come larger and more complex. They demand 
 men of n;ore thorough training and wider expe- 
 rience. /With this system of short official terms, 
 aside from all other considerations, it is simply 
 
40 THE POLITICAL PBOBLEM. 
 
 impossible for our highest public officials to get 
 the experience that is absolutely necessary in or- 
 der to make them efficient public servants. 
 
 It is especially in the members of what are 
 termed the legislatures, of our cities, states, and 
 of the nation, and in the different administrative 
 heads, that we need not only men of ability and 
 honesty, but men of large experience. The old 
 saw, that a rolling stone gathers no moss, is as 
 true in matters of state as in private callings. 
 As a rule, men w^ho are to be valuable servants 
 must give their time to work of one kind, and 
 must follow it for their whole lives. That is the 
 law^ of human nature in stone-work, wood- work, 
 medicine, war, law, and all other human callings, 
 private or public. This need of experience is 
 especially great with the men at the head of our 
 governments. With the mere administrative 
 subordinates, the men at the bottom, w^ho lay 
 pavements and sewers, who carry letters and do 
 merely the more mechanical portions of our pub- 
 lic work, the question is comparatively unimpor- 
 tant. Governments, like all other organizations 
 of human beings, depend for their working effi- 
 ciency on the men at the head. The men at the 
 head are the ones who need capacity and train- 
 ing ; and if those qualifications be wanting in the 
 
THE PKACTICAL KESULTS. 41 
 
 men at the head of the government, it matters 
 little who or what are the subordinates. 
 
 Now under our present system of government 
 it is simply impossible to secure large official ex- 
 perience in the men at the head. Even assuming 
 that in their short official terms they were sur- 
 rounded by every possible inducement to give 
 their whole time and thought to their official 
 work, it would be impossible for them to get 
 their greatest value as public servants in one, 
 two, four, or ten years. Men grow. Those men 
 who have the most in them grow for the longest 
 time — up to their latest years. The older they 
 grow, the wiser they grow. These questions 
 that are dealt with by the members of our na- 
 tional and state legislatures are large questions. 
 They are varied. They cannot be decided, if 
 they are to be decided wisely, on abstract prin- 
 ciples. They require a wide range of knowl- 
 edge, the study of wide ranges of facts. Let us 
 rid ourselves of this silly, antiquated, provincial 
 idea that any man can be a legislator, and that 
 at that work one man after another can " take 
 his turn." However able a man may be, how- 
 ever much he may have studied books, however 
 long may have been his experience in private af- 
 fairs, in order for him to be a valuable public 
 
42 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 servant, in a high legislative or administrative 
 position, it is essential that he should have a new 
 set of facts and a new set of ideas; facts and 
 ideas that he can get in no possible way other 
 than by actual experience in pubhc office ; and 
 the longer his experience, the greater is his value 
 to the people. 
 
 So far we have made the assumption that the 
 public official had every inducement to use his 
 time and abilities solely in the discharge of his 
 official work, during his short official term. 
 
 But have the men in our highest public places 
 that inducement ? 
 
 Can they have it ? 
 
 It is utterly impossible. We will waste no 
 time in considering the officials who are merely 
 subordinates. The very large majority of our 
 highest public servants, under our present sys- 
 tem, selected as they are by mistaken methods, 
 generally on mistaken tests, do nevertheless sin- 
 cerely try to render the people the best service 
 in their power. But they are compelled to give 
 the largest portion of their time to personal mat- 
 ters. Their time and thought must be given, 
 and is given, to this never-ending struggle for 
 office for their political friends and themselves. 
 They have not the ordinary stimulus that the 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 43 
 
 ordinary human man requires to make liim do 
 his work well. It is matter for wonder that our 
 public work is done as well as it is. It speaks 
 volumes for the honesty and fidelity of human 
 nature. Every man in high public place is the 
 creature of an election. At the end of one, or 
 two, or four, or it may be six years, if he is to 
 hold his office, he must be the creature of anoth- 
 er so-called election. But before he can get an 
 election, he must secure a nomination. The men 
 w^ho surround him on every hand are, like him- 
 self, the creatures of an election. Like him, they 
 must all carry the next election. In order to get 
 their nominations and carry the next election, 
 they all depend on one or another of those stand- 
 ing armies which constitute the parts of the 
 great election machine, every member of which 
 is struggling for public place or public money. 
 Meantime other elections besides their own are 
 continually taking place. For every official place 
 there are hundreds of hungry applicants. In or- 
 der to secure their renominations and re-elections, 
 these high public officials are compelled to give 
 their time to the work of securing public offices 
 and public moneys for the members of what are 
 termed their " parties." A successful politician, 
 nowadays, is usually a man who is generous and 
 
44 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 sympatlietic, in giving his time and money to for- 
 ward the interests of his election army, and of 
 its individual members. Loyalty to one's friends 
 is a quality very admirable. It is largely through 
 the exercise of some of the better human instincts 
 that a man is a good politician. But good " poli- 
 ,tics" does not conduce to the preservation of 
 public interests. If our highest public servants 
 wish to keep their places, they are compelled to 
 give public offices to their friends. They are 
 compelled to work for their friends. In one 
 point of view that may be praiseworthy. But 
 it does not make them valuable servants for the 
 public. In short, our public officials are all sur- 
 rounded, through the necessary working of our 
 present political system, with the strongest in- 
 ducements to sacrifice public interests to private, 
 and to give their best efforts to work which is 
 not the work of the people./ 
 
 How is it possible for any man, who would 
 otherwise take pride in his work, to take pride 
 in the work of an office which he may lose at 
 the end of any one or two years, and which sim- 
 ple, honest, thorough work in his office will not 
 help him to retain ? 
 
 It is needless to say that our public servants 
 cannot possibly do their work thoroughly ; they 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 46 
 
 cannot give it their best thought and effort. 
 They will necessarily and certainly give their time 
 to election work ; they will put their best work 
 where it will do the most good, in the manage- 
 ment of caucuses and conventions. In short, we 
 can lay it down as a law of politics — Tenure by 
 election certainly destroys official efficiency, and 
 turns government into an election machine. 
 
 7. The system destroys official responsibiUty. 
 
 Kesponsibility, in order to have any practical 
 value — in order to be of any real practical use in 
 securing efficient administration — must be the re- 
 sponsibihty, of single men, to some immediate offi- 
 cial superior, who is always in close touch with the 
 subordinate, who is competent to judge of the sub- 
 ordinate's work, and Avho has the subordinate con- 
 tinually under close supervision and full control. 
 
 Let us examine this statement somewhat in 
 detail, and see whether it is not well established 
 by experience — especially by our own experience 
 in public affairs. 
 
 In the first place, I say, we must have the re- 
 sponsibihty of single men. 
 \ Wherever work of administration is to be done, 
 if it is to be done with vigor and thoroughness, 
 there must be some one man who is responsible 
 
46 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 for that one work ; there must be some one man 
 who is to bear the blame if the work is done ill, 
 who is to have the fame if the work is done well. 
 It is now a well-established fact, in public as well 
 as in private affairs, human nature being the 
 same in each, that the division of power i^ the 
 division of responsibility, and the division of re- 
 sponsibility is its destruction. 
 
 In the next place, responsibility, if it is to be 
 enforced, must be responsibility to some compe- 
 tent immediate official superior. There must be, 
 immediately over the official, in close contact 
 with him, some one man, or some one body of 
 men, that is able to form an intelligent judgment 
 on the quality of his work. I do not say that in 
 all cases this superior must be a specialist. But 
 the superior must be some man, or body of men, 
 competent, from training and experience, to form 
 an intelligent and sound judgment on the subor- 
 dinate's work. There is no way so certain to 
 destroy the self-respect, the vigor, and the free- 
 dom of a servant, as to put him under the super- 
 vision of a man who is ignorant — I mean igno- 
 rant as to the quahty of the servant's work. 
 
 Then, too, the subordinate must know and 
 feel that the supervision is regular and continu- 
 ous. He must be conscious that his work is lia- 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 47 
 
 ble to be scrutinized at any moment ; that all his 
 official weak points and his official failures may 
 be found out at any time, and will be found out 
 surely and soon. 
 
 Then, too, the superior must have full and com- 
 plete control of the subordinate. The subordi- 
 nate must know that the superior, immediately 
 over his head, has full control, within proper 
 limits, with proper securities to the subordinate, 
 of the subordinate's official tenure. Supervision 
 without control has value ; but it is not equal to 
 the requirements of an efficient service. 
 
 So, I say, responsibiHty, to be adequate, espe- 
 cially in any large organization of men charged 
 with the conduct of large affairs, must be the re- 
 sponsibility of single men to competent superi- 
 ors, who have the subordinate under regular and 
 constant supervision and control. 
 
 Now apply these well-known and well-estab- 
 lished facts to the working of our present form 
 of government. 
 
 Power, and, therefore, responsibility, are in 
 most instances divided. The administrative 
 heads, in our national, state, and municipal gov- 
 ernments, seldom have the appointment or con- 
 trol of their subordinates. We do not have the 
 responsibility of individuals. 
 
48 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 But as to our hio^hest administrative and legis- 
 lative officials, on whom we must, of course, de- 
 pend for efficient administration, the case is still 
 stronger. In practice it is almost impossible to 
 remove single individuals for their single individ- 
 ual deficiencies. Everything is massed. When 
 it comes to what we term " election day," then 
 the practical question to the citizen is, not " Has 
 this one official, or that one official, done his 
 official duty ;" but " Is it, upon the whole, pru- 
 dent for me to hand over the control of the whole 
 government to the opposite party?" His con- 
 clusion is, almost invariably, that he must, at 
 least for this one time, until some more pressing 
 exigency arises, stand by his political colors. 
 The time for desertion seldom comes. At times, 
 when the citizen thinks that it has come — before 
 election — he knows that by the act of desertion 
 he will lose all weight in his party councils. He 
 usually believes, sincerely, that the success of his 
 party, each and every year, is necessary to the 
 interests of the whole people. So the result 
 generally is that he votes the whole party ticket. 
 And so it will be, as long as we insist on operat- 
 ing everything by popular election. The prac- 
 tical question is, each year, not as to the respon- 
 sibility of individuals, but as to the defeat of the 
 
THE PRACTICAL EESULTS. 49 
 
 grand old '^ party." ]N"ear]y always, with very 
 few exceptions, the old political charger, when 
 he hears the sound of the old political trumpet, 
 springs into the old line, with his old comrades 
 in battle, and goes through the old evolutions of 
 the pohtical parade-ground. Individual officials 
 are then too unimportant to call for indi\^dual 
 notice. Althouo:li the citizen mav not in the 
 past have altogether approved the acts of of- 
 ficials of his own party, or of his own party lead- 
 ers, yet there he is, face to face with the alterna- 
 tive of voting with his political friends or with 
 his political enemies. The result is, as a rule, he 
 stands by his friends. And most men approve 
 his so doing. However much we may, in the- 
 ory, admire and approve independence of po- 
 litical thought and action, yet in practice most 
 men also admire, quite as much if not more, loy- 
 alty to political friends. With the large major- 
 ity of men the last feeling generally controls 
 their political action. In the heat of the great 
 election contests it becomes a question of success 
 or failure between one's friends and enemies ; a 
 question of records and histories, of great and 
 glorious political memories, of great and glorious 
 political parties. 
 
 The result is that it becomes practically im- 
 4 
 
50 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 possible to hold any one individual responsible 
 for his individual acts. Individual responsibility 
 is in effect destroyed. The destruction of the 
 responsibility of single individuals virtually de- 
 stroys official responsibility altogether. 
 
 Men talk of the responsibility of "party." 
 But what does it amount to in practice? Its 
 individual members, and its leaders, are continu- 
 ally changing. If some one prominent man at 
 any time becomes unpopular, and his unpopular- 
 ity is too great, he is, for a time, or perhaps per- 
 manently, sent to the rear. And then when the 
 next election day comes, it is again a question 
 of great parties and great principles. The ques- 
 tion of single men again falls into oblivion, ^o 
 doubt if a party is so indiscreet as to put in 
 nomination, for some very prominent office, some 
 very obnoxious man, citizens may, in sporadic in- 
 stances, vote against such single men. And the 
 fear of such action does, no doubt, operate to some 
 extent to prevent glaring official misconduct in 
 some individual instances. But, in general, the 
 responsibility of individual officials for individual 
 action is, and necessarily must be, ignored. 
 
 8. The system corrupts official action and our 
 entire political life. 
 
THE TKACTICAL RESULTS. 51 
 
 \ The only sound principle which should govern 
 official action, as most men will agree, is that 
 every public official should perform each official 
 act, to the best of his ability, w^ith a view only 
 to the law and his official duty. / 
 
 In practice, that becomes, under our present 
 system, largely mipossible. 
 
 Especially the appointments to the highest pub- 
 lic offices necessarily are made, and necessarily 
 will be made, largely with a view to interests that 
 are really personal. The men w4ao make the ap- 
 pointments are themselves the creatures of these 
 election organizations. Assuming, then, that they 
 have very upright purposes, they generally think 
 that it is really required by public interests that 
 the elections should be carried by the organiza- 
 tions to which they belong. They reason that 
 the men of their own organization are quite as 
 competent public servants as the men of hos- 
 tile organizations. They know that they cannot 
 keep their own organizations in efficient form for 
 political work, unless they distribute the public 
 offices among their own political friends. At 
 the same time, the number of public offices is 
 very limited, and the number of applicants for 
 those offices is very large. The result is, that 
 the leaders of the successful organization fill ex- 
 
52 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 isting vacancies with their oAvn pohtical adher- 
 ents; and they use their power without much 
 limit to make vacancies for the purpose, where 
 vacancies do not ah'eady exist. '' 
 
 So far as to appointments to pubUc office. 
 
 But how is it as to official action ? 
 
 At every turn, the action of public officials is 
 largely influenced by the pressure of political 
 friends. ' . Government contracts are given to po- 
 htical friends. The performance of these con- 
 tracts is judged and enforced by political friends, 
 and not by impartial public servants.,'' 
 
 These are not, however, the worst results. 
 
 "Whenever the minds of public officials become 
 familiar, as they soon do, with the idea that pub- 
 lic appointments and public acts are not to be 
 regulated solely with a view to public interests, 
 but that they are to be used in any degree for 
 what are termed party purposes (which is an- 
 other name for personal purposes), the next step 
 is one often and easily taken. Our public offi- 
 cials, legislative and administrative, are continu- 
 ally called on to act on matters that affect very 
 large amounts of property and money. It is not 
 often the case, as I believe, that the individuals 
 whose interests are affected by such official ac- 
 tion directly approach the public official himself 
 
THE TKACTICAL RESULTS. 53 
 
 with the offer of a direct money payment for 
 any specific official act. They go to tlie pow- 
 erful politicians, and employ them. The politi- 
 cians secure the necessary official action, often 
 without paying, or agreeing to pay, for it in 
 money. The official is virtually their own creat- 
 ure. He is in their power. He holds, by their 
 grace, not only his present office, but his chances 
 of future preferment. Their wishes are to him 
 virtually commands. When money is paid, it is 
 paid, generally, or often, to the politician who 
 holds no office. Often, perhaps generall}^, there 
 is no express understanding that any money is 
 to be paid to the official. Such an understand- 
 ing is too dangerous. But the official action is 
 secured, and very often by the use of money. In 
 law, the crime of money bribery is not commit- 
 ted. The official has only obliged a powerful 
 political friend. The effect, so far as the inter- 
 ests of the people are concerned, is the same as 
 if the official himself had been directly bribed 
 with money. 
 
 The same result is easily and frequently accom- 
 plished in a different way. What are termed the 
 "legitimate political expenses" of the different 
 political organizations and candidates in election 
 campaigns require very large amounts of money. 
 
54 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 Private individuals who have business affairs 
 that require, and are expected to require, action 
 on the part of public officials, therefore make it 
 a regular practice to contribute large sums of 
 money for what are termed " political purposes ;" 
 that is, for bands of music, political meetings, 
 and the many and large lawful expenses of a 
 political campaign as now conducted. The mere 
 printing of election tickets is a comparatively 
 insignificant item. It is only one item, which 
 comes at the end of the great campaign. The 
 larger expenses of the campaign, the recruiting, 
 organizing, and drilling of the armies, the con- 
 ventions and processions, the brass bands and 
 the mass meetings, the pay of the state, county, 
 city, town, and ward politicians through the 
 months before the single day of the election, in 
 fact through all the years, those are the things 
 that cost, those are the things that make the 
 main burden of our present political contests, 
 amounting each year to millions of dollars. 
 These amounts have to be paid by some one. 
 By whom ? They are paid largely by the large 
 moneyed enterprises whose interests are exposed 
 to the action of public officials. It is a regular 
 practice — regularly understood. 
 
 Now, when a man who has made large money 
 
THE PKACTICAL RESULTS. 55 
 
 contributions, to secure the nomination, or elec- 
 tion, of high pubhc officials, comes before them, 
 or their fi'iends, for official action, what is the 
 probability as to what the action of the officials 
 will be ? 
 
 Yet men do not call that bribery. There is 
 no direct agreement for any payment of money, 
 for a specific vote or act, or for any vote or act. 
 
 But, so far as concerns the interests of the 
 people, what is the difference in the result ? 
 
 And does the svstem, which makes such a 
 state of things necessary and certain, tend to 
 promote public purity, or does it put a premium 
 on corruption ? The ordinary idea of corruption 
 is one of mere pecuniary corruption. But what 
 difference does it make, in results, whether you 
 buy official action with private money or with 
 a public Office? Or what is the difference in 
 principle? There are, no doubt, cases of direct 
 bribery. But its amount is, in my belief, greatly 
 overrated. Even under our present system, the 
 large majority of public officials, I am convinced, 
 in the large majority of cases, intend to do as 
 well as they know how, and as well as circum- 
 stances will admit. 
 
 But a vast amount of what is, in its effects, 
 money bribery, is accomplished without the par- 
 
56 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 ties to the offence being thoroughly aware of 
 the real nature of their acts. 
 
 Yast amounts of money, amounts running into 
 the millions, are paid each year for the support 
 of these great election armies. The men who 
 make the payments expect, and get, an equiva- 
 lent for their money. They are our shrewdest 
 business men. They pay, because it pays. 
 
 The results of these great popular elections 
 now depend, necessarily, largely on the use of 
 money. The decision of one of these great con- 
 tests may at any time narrow itself to the mere 
 obtaining of a few thousand or a few hundred 
 votes, in some single state, or some single city. 
 "With such prizes depending on the result, the 
 temptation to use large amounts of money for 
 corrupt j)urposes is very great. All well-informed 
 men are well aware that large amounts of money 
 are so used. It is not necessary that they be 
 used in paying money for votes to the citizens. 
 Payment to the professional politicians %olio lead^ 
 who control votes by the thousands and millions, 
 serves a better purpose, and is not a violation of 
 the law. Virtually public offices by the thou- 
 sands, and votes of citizens by the millions, are 
 bought and sold for money. What need is there 
 for any one to pay money to individual voters, 
 
THE PKACTICAL RESULTS. 57 
 
 for a few hundred individual votes, when, by 
 buying a nomination from the leaders of one of 
 the great " parties," it is possible to purchase over 
 five million votes in a single lot. In a recent po- 
 litical "campaign" we have seen great excitement 
 over the purchase of voters in " blocks of five." 
 But what are Ave to say as to the purchase of 
 voters in " blocks " of five million ? 
 
 Any single one of these features of our polit- 
 ical system, taken by itself, might not work re- 
 sults so serious. 
 
 It is the combination that does the mischief, 
 and makes it so great. The law fails to provide 
 any organization whereby the people can act to- 
 gether, as one people, in the selection of its high- 
 est public servants. Factions are therefore formed 
 outside of the law ; and the citizens are compelled 
 to act with some faction. Then comes this mass 
 of election work, with its secrecy, its necessary use 
 of large amounts of money, even if the uses are 
 only legitimate, and its employment of dirty men 
 and dirty methods. The use of money in elec- 
 tions has with us at all times been productive of 
 evil results. The evils have, however, of late 
 years greatly increased, with the increase in the 
 amount of election work and the increase in the 
 people's wealth. The use of money in carrying 
 
58 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 elections has now reached very large proportions. 
 It is a rule, now almost universal, that every can- 
 didate for a public office, unless in the poor rural 
 districts, has to pay an "assessment" for the pur- 
 pose of meeting his share of the expenses of 
 these great campaigns. The mere cost of print- 
 ing tickets is comparatively a trifle. The assess- 
 ments are always said to be for meeting only 
 expenses that are " legitimate." Every sensible 
 man knows that in one form or another, directly 
 or indirectly, these assessments are used to buy 
 nominations and votes. And as to its effect on 
 the administration of public affairs, and on the 
 public conscience, the one is about as bad as the 
 other. "Well-informed men well understand that 
 our so-called popular elections, as they are now 
 conducted, virtually amount in many cases to a 
 mere sale of public offices to the highest bidder. 
 But it need not go so far as that. Here in the 
 city of ISTew York we have every year the nom- 
 inations, which are equivalent to elections, ar- 
 ranged by a few professional politicians. And 
 we have to take the public servants that they 
 see lit to give us. It has been often stated, 
 and, as I believe, accurately, that more than once, 
 when the few professional politicians who had 
 the decision of nominations were unable to agree, 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 59 
 
 they have disposed of the different pubhc offices 
 by lot. AVhen nominations are disposed of in 
 that manner, and the citizen has left to him noth- 
 ing but the selection between two nominations, 
 when it is virtually certain, as it is in nine cases 
 out of ten, that the citizen will simply accept the 
 nomination made by the professionals whose lead 
 he has formerly followed, what is the real value 
 of this system of so-called popular election. 
 
 Is this democratic government ? 
 \The practical difficulties lie in the enormous 
 amount of this election work, its continuousness, 
 its costliness, the size of the constituencies, and 
 the magnitude of its prizes. It is, no doubt, the 
 fact that, even under this system, the individual 
 citizens have some degree of power. They, no 
 doubt, have it in their power to depose one body 
 of ijrofessional politicians and put another in 
 their places. "When one body of professionals 
 too far tries the public patience, we have times 
 of sudden and short popular excitement, and we 
 depose some single set of professionals. In short, 
 we have a revolution, followed by another period 
 of quiet endurance. 
 
 This right of revolution is practically all that 
 the citizens have. But a system which gives to 
 the citizens only the power of revolution, if words 
 
60 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 are to be used with accuracy, can hardly be 
 termed " democratic." If this process of revolu- 
 tion produced any substantial or lasting gain, the 
 position would be different. But its result, after 
 the primary spasm, is at most only the putting 
 the control of public affairs in the hands of an- 
 other set of office brokers. '' Politics " becomes 
 the art of carrying elections, largely by the use 
 of corrupt means and corrupt methods. 
 
 Meantime the professional politicians thrive — 
 a few of them. But even they — the better por- 
 tion of them, and among them there are very 
 many deserving men — weary of this feverish, fit- 
 ful fight of faction. They would much prefer, if 
 they could have it, the opportunity of doing some 
 useful work for the people — in the line of their 
 strict official duties. They would prefer, if they 
 could, to give honest work and get honest wages. 
 But what can they do ? They are not free. Their 
 life is one never-ending struggle to get office and 
 to keep it. It is not merely a struggle between 
 the professionals of the two great " parties," but 
 between different factions and cliques of the same 
 party, l^o individual official is for any long 
 time sure of his place. Of one thing he is, and 
 always can be, utterly certain — that is, if he lets 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 61 
 
 alone the work of carrying elections, and merely 
 gives his best time and thought to the work of his 
 office — his official life will soon come to an end. 
 These results will continue precisely so long as 
 we continue the conditions. Precisely so long 
 as we keep this political system, or its main feat- 
 ures, there is no prospect of any substantial or 
 lasting improvement in the administration of 
 public affairs. As a rule, all men do as well as 
 the system will allow. The citizens do as well as 
 they can. Public officials — most of them — do as 
 well as they can — as well as they can, with their 
 lack of knowledge, of experience, and especially 
 with their lack of time. Even the professional 
 politicians who are not in office — on the whole — 
 do as well as they can. One of the most powerful 
 professional politicians of late years in the city 
 of New York is reported to have said that he 
 had during his entire political career " done all 
 in his power to give the city of New York good 
 government." I have no doubt he spoke the 
 truth. In the simple sincerity of his heart he 
 unconsciously used language that might properly 
 have been used by a Caesar or a Napoleon, and 
 his words were in entire harmony with the facts 
 of the situation. He was in his day and gener- 
 ation a man of large power. He virtually made 
 
62 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 appointments to public office, and largely con- 
 trolled the administration of public affairs. The 
 citizens, each year, went decorously through the 
 forms and ceremonies of what they were pleased 
 to term a " popular election." They gravely went 
 to the polls, took their printed lists from their 
 party leaders, which they dutifully deposited in 
 boxes — constructed and locked in strict accord- 
 ance with the election law. Meantime Mr. John 
 Kelly, who more than any one man controlled 
 the disposal of public affairs and the spending 
 from the public purse, did, I have no doubt, do 
 his best to " give the citizens of ^ew York good 
 government." For he was, as I have> always 
 been informed, a very honest man, and a man of 
 very honest public purposes. But what could 
 even he do ? Though he was a political leader, he 
 was bound hand and foot to his political follow- 
 ers. He was compelled — against his judgment, 
 often against his wish — to give public offices to 
 men whom he knew to be unfit for their places. 
 It was the only way in which he could pay his 
 election army; and that army had to be paid. 
 He was a believer in what is termed "party gov- 
 ernment," which means government by organ- 
 ized bodies of professional electioneering agents, 
 who betake themselves to the work of carrying 
 
THE PRACTICAL RESULTS. 63 
 
 elections because it pays ; who are compelled by 
 the force of circumstances to make it pay ; who 
 will continue so to do, just so long as the work 
 is so vast, so regular, and has so large prizes. 
 
 All our highest public officials are dependent 
 on, and in the power of, the professional pohti- 
 cians. The theory is, that they are dependent on 
 the citizens, and under the control of the citizens. 
 The fact is, that the power supposed to be in the 
 hands of the citizens is reallv in the hands of the 
 leaders — from time to time — of the election ar- 
 mies ; men who are not selected by the people ; 
 who are not controlled by the people. 
 
 Again we come upon the great fundamental 
 facts : we overburden the citizen ; we overuse 
 and misuse the process of popular election ; we 
 use a mistaken form of that process. 
 
 TVe have now seen the practice under our pres- 
 ent form of government. 
 
 It does not in all respects conform to the the- 
 ory. 
 
 The theory is, that this political system puts 
 the supreme power in the State in the hands of 
 the citizen. 
 
 The fact is, that it burdens the citizen with a 
 power that he cannot use. It is utterly beyond 
 
64 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 his possibilities. The attempt to have the citi- 
 zen take his direct personal part in the actual se- 
 lection and control of a large number of public 
 officials, in the governments of large peoples, 
 through the large, frequent, and regular use of 
 this present process of popular election, is a fail- 
 ure. At first sight — as a mere theory — it seems 
 quite plausible. In actual practice, when exam- 
 ined in the light of our experience, it is seen to be 
 radically and fundamentally unsound. It cannot 
 be made to work, with large peoples, whose pub- 
 lic officials must have the control of large mass- 
 es of men, money, and material. It creates a 
 privileged class ; it bars the best men from the 
 public service ; it takes power out of the hands 
 of the people ; it destroys the political freedom 
 of the citizen ; it destroys the political freedom 
 of the people ; it destroys official responsibility ; 
 it corrupts onr whole political life. , 
 
 Is there any remedy ? 
 
 J^o sensible man thinlvs, for an instant, that 
 everything can be done immediately. 
 
 But can we not soon get some substantial gain ? 
 Can we not make things somewhat better than 
 they now are? Has not our political experi- 
 ence of one hundred years, an experience so 
 new and rich, taught us something ? Is govern- 
 
THE TK ACTIO AL RESULTS. 65 
 
 merit the only thing in which we are to make 
 no improvements? Here alone are we to use 
 the old machinery devised by those provincials 
 of 1787 ? 
 
 Eemarkable their work was, no doubt. But 
 they were only human beings, with absolutely no 
 experience in the actual working of democratic 
 government on any large scale. Is it the fact 
 that we can learn nothing, and do nothing ? 
 
 The idea is absurd. 
 
 But what are we to do ? How are w^e to work 
 out in practice this idea of " government by the 
 people V 
 
 We have not done it yet. Few men in this 
 country, when they give the matter careful 
 thought, will be ready to admit that they are 
 satisfied with the present working results of this 
 first experiment in the world's history, on any 
 large scale, in democratic government. This 
 greatest of all political problems has not yet 
 been fully solved — for all time. We have done 
 a very creditable piece of political work — for a 
 first attempt. We have shoAvn that democratic 
 government, even in its present crude, undevel- 
 oped form, is a thing practicable ; that it can be 
 made to work. AVe have made democratic gov- 
 ernment, on a large scale, a practical success. 
 5 
 
66 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 But this is only our first attempt. "We have 
 merely launched the good ship Democracy^ chris- 
 tened her, and given her a short trial trip. Much 
 work is still to be done. 
 
CHAPTER HI. 
 
 THE CHANGES NEEDED. 
 
 What, then, is the next stage in the evolution 
 of democratic government? What is the next 
 experiment in the political laboratory of the peo- 
 ple of the United States ? 
 
 The question is one of organization. When- 
 ever work of any magnitude, private or public, 
 is to be done by any large number of men, there 
 must be organization, of one kind or another; 
 that is, the work must be divided, and subdivided ; 
 the men who are to do it must be divided, and 
 subdivided. Different kinds of Avork must be 
 given to different kinds of men, having different 
 kinds of ability, different training, different ex- 
 perience. But, especially wherever any large 
 number of men are to work together, are to co- 
 operate, there must be superiors and subordi- 
 nates ; some must command, some must obey ; 
 otherwise the result will be anarchy and chaos. 
 
 Especially, inasmuch as a State is a human or- 
 
68 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 ganism, composed of human beings, it must be 
 ruled by its brain, and its brain must be in its 
 head. 
 
 E^ow a democratic State is not an exception to 
 these general statements. In a democratic State, 
 as well as in one that is termed monarchic or 
 oligarchic, some men must lead, some must obey ; 
 the people must have a head ; the mass of citi- 
 zens must be ruled, and controlled, if the pubhc 
 work is to be done, and done well. A demo- 
 cratic State is not a collection of men who are 
 all equals in their positions in the State. All 
 citizens should, no doubt, have equal rights under 
 the law. But they cannot all hold the same po- 
 sitions in the State. The points wherein a dem- 
 ocratic State differs from one that is termed 
 monarchic or oligarchic, is that in the demo- 
 cratic State the supreme will is, or should be, the 
 will of the people, instead of being the will of 
 one man, or of a few men. But there must be a 
 supreme will, and a strong will, controlled by a 
 wise judgment, if we are to avoid anarchy and 
 a great waste of strength. 
 
 Democratic institutions are to win their way, 
 if they do win it, as they will, and are now fast 
 doing, for the reason, not that they attempt the 
 ridiculous impossibility of making all men equal, 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 69 
 
 not because they seek, or will be able, to reduce 
 society to a dead level of mediocrity, but because 
 they will, when more fully developed, give so- 
 ciety a more perfect organization, will more per- 
 fectly marshal its forces, will more thoroughly 
 subordinate the bad social elements to the good, 
 will more fully enable men to find their right 
 places, will give greater security for having so- 
 ciety ruled by its brains — by men of worth, in- 
 stead of men of birth. The idea that democracy 
 is to be a State where all men are to be masters, 
 or where every man is to be his own master, 
 where all men are to rule, and none to obey, is 
 quite crude and erroneous. In a democratic 
 State, when its evolution is more complete, men 
 will be ruled as they have never yet been ruled ; 
 they will obey as they have never yet been com- 
 pelled to obey. Society will be ruled by a 
 stronger will and a wiser judgment than ever 
 before; for the will of a people is a stronger 
 will, and the judgment of a people is a wiser 
 judgment, than the will or judgment of any one 
 individual, or faction of individuals. 
 
 But the chief point in a democratic govern- 
 ment, which is, like any other government, 
 or should be, an organization of men, is how 
 to get the brains at the head. Democracy, if it 
 
J 
 
 70 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 succeed, as it will, will succeed because it fur- 
 nishes the best security for getting the people's 
 best men at its head. In order to handle these 
 great modern social forces, that are continually 
 growing with the growth of men's knowledge, 
 we must have better government ; society must 
 have stronger and wiser control ; and that con- 
 trol is to be found only in a more perfect organ- 
 ization, an organization which can be had only 
 .from democracy. 
 
 The question, then, is one of organization. 
 
 The first point to be ascertained is, what are 
 the chief ends, the chief practical results, that 
 must be accomplished, made actual accomplished 
 facts, by any government that deserves the name 
 of " democratic." 
 
 Those chief ends are, as it seems to me, three : 
 
 1. It must secure the most full, free, and 
 healthy political action on the part of the indi- 
 vidual citizen. 
 
 Taking it as a practical question, my reason 
 for insisting on the fullest measure of practicable 
 political action for the individual citizen is, that 
 it is the best practicable way to get the best re- 
 sults in the administration of public affairs, as 
 well as the best way to secure the healthy devel- 
 opment of the citizen and of the State. It wiU 
 work well. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. Tl 
 
 But when we say that we must secure the full- 
 est practicable measure of political activity for 
 the citizen, it does not mean that his political 
 functions are to be limited to his being allowed 
 to put " his mark " against a few names selected 
 by him from printed lists made up by the profes- 
 sionals, even if the State pays the printing bills and 
 puts him in a box while he " makes his mark." 
 
 The citizen must do something more than that, 
 if democratic government is to be anything other 
 than a farce and a failure. 
 
 2. It must secure the supremacy of the judg- 
 ment and will of the people. 
 
 This means something more than having an 
 annual, or biennial, or quadrennial choice, by the 
 individual citizens, between the tickets of differ- 
 ent organizations of professional election brokers. 
 
 Any government that deserves the name " dem- 
 ocratic" must provide some simple and efficient 
 means whereby the people can think — as a peo- 
 ple, can form its deliberate judgment — as a peo- 
 ple, and can form and utter its will — as a people, 
 on 2)recise practical public questions of both men 
 and measures. 
 
 It is not a political process of any great prac- 
 tical value, to have mere periodic countings of 
 
72 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 noses on a selection between the " tickets " of rival 
 factions of professional politicians, even if there 
 be a prominent protrusion of what are termed 
 political platforms, by so-called grand old politi- 
 cal parties, with grand old political platitudes, 
 termed " party principles," so vague that they 
 mean anything or nothing. 
 
 There must be some simple practical machinery 
 whereby the people can confer, hold its common 
 deliberations, at the time when it is to act, on the 
 precise question, whether of men or measures, on 
 w^hich it is to act. There must be more than a 
 counting of individual preferences. There must 
 be the means for forming a " judgment "of " the 
 people " by a process of thought — of the people. 
 
 3. It must secure efficient administration. 
 
 It has commonly been assumed that democratic 
 government necessarily involved some degree of 
 sacrifice on the score of administrative efficiency. 
 
 This is, in my belief, a mistake. Taking it as 
 a whole, with aU its faults, I incline strongly to 
 the opinion that our present political system, our 
 particular combination of national, state, and 
 local governments, as it has existed during this 
 last one hundred years, has produced better prac- 
 tical results, taking them altogether, than have 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 73 
 
 been produced by any S3"stem of political organiza- 
 tion thus far known, in the same space of time. 
 Its faults have, no doubt, been great and glaring. 
 We have not reached perfection. Yet even the 
 degree of political freedom that we have thus far 
 enjoyed, and the imper:£ect organization that we 
 have thus far effected, have, as it seems to me, 
 given us remarkable practical results. When we 
 shall have continued our experiment, in the light 
 of what we can now learn from our past experi- 
 ence, when this hard-headed, practical American 
 people once seriously undertakes to concentrate 
 its thought (as it is now beginning to do) on the 
 present phase of the democratic problem, then 
 our results will be better. Then we shall — in 
 time — demonstrate the fact, by fresh experi- 
 ments, with new and improved political machi- 
 nery, that for the purposes of mere administra- 
 tion, there is no form of government so efficient 
 as a free democracy. 
 
 Any government, therefore, I say, that de- 
 serves the name of " democratic " must secure, 
 with other results, that of efficient administra- 
 tion. 
 
 That means, especially, the selection of fit men 
 at the head. 
 
 The men of importance in any government are 
 
74 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 the men at its head. They are, of all men, the 
 ones who must be able, honest, and of large ex- 
 perience. We have been in the habit of virtu- 
 ally assuming that the administration of pub- 
 lic affairs required only ordinary men, men of 
 ordinary ability, of ordinary honesty, and ordi- 
 nary experience. And it has been often assumed 
 by political writers that democratic government 
 means government by any one and every one, 
 turn and turn about — in short, that it means 
 government hy the Qjiasses. 
 
 Democratic government, as I understand the 
 term, means government by the people's brain. 
 It means that the administration of 23ublic affairs 
 shall be in accordance with the best judgment 
 that can be formed by the entire people, by its 
 best blood and fibre. It means government by 
 the best men. 
 
 My reason for my confidence in democratic in- 
 stitutions is, that, in my judgment, the political 
 experience of the world, and especially of this 
 country, has now established that, upon the 
 whole, in the long run, no other form of gov- 
 ernment gives so much stability, so much vigor, 
 gives security so strong for the selection of the 
 fittest men for the highest public places as will 
 the democratic, provided, however, the people be 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. VS 
 
 SO organized as to secure real freedom of thought 
 and action. 
 
 This is the point of essential importance, the 
 having strong men, men of large natural capacity, 
 with the thorough training that comes only from 
 hirge experience, at the government's head. Get 
 the right men at the head, and they will see to 
 the subordinates. As to that we need give our- 
 selves no uneasiness. The point of importance 
 is the getting the right men at the head. 
 
 To recapitulate, then, the chief practical re- 
 sults which must be accomplished by any gov- 
 ernment that deserves the name of " democratic," 
 are three : 
 
 1. It must secure the most full, free, and healthy 
 pohtical action on the part of the individual citi- 
 zen. 
 
 2. It mnst secure the supremacy of the peo- 
 ple's will and the people's judgment. 
 
 3. It must secure efficient administration. 
 With a view to the realization, in practice, of 
 
 these ends, let us next see whether some politi- 
 cal facts, as to the practical working of demo- 
 cratic institutions, have not now been established 
 — by experience. 
 
 I submit that at least three such facts are now 
 so estabhshed. 
 
76 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 They are, as it seems to me, these : 
 
 I, The puhlio meeting is the organ for the for- 
 mation and declaration of the people's judgment 
 and the people's will. 
 
 This statement, in its general terms, might be 
 generally accepted, as a statement of a theoret- 
 ical principle, as to a people's action on measures. 
 
 It is equally accurate as a statement of the 
 proper practice, in the formation of anything that 
 deserves the name of a '' judgment," as to men. 
 
 Let us consider the nature of the process, and 
 we shall easily understand its reason and its ne- 
 cessity. 
 
 Wherever any number of individuals, having 
 common interests, need to agree on a common 
 course of action, the simple, natural, and easy 
 method of reaching that agreement, if they are 
 reasonable beings, is for them to meet and con- 
 fer. If they are not reasonable beings, then they 
 are not fit for democratic institutions, and are 
 not here to be taken into account. But if they 
 are, if they meet and confer, they will in time 
 almost invariably come to an agreement. Each 
 individual will have his own individual ideas. 
 Those ideas will have to be harmonized. Indi- 
 viduals wiU have to make concessions. The easi- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 77 
 
 est and quickest way — in short, the only way that 
 is really practicable and effectual — by which they 
 can reach this result of agreement, is for them 
 to meet and confer, to concede and agree. That 
 is the way reasonable men do in their private 
 affairs. That is the way reasonable men must 
 do in public affairs. Each individual Avill have 
 a reasonable opportunity to utter his own views, 
 to hear the views of other men, and to change 
 his own. In time, the entire body is reasonably 
 certain to agree on a common conclusion. 
 
 It is virtually assumed by nearly all writers 
 on democratic institutions that men of different 
 ways of thinking must always continue to differ ; 
 that thev must hold to their own individual ideas 
 to the end ; that men holding like ideas must 
 combine in factions, and must have a great con- 
 test once in a certain or uncertain term of years 
 for the possession of the highest public offices 
 and the supreme control of public affairs. 
 
 This assumption utterly ignores the limita- 
 tions of human minds, and human knowledge ; 
 the fact that all men are ignorant, one-sided, 
 and liable to error ; that most of them, if they 
 are placed under the right influences, wish to 
 correct their errors ; that all of them, if they do 
 not wish it, ouglit to correct those errors ; and 
 
78 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 that the furnishing the opportunity for men to 
 learn the ideas of others, and thereby to correct 
 their own errors, is the chief end to be attained 
 under a free democratic government by free po- 
 litical processes. 
 
 To accomplish that end there is as yet no 
 known practicable process for any large number 
 of citizens, other than that of the public meeting. 
 Without that process — keeping the individual 
 citizens separate, restricting them to the oppor- 
 tunity of casting a secret ballot separately, with- 
 out the opportunity for free public conference, at 
 the time they take public action — the citizen is 
 restricted to the right to utter his own separate 
 individual present preference between two or 
 more special men or measures proposed before- 
 hand by single men or single factions. The very 
 essence of democratic free thought is wanting. 
 The most valuable of all the processes possible 
 to a free people is virtually disused. The citizen 
 and the people are both deprived of the chief 
 opportunity that can be provided by democratic 
 institutions, for political instruction and political 
 thought. They become virtually the puppets in 
 a political Punch and Judy, pulled backwards 
 and forwards by professional politicians. The 
 most essential features of a free, healthy polit- 
 ical life are lost. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 79 
 
 This is so even when we are deahng only with 
 the citizens of a small political body, like the 
 people of a village or a small town. 
 
 But w^hen we come to consider the cases of the 
 large peoples — the peoples of the large cities and 
 states and of the nation, Avhere it is necessary for 
 large numbers of men to come to a common con- 
 clusion as to a course of common action, as to 
 large public affairs and large public interests — 
 the utter impossibility of having anything like the 
 formation of a common judgment — by a people — 
 as to the real merits of any precise question, of 
 either public measures or public men, by these 
 so-called popular elections, without the represent- 
 ative public meeting, becomes grotesquely ap- 
 parent. Especially is this so if these elections 
 are frequent and for large numbers of officers. 
 It then becomes utterly impossible for the large 
 majority of citizens to get any considerable 
 amount of knowledge as to the real merits of 
 specific practical public questions. Even the 
 most intellififent, the ablest, the most hio-hlv 
 educated, and the most thoughtful individual 
 citizen will nearly always be unable to get the 
 knowledge of the special facts of special cases 
 which is absolutely indispensable to enable him 
 to form anything that deserves the name of a 
 
80 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 judgment — on its merits — of any special question. 
 He can, no doubt, join in a party procession, fol- 
 low a party banner, pound on a party drum, and 
 blow a party trumpet ; but to form a calm judg- 
 ment, even of one single individual, on any spe- 
 cific question, by this process of an annual con- 
 flict for place between two or more great armies 
 of professional politicians, is an impossibility. 
 
 What process, then, is there that will enable a 
 people of large numbers really to think as a peo- 
 ple — to weigh the merits as a people — of public 
 men and public measures ? 
 
 There is only one such process — that is, only 
 one has yet been found, tried, and proved by ex- 
 perience — and that is the process of the public 
 meeting. 
 
 This public meeting will be a meeting of all 
 the citizens, meeting in their own persons, if their 
 numbers be not too large to allow them to meet 
 and act conveniently in one body. If, however, 
 their numbers be too large to allow them con- 
 veniently to meet and act as one body in their 
 own j^ersons, then they must meet and act in 
 the persons of their representatives. When the 
 number of citizens who are to take common po- 
 litical action is more than about ^ve hundred, 
 they must be divided into smaller primary dis- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 81 
 
 tricts, and the citizens in the primary districts 
 must meet in public, choose their representatives, 
 and the representatives so chosen must there- 
 after meet in one bodv, and take action as one 
 body for the entire people. 
 
 For instance : Take the case of a people hav- 
 ing a population of one million. That would 
 ordinarily mean with us a number of voting cit- 
 izens of about two hundred thousand. If this 
 people go through the form of choosing a large 
 number of public officials each year through the 
 ordinary process of the so-called popular election, 
 by written or printed ballots, cast by the citizens 
 separately, without using the public meeting, then 
 it can, by possibility, accomplish nothing but the 
 making a selection, by a mere majority of indi- 
 viduals, between the nominees submitted before- 
 hand of two or more strong organizations. We 
 have tried this experiment now for many years, 
 and its results are well known and uniform. The 
 process of election becomes merged in the jDroc- 
 ess of nomination, and the process of nomina- 
 tion falls, sooner or later, into the hands of pro- 
 fessionals. 
 
 Suppose, on the other hand, that this people 
 of two hundred thousand citizens be divided into 
 five hundred primary bodies in that number of 
 6 
 
82 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 primary districts, giving four hundred citizens to 
 each district, and that the citizens in each district 
 came together in one public meeting and chose a 
 delegate ; that then the five hundred delegates so 
 chosen met in one public meeting and chose a 
 chief executive official or a delegate to a state or 
 national legislature. In that case the citizens in 
 each district would have at least the opportunity 
 to make their own free choice of a delegate ; citi- 
 zens would have at least the opportunity to make 
 new nominations at the time on the spot ; they 
 would have something more than the mere oppor- 
 tunity to choose between two or three " tickets " 
 presented beforehand. A delegate so chosen by 
 a majority, or, better, by two thirds, of the citizens 
 so met, could be properly said to be the " choice " 
 of the district ; and those delegates, meeting in 
 one assembly, would have at least the opportunity 
 to make something that might properly be termed 
 the free choice of that entire people. 
 
 It is to be noted that such a procedure would 
 involve merely the adoption, under the law, of 
 the same machinery for the action of the whole 
 people that has largely been already adopted, 
 outside the law, for the action of our present 
 political parties. It is the well-known, well-tried 
 machinery of action by delegates, where it is im- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 83 
 
 possible or impracticable for the principals to act 
 in their own persons. 
 
 Is it not plain, therefore, that the only means 
 practicable by which anything can be had that 
 can be properly termed an expression of the 
 " will of the people " is the public meeting of 
 citizens or their delegates ? 
 
 But I go further. 
 
 Not only is the public meeting the proper 
 process by which a people should form its com- 
 mon will, but it is the only process by w^hich it 
 can form anything that can properly be termed 
 a " common judgment," a " judgment of the 
 people." 
 
 Again, let us consider the actual working proc- 
 ess of an ordinary public meeting, like the simple, 
 old-fashioned town meeting. 
 
 If the question be one of passing a town ordi- 
 nance or voting a town expenditure, if the cit- 
 izens meet, the action of the meeting is not 
 limited to the simple acceptance or rejection of 
 some measure proposed beforehand. Amend- 
 ments are offered. "Wholly new measures are 
 proposed. Public debate is had. Men utter their 
 individual opinions. Reasonable men change 
 their opinions. Many men then form their opin- 
 ions for the first time — that is, on the precise 
 
84 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 question on which action must be had. Ex- 
 tremists are compelled to make concessions, 
 though they may have great weight in forming 
 the final judgment. In the end the common 
 agreement is generally a compromise between 
 the views of extremists. The result reached bv 
 this process of compromise and agreement is 
 nearly always something very different from the 
 views of any single individual, or of any single 
 faction, as those views had existed beforehand. 
 This result, no doubt, may not be the wisest pos- 
 sible result. It may, possibly, not be as Avise a 
 result as would be obtained by adopting, bodily, 
 the judgment of some single individual or of 
 some single faction. But it will be a new result, 
 the result of a new process — a process that can 
 properly be termed co-operative thought by a cor- 
 porate, co-operative brain. Such a result will be 
 properly termed a " judgment of the people." 
 
 So, too, when popular action is to be taken in 
 the selection of a man, to fill any public ofiice. 
 The ordinary parliamentary practice in any pub- 
 lic meeting would be to act on candidates for 
 different public offices one at a time — at least 
 to consider the candidates for each office sep- 
 arately from the candidates for other offices. 
 Debate can be had. It will be possible to have 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 85 
 
 something like tlie deliberation of a whole peo- 
 ple, at the time the voting is done, on the fitness 
 of single men for the work of single offices. 
 Many citizens will be, before the meeting, wholly 
 uninformed as to the different candidates — their 
 occupations, reputations, and characters. Citi- 
 zens who have this knowledge will be able to 
 give it to others who have it not. In this way 
 it will be possible to get a process that can prop- 
 erly be termed " thought of the people " on the 
 fitness of different candidates. The result of that 
 thought will be something that can properly be 
 termed a "judgment of the people." 
 
 ISTow, can that result be had without this 
 process ? 
 
 But I go further. 
 
 Kot only is the public meeting the only ma- 
 chinery whereby we can obtain a " judgment of 
 the people," but in the large majority of cases 
 the judgment of the people thus formed, espe- 
 cially the judgment of any large people, will be 
 wiser than the judgment of any single man or 
 single faction. 
 
 Public questions are large, many-sided, and 
 often involve the consideration of wide masses 
 of facts. But the knowledge of each individual, 
 as far as it bears on public questions, is generally 
 
86 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 comparatively narrow and scanty. Each indi- 
 vidual will need information, of a kind that he 
 will, in general, be able to get only from other 
 men. 
 
 Public action on public questions can seldom 
 be taken wisely by mere adherence to previously 
 formed ideas, even if they be formed with great 
 care. The wisdom of a public measure gener- 
 ally depends on careful consideration of diverse 
 private and public interests. Decisions of such 
 questions, if they are to be wise, must be made 
 after a calm, careful weighing of varied individ- 
 ual views. The judgments of single individuals 
 are generally made on views that are partial and 
 one-sided, on insufficient knowledge and informa- 
 tion. In order to get large, many-sided views of 
 large pubhc questions, it is essential to have the 
 conference of many minds. 
 
 It is often urged, as a defence of what is termed 
 " party government," that men differ in tempera- 
 ment — that some are conservative, and others are 
 eager for change. It is then inferred that these 
 two classes of men should be formed into sep- 
 arate and antagonistic organizations, and that 
 these antagonistic organizations should from 
 time to time have a contest for the possession 
 of public offices and the control of public affairs. 
 
THE CUANGES NEEDED. 87 
 
 I deny that it is possible to divide any com- 
 munity into two factions, the individual members 
 of each of which will agree in their judgments 
 (if they have formed any) on all public questions. 
 But if the citizens could be so divided, even then, 
 I submit, such a division would not Avell serve 
 [)ublic interests. 
 
 Public interests demand, not that those two 
 classes of individuals, assuming that they exist, 
 should be separated into two hostile political 
 camps, but that they should be brought together 
 into one common organization, in order that they 
 may be led to co-operate, to confer, and agree — as 
 to the course that is most wise, which is presum- 
 ably not the extreme view of either class, but a 
 mean view between the two extremes. 
 
 But that is not all. 
 
 Assuming that it is possible for the individual 
 citizen to form an intelligent judgment on many 
 practical public questions, the citizens, on the 
 same questions, will divide on different lines. In 
 forming these large factions, therefore, which are 
 commonly termed " parties," the only thing that 
 is practicable, even as to single questions, is to 
 select some " issue," as it is termed, which is very 
 general, into which there must generally enter 
 some question of a moral or sentimental aspect, 
 
88 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 which will serve as a battle-cry and rouse the 
 masses. But the great majority of public ques- 
 tions are simply questions of prosaic, matter-of- 
 fact business — mainly questions of raising and 
 spending the public money and doing very pro- 
 saic work. The result is that it is, in the large 
 majority of cases, impossible by these party con- 
 flicts to get an expression of even the opinions 
 of individual citizens as to any specific practical 
 questions. Practical questions are questions of 
 fact and detail. They must be carefully con- 
 sidered in detail. Specific measures must be 
 proposed, discussed, and amended. There is no 
 way in which this work can be done, or by which 
 any question can receive the common considera- 
 tion of any large number of minds, other than 
 by the process, not of conflict, but of conference. 
 There must be, not a struggle between armies 
 for public place, but co-operative thought, of 
 men of different ways of thinking, in calm com- 
 mon conference. Differences must be harmo- 
 nized, not increased. Whatever conflict there is 
 must be the conflict of ideas, not of persons. 
 
 Now consider what generally takes place when- 
 ever any reasonable number of reasonable men, 
 who are not under the necessity of serving per-- 
 sonal ends, and Avho are not influenced by sen- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 89 
 
 tiinental considerations, come together for com- 
 mon conference as to common interests. There 
 is nothing which will so stimulate the thought 
 of the individual as conference with other rea- 
 sonable men. Each individual is reasonably cer- 
 tain to utter his best individual thought. Its 
 merits will be judged by the wiser judgment of 
 others. The common judgment of the body, 
 formed by common agreement, in selecting from 
 the ideas of individuals, will be reasonably cer- 
 tain, if there be time, to combine the best results 
 of the thought of the individuals. This common 
 judgment will be the fruit of nature's process, 
 the survival of the fittest, by natural selection, 
 by the common judgment, from the struggle of 
 ideas. 
 
 Any other process than this one of co-opera- 
 tive conference deprives reasoning men of the 
 natural, simple means of influencing other rea- 
 soning men by reasonable arguments. The pres- 
 ent system of party conflicts assumes that men 
 who differ in their individual ideas on prominent 
 public questions are to continue to differ ; that 
 they are to be kept asunder ; that they are not 
 to change their ideas, are not to learn, 
 
 Kow the essential fundamental idea of demo- 
 cratic government is, that the State is to be a 
 
k 
 
 90 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 government of ideas and laws, not of persons; 
 that, therefore, the machinery of government is 
 to furnish the most simple and direct means 
 whereby the soimdness of ideas is to be tested ; 
 that the community is not to be governed in ac- 
 cordance with the ideas or the wishes of any one 
 man, or of any one faction ; but that the govern- 
 ing: ideas must be the wisest ideas of the whole 
 people, thinking and acting with freedom, as one 
 whole people. 
 
 Consider what are the ordinary chances of ac- 
 tion by delegates of any people of large numbers 
 — provided those delegates are freely chosen, and 
 are free to act on their common judgment. Even 
 the men whom we now send to our national 
 Congress are many of them able men. They 
 are generally men without special knowledge 
 or special experience for their special work. But 
 suppose that they were free to take the time 
 they needed, and to use their own best judgment 
 as to the measures best fitted to serve public in- 
 terests ; suppose that they were free from what 
 are termed "party," really personal, considera- 
 tions. Is it not reasonably certain that the com- 
 mon judgment of that body, assisted, as they 
 would be, by outside discussion in the public 
 press, AYOuld be a reasonably sound judgment ? 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 91 
 
 But most of those men are not the free choice 
 of the people. I venture to think that the peo- 
 ple, if it made a free choice of its own, would se- 
 lect a better class of men than is selected by the 
 professionals of either "party." The people of 
 the United States could easily, at this day, with 
 its larger numbers and larger experience, select 
 an abler body of men than the men who formed 
 the Constitutional Convention of 1787. That 
 convention had among its members three or four 
 great individuals. But, as a body, it could easily 
 be equalled to-day by a body of men really chosen 
 by the peoples of the different Congressional dis- 
 tricts. I do not mean, or think, that the choice 
 of the people of each district would invariably 
 and inevitably be the ablest or the wisest single 
 man in the district. But let the citizens have 
 their heads, and let them meet in their free pub- 
 lic meeting, and, as a rule, in the large majority 
 of cases, they would be very certain to select as 
 their delegates men of strength. No others 
 could stand the tests. The body of delegates so 
 selected would be, as certainly as we can make 
 things certain by mere human means, a very 
 strong body of men. It would be a body rep- 
 resenting varied interests, and varied shades of 
 individual opinion. If they could be free, and 
 
92 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 could take time for common deliberate action — 
 not for party contests — would there not be a 
 reasonable certainty, as human certainties go, of 
 reasonably wise results ? 
 
 At least, should we not probably get wiser re- 
 sults than we now get from these annual peren- 
 nial election campaigns ? 
 
 Are they processes of thought f I grant fight- 
 ing with ballots is better than fighting with bul- 
 lets. It is a process one degree higher in the 
 evolution of political processes than civil war in 
 the old form. Yet it is, in fact, a new form of 
 civil war; no doubt a form sanctioned by the 
 law, as the law now exists ; but it is essentially 
 a contest for place between persons, not a search 
 for the truth in the realm of ideas. 
 
 I say, then, that the public meeting of a whole 
 people, in the persons of its delegates, chosen 
 freely, thinking freely, acting freely, is the ma- 
 chinery most certain, as a practical machinery, 
 to give us the people's wisest judgment on prac- 
 tical public questions. 
 
 I do not assert that the action of peoples taken 
 in their public meeting will invariably be wise. 
 Peoples, like individuals, will make their errors 
 of thought and action. 
 
 I do say, however, that in the large majority 
 
TUE CHANGES NEEDED. 93 
 
 of instances, the greatest practical security for 
 obtaining a wise judgment on actual pul^lic 
 measures is to be found in the use, at all stages 
 of popular action, on both public measures and 
 public men, of the public meeting. 
 
 As illustrations of the accuracy of these state- 
 ments, I need here only point to two pieces of 
 political work from our own political experience : 
 the formation of our national Constitution, and 
 the body of constructive political legislation 
 passed by our national Congress at the very be- 
 ginning of our political life, under that Constitu- 
 tion, whereby the national government was put 
 into operation. Those two pieces of work I 
 submit to the judgment of reasonable men, as 
 examples of what can be accomphshed by the 
 simple process of common dehberation between 
 men having the widest differences of individual 
 opinion. The study of the proceedings of the 
 Constitutional Convention of ITS 7 is most in- 
 structive. The individual members of that con- 
 vention had the largest divergence of individual 
 views as to what should be the form of federal 
 union which they should recommend. They 
 came together without authority to form a na- 
 tional government. When they met, it is safe 
 to say that hardly one of them had the most 
 
94 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 remote conception of anything like the scheme 
 of political organization on which they finally 
 agreed, or of anything like a single national gov- 
 ernment for a single people. If they had met 
 as the members of two rival political parties en- 
 gaged in a continual struggle for the possession 
 of public place, it is doubtful if they would have 
 come to any agreement as to any constitution. 
 Fortunately they were free. Each individual 
 held his individual views. He uttered them. 
 Many of them he changed. Agreement came, 
 first as to single points, single clauses, and single 
 articles. The combined result, made by putting 
 together those separate parts, did not, in all re- 
 spects, commend itself to the judgment of even 
 any one individual. But the individual members 
 ao^reed on that combined result for the reason 
 that public interests demanded that they should 
 agree on something — and they could agree on 
 nothing else. Even after the Constitution was 
 framed, many men who took part in its construc- 
 tion had the gravest doubts as to the possibility 
 of its being made a working success. 
 
 Then came the organizing of the government 
 under the Constitution. That, too, Avas accom- 
 plished by the same process of selection and agree- 
 ment. But this work, too, was done by men 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 95 
 
 who were free ; who were not under the pressure 
 of factional passions and factional interests. 
 
 Better work can be done now by using the 
 same process. 
 
 Why not? 
 
 The wliole system of popular election, as it is 
 now framed, rests on an unsound principle — the 
 assumption that the individual citizen can take 
 a direct personal part in the direction of the 
 public affairs of large peoples. The idea is, that 
 if the highest public officials, the members of 
 the popular assembly or of the legislature, as it 
 is commonly called, are elected at frequent in- 
 tervals by the direct vote of the citizens, each 
 individual citizen has the opportunity to pass his 
 individual judgment on the conduct of the offi- 
 cial, and re-elect the official, or elect some other 
 man in his stead, according to the nature of that 
 individual judgment. 
 
 In the public affairs of the small peoples, the 
 villages and towns, and in the public affairs of 
 the smaller electoral districts, in short, as to all 
 matters that come before what may be called 
 the primary public meetings — the political units 
 in city, state, and national affairs — the individual 
 citizen can take his direct personal part. 
 
 "When, however, it comes to the affairs of the 
 
96 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 larger peoples, the individual citizen must act in 
 the person of his representatives ; his direct per- 
 sonal action must be limited to his action in his 
 local district meeting, in what may be termed 
 the people's primaries. 
 
 If it were possible for him, under this specious 
 form of direct popular election, by the mere 
 counting of individuals, to pass a judgment of 
 approval, or disapproval, on the policy of the peo- 
 ple's representatives, it would not be desirable. 
 For no mere individual citizen is quahfied to pass 
 such a judgment. He cannot have the necessary 
 knowledge of the facts ; nor can he get the nec- 
 essary time for thought. On the other hand, the 
 formation of any such judgment is not possible. 
 The attempt to get such a result necessarily re- 
 sults in failure. It puts on the citizen a burden 
 that he cannot possibly carry. It puts on him a 
 duty that would require his entire time and that 
 even then he could not accomplish. The attempt 
 to work out that idea in practice brings into ex- 
 istence this large amount of election work which, 
 as our experience has demonstrated, results in 
 putting the selection and control of our highest 
 public officials in the hands of the election brok- 
 ers, and destroys the political freedom of both, 
 citizen and people. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 97 
 
 I do not say that the use of the public meet- 
 ing, of and by itself, would put an end to the 
 power of the professional politician, and make 
 the citizen and the people free. 
 
 To accom})lish that result it will be necessary, 
 as I shall try to show later, to give up this entire 
 system of tenure by election, and to so cut down 
 the number of elective offices as to reduce the 
 amount of election work to a point Avhich will 
 insure good administration, and put the control 
 of affairs in the hands of the people. 
 
 But what I do say is, that, in order to get any- 
 thing that can be correctly termed an expression 
 of the people's judgment, or the people's will, on 
 any question, we must use, at every stage, the 
 public meeting. 
 
 That is the first fact as to the practical work- 
 ing of democratic institutions, that is, in my be- 
 lief, now estabhshed by our political experience. 
 
 II. Administration must have one head, 
 That means, that at the head of every admin- 
 istrative office and department there must be 
 some one man, "who shall have the selection, the 
 control, and the removal of his OAvn subordinates ; 
 and that all the heads of administrative offices 
 or departments in the administrative service of 
 7 
 
98 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 a people, the people of a single town, or city, or 
 state, or nation, shall, in like manner, be directly 
 under the control of, and responsible to, a mayor, 
 governor, or president — in other words, to some 
 one executive head. 
 
 This fact is now pretty generally conceded by 
 practical men who have had any considerable 
 experience with affairs and men. 
 
 In the earlier rudimentary stages of the devel- 
 opment of democratic institutions, it was gener- 
 ally assumed that administrative power, in order 
 to secure the people against its tyrannical abuse, 
 must be divided among several individuals or 
 bodies. It was considered dan^rerous to concen- 
 trate power in the hands of single men. 
 
 This assumption was not strange, in view of 
 the experience of mankind with hereditary, irre- 
 sponsible kings. 
 
 It has, how^ever, now been established, by ex- 
 perience, that the best security against the abuse 
 of power is in its concentration. I insist, as 
 strongly as any one can, that the chief executive 
 must be selected by the people ; that he must be 
 responsible to the people ; and that his responsi- 
 bility must be thorough and constant. 
 
 But if he is so selected, and is so held respon- 
 sible, then I say that human experience has now 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 99 
 
 made it matter of clear and certain demonstra- 
 tion that full security for vio-orous and honest 
 administration can be had only under a single 
 head ; that is, the honest and efficient adminis- 
 tration of the affairs of any people, small or 
 laro-e, can be secured only under the control of 
 single men, who are directly responsible to the 
 entire people. How this responsibility to the peo- 
 ple can be secured will be considered later. But, 
 with that responsibility properly secured, tlien, I 
 say, vigor, efficiency, and honesty can be effec- 
 tually secured only under the one-man system. 
 
 The reason of this, too, is to be found in the 
 imperfections of human nature. If men were 
 perfect, they would do their work well under 
 any system. But most men, if we are to secure 
 the best work of which they are capable, require 
 the spur of undiyided responsibility. They need 
 to feel that they are themselves to have, alone, 
 the credit for good work, and the blame and 
 penalty for bad work. Moreover, it is only 
 proper and just that, if we are to hold a man re- 
 sponsible for actual working results, we should 
 give him the free selection and the full control 
 of his subordinates. He must have their selec- 
 tion, for he alone can know what are the precise 
 qualifications required for the precise work to be 
 
100 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 done by any particular man of the force under 
 him. Other men might possibly make better se- 
 lections for themselves. J^o one but himself can 
 make good selections for him. He must also 
 have the power of removal, for no one can so 
 well judge whether their work is done well. 
 
 In short, it is now ascertained, by experience, 
 in public aifairs as well as private, that in ad- 
 ministration the division of power means the 
 division of responsibility, and the division of re- 
 sponsibility means its destruction. Responsibil- 
 ity, in order to be thorough, must be the respon- 
 sibility of single men. 
 
 We talk of the responsibility for administra- 
 tion of a great political party. We might almost 
 as well talk of the responsibility of a swarm of 
 bees. 
 
 That brings us to the question how we are to 
 secure the responsibility of single men to the 
 whole ]3eople. 
 
 To that question the answer is given in the 
 statement of the next principle. 
 
 It is 
 
 III. The popular assembly should have the 
 supreme control of the chief executive and of 
 its own members. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 101 
 
 Let US separate this statement into its two 
 parts, and consider them separately. 
 
 And first let us consider the question of its 
 control of the chief executive. 
 
 The selection of the chief executive, it would 
 be generally conceded by all believers in demo- 
 cratic institutions, should be made by the whole 
 people. 
 
 If the considerations already advanced be 
 sound, then the action of the people in making 
 that selection should be had in a public meeting 
 of citizens or delegates. Only in that way can 
 the people act on its best judgment.* 
 
 * My single individual view is, too, that the selection of 
 the chief executive, wherever it is made by an assembly of 
 delegates, should be by a special assembly of delegates 
 specially selected for that special act, and not by the gen- 
 eral assembly, which has the general supervision and con- 
 trol. In other words, the election of the chief executive 
 should be by a special electoral college. 
 
 This method, it is to be noted, is the method of which 
 the framers of our national Constitution had a dim concep- 
 tion, but which they failed to put in practical shape in their 
 provision for an electoral college. They intended, without 
 doubt, to create a body of representatives who should act 
 as a body, and exercise some discretion of their own in that 
 action. But they did not realize the necessity of having 
 the electors meet in one body, at one time and place. In 
 
102 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 If a chief executive so selected liad the free 
 selection and control of his subordinates, and 
 were at the same time himself held to a thor- 
 
 the absence of any such meeting, experience lias shown 
 that, in order to insure a choice, it is necessary that there 
 should be national election organizations, with candidates 
 selected and named beforehand, for whom the electors shall 
 vote under a previous understanding — a procedure which 
 prevents all freedom of either individual or corporate ac- 
 tion on the part of the electors or the electoral college. 
 Without such national organizations and such previous un- 
 derstanding, it would ordinarily result that no choice would 
 be made by the electors, as it was of course desired and in- 
 tended there should be,* If, however, it had been provid- 
 ed that all the electors should meet in one body, then there 
 would be the possibility that the electors could confer, 
 could hold common deliberations, and have a free public 
 discussion of the public needs, and of the right man to 
 meet those needs. In a body of electors chosen by the 
 process of free election, all shades of opinion would be 
 fairly certain to be represented. We should have as great 
 security as we can have under any process of getting a man 
 of ability and integrity and of administrative experience. 
 Moreover, a man who should be so chosen by such a body, 
 would feel that he owed his position to no single man or 
 
 * The choice by the House of Representatives, in both 
 the original Constitutional provision and in the Twelfth 
 Amendment, was intended only to meet contingencies. It 
 was not intended to be the regular method. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 103 
 
 OHgh and constant responsibility — not at annual 
 intervals, but regularly and continuously — would 
 not the security for efficient administration be at 
 least as thorough as it is now ? Would it not be 
 
 single faction. As far as could be secured by any mere 
 process of election, he would be independent of all fac- 
 tional and personal considerations and obligations. 
 
 My belief is, too, that in such an electoral body, for the 
 selection of an officer so important, there should be re- 
 quired more than the vote of a mere majority, at least a 
 two-thirds vote, and possibly even a larger one. There 
 should, as it seems to me, be a vote which should be as 
 near as is practicable to an agreement of the whole people. 
 The dissenting minority should be, as nearly as possible, 
 only a minority of irreconcilables. 
 
 I do not say that this form of the process of popular elec- 
 tion would invariably give us the fittest man that could be 
 found for the position of chief executive. I do say, how- 
 ever, that, in my individual belief, this process is the one 
 which is, in tiie long run, more sure than any other to give 
 us an efficient and safe man for that position, one who shall 
 deserve and inspire the confidence of the entire people. 
 
 Is it not, at least, as near a certainty as we can often get 
 in human aff*airs, that a man so selected will be a better 
 man, one more certain to serve public interests, than the 
 men who are selected by our present methods by the pro- 
 fessionals, provided he can, after his election, be, as far as 
 possible, free from factional and personal control, and, as far 
 as possible, under the immediate, thorough, and constant 
 control of, and responsible to, the whole people ? 
 
104 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 as thorough as we can make it by mere human 
 means ? 
 
 To return from this digression as to the selec- 
 tion of the chief executive, to the present ques- 
 tion of his responsibility to, and his control b}^, 
 the people, the whole people. 
 
 That there should be such responsibility all 
 will agree. That it should be thorough and con- 
 tinuous must be conceded. 
 
 Now our present political system, even in the- 
 ory, contemplates only the enforcing this respon- 
 sibility, to only the individual citizens, at fixed 
 periods — at the end of fixed terms of years. 
 
 If responsibility to the people, even only at the 
 ends of terms of years, were actually secured by 
 the tenure by election, there would be something 
 to be said in favor of our continuing this tenure. 
 But, as we have seen, we actually secure, not re- 
 sponsibility to the people, but only responsibility 
 to the professionals, or rather to the men who 
 keep the professionals in their pay. 
 
 How, then, are we to secure responsibility to 
 the people ? 
 
 The answer is, we must have the power of re- 
 moval of the chief executive in the hands of the 
 people at all times, instead of in the hands of- the 
 professionals at fixed terms of years. In other 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 105 
 
 words, we must use, instead of tenure by election, 
 tenure by the Avill of the people. 
 
 Here, as elsewhere, the people must act in and 
 by its popular assembly. 
 
 Somewhere in the State there must be a pow- 
 er that is supi'eme, that has the supreme control 
 of the entire administrative service. 
 
 A State, as well as an individual, must have 
 one judgment, and one will, that is supreme. 
 AVhat judgment and what will can be supreme, 
 with such safet}^, as the judgment and will of 
 the whole people? Provided alwa3"s that the 
 people be so organized as to be able to co-oper- 
 ate in the act of thinking, to have its own com- 
 mon deliberations, and form its own common 
 judgment. This is the very essence of democ- 
 racy — the supremacy of the judgment, and the 
 Avill, of the people. Usually all that democrats 
 have considered essential in democratic institu- 
 tions has been the supremacy of the wills of the 
 individual citizens. They have lost sight of the 
 fact that it is as essential for a people as for an 
 individual, that it should be one organism, that 
 thinks and reasons as one organism, and that its 
 will should be subordinated to its reason, to its 
 judgment. Usually, too, the will of the people 
 has been hastily assumed to consist in a mere 
 
106 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 declaration, for or against some single man or 
 measure, by a mere majority of individual voices. 
 
 But that is a thing very different from the de- 
 liberate thought of a whole people. 
 
 Now there is only one way in which the judgment 
 of the people, as a people, can be made supreme, 
 and the will of the people, as a people, be made 
 the absolutely controlling will in the State ; and 
 that is by giving to the popular assembly, by a 
 vote sufficiently large to insure careful delibera- 
 tion (say two thirds or three fourths or possibly 
 even five sixths), not only the power of making 
 the laws and the general regulations for the 
 transaction of the public business, but also the 
 full control, including the power of removal, of 
 the chief executive, at any time, for any cause in 
 its judgment sufficient — not merely for a crime, 
 but for neglect of duty ; for a failure in any re- 
 spect, or for any reason, to give satisfactory ad- 
 ministration. 
 
 What we require at the hands of the executive 
 is to execute — to do — to carry out the will of the 
 people, to administer its public affairs in strict 
 accordance with the laws and regulations which 
 have been made by the people. 
 
 For any one of many reasons the chief execu- 
 tive may fail to give good administration. He 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 107 
 
 may become permanently ill, or he may become 
 merely insubordinate. In any case, wherever he 
 fails, for any reason, to give good administration, 
 it is necessary that there should be some power 
 in the State that can remove him at once. De- 
 lay in such cases may be full of danger. 
 
 Where can such a power be so well placed as 
 in the hands of the popular assembly? With 
 what body of men can it be trusted with greater 
 safety? What body of men can have as thor- 
 ough knowledge of all the facts of the situation, 
 or be so sure to make a wise judgment on those 
 facts ? 
 
 It is to be noted that this power is already 
 vested, as to the President of the United States, 
 in the United States Senate — by a two-thirds 
 vote, for a limited purpose, on a conviction of 
 '' high crimes and misdemeanors." But suppose 
 the chief executive is only ill, or incompetent. 
 The responsibility and efficiency of subordinate 
 officials amounts to nothing if the head be not 
 responsible. The efficiency of the entire service 
 depends mainly on the man at the head. If he 
 is to give good results, he must be trusted with 
 great power. But then he must be — at all times 
 — not once in two or four years — under thorough 
 responsibility. There is no way possible, by 
 
108 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 which this responsibility can "be adequately se- 
 cured, except by having the power of removal, 
 at all times, in the hands of some one man or 
 body of men. 
 
 This is the power that every employer has 
 over every servant, wherever human affairs are 
 managed on common-sense methods, in harmony 
 with the laws of human nature. 
 
 It is this fact which insures the administrative 
 vigor that we find in absolute monarchies, in 
 those few instances when the man at the head 
 chances to be an able man himself, or under the 
 influence of some other man who is able. Indi- 
 vidual officials are then under thorough and con- 
 stant individual responsibility. But this respon- 
 sibility is more necessary for the one man at the 
 head than for any and all others. 
 
 This means, to put it in another form, the ab- 
 olition, as to the chief executive, of tenure by 
 election, and the putting in its place tenure by 
 the will of the people. 
 
 In other words, we should give to the people, 
 in its popular assembly, the power to remove, at 
 any time, for any cause which is in their judg- 
 ment sufficient, the one executive head, instead 
 of removing and re-electing him at the end of 
 fixed terms of years. Having a single executive 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 109 
 
 head, the popular assembly should have the com- 
 ])lete control at all times of that executive head, 
 for reasons that have due connection with ad- 
 ministration. Hold him responsible for admin- 
 istration. Secure that responsibility, as sensible 
 men do in private affairs, by discharging the ser- 
 vant whenever, for any reason, he faiis to give 
 satisfaction to the master. In other words, we 
 must have responsibility to the people at all 
 times, instead of to the professional politicians 
 once in one, two, or four years. 
 
 With our present form of popular election, by 
 the direct action of the citizen, it is impossible to 
 have anything other than this term system. It 
 is quite out of the question to have the citizens 
 go through this form of balloting every day or 
 every month. It is very costly in time and 
 money. There must be some limit to the fre- 
 quency of these so-called popular elections. If 
 we have direct voting by individuals, it must be 
 at fixed periods, at tixed terms of years. But 
 meantime the administration of public affairs, 
 while honest, may be very unwise. The dangers 
 of delay may be very great. In such cases due 
 regard to the security of public interests requires 
 that the chief executive should be subject to the 
 power of removal at all times for the mere fail- 
 
110 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 ure to give satisfactory administration. And this 
 power of removal must be intrusted to some body 
 of men in the State. For men are the only agen- 
 cies that are available. 
 
 If the power of selecting the successor were 
 in the ordinary ]3opular assembly, which had the 
 power of removal, it might be thought that there 
 would be for that reason a temptation to the 
 popular assembly to use the power of removal 
 unwisely, or even corruptly. 
 
 This temptation, however, would be largely, 
 if not wholly, removed by the plan already sug- 
 gested, of having the election of the chief execu- 
 tive vested in a special popular assembly chosen 
 for that sole purpose. Of course we cannot ex- 
 pect, under any system, to insure the members 
 of the general popular assembly against any and 
 all temptation, from any and every source. All 
 that we can expect to do in that direction is to 
 reduce this temptation to the lowest amount 
 practicable. This we should do by vesting the 
 power of electing the chief executive in a special 
 popular assembly, the members of which were 
 chosen by popular election for that one purpose, 
 in other words, in a special electoral college. 
 
 The whole question virtually comes down to 
 this : Should this power of removal be limited to 
 the mere cases of crimes ? 
 
THE CnANGES NEEDED. Ill 
 
 If it is safe to trust the Senate with the power 
 of removing for crime, is it not safe to trust the 
 entire legislature, or the popular assembly (under 
 the security of a two-thirds vote), with the power 
 of removing for inefficiency ? 
 
 And can we secure vigorous, efficient adminis- 
 tration, without vesting this power somewhere ? 
 
 Is there any other way in which we can have 
 any reasonable probability of securing experi- 
 ence, with responsibility, on the part of our chief 
 administrative official? We do not secure that 
 result by our present system. Can any other be 
 suggested, by which those two points can both 
 be combined ? Can these two advantages be had 
 in any other way than by having the supervision 
 and control of all public affairs, of the entire ad- 
 ministration, in the hands of some body of men 
 of knowledge and experience, who can act, intel- 
 ligently and freely, on their best common judg- 
 ment, at any time and at all times ? 
 
 And where can we find such a body of men, 
 except in the popular assembly, in the people's 
 public meeting? The supreme power, the su- 
 preme control, must be somewhere. The experi- 
 ment of putting it in the hands of the individual 
 citizen has been tried, and has given, invariably 
 and certainly, one result, the putting the control 
 
112 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 of public affairs, the selection and control of the 
 highest public officials, in the hands of the pro- 
 fessional politicians, which means, necessarily and 
 certainly, putting it in the hands of the corrupt 
 rich men who pay those professionals, who sup- 
 ply the money. 
 
 This proposal, it is to be noted, consists merely 
 in giving to the popular assembly the same pow- 
 er of removing the single executive head that the 
 British House of Commons has of removing sev- 
 eral heads of different administrative depart- 
 ments. 'Now few men have ever said that there 
 was any danger in giving to the House of Com- 
 mons that power over those different heads of 
 departments. But is it not safer to give to the 
 popular assembly the supreme control over one 
 official than over many, especially if the assem- 
 bly has no voice in the selection of the successor ? 
 The British House of Commons has not only the 
 removal of all those department heads, but vir- 
 tually the appointment of their successors. There 
 is, therefore, the strongest inducement to mem- 
 bers of the House to intrigue for a vote of the 
 House which will compel the resignation of the 
 Ministry. For resignation of the existing Minis- 
 try means places for a large number of men now 
 out of office. This power of removing all the 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 113 
 
 department heads would be comparatively free 
 from danger and inconvenience, if the members 
 of the popular assembly Avere themselves free 
 from the necessity of paying their political su})- 
 porters ; if they were free from the necessity of 
 carrying the next election; if they were them- 
 selves independent. And if the members of the 
 highest body in the State, the body holding the su- 
 preme power in the State, were to continue to hold 
 their places by the tenure by election, I doubt 
 if we could obtain any very substantial, or very 
 enduring, improvement in our public methods. 
 
 We come, then, to the question of giving to 
 the popular assembly the supreme control of its 
 own members. 
 
 That means the abolition of tenure by election 
 for the members of the popular assembly, as well 
 as for the chief executive, and the substituting 
 in its place tenure at the will of the people ; in 
 other words, each member of the popular assem- 
 bly, though originally chosen by the citizens of 
 his electoral district, would be responsible, after 
 he was chosen, not to his single district or to its 
 citizens, but only to the Avhole people, that is, to 
 the popular assembly itself. 
 
 This proposition will, no doubt, seem to many 
 minds strange and revolutionary. 
 8 
 
114 THE POLITICAL PEOBLE^L 
 
 Let US see, however, whether such a change is 
 not now shown by our experience to be neces- 
 sary. In the hght of our experience, will any- 
 thing short of this change serve our needs ? 
 
 The theory has been, heretofore, that this ten- 
 ure by election, this term system, has secured 
 responsibility to the citizen. 
 
 But we have already seen that that is not the 
 way in which the theory works. The practical 
 result is to insure only responsibility to the pro- 
 fessionals, and to such moneyed interests as are 
 willing to use corrupt methods. 
 
 What method, then, is open to us ? We must 
 do something. We must at least make an effort 
 to find some practical remedy for those great and 
 radical evils. What shall it be ? 
 
 This question necessitates a consideration of 
 the main idea which lies at the foundation of 
 representative government. 
 
 This idea has generally been that the repre- 
 sentative, so called, the member of a popular as- 
 sembly who was chosen by citizens of a single 
 district, was to represent the ideas of the citizens 
 of that district in his action as a member of the 
 general assembly. This idea has been one of the 
 main reasons on which has rested the term sys- 
 tem. It has been assumed that the delegate 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 115 
 
 *' represented " these citizens of the single district, 
 and that they shouhl, therefore, have the oppor- 
 tunity to send some other delegate in his place, 
 whenever he should cease to represent their ideas 
 satisfactorily. 
 
 Although this theory has been accepted very 
 generally, careful consideration will, I think, 
 show its unsoundness. 
 
 Let us begin its examination by seeing what 
 would be the practical Avorking of this change 
 here proposed in our political machinery. 
 
 The common impression might be that it would 
 make the popular assembly a body of great per- 
 manence, with a permanent membership ; that it 
 would be a body of old men — with old, stagnated 
 ideas. 
 
 On the contrary, the tendency would be to 
 give us a body of very able, active men, thor- 
 oughly in harmony with the most advanced 
 thought of the time, the membership of which 
 would be constantly changing. But this change 
 in membership would be easy and steady. It 
 would be the continued change of single men by 
 resignation and death (not often by removal), and 
 the bringing in of steady streams of new blood, 
 of new men directly chosen by the people. If 
 the people can be trusted (as I believe they can, 
 
116 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 with proper organization), tlie men who would be 
 chosen as delegates would generally be first-class 
 men. I do not mean that even the people would 
 invariably make the wisest possible choice, would 
 always select the one wisest or fittest man. But 
 they would be very certain, in the large majority 
 of instances, when they had freedom of action, 
 to select men who were safe ; men of good re- 
 pute, who had had experience in affairs ; men of 
 public spirit, who had been tried. These men so 
 selected would be ordinarily men somewhat ad- 
 vanced in years, who had led laborious lives. 
 They would generally be successful men, there- 
 fore generally men of some means. Membership 
 in these popular assembhes, if men did their 
 work faithfully, would be very laborious. Mem- 
 bers who were honest would get small remunera- 
 tion in money ; and all that they could gain in 
 reputation they would get in a comparatively 
 short time. Many of them, after a reasonable 
 time of service, would ask to retire, and get some 
 measure of honorable satisfaction from their 
 later years in private life. 
 
 But assuming that there were, virtually, no 
 resignations, and no removals, death alone Avould 
 probably make, virtually, a complete change in the 
 membership of the national, or a state, popular 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 11*7 
 
 assembly once in about fifteen years. At times 
 single individuals would serve for a longer time, 
 it might be twent}^ or thirty years, or even more. 
 But the large majority of the members would 
 die within twelve or fifteen years. The result 
 would be that the membership would be con- 
 stantly changing. But the change would be 
 gradual and easy, instead of being revolution- 
 ary. Instead of having a large number of ex- 
 perienced men go out and new men come in at 
 fixed periods, old men would go out and new men 
 w^ould come in sino^lv. The machinerv would not 
 be deranged. "Work would not be interrupted. 
 The membership ^vould have stability and mo- 
 bility combined. New blood and brain would 
 be continually coming in, and at the same time 
 the body would at all times have a large propor- 
 tion of members of experience. 
 
 Even such a body of men as, I believe, would 
 be selected by our American people when free, 
 still ought to be under constant responsibility to 
 some competent lawful authority. 
 
 How would that be secured better than bv 
 having the individual members of each popular 
 assemblv accountable for their conduct, as mem- 
 bers of the assembly, only to the assembly itself ? 
 
 In the first place, the only men who can have 
 
118 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 any full or accurate knowledge, any suflB.cient 
 means for forming a sound judgment, as to 
 Avhether or not any member of the popular as- 
 sembly is a really faithful and valuable servant 
 to the people, are the members of the assembly it- 
 self. No other men can see the member day by 
 day — can judge the quality of the man and his 
 work. Those men will be able to form a judg- 
 ment that will, in all probability, be correct. If 
 they cannot, no men can. 
 
 In the next place, if we give to the popular as- 
 sembly the degree of stability in its membership 
 that it would gain from the abolition of the ten- 
 ure by election, no body of men would have so 
 strong a merely selfish personal interest to in- 
 duce them to act on their best judgment as the 
 popular assembly itself. Such a body of men 
 would have a large degree of official pride, one 
 of the strongest practical motives that men have. 
 That is a motive that always exists to a very 
 powerful degree, with men who are members of 
 any permanent organization. Soldiers are proud 
 of their army. Sailors are proud of the navy. 
 The professional politicians are proud of their 
 party. The members of the popular assembly, 
 being human, Avould have the same kind of pride 
 for the same reasons. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 119 
 
 The members of such a body would, moreover, 
 be able to gain a large knowledge of public af- 
 fairs, and a long experience in their special public 
 work. They would have the opportunity of be- 
 coming veterans. Where, but in government, 
 our largest organization of men, that deals with 
 our largest affairs, do we think it possible for men 
 to fit themselves for the highest places in one, 
 two, or four years ? When one comes to give the 
 matter careful thought, how is it possible for men 
 to fit themselves for the highest places in our 
 government, for membership in our national and 
 state legislatures, unless by experience? Every 
 private citizen, in every private calling, studies 
 in the school of experience, and knows that he 
 must do so if he is to be a practical and success- 
 ful man. There is no private occupation of any 
 kind that a man can learn in two years, unless it 
 be to dio: dirt or break stone. Even dio^Hno: dirt 
 and breaking stone, if they are to be done well, 
 require training of more than two years, for a 
 man must have his muscles developed by years 
 of hard work. But to be a good blacksmith, or 
 a good carpefnter, takes long training, long ex- 
 perience; and each fresh year adds to the skill 
 and worth of the workman. Yet our present 
 |X)htical system is founded, virtually, on the as- 
 
120 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 sumption that, in matters of government, train- 
 ing and experience have no importance for the 
 men at the head. Most men agree that the sub- 
 ordinates — the men who handle letters in a post- 
 office, or who weigh merchandise in a custom- 
 house, or who use ships and rifles and artillery — 
 must have training and experience. 
 
 But how is it as to the men at the head ? 
 
 Where is it that we must especially have the 
 brains, and the power that comes from training 
 alone ? 
 
 The trouble is deep-seated. It comes from the 
 assumption — that hes at the foundation of our 
 whole political system — that "government by 
 the people" means government by the individ- 
 ual citizens ; that those individual citizens are to 
 " take turns " at the public work ; and that the 
 individual citizens are themselves, in their own 
 persons, to exercise the supreme control over 
 the actual administration, not only of the local 
 affairs of the small peoples, but also of the larger 
 affairs of cities, states, and the nation. My posi- 
 tion is this : I draw no distinction, as to this 
 point, between citizens who are termed educated 
 and well-informed, and those who are termed un- 
 educated and ill-informed. As to this point, of 
 taking a direct personal part in the administra- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 121 
 
 tion of the public affairs of the larger peoples, all 
 citizens are uneducated and ill-informed. The 
 ordinary citizen must necessarily be unable to 
 get the knowledge that is absolutely necessary 
 to enable him to judge of the quality of the pub- 
 lic work of any of our highest public servants. 
 In the original selection of those highest servants, 
 each citizen should, as I have stated, have his one 
 free voice. But as to passing judgment, through 
 this process of so-called popular election, on the 
 quality of the servants' work, after they take 
 their seats in the popular assembly, the ordinary 
 citizen, whoever he may be, high or low, rich or 
 poor, learned or unlearned, must necessarily be 
 unable to form an intelligent judgment. 
 
 The idea, therefore, that the delegate in the 
 popular assembly is the "representative" of the 
 ideas of the individual citizens of the district 
 which elects him rests, I submit, on unsound po- 
 litical views. The popular assembly should be an 
 assembly of the whole people^ met to confer on 
 the affairs of the lohole people^ and to decide pub- 
 lic questions with a view to the interests of the 
 whole people. It should be an assembly where 
 the thought of each individual citizen, as far as 
 may be, is to be represented in the process of form- 
 ing the thought of the people as to the practical 
 
122 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 measures demanded by the common weal. But 
 individual interests and local interests, whenever 
 necessary, are to be sacrificed for the common 
 good. The time when they should be so sacri- 
 ficed, and the extent to which they should be 
 sacrificed, can be determined, wisely and right- 
 ly, only in the common assembly, by its com- 
 mon judgment. That common judgment, when 
 formed, until it is modified or reversed bv the 
 same authority, must be conclusive. For his indi- 
 vidual action, in assisting to form that common 
 judgment, it is not expedient, nor is it, in the 
 long run, for the interest of any one, that the in- 
 dividual member should be held responsible to 
 any authority other than that of the body itself. 
 When the representative is once chosen, he should 
 be the servant of the whole people, to care for the 
 interests of the whole people, responsible only to 
 the whole people. No individual, or body of indi- 
 viduals, or siugle section, or single faction of the 
 people, should thenceforth have over him any 
 supervision or any control. 
 
 Especially is it against the interests of the in- 
 dividual citizens that the delegate should simply 
 " represent " the ideas of the citizens of his own 
 district, or a majority of them. The purpose of 
 free democratic institutions is to have the gen- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 123 
 
 eral policy of the government as wise as it is possi- 
 ble to make it by the combined wisdom of the en- 
 tire people. This is the wish of all sensible men. 
 The interests of the whole people, if they are 
 rightly understood, are harmonious. If a proper 
 understanding is had of the interests of different 
 individuals and sections, there is no conflict be- 
 tween them for any long time. But, however 
 that may be, the delegate is chosen because he 
 is one of the able men of his district, much abler 
 than the majority. But he is not infallible, nor 
 are his constituents. ITeither their ideas nor his 
 can be assumed to be absolutely right, even w4th 
 a view only to forwarding the mere sectional in- 
 terests of his one district, ^ow, can it be w^ell 
 to bind the delegate, on any subject, so that he 
 shall not have the right to freely change his 
 mind ? Can it be wise even to make the attempt ? 
 Is it for the real interest of the State, or of any 
 considerable number of citizens, that the dele- 
 gate should be so bound ? To hold that the del- 
 egate should be fettered by pledges is, so far, to 
 prevent the working of free thought. The pop- 
 ular assembly is not free in its action unless 
 each one of its members is free to think his own 
 thought, to utter it in his own way, and to 
 change his opinions when convinced by reason- 
 
124 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 able argument. It is of the very essence of free 
 democratic institutions that the thought and ac- 
 tion of the delegate should be as free as that of 
 the citizen. 
 
 But fortunately there are few practical ques- 
 tions on which the attempt to bind the delegate 
 by pledges is ever made. As a matter of prac- 
 tice, he is usually trusted to act on his own judg- 
 ment, as he should be. 
 
 The more we consider this idea, that the mem- 
 ber of the popular assembly is the representative 
 of any one district, or of any section of individ- 
 uals, the more clearly we shall see that it is rad- 
 ically unsound in theory and impossible of prac- 
 tice. 
 
 If it were possible, in practice, to secure this 
 responsibihty to the individual citizens, or to any 
 single section, then this idea of such a responsi- 
 bility would stand on stronger grounds. 
 
 But it cannot be carried out in practice. The 
 attempt has been made, in this country and in 
 other countries, in times modern and times an- 
 cient. It has always failed. It has secured re- 
 sponsibility to election managers, not to the peo- 
 ple. It has secured responsibility only in word, 
 not in deed. It has given lip service, and not 
 faithful work. It has brought into existence a 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 125 
 
 class of noisy men, who prate about platforms 
 and principles, but who are compelled to serve 
 the personal interests of themselves and their 
 fellow -professionals. It has given to the peo- 
 ple demagogues and not statesmen — the rule of 
 money, instead of the rule of ideas. 
 
 But the most important point is yet to be 
 named. 
 
 This change in the tenure is the only way in 
 which we can secure, in the popular assembly, 
 freedom — with responsibility. We believe in free 
 democratic institutions, because we believe in the 
 power and the w^isdom of free thought. Free- 
 dom of thought and freedom of political action 
 cannot be had, either on the part of the citizen 
 or the public servant, so long as Ave keep this 
 tenure by election. It is tenure by election that 
 brings into existence these great standing armies, 
 which, under the form of extremely democratic 
 institutions, in effect destroy the political free- 
 dom of the citizen, and make our highest public 
 officials not the servants of the people, but the 
 slaves of the election machine. If we are to ex- 
 pect wise legislation and efficient supervision of 
 public affairs at the hands of the popular assem- 
 bly, its members must be free — to form and utter 
 each man his own individual opinions, to take part 
 
126 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 in free public conference, to be influenced by free 
 public argument, and to agree, without fear or 
 favor of any individual, or body of individuals, 
 outside the assembly, in a common conclusion. 
 
 Publicity, in its modern sense, political day- 
 light, is the surest protection for the people. 
 Bribery statutes do no harm; they never have 
 done much good. But the real protection against 
 briber}^ and corruption must be found in free- 
 dom — and publicity, with real, substantial respon- 
 sibihty to the jpeojple. These combined will puri- 
 fy the political waters, and will produce a more 
 highly educated standard for official action — in 
 time. It will take time, but not a very long time, 
 as times should be measured in the lives of nations. 
 
 But we must bear it well in mind that honesty 
 never yet was the child of slavery — even in gov- 
 ernments. 
 
 I do not mean that the abolition of tenure by 
 election will abolish selfishness, or bring in im- 
 mediately the millennium. The fact is, that the 
 real difficulty with this present system of tenure 
 by election is that it is suited only to the mil- 
 lennium ; that, so long as men are such as they 
 are, selfish and imperfect, it cannot be made to 
 work well under our present changed conditions ; 
 it seems plausible, as a matter of theory, but it 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 12 
 
 K 
 
 can no longer stand the tests of actual practice. 
 So long as "we make it for the personal interests 
 of our public servants to carry elections, they will 
 carry elections. And so long as men continue 
 to be influenced largely by their own views of 
 their own interests, it will be necessary for us to 
 make this fundamental change in our government, 
 in order to make their personal interests coincide 
 with the interests of the public, and thereby se- 
 cure their devotion to the interests of the public. 
 In other words, under our present system, we 
 make an " irrepressible conflict " between the rep- 
 resentative's personal interest and his public duty. 
 AVe must make those two thino;s harmonize. 
 
 The actual working of the machinery, as found 
 by experience, is this : When representatives are 
 compelled to carry the next election in order to 
 preserve their political life, the pressure of per- 
 sonal interests will, very surely, in the large ma- 
 jority of cases, make the representative serve 
 the interests of the men who control the organ- 
 izations of professional election brokers; that 
 means the men who provide the party funds. 
 Those men who hold the money-bags have him 
 largely under their control. To the citizen he 
 gives his profession of faith in the political plat- 
 forms. To the men w^lio provide the money — 
 
128 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 the sinews of war — for these election campaigns, 
 he gives his actual service. If, on the contrary, 
 he is responsible only to the popular assembly, 
 he is dependent on a body of men who are, as 
 nearly as men can be, independent ; who have 
 the ability and the opportunity to judge him ac- 
 curately and fearlessly. If any body of men in 
 the entire community can be depended on to 
 judge him justly, it is that body of men. No 
 other body would be so able or worthy of trust. 
 If the citizens can be trusted to select their rep- 
 resentatives, those representatives can, and must, 
 be trusted to judge their fellow-members. 
 
 This proposal Avould give the popular assem- 
 blies no power that they do not already have. 
 It is the ordinary law that legislative houses 
 have the right to expel any member by a two- 
 thirds vote. All that is here proposed is to de- 
 stroy " tenure by election," so as to insure to 
 the members of these supreme bodies experience, 
 and independence of the corrupt elements in the 
 State. 
 
 We must realize, in politics, the strong points, 
 and the weak ones, of human nature. Most men 
 try to do right, to live up to their lights. Most 
 men, too, are influenced by their own views of 
 their own interests. What we wish from these 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 129 
 
 men whom Ave place at the head of our public 
 service, is the best service they can give us. If 
 we expect to get that service at their hands, we 
 must malie it pay for them to give us their best 
 service, instead of making it pay for them to sac- 
 rifice the interests of the people to the interests* 
 of the office broivcrs. In other words, we must 
 pay them liberally in money (cheap labor is poor 
 labor, in public as well as in private affairs) ; and 
 we must make the prizes of public life depend 
 on fearless public work, instead of the dirty work 
 of pulling the -wires of the political puppets, man- 
 aging caucuses, and paying for election work 
 with public office and \\A\h money. When we 
 begin to carry on our government on those sim- 
 ple common-sense business principles, then we 
 shall TTiake a 'beginning in the work of putting 
 straight the present crooked condition of public 
 affairs. What is now termed " Civil Service Re- 
 form'' consists mainly of an attempt to take "out 
 of politics " a limited number of subordinate 
 places. But the offices that must be taken " out 
 of poUtics " are the offices at the head. For " pol- 
 itics " now means the trade of office brokerao^e. 
 Nothing substantial can ever be accomplished, 
 nor can w^e even make a substantial beo:innino: 
 of any substantial improvement, so long as we 
 
 
130 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 retain this system of slavery for the men at the 
 head. There is the chief evil; there we must 
 apply the remedy. 
 
 ]^ot withstanding these considerations, how- 
 ever, there will still remain, in the minds of 
 many men, a fear of what will be called an as- 
 sembly of members who hold office " for life." 
 The fear will be that such a body of men will 
 form corrupt combinations, and Avill sacrifice the 
 interests of the people to their own personal in- 
 terests ; perhaps even to the extent of attempt- 
 ing to undermine or destroy the liberties of the 
 citizen and of the people. 
 
 This point certainly deserves the most careful 
 consideration. 
 
 First, however, it is to be noted that this sacri- 
 fice of the interests of the people to the interests 
 of the office-holder is the chief evil under our 
 present system ; and is the principal pressing rea- 
 son why the system must be changed. The ques- 
 tion here is, therefore, not whether the danger 
 will exist at all, if our system be changed, but 
 whether it will be greater or less than it is now. 
 
 This question is one that goes to the very es- 
 sence of democratic institutions. 
 
 It is a fact, as we well know, that in every 
 community, under every form of government. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 131 
 
 citizens can be found who can be trusted to serve 
 the people faithfully, and, if necessary to that 
 end, to sacrifice their own personal interests, their 
 lives, and their fortunes. This American people, 
 especially, has always had such men in abun- 
 dant numbers. The question, then, really comes 
 down to this : Can we trust, not our public ser- 
 vants, but the people ? Can we depend on the 
 people, to find out these men, and put them in 
 the people's highest places? If we can, then 
 the question is answered. 
 
 JS'ow the essential fundamental fact on which 
 democratic institutions must stand, if the}^ are 
 to stand at all, the fact on which alone demo- 
 cratic government can and must justify its ex- 
 istence, is that tJie people can he trusted to do 
 this very thing. If the people cannot be trusted, 
 it has no right to rule ; if it cannot be trusted to 
 select the men who are to fill the highest places 
 in the State, it can be trusted to do nothing. I 
 agree that no body of election brokers, able as 
 many of them are, honest as many of them are, 
 public-spirited as many of them are, can be trust- 
 ed to exercise the supreme power in the State, 
 even though they be restrained by the fear of 
 the newspapers. I agree, too, and insist, that, if 
 the people is to select its own servants, it must 
 
132 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 be SO organized that it can think and form its 
 own judgment, at the time it makes that choice. 
 I agree, too, and insist, that the idea that the 
 people can perform the work of administration 
 in any way other than by the hands of men spe- 
 cially selected for that work is an impracticable 
 idea. But in the honesty, and common - sense, 
 and political wisdom of the people, when it is so 
 organized that it can think with its own brain, I 
 have, for one, the highest confidence. It must 
 be content with only exercising the supreme su- 
 pervision and control. It must act through its 
 members and organs. It must not try to have 
 each one of its members, much less each one of 
 its individual cells, the citizens, exercise every 
 function in the State. Each citizen cannot at 
 once be the brain, liver, and stomach of the body 
 poUtic. But the people, properly organized, can 
 be fully trusted, when they cease to turn politics 
 into a mere gambling game of political see-saw, 
 to do the rational Tv^ork of rational government. 
 
 But, then, when I say that we can trust the 
 people to select its servants, I say also that the 
 people must trust those servants after the ser- 
 vants have been selected. 
 
 We are compelled to trust men — under any 
 system of government. We do it now. We must 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 133 
 
 do it alwa3's. What is it even now, under our pres- 
 ent system of government, where the people have 
 no substantial control of public men and meas- 
 ures, that constitutes our only substantial secur- 
 ity for the honest administration of public af- 
 fairs ? The consciences of men ; of the profes- 
 sional politicians ; their sense of right and wrong. 
 These professional politicians are very shrewd ; 
 they understand the political position better than 
 any other class of men in the community ; they 
 know very well that it is easy for members in 
 the state and national legislatures to do the 
 work of the large moneyed interests quietly, se- 
 cretly, and efficiently, year after year, and be re- 
 elected term after term, so long as they make 
 fine speeches about the rights of the slave, the 
 rights of the laboring man, the wrongs of capi- 
 tal, the necessity of temperance — in short, so long 
 as they will stand on high moral " platforms " 
 and take high moral ground on all the " burning 
 issues." These men know very well that " poli- 
 tics," as now practised, is a game and a sham. 
 Yet the large majority of these very profession- 
 als do as good work for the people as is allowed 
 by their knowledge, their surroundings, and es- 
 pecially by the amount of time at their disposal. 
 Why ? Simply for the reason that, after all is 
 
134 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 said and done, the members of onr state and na- 
 tional legislatures, selected as they are, not by 
 the people, but by the professional politicians, 
 controlled as they are, not by the people, but 
 by the professional politicians, yet have con- 
 sciences / they are men of ordinary honesty and 
 ordinary intelligence ; they represent a large 
 number of diverse interests; in a rough way, 
 they deliberate, and form a common judgment ; 
 in a rough way, under very difficult circum- 
 stances, they do the people's thinking, as well 
 as they can ; and, as far as circumstances permit, 
 they act up to their best lights, their highest 
 standards. The standards, often, are not very 
 high. The men are taught in a bad school, the 
 one where we now compel them to study, the 
 school of the election machine. The methods 
 are not the best methods. But they are the meth- 
 ods we compel them to use. The fact that our 
 results are no worse, that our public affairs are 
 administered as well as they are, is the strongest 
 evidence of the nobility of human nature, and of 
 the high degree of confidence that we might safe- 
 ly place in other men, selected by other processes, 
 or even in these same men, if, even now, Ave were 
 to send them to a new school. For the men are 
 very American, very clever, very quick to learn. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 135 
 
 The matter comes down finally to this : Under 
 the system of " tenure by election'* we trust power 
 to these men selected by the election machine 
 for "^ short term. Under a system of " tenure 
 by will of the people " we should trust men se- 
 lected by the people for no term, only for so 
 long as the people itself should think it wise. 
 
 Under which system are the probabilities of 
 honest and efficient administration the greater ? 
 
 But it may still be said that this will make 
 public officers hold office for life, and will, there- 
 fore, not be democratic. 
 
 Let us see what there is in this point. 
 
 If the people really makes its own choice of its 
 own highest officials, and has the power of re- 
 moving them whenever it sees fit, it will have as 
 thorough practical control of public officials and 
 public affairs as is possible ; certainly much great- 
 er than it has now. 
 
 But it is the fact that, with the modifications 
 here proposed, while the control of public men 
 and public measures would be at all times in the 
 liands of the people, many men who entered the 
 public service would stay in it for life. Not, in- 
 deed, in the same places. Men who went in at 
 the bottom would have some fair possibility of 
 rising to the top, of winning high rank by good 
 
136 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 work — as they do now in private affairs. But, 
 no doubt, many public servants would, under a 
 common-sense organization of the public service, 
 stay in it for life. 
 
 But that is a uniform condition of the highest 
 success. Men who achieve any substantial suc- 
 cess in any calling must follow that calling, as a 
 rule, for life. That is a necessity that arises from 
 the finite nature of man's faculties. Men who 
 work on the rotatory system generally do work 
 of little or no value. The rotatory system is ad- 
 mirably fitted for stars, but not for human be- 
 ings. In times past, yielding to the needs of our 
 crude frontier life, we have been in the habit of 
 admiring men who were ''handy," as the term 
 is ; men who could do a little of everything, who 
 could do everything equally well — and equally ill. 
 But we now live under other conditions, and must 
 use other methods. "Work must be subdivided ; 
 men must be organized ; and they must give their 
 time mainly to work of one kind. There is in 
 this nothing new. Men have always done so 
 in large and civilized peoples. We, in our turn, 
 are now becoming a large and civilized people ; 
 and we must live accord in o^l v. In affairs of State, 
 
 CD tJ - 
 
 as in private affairs, we must generally employ 
 servants who work for life. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 137 
 
 It may be said, too, that these changes will 
 create an office-holding class ; that we shall have 
 an aristocracy. 
 
 That is, no doubt, true— we should, no doubt, 
 then have an office-holding class. 
 
 But we have it now. And the question is, 
 whether we will have an aristocracy or a kalds- 
 tocracy — whether we will be governed by the best 
 or the worst elements in the community. As 
 things now are, it may at any time happen that 
 the office of President of the United States, or 
 Governor of the State of ^ew York, or Mayor 
 of the City of New York, may be bought by the 
 purchase of a few thousand votes. More than 
 that number can be, and is, bought and sold, for 
 money, at every annual election. Under this 
 wonderfully organized, highly developed system 
 of carrying elections, with large numbers of 
 voters voting at the same time for the same offi- 
 cers, through large districts, these skilful profes- 
 sionals know precisely where are the weak and 
 doubtful spots on which they must concentrate 
 their work, and, above all, their mone}^ In the 
 large cities there will be, yet for some time, a con- 
 siderable number of men who belong to the crim- 
 inal classes. These members of the criminal 
 classes are the men who buy and sell votes. Un- 
 
1.38 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 der our present system, therefore, the largest 
 possible weight is given to the criminal classes. 
 Other men vote on their convictions. These men 
 buy and sell nominations and votes for money. 
 And thus it happens that these men, who can 
 easily be induced by money to go on either side, 
 or rather on the side that will pay most, are very 
 often, and much more often than anv other class 
 of men in the community, the force that in the 
 end proves to be the controlling force. It is not 
 necessary to go into particulars. The profession- 
 als, in both of what we term the great " parties," 
 are men of the same kind, and are compelled, in 
 self-preservation, to use the same methods. They 
 have to fight fire with fire. The result is that, 
 under our present system, we give a very undue 
 weight to our criminal classes, and they have be- 
 come a very powerful element in the selection 
 and in the control of our public officials. So, 
 I sa}^, the question is whether we will have an 
 aristocracy or a kakistocracy. 
 
 Let us not be afraid of a name. 
 
 Any real democracy will be an aristocracy — 
 the only possible aristocracy. IS^o hereditary 
 system can give a real aristocracy — where men 
 are selected for the highest places in the State 
 for worth and not birth. The only political sys- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 139 
 
 tern under which this is possible is a democracy, 
 if the men at the head of the State are selected 
 by the judgment and brain of the people. I do 
 not say that such men will always be so selected, 
 even where the people controls. I do say that 
 such men cannot be selected, as a rule, under any 
 other system, and that they will be selected, as a 
 rule, under a real democracy. Under the heredi- 
 tary system the accidents of birth will occasion- 
 ally produce men of exceptional power, and of 
 large and generous public views. As a rule, how- 
 ever, the descendants of kings soon become weak 
 or tyrannical, or both. The system is a failure. 
 The rotatory system — the system of the political 
 whirligig — is now also shown to be a failure. 
 Whether or not the democratic system can suc- 
 ceed remains to be seen. 
 
 For one, I think it will. 
 
 But what else can we try ? Or shall Ave con- 
 tinue to use the political see-saw ? 
 
 My conclusion, then, as to this point of our 
 inquiry, is, that three fundamental principles 
 have now been established, especially by our ex- 
 perience in the last hundred years, to be essen- 
 tial to the harmonious and successful working 
 of democratic institutions; and that those prin- 
 ciples are: 
 
140 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 I. The popular assembly, or public meeting, is 
 the organ whereby any people, that is, any num- 
 ber of individuals who are to take combined po- 
 litical action, must form and utter its common 
 judgment and its common will, 
 
 II. Administration, the execution of a people's 
 policy, must have one head. 
 
 III. The popular assembly of each people must 
 have the supreme supervision and control of all 
 its public afPairs, of its administrative methods, of 
 the administrative head, and of its own members. 
 
 Let us now take one step further in our study, 
 and see what would be the effect, on the politi- 
 cal life of the individual citizen, and of the peo- 
 ple, of the adoption in practice of these princi- 
 ples, w^hen taken in combination. 
 
 In the first place there would be at least a ten- 
 dency to secure freedom of political thought and 
 political action on the part of the citizen. 
 
 I admit that, even as tilings now are, the citi- 
 zen has, to Sonne extent^ freedom of thought. He 
 has, no doubt, in law the right, and in fact the 
 power, to thinh as he will on any and all politi- 
 cal questions at all times. But though he has in 
 law that right, and in fact that power, the practi- 
 cal working of things now is, that the right and 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 141 
 
 power are unused at the very time when the citi- 
 zen comes to exercise his functions as a citizen, 
 that is, at the time of election. At other times 
 he thinks with some degree of freedom. At that 
 time he enters into vohmtary servitude. Bear in 
 mind that, except in the affairs of the smallest 
 local organizations, the outside practicable limit 
 of action that can be open to the individual citi- 
 zen is, that he may take part in the mere selec- 
 tion of the highest officials. It is impossible for 
 him to do more than that, under any system 
 whatever that can be made to work. Now, un- 
 der our present machinery, whatever the citizen 
 mav think before election, when election comes 
 he is practically certain, in the large majority of 
 cases, to surrender his own individual judgment, 
 and to act with his old comrades in battle under 
 his old generals. In other words, he acts at that 
 time not on his judgment, but in accordance 
 with his feelings, of distrust of his old political 
 enemies, and loyalty to his old political friends. 
 In practice, he then omits to exercise the right 
 that he has under the law, the exercise of which, 
 at all times, and under all circumstances, lies at 
 the foundation of democratic institutions. It 
 makes comparatively little diiference how a citi- 
 zen thinks, or how much freedom of thought he 
 
142 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 has, under the law, before the time of action, if 
 he is always to omit using it when the time 
 of action has come. 
 
 But let us see how it would be if we were to 
 adopt in our government the principles just 
 stated. One effect, at least, would be this: it 
 would tend to destroy the work and the power 
 of the election machine. The work would cease 
 to pay. The number of offices to be filled by the 
 process of election would be reduced to the small- 
 est possible number, and no one could tell when 
 even those few offices would be vacant. For 
 each people, the people of a town, cit}^, state, or 
 the nation, there would be only one elective ad- 
 ministrative officer, the single administrative 
 head. Each election district would also have to 
 choose a delegate, whenever that became neces- 
 sary for the purpose of selecting members of any 
 one of the different popular assemblies. This 
 decrease in the frequency of elections for each 
 single office, combined with the decrease in the 
 number of elective offices, would at least have a ten- 
 dency to bring the measure of this election work 
 somewhere near to the possibilities of the ordi- 
 nary citizen. The paucity and uncertainty of the 
 prizes to be won by election work would tend, too, 
 to drive the professionals into other occupations. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 143 
 
 'What now keeps tliese election armies in ex- 
 istence is the fact that there are these thousands 
 of vacant offices each year, to be gained by suc- 
 cess in these great election contests. Once in 
 two or three years there is the possibility of 
 making a clean sweep of nearly all local offices ; 
 once in one, two, or three years there is the same 
 possibility as to the offices of every state ; and 
 once in four years there is the same possibility 
 as to the offices of the nation. Just so long as 
 these great campaigns are to be fought at fixed 
 periods, and these great prizes are to be won by 
 winning the campaigns, so long the armies will 
 be maintained and paid. Just so long, too, as 
 the constituencies are so large, and the election 
 machinery is so vast, these campaigns will be 
 very costly, in time and money, and will become, 
 and remain, contests in which only these large 
 permanent organizations of highly drilled and 
 disciplined professionals will have any possibil- 
 ity of success. When, however, elective offices 
 are so few, and especially when no one can fore- 
 see w^hen any particular office is to be vacant, 
 then the office brokers will betake themselves to 
 some employment of which the rewards are more 
 numerous and certain. 
 
 Ordinary citizens will then have something 
 
144 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 more nearly approaching a possilility of taking 
 part in the act of an election on terms more 
 nearly equal, and accomplishing some substan- 
 tial result with the expenditure of a reasonable 
 amount of time. Then, as now, individuals will 
 differ in the degree of interest they take in, and 
 the time they will give to, " politics." But there 
 will be something approaching a possihility for 
 ordinary men to have a reasonable degree of 
 weight, for legitimate reasons, in the selection of 
 our public servants. 
 
 I do not mean that there will then be no " par- 
 ties," if that term be used to mean merely combi- 
 nations of citizens for the purpose of concerted po- 
 litical action. Whenever there shall be any public 
 question of sufficiently wide public interest, men 
 will combine, in legitimate ways, to use legiti- 
 mate means to have their views carried into 
 effect in the administration of public affairs. If 
 at such times it should happen that members of 
 some popular assembly were to be elected, no 
 doubt the views of candidates on such public 
 questions would have due weight in determining 
 the popular vote. 
 
 What I am opposing is the existence of these 
 standing armies of office brokers and place hunt- 
 ers, and the political system of which they are 
 the necessary and certain perennial fruits. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 145 
 
 'Nor need there be any fear lest the adoption 
 of the changes here suggested would unduly les- 
 sen the political functions of the citizen. 
 
 On the contrary, the sphere of activity of the 
 citizen and his political influence would be great- 
 ly enlarged. Instead of merely putting a printed 
 list into a box, with or without '' his mark," being 
 himself boxed or unboxed, he would have at least 
 the opportunity to take part in public meetings, 
 established by law, of all the citizens, where the 
 real questions on which he was to act would be 
 publicly discussed, at the time w^hen he was to act 
 upon them. He would have at least his equal op- 
 portunity to take part in these discussions. If he 
 did not take an active part in them, he could at 
 least hear them. He would have at least an oppor- 
 tunity to gain, at the time when he was to act, in- 
 formation, not merely from men of his own " par- 
 ty," but from men of all parties, as to the fitness 
 of all the candidates for all the offices for whom 
 he was to utter his voice. If, according to ordi- 
 nary parliamentary procedure, only candidates 
 for one office should be considered at one time, 
 then there would be at least the possibility that 
 each citizen would freely form his own judgment, 
 and act on it. If, too, according to ordinary 
 parliamentary procedure, each citizen were com- 
 
 10 
 
146 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 a 
 
 pelled on the demand of a reasonable number of 
 citizens to give his vote alond, on the call of his 
 name, then there would be at least a jpossibility 
 of securing responsibility — to public opinion — on 
 the part of the individual citizen, for his individ- 
 ual public action. There is the point where respon- 
 sibility — with freedom — should begin in the State. 
 This direct participation in the common dis- 
 cussions and common action of the regular public 
 meetings of his own fellow-citizens, on his own 
 local affairs, and in the selection of delegates and 
 other public officials, would be the special field 
 of political activity for the ordinary citizen. 
 Political thinkers are generally agreed that this 
 opportunity to take a direct personal part in 
 common public conference as to common public 
 affairs, after reasonable methods, is the funda- 
 mental benefit to be obtained from the old-fash- 
 ioned town meeting. This opportunity, however, 
 would have comparatively little value if citizens 
 even then were to continue, with substantial uni- 
 formity, blindly to act under the orders of party 
 leaders and vote for party candidates. The fact 
 is, that between the organization and action of 
 what now exists under the false name of " party," 
 and the organization and free action of a people, 
 , as a people, there is an "irrepressible conflict." 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 147 
 
 The one involves and requires the subordination, 
 ahiiost uniform, of the individual judgment to the 
 commands of the office brokers. The other in- 
 volves and requires complete freedom of individ- 
 ual thought and action in the process of forming 
 the judgment and will of the people. 
 
 The chief reasons for expecting any substan- 
 tial results from the principles here submitted 
 are to be found, not in the operation of either 
 one of the principles singly, but in the results 
 of all of them combined. If they were all com- 
 bined, there would be d^. possiMlity that the citi- 
 zen could actually enjoy, in practice, something 
 like political freedom. There would be ^possi- 
 bility that the election of the highest public offi- 
 cials would involve the free utterance of individ- 
 ual views, and the free exercise of individual 
 judgment, on the merits of individual candidates. 
 
 If, too, these considerations be sound, then the 
 adoption of these principles would at least have 
 a tendency to secure freedom of political thought 
 and action on the part of the people. 
 
 The chief point is, that, at the time of election, 
 tlie citizens assembled in the public meeting 
 would find it practicable to make new combina- 
 tions ; they could do something more than make 
 a selection from candidates submitted to them 
 
148 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 beforehand. If the people can be trnsted at all, 
 if we can depend on the people at all, under any 
 system, or under any circumstances, to make a 
 wise selection of men for their highest offices, 
 then when a public meeting convened, if any 
 strong combination of men submitted a candidate 
 to that meeting, the meeting could and would 
 adopt that candidate if the requisite number of 
 members were of that mind. If, however, they 
 were not of that mind, then they would have at 
 least the possibility of putting new men in nom- 
 ination at once, on the spot, at the time, without 
 the formality of " tickets," printed or unprinted. 
 
 That is a thing now impossible. 
 
 Then, too, if the vote were taken on a call of 
 names, if, too, the discussion were public, if the 
 action of the citizens were public, should we not 
 have, as nearly as that condition of things can 
 be secured by any machinery whatever, that com- 
 bination of freedom and responsibility as to the 
 action of the individual citizen which would at 
 least have a tendency to secure freedom and wis- 
 dom of action on the part of the whole people ? 
 
 If, then, the adoption of these changes would 
 have a tendency, to some extent, to secure free- 
 dom of action, to the citizen and to the people, 
 what would be the tendencies as to insuring vig- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 149 
 
 orous and efficient administration from the peo- 
 ple's servants? 
 
 We have here to consider only tendencies. 
 How far these tendencies would operate, I do not 
 here undertake to say. It is enough for the pres- 
 ent to consider whether we should make some 
 decided gain ; if so, that is a sufficient reason for 
 making the changes. It is not possible for any 
 system of organization to create or regenerate a 
 people ; it can only have tendencies, in one or an- 
 other direction. 
 
 The question then is, what would be the ten- 
 dencies ? 
 
 If the positions already taken be sound, then 
 the results of the adoption of these changes would 
 tend to secure the selection, for the general su- 
 pervision and control of the public affairs of each 
 people, of each town, city, state, and of the na- 
 tion, of a body of fairly able men, of varied in- 
 terests, and of varied opinions. If the people can 
 be trusted to choose men for any of the highest 
 places in the State, if we can really depend on 
 the honesty and good sense of the people, as I 
 confidently believe we can, and as every believer 
 in democratic institutions must hold, then these 
 bodies of men would be bodies that could be 
 safely trusted with that general supervision and 
 
150 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 control. Being free from the tenure by election, 
 these members would be as free and independent 
 as any body of men in the State. They would 
 have as strong inducements to serve the people 
 faithfully as could be secured with any body of 
 men in the State. Especially they would have 
 time — to learn the people's needs, and the meas- 
 ures best suited to meet those needs, and to learn 
 the most efficient ways of doing the large and im- 
 portant work that would come upon them. They 
 would have time — to get experience. They would 
 be continually recruited from the ranks of the peo- 
 ple, not from the ranks of hungry adventurers. 
 Steadily, and continuously, new men would take 
 the places made vacant by death and resignation. 
 Then, too, we should have the best security 
 that is upon the whole practicable, for the selec- 
 tion of a safe and able man for the administrative 
 head. He would be under close and constant re- 
 sponsibility to the popular assembly, a body of 
 men that would, if any body of men could, be able 
 to judge his work well. The popular assembly 
 could remove him, if that were required by the 
 public needs, and keep him in office, so long as 
 the people's interests were best served by keep- 
 ing him. He would, while being free, yet be un- 
 der close and constant supervision, and under 
 close and thorough control. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 151 
 
 Throughout the executive administration we 
 shoukl have the responsibility, of single individ- 
 uals, for single classes of work. Each superior 
 would be responsible for the work of his subor- 
 dinates. If he did not select fit subordinates, or 
 secure from them good practical results, then his 
 superior would be compelled, in self-defence, to 
 remove him. 
 
 Throughout the entire public service, from the 
 top to the bottom, the mere personal interest of 
 each official, superior or subordinate, would tend 
 to secure from him the thorough performance of 
 his official work. 
 
 But especially the control by the men at the 
 head would be as good as it is practicable to 
 make it. 
 
 There would be at least a tendency to secure 
 freedom, with responsibility to the people, on the 
 part of our highest public servants. 
 
 In the case of these highest public servants — 
 the members of the popular assembly and the 
 administrative head — the responsibility to the 
 popular assembly would be direct and immediate. 
 On the part of subordinate administrative offi- 
 cials, the responsibility to the people would be 
 indirect, through the medium of their superiors. 
 I say this responsibility of subordinates would be 
 
152 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 indirect. But it would be as direct as is possible, 
 under any system of administration that is prac- 
 ticable. This attempt to enforce direct responsi- 
 bility to the citizens, or to the people, on the part 
 of any administrative officials other than the one 
 man at the head, must be abandoned as imprac- 
 ticable. Responsibility, that is indirect in form, 
 is all that is practicable, and is the most direct in 
 substance. 
 
 Freedom, for our highest officials, is as impor- 
 tant as responsibility to the people. Even the peo- 
 ple, when it can think and act as a people, must 
 be content to leave to its chief administrative 
 officials a large degree of freedom. Those offi- 
 cials must be free — always within limits ; always 
 under supervision and control — to use their own 
 best judgment. Especially they must be free in 
 their selection of their own subordinates. We 
 must give up the idea of tying men's hands, in 
 order to prevent their using official power ill. 
 For by so doing we prevent them from using 
 their power well. Horses cannot run fast when 
 they are hobbled. The head of any administra- 
 tive force must be responsible ; he must be under 
 close and constant supervision, under close and 
 constant control ^i. he must be at any and all times 
 subject to removal at the will of the people, on 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 153 
 
 the judgment of the people. But, being under 
 such supervision and such control, men must be 
 trusted, within the limits of their power, to act 
 on their own judgment. That is a fundamental 
 fact, established by the uniform testimony of all 
 men of large experience in large affairs. " Checks 
 and balances" will not serve our needs. There 
 must be freedom for the public servant, as well 
 as for the individual citizen. When we have 
 those conditions, the selection of a mayor, or a 
 governor, or a president will be a matter of real 
 importance ; it will be an affair calling for the 
 exercise of wise judgment, calling for something 
 more than the blind, unquestioning adoption of 
 the action of party managers. When we come, 
 as we shall, to trust men with power, then we 
 shall choose them with care. Then, too, our high- 
 est officials, trusted by a people with power, al- 
 lowed, within lawful and reasonable limits, free- 
 dom of action, will not be compelled to obey the 
 money-bags, and will have some reasonable op- 
 portunity of earning an honorable reputation by 
 honorable work. They will have the oi)portu- 
 nity, with the natural inducements, to serve the 
 people to the best of their ability. 
 
 Should we not also get as strong security as is 
 practicable against the purchase of offices and 
 votes ? 
 
154 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 I do not say that any constitution or laws can 
 altogether prevent such purchases. But with 
 the changes here suggested, if a two-thirds vote 
 of each popular assembly, at each stage of the 
 popular action, were required (as I think it should 
 be) for the selection of any delegate or official, it 
 would be necessary, in order to purchase an of- 
 fice, either to purchase the votes of two thirds of 
 the citizens themselves, at the outset, or the votes 
 of two thirds of the delegates who should be 
 chosen by the people. The purchase of the votes 
 of two thirds of the citizens themselves does not 
 seem to me very probable. The purchase of the 
 votes of two thirds of their delegates would be 
 still more improbable, if we can depend on the 
 23eople to select men of integrity. And, if we 
 cannot depend on the people to that extent, 
 then we may as well throw up our hands and 
 abandon the contest. 
 
 But of that there is no danger. We can de- 
 pend on the people. 
 
 There is one point further. 
 
 Can there be, upon the whole, any security 
 against bribery of individual voters so strong as 
 daylight, the requiring each citizen to, utter his 
 voice, openly and above board, in the presence of 
 his fellows? Secrecy has no place in the pro- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 155 
 
 cesses of free democratic government. It is said 
 that employers will endeavor to coerce their em- 
 ployees, that rich men will attempt to coerce 
 poor men. Such attempts, if made, will be made 
 only by those employers and those rich men who 
 prefer to use the methods of corruption. If 
 those men can only be known, their game will 
 soon be ended. Now the best security for find- 
 ing them out will be the publicity of the public 
 meeting. 
 
 With public offices held, and public affairs ad- 
 ministered, on such a basis, we should have at 
 least some possiMlity of a vigorous and wise ad- 
 ministration of our public affairs. 
 
 In short, the adoption of these principles would, 
 I submit, give at least somepossihility, and would 
 have some tendency, to secure freedom of political 
 thought and action for both citizens and people, 
 and, at the same time, to secure good adminis- 
 tration. 
 
 Would not that be something of an advance ? 
 
 Nevertheless, even if the considerations thus 
 far submitted should carry some degree of con- 
 viction to the mind of the reader, many men will 
 shrink from remedies so radical, and will incline 
 to seek refuge in reforms more partial. 
 
 Let us, therefore, next consider whether any 
 
156 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 of the '' reforms " now prominently proposed af- 
 ford any reasonable promise of any lasting or 
 substantial relief from the evils that now afflict 
 the body politic. 
 
 The evils, it will be conceded, are serious and 
 radical. The remedies, therefore, we may safely 
 assume, must be strong and searching. They 
 must deal with the disease at its roots. They 
 must not trifle with surface symptoms. We must 
 have what Cromwell's men called " root-and- 
 branch" work. 
 
 And first let us examine what is termed " Civil 
 Service Reform." 
 
 In its entire length and breadth, in its fullest 
 scope, taking it on the statement of its most en- 
 thusiastic friends, it consists in putting some re- 
 strictions, and supposed securities, around the 
 power of appointment of subordinate adminis- 
 trative officers. 
 
 How adequate is such a proposal to existing 
 needs ? 
 
 Here is a people engaged in an attempt to es- 
 tablish a democratic government. And the sit- 
 uation that we find is, that a powerful privileged 
 class, of political adventurers, controls the action 
 of the citizen and the people, the selection and 
 official action of presidents, congressmen, gov- 
 
( X3K 
 
 r- 
 
 THE CHANGES NEEDED. 157 
 
 ernors, members of the state legislatures, and 
 mayors, buying and selling our highest offices, 
 like merchandise, for money. 
 
 In such a position we are recommended to re- 
 quire examinations and tests, merely preliminary, 
 for the lowest grades of administrative officials. 
 
 Men say that this is a beginning — in the right 
 direction. 
 
 But we must begin at the right point. "When 
 we wish to purify a stream that has become foul, 
 we begin not at the mouth, but at its source. 
 And when we wish to operate on large masses 
 of men, we must deal with the men at their 
 head. 
 
 But let us examine this " Reform " further. 
 
 The substantial test as to fitness, for the act- 
 ual work of any office, must be made in the of- 
 fice itself, and at the work of the office itself. 
 Preliminary tests, as to mere knowledge of facts 
 of any Idnd, are well enough in their way. They 
 will be made by any sensible superior, who is 
 held to a close responsibility for results, if he is 
 free to conduct his office after his own methods. 
 But the only test or examination that can have 
 substantial value must be made in the work of 
 the office and by the superior. 
 
 Moreover, the tests that are merely prelim- 
 
158 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 inary can be made best by the superior, and 
 should be made by him. They can be made well 
 by no one but a person having a close and inti- 
 mate knowledge of the precise work to be done. 
 
 But the plan of " Civil Service Keform " is to 
 have these preliminary examinations made by 
 persons outside the administrative offices, by per- 
 sons, therefore, who probably have themselves no 
 special knowledge of the special work of the 
 special officials who are to be examined. The 
 examiners will, in all probability, therefore, be 
 generally unable to do well the work of mere 
 preliminary examination. 
 
 But that is not all. Until a substantial change 
 is made in the selection and the tenure of our 
 highest officials, there is no reasonable possibil- 
 ity that this " Keform," even within its limited 
 scope, can be carried out. The officials at the 
 head^ whose personal interest under present 
 methods constantly presses them to keep the 
 power they have, will use their strongest efforts 
 to prevent the " Eeform" from becoming a suc- 
 cess. And without the earnest co-operation of 
 those highest officials, it cannot be made a suc- 
 cess. Give them their freedom, and they will 
 devise and carry out wise tests for the fitness of 
 their subordinates. But we must make it serve 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 159 
 
 their personal interests so to do. In short, which- 
 ever way we turn, we run against this funda- 
 mental fact, that, in order to get any substantial 
 improvement in present methods, w^e must oper- 
 ate, not on the men at the bottom, but on the 
 men at the head ; and, until w^e do so, no sub- 
 stantial or lasting change for the better is to be 
 expected. 
 
 The proposed scheme is flatly in conflict with 
 well-established principles of administration. If 
 a banker is to have his ofiice well administered, 
 he must have the free selection and the full con- 
 trol of his subordinates. The same proposition 
 is true as to an engineer, a postmaster, the head 
 of the entire postal service, the head of a custom- 
 house, or the head of any single office or single 
 department. The proposition rests on the facts 
 of human nature. Subordinates must feel that, 
 within lawful limits, they owe their selection for, 
 and their retention of, their places to their offi- 
 cial superior. They must feel, at all times, that 
 they are under his hiimediate supervision and his 
 direct control. He must, no doubt, be held to 
 strict responsibility. But that must be our se- 
 curity for his right use of his official power. If 
 we tie his hands, we make it impossible for him 
 to use his power for good as well as for evil. 
 
160 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 Security lies in responsibility, of an official who 
 is free, not in fetters. 
 
 It is said, too, that by taking these minor 
 offices out of "politics," we diminish the power 
 of the professional ^politicians, and make it, at 
 least to some extent, less possible for them to 
 pay for election work. 
 
 J^ow it is, no doubt, the fact that the minor 
 offices are used, to some extent, to pay for elec- 
 tion work. But they are used to pay only the 
 subordinates. The}^ will continue to be so used 
 until we deal effectually with the superiors. 
 
 But what is it proposed to do, as to the use of 
 all the siijperioT offices ; and as to those millions, 
 of dollars that are paid by men who pay their 
 money for "political purposes" before election, 
 and who get their own individual interests so 
 well served, by officials who ought to serve only 
 the people, after election? I concede that the 
 friends of " Civil Service Bef orm " have done a 
 very valuable public service, in arousing the 
 public mind to the necessity of destroying the 
 " spoils system " as to minor offices. But, if it 
 is important to destroy that system as to minor 
 offices, it is all the more important to destroy it 
 as to the offices at the head. And it is with 
 those offices at the head that we must make 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 101 
 
 our beginning. The " spoils system " cannot be 
 rooted out as to the minor offices, until it is root- 
 ed out as to the higher ones. 
 
 But if the " Reform " could be carried out to 
 the letter, in its full length and breadth, it would 
 be a mere drop in the bucket. The results would 
 be too inconsiderable to deserve serious atten- 
 tion. It is wholly inadequate to meet the funda- 
 mental existing evils. 
 
 We come next to a consideration of what is gen- 
 erally termed the " Australian Ballot System." 
 
 The chief feature of this system is, that it is an 
 effort to secure still greater isolation and secre- 
 cy in the action of the individual citizen. It is 
 an attempt to protect the individual citizen from 
 influence, of any kind, good or bad, at the mo- 
 ment of his depositing a secret baUot in the ballot- 
 box. To that end it proposes to put the citizen 
 himself in a box. It proposes also to have " tick- 
 ets" or "ballots" printed at the expense of the 
 State. The theory is, that this will do something, 
 or much, to prevent the use of corrupt influences 
 w^ith the citizen, especially the corrupt use of 
 money. 
 
 But here again, what a grotesque dispropor- 
 tion between the disease and the remedy ! The 
 
 amount, and the continuous regularity, of this 
 11 
 
162 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 election work, which constitute the producing 
 cause of these standing armies, remain untouched. 
 The citizen will still be compelled, if he wishes his 
 vote to count, to vote for the candidates of one 
 of the large armies. He will still continue to be 
 loyal to his own army, to dislike deserters, and 
 to surrender his freedom of individual judgment 
 and action at the dictation of his party leaders. 
 He will still continue to be the political puppet. 
 
 The bribery question is, I submit, equally un- 
 important ; I mean, when it is viewed in its true 
 proportions. The use of money in the purchase 
 of individual voters, its use in retail, is, I believe, 
 considerably exaggerated. However that may 
 be, our chief concern is not with its use at retail, 
 but its use at wholesale, its use in controlling 
 nominaticms^ not of one party, but of all parties ; 
 its use in the virtual purchase of votes by the 
 thousands, hundreds of thousands, and the mill- 
 ion. So long as we leave the control of all our 
 hififhest officials in the hands of the men who 
 supply the party treasuries, who virtually buy 
 votes by the million, in advance, it is not an econ- 
 omy of time to give much thought to the purchase 
 of single voters on the day of election. If we are 
 to depend on putting the citizen in a box, we 
 must box him long before election day. 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 163 
 
 The advocates of this especial scheme attach 
 much importance to the fact that the State is to 
 pay the cost of printing ballots. 
 
 But the cost of printing ballots is compara- 
 tively trifling ; even in the largest cities it is only 
 a few thousands of dollars. But how is it as to 
 these hundreds of thousands of dollars that are 
 used hefore election day and after election day 
 for " political purposes " — in other words, for the 
 virtual purchase of officials and official action. 
 
 What we need to consider is, not the purchase 
 of a few thousand votes of individual voters, so 
 much as the sale of the offices at the head, the 
 purchase of legislatures, and the millions stolen 
 from the public treasuries, at every hand, after 
 election. 
 
 But, if there be any soundness in the positions 
 before taken, this separation of the individual 
 citizen, at the very time when he is to take po- 
 litical action, this secrecy of the action of the 
 citizen, this protecting him from influence, all 
 rest on unsound grounds and on erroneous theo- 
 ries of democratic government. 
 
 Publicity is of its very essence. Influence of 
 one citizen by another, by fair, reasonable, open, 
 public argument, is of its very essence. Kespon- 
 sibility of the individual citizen, for his individu- 
 
164 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 al action, is of its very essence. All these re- 
 cpire publicity. Publicity, too, is the strongest 
 security that is practicable against bribery. 
 
 I submit, then, that the so-called " Australian 
 system" is fundamentally unsound in principle, 
 is an attempt to deal only with surface symptoms, 
 and should be put in the category of petty polit- 
 ical panaceas. 
 
 Another proposed measure, which has fre- 
 quently received very reputable support, is that 
 the heads of administrative departments should 
 have seats in the popular assembly (or in one 
 branch of the popular assembly, where there are 
 two), and should there be required from time to 
 time to answer questions as to their department 
 administration. 
 
 This is especially urged as a means of enforc- 
 ing administrative responsibility. 
 
 It is commonly said that this feature has been 
 tried in Great Britain, and " works well." 
 
 If there is one nation among civilized peoples 
 especially distinguished for administrative in- 
 efficiency, except in some departments which are 
 practically free from the operation of this feat- 
 ure, it is Great Britain. 
 
 The reasons are not hard to find. In a popu- 
 lar assembly charged with the general supervis- 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 165 
 
 ion and control of the entire affairs of a large 
 people, it is quite impracticable to give full and 
 sufficient statements of the details of department 
 work in mere oral debate, or oral conference. 
 Such statements can be given only in full and 
 carefully prepared reports, in print, with full de- 
 tails of facts and figures. Not only is it imprac- 
 ticable for such reports to be made in any other 
 form than in print, but in no other form can they 
 be properly examined and studied. 
 
 Moreover, the head of a large executive de- 
 partment, who has to superintend and control 
 the operations of a large number of subordinates, 
 must give his time and work to his department. 
 As an ingenious device for wasting time and hu- 
 man strength, nothing can well be conceived 
 more efficient than this favorite of literary poli- 
 ticians, the asking and answering of questions on 
 the floor of the popular assembly. 
 
 It is simply impossible, for any head of a large 
 department, who does his work well, to give any 
 considerable amount of time to defending his 
 "pohcy" in a deliberative assembly. Very 
 probably, if he be a man of action, he will not 
 be a man of words. If he is to have a " policy " 
 worth defending, his time and toil, his days and 
 nights, must be given to making that " j)olicy," 
 
166 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 not in making speeches about it. Human life is 
 not long enough, human strength is not strong 
 enough, to enable one man, as a rule, to manage 
 a great state department and also take part in 
 the conferences of a working deliberative assem- 
 bly. If his keeping his place is to depend on the 
 results of parliamentary contests, over parlia- 
 mentary questions, then, I concede, his presence 
 will be necessary in the parliamentary assembly. 
 Then, too, it will matter little how well he does 
 the work of administration. But if his adminis- 
 trative work is to be done, and done well, that 
 work must have his time and thought. His re- 
 sponsibility must be for his administrative work, 
 to his administrative superiors, not for forcible 
 argument in a deliberative assembly. 
 
 Then, too, even now, it may be said that citi- 
 zens should give greater attention to " politics," 
 should attend the "party" primary meetings, 
 and seek reform, within the existing pohtical 
 " parties," by existing methods. 
 
 But this has been often tried in the past, and 
 has always failed. It will certainly and always 
 fail in the future, unless we can find some way to 
 enable amateurs to beat professionals, or some 
 way by which ordinary men, who have to earn 
 their living, can give all their time to " politics," 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 167 
 
 and yet give all their time to the regular occupa- 
 tion by which they gain their bread. The best 
 men in the community are the men who work, 
 who are, for one or another reason, compelled to 
 work, who work hard at some regular calling. 
 IS'ow if some one will devise a way by which 
 these men who do the worh of society can at the 
 same time give large amounts of time to this 
 w^ork of managing caucuses and elections — in 
 short, if we can make each one of these citizens 
 "two gentlemen at once" — then there may be 
 some possibility of getting good government 
 work out of our present election machine. 
 
 But it may be suggested that we can have 
 longer official terms. 
 
 This suggestion will be found, on careful con- 
 sideration, to overlook the essential reason, and 
 the necessary result, of any and every system of 
 fixed terms of office, of whatever length. 
 
 The purpose of the term system in any form, 
 with terms of any length, is to keep the highest 
 officials under the control of the citizens. 
 
 Xow this purpose of using the term system 
 at all requires that the term be short. The 
 purpose is to have the official under the control 
 of the citizen all the time, or as nearly so as is 
 practicable. If, then, the term be long, assuming 
 
168 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 that such control were really secured by having 
 a term of any length, the official will be virtually 
 freed from this control of the citizen for the 
 greater part of the term. For the more distant 
 the election, the more independent is the official, 
 and the more he will count on time to do away 
 with the unpopularity that might come to him 
 from some of his official acts. 
 
 But a term that is long at its beginning be- 
 comes short near its end. And then the evils 
 continually increase. Then comes the inevitable 
 slavery to the election machine, and to the rich 
 and powerful interests that control it. So that 
 a longer term loses the assumed advantages, and 
 keeps the actual disadvantages, of a term that is 
 short. 
 
 Moreover, even if it should be supposed that a 
 single official, standing by himself, would be 
 somewhat more independent if his term were 
 longer, yet no substantial improvement would be 
 gained if all the highest officials still continued 
 to hold their offices under terms of some length. 
 For they would all still be dependent on carrying 
 elections ; vacancies in all these offices would still 
 be certain, and would come at fixed periods ; the 
 mass of election work would still be large, con- 
 tinuous, and regular; it would still be in the 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 169 
 
 hands of professionals ; and those professionals 
 would still, in one way or another, select and 
 control the officials. We should make no sub- 
 stantial gain in emancipating the citizen, the peo- 
 ple, or the public servant. 
 
 Turn it as we may, the fact remains, and can- 
 not in any way be avoided, that the individual 
 citizens, educated and uneducated alike, in gener- 
 al, are, and always must be, incompetent to form 
 an intelligent judgment on the official action of 
 public officials, except in the local affairs that 
 come under the cognizance of the town, and oth- 
 er local, primary meetings; that, in the larger 
 peoples of larger numbers, the members of the 
 supreme popular assembly will be the only men 
 in the State who can possibly have the knowl- 
 edge necessary to form an intelligent judgment 
 as to the official conduct of any member of the 
 assembly or the chief executive ; and that the at- 
 tempt to secure responsibility, on the part of those 
 members, or of the chief executive, to the body 
 of citizens, through tenure by election, for fixed 
 terms of years, either short or long, necessarily 
 and certainly fails to accomplish that result, but 
 on the contrary does necessarily and certainly 
 turn government into an election machine. 
 
 This term system, in any and all its forms, is 
 
170 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 the result of attempts to work out a rough rudi- 
 mentary idea of democratic government, in the 
 form of government by the individual citizens. 
 Mr. Lincoln struck a grand phrase when he spoke 
 of " government of the people, by the people, for 
 the people." But to put that idea into practice, 
 if we are to give the words all the meaning of 
 which they are susceptible, and which they ought 
 to carry, is a thing yet to be accomplished. To put 
 in practical form the idea that this great combi- 
 nation of states, formerly, as between themselves, 
 independent, is a single living organism, that it 
 must have unity of existence, unity of organiza- 
 tion, and, above all, unity of brain and will — to 
 work out that idea in practical form, to make it 
 a living, accomplished fact, that is a work of mag- 
 nitude, to be undertaken and accomplished by 
 this American people, after its simple, old-fash- 
 ioned methods, by the regular machinery pro- 
 vided by law, a machinery often before used, and 
 always with marked success, the Constitutional 
 Convention. 
 
 But some persons, even if they are convinced 
 that the points here presented are sound " theo- 
 retically," yet will be strongly inclined to the 
 opinion that the points cannot be put into practice. 
 
 Why not ? 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. iTl 
 
 The undertaking Avill not be as hard as was 
 the formation of a single national government, 
 by the inhabitants of thirteen different colonies, 
 some of them of different blood, habits of thought, 
 and religion, with the strongest fears of any gov- 
 ernment except their own colonial legislatures, 
 who had just thrown off the yoke of a foreign 
 king, and whose citizens, in general, had the most 
 petty, provincial ideas. Consider, too, that that 
 undertaking was accomplished without the rail- 
 road or the telegraph, and virtually without the 
 press and the post-office ; in other words, almost 
 wholly without the modern highways of thought. 
 We are apt to forget the difficulties under which 
 the men labored who framed our national Con- 
 stitution and procured its adoption, and the great 
 facilities Ave now have for forming a great na- 
 tional idea and a great national sentiment, and 
 putting that idea and sentiment into practical 
 forms. If the principles here set forth are sound, 
 a point which can be determined only after full 
 and free public discussion, then it will be much 
 easier to amend the national Constitution than it 
 was to make it. It will be much easier for this 
 now consolidated people to make some changes 
 in its political organization than it was to get an 
 organization, or to get and keep a mere political 
 
172 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 existence. Let us remember how we came into 
 being, when we came into being, and what ^ye 
 have done in these years during which we have 
 only reached our political majority, while we 
 have been cutting our political teeth, and having 
 our political mumps and measles. Bearing these 
 points in mind, who will venture to say that the 
 work of amending our political system in all 
 necessary points is beyond the capacity of this 
 people ? 
 
 The main ground, however, on which would 
 rest the impression that the changes which are 
 necessary cannot be adopted in practice would 
 probably be the idea that those changes would 
 be opposed by the professional politicians. 
 
 Even if that were so, it would constitute no 
 good reason for not making the effort, provided 
 the changes are necessary. If the principles here 
 urged are sound, they are sure, in time, to be 
 adopted. And be it remembered that political 
 forces are larger, and political growth is more 
 rapid, with us, at this time, than with any other 
 people, or at any former time. Political events 
 with us move with great speed. If it were the 
 fact, therefore, that these changes would be op- 
 posed by the professional politicians, that would 
 be no good reason why we should not at least 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. l73 
 
 make an effort to improve our methods of gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 But is it so certain that these ideas would be 
 opposed by the professionals ? 
 
 As a single individual, my own present view is, 
 that we should do wisely if we were to put our 
 modified system of government into operation 
 by adopting it with the men who are at the time 
 already in office ; that is, we should abolish the 
 term system at once for all officials, make all 
 the administrative officials directly responsible to 
 their immediate superiors, make the chief ex- 
 ecutive directly responsible to the legislature — 
 removable by a concurrent two-thirds vote of 
 both houses — and then provide that the new 
 method of election by the process of the public 
 meeting be adopted only in the selection of pub- 
 lic officers to be chosen as the successors of men 
 already in office. 
 
 I should urge this for two reasons : 
 
 The fii'st is, that such a step would be best for 
 the highest public interests. It would introduce 
 proper administrative methods and efficient men, 
 in the shortest time practicable. Among the men 
 now in office there is a large number of able men, 
 men who are very desirous of doing good work, 
 and who would do it if we allowed them. Many 
 
174 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 of them have a fair amount of experience. These 
 men now in office are in a measure representa- 
 tive men, as much so as any similar number of 
 men whom we have any reasonable chance of get- 
 ting under the present system. The men in office 
 at the time, therefore, seem to me, upon the whole, 
 the best body of men that it is at present practica- 
 ble for us to obtain, in whose hands to trust our 
 government work ; in other words, they would 
 constitute the best body of men that we could 
 reasonably expect to get, with whom to make our 
 experiment of common-sense business methods. 
 
 The second reason is, that, on this plan, we 
 could probably command the support of the pro- 
 fessional politicians to such a modification of our 
 political system. I mean, if the ideas here pre- 
 sented are sound. Even the professional politi- 
 cians have in their composition a large propor- 
 tion of human nature ; and they are very willing 
 and eager to serve popular interests, and espe- 
 cially to fall in with popular ideas — so long as it 
 is not necessary at the same time to sacrifice their 
 own personal interests. 
 
 Now these proposed changes would, first and 
 foremost, directly and especially serve the per- 
 sonal interests of the most powerful professional 
 politicians of both the present so-called political 
 
THE CHANGES NEEDED. 175 
 
 *' parties." The most powerful men of both par- 
 ties at this time are those who are now in office. 
 They number about as many of one party as of 
 the other. Together they form only one " party," 
 of two parts. They have been long accustomed 
 to working and trading together, in gi-eat har- 
 mony. The only point of difference between 
 them consists in their "platforms." But each 
 makes the same use of its " platform." They 
 parade it before election, and use it for a war- 
 dance after election. 
 
 This plan, therefore, of doing away with the 
 term S3^stem, for all men at the time in office, 
 happens not only to be for the highest public in- 
 terests of the people, but it would also, directly 
 and immediately, most effectively serve the per- 
 sonal interests of all these professionals. 
 
 It would command their support. That is sure- 
 Iv a strong^ consideration in its favor. 
 
 And has any scheme yet been presented to the 
 public mind for the improvement of administra- 
 tive methods that combined all these features ? 
 that even appeared to have a tendency to accom- 
 plish the emancipation of the citizen, of the peo- 
 ple, and of the public servant ? — in short, to serve 
 the highest public interests of both citizen and 
 people, and at the same time serve the personal 
 
176 THE POLITICAL PKOBLEM. 
 
 interests of the professional politicians of both 
 the present prominent political parties ? 
 
 Let me put another question. 
 
 Is there not at least an approach to a possibil- 
 ity that our present public servants, even assum- 
 ing that we never had better men, would give us 
 better work under a better system than they can 
 give us under our present one ? 
 
SOME GENEKAL CO:^SIDEEATIONS. 
 
 But it may be said, all this is mere " theo- 
 rizing." 
 
 The discussion of our present national Consti- 
 tution, when it was under consideration in the 
 Constitutional Convention, was mere '' theoriz- 
 ing." 
 
 It must be conceded that the members of that 
 Convention " theorized " to some purpose. 
 
 Let us look at our present political position. 
 
 Our present position is, that something must 
 be done. 
 
 Then the question is, what is the right thing 
 to do? Wlioever objects to what is here pro- 
 posed can fairly be called on to propose some- 
 thing better. It is not greatly to our purpose to 
 give a vivacious and interesting account of mere 
 l^henomena ; to put in readable form a statement 
 of the present and past working of our political 
 institutions. 
 
 In its way that is very well. 
 12 
 
178 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 But what are we to do — in the future ? Events 
 will not stand still, even if we men may wish to 
 do so. 
 
 We cannot, and shall not, let our political fort- 
 unes drift at the mercy of the political winds and 
 waves. We hav^ to :study the charts, find out 
 the rocks and shoals, learn, as far as we can, all 
 the points of danger, and then, as far as human 
 foresight avails to that end, we must lay out the 
 course of our future political voyage heforehand^ 
 according to our best knowledge and judgment. 
 Many men are inclined, when any scheme of po- 
 litical organization, or reorganization, is advanced 
 for public consideration, to sneer at it as " theo- 
 retical," and to say that these things cannot be 
 " planned beforehand ;" that constitutions are not 
 drafted on paper, but they must grow. 
 
 This kind of criticism comes usually from 
 men who have not taken the time, or given the 
 hard work, necessary for a full comprehension of 
 the real points of the political problem. No 
 doubt, in one sense, the careful consideration 
 of any fundamental modification of our political 
 system is ''theorizing." 
 
 But the formation, or amendment, of every 
 state constitution, of every city and town charter, 
 is a piece of pohtical "theorizing" of precisely 
 
SOME gen*:ral considerations. 179 
 
 this same kind. We Americans are, of all things, 
 a nation of '' political theorizers." We are not 
 believers in political patch-work. We are, by nat- 
 ure and education, "constitution-makers." We 
 are the political descendants of the men who came 
 over in the ^Layflower. -They were the men who 
 first in the history of the world formed, by their 
 common deliberations, a paper constitution, a po- 
 litical compact, of limited scope, of vague form, 
 but yet a written constitution, drawn up hef ore- 
 hand, on paper, under which a great people began 
 its political existence. I confess to a strong ad- 
 miration for the political work and the political 
 methods of that little body of men, who furnished 
 the first example in the work of making " paper 
 constitutions," an example which has been since 
 followed with such uniformity by the American, 
 people, in the drafting, and adoption, and amend- 
 ment of charters and constitutions for its towns, 
 cities, states, and the nation. 
 
 The practice is not now^ to be abandoned. 
 
 Especially are we given to political experi- 
 ment. The consideration of any new scheme of 
 government, or of any proposal for the modifica- 
 tion of any old scheme of government, must nec- 
 essarily be "theoretical;" that is, it must be based 
 on ideas — on ideas of what political means are 
 
180 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 necessary to produce certain political ends. What 
 those means are, always is and always must be, 
 inevitably, to some extent, matter of speculation, 
 of conjecture, of " theory." But with this Ameri- 
 can people the practical political question of the 
 day is, shall we continue to use a " theory " which 
 we have thoroughly tried, which we know has 
 already failed in the past, and wiU certainly fail 
 in the future, or shall we make the attempt to 
 devise some new political process, or some new 
 combination of old processes ? If w^e conclude, 
 as we certainly shall, to attempt something new, 
 in this new land of new things, of new political 
 forces and new political processes, what shall it 
 be ? And how are Ave to decide ? There is only one 
 way possible, and that is to study the past, to 
 study human nature — the material which we must 
 use — and to work out a " theory," an idea — or a 
 set of ideas. We must discuss them in pubhc, 
 turn them over, put them under our mental mi- 
 croscopes, and then work out a scheme, a system. 
 For this body politic is a very delicate organism, 
 one that requires careful handling ; if we change 
 its laws of life at one point, we may need to 
 change them at other points. 
 
 But change, of some kind, we undoubtedly 
 must make, fundamental and constitutional. 
 
SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 181 
 
 We must give up our system of distrust of 
 public servants. We must finally realize that 
 governments, as well as other organizations of 
 human beings, must be managed on the basis of 
 confidence in men. We all know that single in- 
 dividuals, here and there, under the stress of 
 temptation, prove faithless to the trusts they un- 
 undertake. As a rule, however, men who are 
 selected with care are faithful, and do their 
 work as well as they know how. Their errors 
 are largely errors of ignorance. All the vast 
 operations of commerce, all private affairs, are, 
 and must be, transacted on the basis of confi- 
 dence in human nature. On no other basis can 
 the world move. We are compelled to act on 
 this basis now, in our administration of public 
 affairs under our present s^^stem. 
 
 But we must act on this basis throughout. We 
 must realize that all our public affairs must be ad- 
 ministered by men. Those men must be sur- 
 rounded by the same safeguards with which pru- 
 dent men surround their servants in private life. 
 \ We must select them with the greatest care ; we 
 must give them the same opportunities to gain 
 skill and experience ; we must keep them under 
 careful supervision and control ; and we must 23ro- 
 vide the proper means for securing their full re- 
 
182 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 sponsibility to the people. But, having done all 
 this, we must give them our confidence, knowing 
 that in individual instances it will be abused, but 
 that in the large majority of cases our public ser- 
 vants will serve us faithfully, if they are only free. / 
 
 The more we think of it, the more strong will 
 be our disbelief in astronomical politics ; or in 
 any political system under which public officials 
 are put in and out of office at fixed periods of 
 time — after anv fixed number of revolutions of 
 this or any other planet around this or any other 
 sun. If men were apples or pumpkins, if they 
 ripened and decayed with the seasons of this 
 star which we term the earth, then it might be 
 conceded that we could properly ^^ their terms 
 of service by the same periods of time that fixed 
 their ripening and decay. But men are not so 
 constituted. And it would seem natural and 
 reasonable that the times of their appointment 
 to, and removal from, public offices, should have 
 some relation to the times of their fitness and 
 unfitness for the public service. In private af- 
 fairs we select men for certain kinds of work on 
 account of their fitness, actual or supposed, for 
 those kinds of work ; we keep them in our em- 
 ploy so long as they do their work well ; and we 
 discharge them when, for any reason, they do 
 
SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 183 
 
 their work ill. We know, too, that men, if they 
 are of the right kind, if we have been wise in 
 our selection, until very late in life, improve with 
 time ; they get greater skill, greater prudence, 
 greater wisdom ; each year makes them more 
 valuable servants, at least for the higher posi- 
 tions of supervision and control. For the less 
 responsible work of execution we need the strong- 
 er muscles and greater phj^sical vigor of youth. 
 But in the high positions of supervision and con- 
 trol we need men who have gained wisdom, from 
 long experience in the administration of public 
 affairs. 
 
 Now the very essence of the astronomical sys- 
 tem is, that we cannot have men of wisdom and 
 experience in the highest public places. For, 
 if any public official does his duty to the peo- 
 ple, faithfully and fearlessly, he is certain of 
 being in time removed from the pubHc service. 
 It is not that the people do not wish him longer 
 to serve them, or that he does not wish longer 
 to serve the people, or even that the profes- 
 sional politicians do not wish to give us as good 
 public service as the system allows. But no 
 one is free ; the people is not free ; the official 
 is not free ; the politicians are not free. All 
 are bound by this overpowering necessity of 
 
184 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 carrying on this monstrous astronomical election 
 machine. Free democratic government is made 
 impossible. 
 
 We must change the system ; so that the citi- 
 zens can have freedom of action; so that the 
 people can have freedom of action ; so that the 
 officials can have freedom of action, with thor- 
 ough and constant responsibility to the people; 
 and finally, so that the people may be ruled b}^ 
 the people's brain. 
 
 The actual working of our present system is, 
 that the servants appoint themselves, instead of 
 being appointed by the people ; the servants rule 
 the people, instead of the people ruling the ser- 
 vants. If we judge political systems by their 
 practical results, our system is not democratic. 
 It may be such in form ; it is not so in its work- 
 ing results. 
 
 But working results are what is required by 
 this practical American people. And, as a work- 
 ing result, what we have accomplished thus far 
 is, with some democratic features, a combination 
 of ochlocracy and plutocracy — a rule of mob and 
 money — greatly restrained, no doubt, by public 
 opinion, or, speaking more correctly, by public 
 sentiment. For on any specific public question 
 of actual, practical public affairs, the people is 
 
SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 185 
 
 not now so organized that it can form and utter 
 anything that can properly be called an " opin- 
 ion " — " of the people." The will of the people 
 is not supreme. For we have no adequate polit- 
 ical machinery, under our present imperfect or- 
 ganization, for its formation or its expression. 
 The only organ it now has is, substantially, the 
 press ; and, great as is the power of the press, 
 admirable as has been its service, it is not capa- 
 ble of serving as the people's brain and will in 
 the actual daily administration of public affairs. 
 The people's present political life is a continued 
 contest for place, between large combinations of 
 individuals, to serve personal ends, instead of be- 
 ing one continuous, harmonious, co-operative ex- 
 penditure of the combined energy of one people, 
 organized to act as one body, under one mind 
 and will, to serve public ends, so far as that re- 
 sult is practicable by merely human means, by 
 merely human machinery. 
 
 The doing of our public w^ork demands a large 
 brain and a strong hand ; a larger brain and a 
 stronger hand than the brain and hand of any sin- 
 gle individual or single faction. It demands, too, 
 something more than the sporadic thought of an 
 imperfectly organized mass of individual citizens, 
 even if they be orderly and law-abiding, and take 
 
186 THE POLITICAL PROBLEM. 
 
 part each year in what is termed a " popular elec- 
 tion." The work demands, too, something better 
 than the alternating will of factions, constantly 
 engaged in a struggle for public place. In short, 
 the work can be done satisfactorily only by the 
 mind and hand of the people — the whole people 
 — thinking and acting as one people, thinking at 
 the time it acts^ on the Tnan or mfieasuTe on which 
 it is to act. Something more is needed than an 
 annual battle with ballots between two great 
 contending armies. This American people, made 
 up of individuals and smaller peoples, must be 
 organized — organized rightly. It must cease to 
 be a comparatively disorganized collection of 
 mere individuals. Each people must have its 
 own head and its own hand. It must administer 
 its own affairs. But it must be organized as one 
 people. Our public work is now too vast, our 
 public interests are now too large, to be handled 
 on the rotatory principle — to have their control 
 put up year after year as the prize of these great 
 election contests, and put alternately into the 
 hands of one and another faction of professional 
 politicians, whose time and efforts are continually 
 given to the management of these vast election 
 campaigns. Public work calls for the highest 
 wisdom and administrative talent that the people 
 
SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 187 
 
 can command. It cannot be done, if it is to be 
 done well, by merely ordinary men, of merely or- 
 dinary knowledge, of ordinary experience, taken 
 from time to time from the ranks of the citi- 
 zens, to serve for only one, two, ten, or even 
 twenty years, and then to be dropped back again 
 into the mass of citizens, it may be in the midst 
 of a great negotiation, or even of a great war. 
 Astronomical politics served fairly well as a first 
 experiment in the science of popular govern- 
 ment. It is, no doubt, a great advance on the 
 tyranny of irresponsible hereditary kings and 
 hereditary classes. It may even now answer, 
 passably, for the affairs of a people that has 
 small numbers and little wealth. One can drive 
 with comparative ease and safety on a corduroy 
 road, with light weights and at low speed. But 
 when we use the large masses, large forces, and 
 large velocities of a great and complex modern 
 society, then we must have the strongest and 
 smoothest machinery and the best methods that 
 modern political science can devise. We must 
 have a solid political road-bed, carefully graded, 
 with political steel rails, and aU the best appli- 
 ances that can be provided by the wisdom of the 
 whole people. When we talk of "government by 
 the peoj^le," in these days, we mean something 
 
188 THE POLITICAL PEOBLEM. 
 
 more than that this great mass of individual cit- 
 izens shall be the pawns on the political chess- 
 hroard, in the great game of " politics " as now 
 played. We mean that these citizens shall do 
 something more than serve as the automatic dig- 
 its in a great election machine, to put printed 
 lists in a box, even if the machine be operated 
 without a jar, in strict accordance w^ith the forms 
 of law. To call this thing " government by the 
 people " is not an accurate use of words. 
 
 I have it fully in mind that government is to 
 be something more than a mere organization of 
 the people, for the mere transaction of the peo- 
 ple's business on ordinary business principles. It 
 must also secure to the individual citizen, and to 
 the whole people, the fullest measure of healthy 
 political activity and political freedom ; it must, 
 so far as such things can be as yet secured by 
 human institutions, secure to every individual 
 citizen, to each smaller people, and to the whole 
 nation, a free, vigorous, healthy political life. 
 
 But the accomplishment of those ends is en- 
 tirely consistent with vigorous and efficient ad- 
 ministration. More than that, the same changes 
 that are needed to accomplish the one result are 
 indispensable in order to accomplish the other. 
 In such an organization as is necessary for such 
 
SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 189 
 
 a people as ours, if our public affairs are to be 
 administered with wisdom and efficiency, it is 
 needless to say that the different classes of the 
 public work must be in the hands of men of 
 training, especially of that kind of training that 
 can be gained only by long experience. Pota- 
 toes and beets come to their full, mature growth 
 in one or two years. For fruits and vegetables 
 the year system may be well. But human be- 
 ings, as yet developed, need a lifetime — the time 
 of human, not potato, life — to get their growth. 
 Let us rid ourselves, finally and forever, of this 
 antiquated maiden fancy, that men can serve the 
 people well without training and experience, and 
 can reach the full measure of their usefulness in 
 two, four, or ten years. 
 
 Is"ow, has not the experience of the human race, 
 especially has not this experience of our own 
 during the last one hundred years, definitely set- 
 tled some political laws, that must be observed 
 in the organization of any democratic govern- 
 ment, that is to be a practical working success ? 
 
 If so, what are those laws ? 
 
 Have they been here stated with accuracy ? 
 
 THE END. 
 
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