  SHORT SKETCHES OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE PROGENY; THE POLITICIAN AND THE BOSS; THEIR CREATIONS THE RING AND THE MACHINE; AND THEIR BY-PRODUCT, THE LOBBY No account of manhood suffrage would be complete without proper mention of the politicians and their work, for they are the essential product of the system, its distinctive feature and its condemnation. It is they who manage the controllable vote created by manhood suffrage and without which they themselves would cease to exist; and it is they who nurse that vote, feed it and train and fashion it to their malign uses as an instrument of perfect control of American political life. The politicians are absolutely indispensable to the working of the present political system in the United States. They handle the voters like cattle intended for the stock market; like the animals the voters go willingly or half willingly to the places prepared for them, in pursuance of plans in which they take no part, which they do not understand. The voters are bargained for and delivered in batches just as the animals are, and the managers and their subordinates in charge are the political masters of the country. These managers from the very first have been a sordid lot. De Tocqueville, writing about 1835, when the manhood suffrage rÉgime was only ten years old said of them, “I have heard of patriotism in the United States, and I have found true patriotism among the people, but never among the leaders of the people.” (Democracy in America, Vol. I.) The present-day professional politicians may be as lacking in patriotism as the political leaders of De Tocqueville’s time, but taken There are of course high and low grade politicians, small and large leaders and managers and various grades between; besides retainers and subordinates, known as captains or henchmen with their followers or heelers. In cities, the local or district leader is often an able man in his way; and of late years as politics has developed into a science, he is often found to be sober, shrewd and well mannered. His duties are varied. He assists and protects his constituents in local political matters; obtains the saloon license; also permits for the small trades or businesses, the boot-black, the lemonade seller, etc. He protects against arrests, gets bail for culprits, sees police judges, lends small sums, distributes coal in winter, gives poultry at Christmas, sends medicine for the sick, helps bury the dead by procuring credit or cheap rates at the undertaker’s, orders drinks at the saloon, and is looked on as a ready helper in time of trouble of all kinds. He may have placed a large number of men on the city pay-roll who never do much work and whose principal duties are to attend conventions, get out the vote on election day, promise places and favors, and threaten and intimidate opposition to the regular ticket. In some cities these petty leaders are numbered by the thousand. It was estimated at one time that they totaled 12,000 to 15,000 in New York alone. As time passes the outward semblance and methods of the politician may change, or they may vary with his situation and station in the political hierarchy, but his spirit and objects and evil influence continue unaltered. The politician of our day is thus described by Dr. Clark: “The perfect type of the American politician is a mixture of the demagogue, the intriguer and the jobber; flattering the people, locking arms with every surrounding influence and all the time looking out for himself.” (The Machine Abolished, p. 43.) Bryce thus sketches the ward politician: “As there are weeds that follow human dwellings, so this species thrives best in cities, and even in the most crowded parts of cities. It is known to the Americans as the ‘ward politician,’ because the city ward is the chief sphere of its activity, and the ward meeting the first scene of its exploits. A statesman of this type usually begins as a saloon or barkeeper, an occupation which enables him to form a large circle of acquaintances, especially among the ‘loafer’ class who have votes but no reason for using them one way more than another, and whose interest in political issues is therefore as limited as their stock of political knowledge. But he may have started as a lawyer of the lowest kind, or lodging-house keeper, or have taken to politics after failure in store-keeping. The education of this class is only that of the elementary schools; if they have come after boyhood from Europe, it is not even that. They have of course no comprehension of political questions or zeal for political principles; politics mean to them merely a scramble for places or jobs. They are usually vulgar, sometimes brutal, not so often criminal, or at least the associates of criminals. They it is who move about the populous quarters of the great cities, form groups through whom they can reach and control the ignorant voter, pack meetings with their creatures.” ... “In the smaller cities and in the country generally, the minor politicians are mostly native Americans, less ignorant and more respectable than these last-mentioned street vultures. The bar-keeping element is represented among them, but the bulk are petty lawyers, officials, Federal as well as State and county, and people who for want of a better occupation have turned office-seekers, with a fair sprinkling of store-keepers, farmers, and newspaper men.” ... “These two classes do the local work and dirty work of politics. They are the rank and file. Above them stand the officers in the political army, the party managers, including the members of Congress and chief men in the State legislatures, and the editors of influential newspapers. Some of these have pushed their way up from the humbler ranks. Others are men of superior ability and education, often college graduates, lawyers who have had practice, less frequently merchants or manufacturers who have The political leaders, says Eaton, endeavor to bring “every form of human depravity, imbecility and ignorance to the polls. They and their minions search the garrets and the cellars, the prisons and the asylums, the grog shops and the poor houses; they lead and hustle to the ballot boxes the vilest specimens of humanity which can be made to cast a vote” (Government of Municipalities, p. 122), and he adds that some of these leaders are public officials, some have even been on the bench of justice as police magistrates. Here is a sketch of a New York district leader, veracious though imaginary, from the facile pen of O. Henry (The Social Triangle). “Billy McMahan was the district leader. Upon him the Tiger purred, and his hand held manna to scatter. Now, as Ikey entered (the bar room) McMahan stood, flushed and triumphant and mighty, the center of a huzzaing concourse of his lieutenants and constituents. It seems there had been an election; a signal victory had been won; the city had been swept back into line by a resistless besom of ballots. How magnificent was Billy McMahan, with his great smooth laughing face; his gray eye shrewd as a chicken hawk’s; his diamond ring; his voice like a bugle call; his prince’s air; his plump and active roll of money; his clarion call to friend and comrade—oh, what a king of men he was! How he obscured his lieutenants, though they themselves loomed large and serious, blue of chin and important of mien, with hands buried deep in the pockets of their short overcoats.” Besides the immediate lieutenants of the boss there are in the cities gangs of “heelers” formed by the political organizations who, as said by Ostrogorski, constitute a latent political force under the management of henchmen. They are described by him as ignorant, brutal, averse to regular work, mostly recruited from the criminal or semi-criminal classes, from among frequenters of drinking saloons and from failures and loafers of every description. When the elections come “A politician has come to mean one devoted not to the science and art of government, but to the success of a political party; a party worker who devotes himself to the art of making nominations and carrying elections; one who manages caucuses, committees and conventions, by which the party business and the party machinery are carried on. It is because the people have consented to turn over their parties and their party government to this self constituted class of party managers that they have come under the control of rings and bosses.” (Political Parties and Party Problems, p. 360.) He describes a political ring as a group of these professional politicians who live by politics, bound together for mutual support in pursuit of offices, public patronage, contracts and other pecuniary opportunities, and generally unscrupulous in their methods. The leader of the ring is the boss, who usually does not hold office but controls the offices from outside, by backstairs influence. This from Professor Hyslop: “But the single purpose that animates the average politician is the same that inspires the beggar or the thief. Either he has failed for want of ability of an honest kind in legitimate methods of business and in competition with his fellows, and seeks a public salary with freedom to indulge his natural indolence, or he uses his ingenuity and abilities to secure the irresponsible power to plunder the public with impunity.” (Democracy, p. 270.) The purchase of votes and the collection of funds for that purpose has always been an important part of the politician’s work. The expression “bunches of five” has become a byword ever since its use some twenty years ago by a prominent Republican politician in reference to delivery of votes for money. “Frying out the fat” is another striking expression which be Let us now glance at the great man himself, the real Boss, the magnate, the prince of American Democracy, the man who of all men most thoroughly believes in manhood suffrage, understands it and profits by it; one of the real political rulers of the American people; he who makes and unmakes governors, senators and high judges; he for whom sheriffs, aldermen, assemblymen, state senators, and sometimes even our mayors of cities are glad to run errands and to wait in anterooms. Writing in 1914 Goodnow says of the bosses: “They control the making of laws and their execution after they are made.” (Politics and Administration, p. 169.) What is a boss like? What are his outward manifestations? About the best analysis of his character and functions was made by Professor Reinsch of Wisconsin, as follows: “Sooner or later there is evolved the boss, the fruit and flower of commercial politics in America. He represents the main interest but also holds the balance between the minor tributary groups. The secrecy necessary for his work gives him great power. He alone holds all the threads that bind the system together. In his person are united the confidence of the favored interests and the hopes of his political lieutenants. He commands the source of supplies. He has mastered the study of political psychology and knows by intimate experience the personal character of the prominent politicians in the state. Most of them are dependent upon him for future favors or are bound to him through past indiscre Another sketch: “It must not be supposed that the members of Rings, or the great Boss himself are wicked men. They are the offspring of a system. Their morality is that of their surroundings. They see a door open to wealth and power, and they walk in. The obligations of patriotism or duty to the public are not disregarded by them, for these obligations have never been present to their minds. A State boss is usually a native American and a person of some education, who avoids the grosser forms of corruption, though he has to wink at them when practised by his friends. He may be a man of personal integrity. A city boss is often of foreign birth and humble origin; he has grown up in an atmosphere of oaths and cocktails; ideas of honour and purity are as strange to him as ideas about the nature of the currency and the incidence of taxation; politics is merely a means for getting and distributing places.” (Bryce, American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 110.) Under the supervision of the political boss blackmail is levied for party purposes from gambling houses, saloons and “Those who support him have their reward—the laborer gets his job, the placeman office; the policeman his promotion or his “divvy”; the contractor a chance at the public works; the banker the use of the public money; the gambler and the criminal immunity from prosecution; the honest merchant certain sidewalk privileges; the rich corporations lowered assessments and immunity from equitable taxation. All buy these special favors by support of the Boss’s power and policy, and all enjoy the blessings of the Boss’s government, high taxation, maladministration, stolen franchises, robbery of the public treasury, and criminal disorder in the community.” (Political Parties and Party Platforms, p. 364.) In an article in the Outlook, April 2, 1898, Miss Jane Addams of Chicago, a well-known settlement worker, writing no doubt from personal observation, describes the Boss as an institution of American politics in similar language to that of Professor Woodburn. She depicts the typical city political boss, his personality and good-natured freebooting methods with piquancy and vigor; he is, she says, a successful boodler who is popular with the poor because in their ignorance they suppose that he only robs the rich while to the poor he is a sympathetic friend; or as they say, he has a good heart. The reader can easily trace for himself the direct connection between this point of view of the lower classes and their support of Tweed, the robber politician whom a New York But there is a power greater even than the Boss; and that is the Machine, a creation which has reached its highest development in our own time and of which the greatest politicians speak with awe. Theodore Roosevelt, the “Big Bull Moose,” was a big politician, a glorified Boss; but he went down at Chicago in 1912 crushed by the steam roller attachment of the Machine. “For the Roller came and with great eclat it laid that turrible animile flat,” was the doggerel verdict of a newspaper of that day. “The tremendous power of party organization has been described. It enslaves local officials, it increases the tendency to regard members of Congress as mere delegates, it keeps men of independent character out of local and national politics, it puts bad men into place, it perverts the wishes of the people, it has in some places set up a tyranny under the forms of democracy.” (Bryce, American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 612.) The word “machine” indicates its character. “The professional politicians (says Ostrogorski) operated, under the direction of the managers, and the wire pullers with such uniformity and with such indifference or insensibility to right and wrong, that they evoked the idea of a piece of mechanism working automatically and blindly; of a machine; the effect appeared so precisely identical, that the term “machine” was foisted on the Organization as a nick-name which it bears down to the present day.” (Democracy, p. 60.) In this machine the voter is a very small cog; he neither devised the machine, nor can he in the least control it, nor is it constructed to serve his interests. It is organized in the interests of discipline and on the principle of obedience. In New York, for instance, an important part of the Tammany Machine is the Committee on Organization, composed of the leaders of certain wards and districts, each one of whom either holds a public office or has a valuable public contract or is in some way dependent on the Boss for his yearly income. The committee man looks after his district and is responsible to the Boss for its vote. Not by the people but by the political machines are offices filled, laws enacted, government carried on. The machine discipline though sometimes severe operates on the whole for the benefit of the politician by protecting the faithful. The efficient members of the class of professional politicians are never more than temporarily shelved. If defeated at one election they are chosen at another. If they fail to get one office, room is made for them somewhere else, and so they are made to form a class of permanent office-holders, and the power and efficiency of the political oligarchy are steadily maintained. “The City machine makes friends with saloon keepers, with gamblers and other criminal classes, or with large financial institutions, seeking to obtain control of the vast sums expended for public improvements. This source of revenue has of late proved vastly more fruitful than the earlier and more primitive methods. By means of these various alliances a large body of pledged supporters is secured. In addition to ordinary party officers the machine employs a body of workers formerly known as ward heelers now more generally called workers, gangs, gunmen, or district leaders, some of whom are accustomed to commit various sorts of crime, such as securing fraudulent naturalization papers for foreigners, entering fictitious names on the register of voters, organizing repeaters and voting them on election day.” (Cyclopedia American Political Government, Machine, Political, 1914.) We quote once more from Bryce, writing in 1894, as to the operation of machine rule in New York City: “Such an organization as this, with its tentacles touching every point in a vast and amorphous city, is evidently a most potent force, especially as this force is concentrated in one hand—that of the Boss of the Hall. He is practically autocratic; and under him these thousands of officers, controlling from 120,000 to 150,000 votes, move with the precision of a machine. However, it is not only in this mechanism, which may be called a legitimate method of reaching the voters, that the strength of Tammany lies. Its control of the city government gives it endless opportunities of helping its friends, of worrying its opponents, and of enslaving the liquor-dealers. Their licenses are at its mercy, for the police can proceed against or wink at breaches of the law, according to the amount of loyalty the saloon-keeper shows to the Hall. From the contributions of the liquor interest a considerable revenue is raised; more is obtained by assessing office-holders, down to the very small ones; and perhaps most of all by blackmailing wealthy men and corporations, who find that the city authorities have so many opportunities of interfering vexatiously with their business that they prefer to buy them off and live in peace. The worst form of this extortion is the actual complicity with criminals which consists in sharing the profits of crime. A fruitful source of revenue, roughly estimated at $1,000,000 a year, is derived, when the party is supreme at Albany, from legislative blackmailing in the legislature, or, rather, from undertaking to protect the great corporations from the numerous ‘strikers,’ who threaten them there with bills. A case has been mentioned in which as much as $60,000 was demanded from a great company; and the president of another is reported to have said (1893): ‘Formerly we had to keep a man at Albany to buy off the “strikers” one by one. This year we simply paid over a lump sum to the Ring, and they looked after our interests.’ But of all their engines of power none is so elastic as their command of the administration of criminal justice. The mayor appoints the police justices, usually selecting them from certain Tammany workers, sometimes from the criminal class, not often from the legal profession. These justices are often Tammany leaders in their respective districts.” ... “With such sources of power it is not surprising that Tammany Hall commands the majority of the lower and the foreign masses of New York, though it has never been shown to hold an absolute A booklet published in 1887 gives some account of the organization of the political machines of New York City, showing that they all depend upon the use of a minority controllable vote presumably of men without substantial means and whose political support is therefore purchasable in one way or another. The writer says: “The machine is governed by a singleness of purpose which produces a compactness against which good citizens can only break themselves to pieces when fighting it from within, while if they organize an outside opposition in which everything is done by honest discussion, compactness is almost impossible of achievement.... The politicians would not be difficult to beat if the people would organize for their own protection and from principle; but it is the matter of organization which is difficult, and no one understands this better than the bosses,” (Ivins, Machine Politics.) The machine is not peculiar to the cities: “It is also found at the court house of the rural county, at the cross roads postoffice, the village store, the town hall. The difference is one of degree; the mechanism is everywhere the same.... The corrupt political machine of today controlled by a boss is contrary to the American system of government, and were it not a terrible reality this creation would be deemed an impossibility. It is in its present state of perfection, rule of the people by the individual for the boss, his relatives and friends. It is the most complete political despotism ever known.” (Coler on Municipal Government, 1900, pp. 188-190.) Nor is the use of the machine confined to the Democratic party; even in New York it is part of the Republican party system also. In an address delivered in New York May 2d, 1880, George William Curtis described the Republican polit “This gentleman, Mr. James McManes, having gained influence among the humbler voters, was appointed one of the Gas Trustees, and soon managed to bring the whole of that department under his control. It employed (I was told) about two thousand persons, received large sums, and gave out large contracts. Appointing his friends and dependents to the chief places under the Trust, and requiring them to fill the ranks of its ordinary workmen with persons on whom they could rely, the Boss acquired the control of a considerable number of votes and of a large annual revenue. He and his confederates then purchased a controlling interest in the principal horse-car (street tramway) company of the city, whereby they became masters of a large number of additional voters. All these voters were of course expected to act as ‘workers,’ i.e., they occupied themselves with the party organization of the city, they knew the meanest streets and those who dwelt therein, they attended and swayed the primaries, and when an election came round, they canvassed and brought up the voters. Their power, therefore, went far beyond their mere voting strength, for a hundred energetic ‘workers’ mean at least a thousand votes. With so much strength behind them, the Gas Ring, and Mr. McManes at its head, became not merely indispensable to the Republican party in the city, but in fact its chiefs, able therefore to dispose of the votes “Machine politics are completely subversive both of democracy and of the principle of responsibility for which democracy is supposed to stand. It constitutes nothing except a system of self-appointed rulers, and the principle of elective representation of which we boast becomes a farce. Public servants and officers can in some way, usually, be made responsible for the administration of government, but political bosses never, or at least not until they have retired with plunder enough to live without politics. The despotism of Russia can lay some claim to legitimacy. The Czar obtains his throne and power by the forms of law and has a healthy fear of something, but not so with our bosses. They nominate our candidates for office and mortgage their support, so that we are ruled by men who are not elected to govern us at all, our nominal officers being the mere puppets of the machine. Public opinion is defied until its patience is exhausted, when it is gratified in some caprice and it lapses back again into indifference and the old game goes on. Property of all kinds is blackmailed directly or indirectly, and business terrorized. Even vice and crime come in for tribute as is well known. This is anarchy, not government, and yet we indulge the pleasing illusion that democracy is a paradise.” (Hyslop, Democracy, pp. 32-33.) And further: “It is the insolent disregard of public welfare, the deliberate exclusion of intelligent and honest men from office, the refusal to reason about public policy, the shameless corruption of its leaders, its organized methods of deception, bribery, and blackmail with All nominations for public office to be voted on by the people are made by a machine whatever may be the party in whose name they are made. This is true not only of the high offices, such as president, governor, senator, etc., but also of such lower offices as mayor, judges of the state courts, state senators and assemblymen. Sometimes these nominations are made at primaries which are carried by the boss through the local organizations; or at political conventions also controlled by the machine. The details of the secret manipulations under the recent primary laws have not yet been and may never be published and exposed; but those of the old political conventions were laid bare in a book published in 1899 by Senator Breen, an experienced politician of New York. He there describes the power of the bosses and the subserviency of the masses. “There is scarcely a place on earth (says Breen) where one can see so fully the extremes of sycophancy to which human nature will descend as one does in a political convention in the City of New York.... I blush to record the fact that the convention which I attended (and the same may be said of every political convention in this city even at the present day) was composed of as spineless a lot of creatures as ever prostrated themselves before a throne, or crouched in the presence of autocratic power. Subserviency was shown not only to the local leader or deputy boss himself, but to the understrappers, who were supposed to have his ear. Not able to get into the immediate presence of the leader, persons well dressed and apparently prosperous, as well as those who were ill conditioned, fawned upon forbidding looking beings who were supposed to be close to the leader, and whose intelligence was limited to understanding orders and obeying them.... “Several positions connected with the court were at the disposal of the judge to be elected; the Democratic nomination was equivalent to the certificate of election. There were 177 delegates in all, and although many of them had the appearance of independent men, yet Here you have a veracious picture made by an expert of the actual operation of manhood suffrage, which according to the twaddlers is so effective in stimulating the manly character of the citizens of a free republic. Bryce visited one of these conventions, and this is what he saw: “During the morning, a tremendous coming and going and chattering and clattering of crowds of men who looked at once sordid and flashy, faces shrewd but mean and sometimes brutal, vulgar figures in good coats forming into small groups and talking eagerly, and then dissolving to form fresh groups; a universal camaraderie, with no touch of friendship about it; something between a betting-ring and the flags outside the Liverpool Exchange. It reminded one of the swarming of bees in tree boughs, a ceaseless humming and buzzing which betokens immense excitement over proceedings which the bystander does not comprehend. After some hours all this settled down; the meeting was duly organized; speeches were made, all dull and thinly declamatory, except one by an eloquent Irishman; the candidates for State offices were proposed and carried by acclamation; and the business ended. Everything had evidently been pre-arranged; and the discontented, if The members of these nominating conventions, or “delegates,” as they are called, are supposed to be chosen by the voters at elections held for that purpose, called “primaries.” The vote at these primaries is never more than a fraction of those belonging to the party. It ranges from two per cent to ten per cent unless when there is a contest between two party men, when it may go as high as forty per cent of those entitled to vote. Outside of the party workers, scarcely anyone attends these primaries. Bryce sketches the means taken by the boss to control the primary election, which include trickery, fraud and violence. (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, pp. 102, 103.) He describes the workings of the primary system and the convention as in operation in Philadelphia under the management of the Gas Ring in 1881: “The delegates chosen were usually office-holders, with a sprinkling of public works contractors, liquor-dealers, always a potent factor in ward politics, and office expectants. For instance, the Convention of 13th January, 1881, for nominating a candidate for mayor, consisted of 199 delegates, 86 of whom were connected with some branch of the city government, 9 were members of the city councils, 5 were police magistrates, 4 constables, and 23 policemen, while of the rest some were employed in some other city department, and some others were the known associates and dependants of the Ring. These delegates, assembled in convention of the party, duly went through the farce of selecting and voting for persons already determined on by the Ring as candidates for the chief offices. The persons so selected thereby became the authorized candidates of the party, for whom every good party man was expected to give his vote. Disgusted he might be to find a person unknown, or known only for evil, perhaps a fraudulent bankrupt, or a broken-down barkeeper, proposed for his acceptance. But as his only alternative was to vote for the Democratic nominee, who was probably no better, he submitted, and thus the party was forced to ratify the choice of the Boss.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 408.) The method adopted by the local boss in Breen’s time, to assure himself that every man in the convention would do his bidding, is worthy of admiration for its bold and unscrupulous impudence. He does this, says Breen, in advance of the primary election by making out a list of the delegates whom he desires chosen and obtaining from the inspectors a certificate that they have been duly elected. What occurs thereafter at the primary election is of little consequence as the credentials are already in the possession of the leader, who when the convention meets draws them from his pocket and as there is no going behind the returns the delegates take their seats. Times and laws have changed since Breen’s time and this plan may have been superseded by another, at present not generally known, but the Boss and Machine are still with us as powerful as ever; the class of officials they put over us is the same as before, there is the same material to work with and it is presumable that the present system is equally corrupt and tyrannical with the old one. A large part of the fuel to keep the machine going is provided for by voluntary contributions from business men and corporations desirous of political favors, such as street privileges, franchises, contracts, or is levied as blackmail upon them or upon saloon keepers, gamblers, keepers of brothels and others whose habits or occupations leave them open to police persecution; also by assessments on office holders, candidates for office and levies on corporations sometimes called “strikes.” “The levying of blackmail on companies, either as a contribution to campaign expenses or as fees to pay for protection, is now one of the principal sources of a Boss’s revenue, and, in states like New York, goes a good way towards enabling him to defy hostile sentiment. It furnishes him with funds for subsidizing the legislature and the press.” (Atlantic Monthly, July, 1896.) Bryce states that the collection of revenues of a political Ring flow from five sources, viz., public subscriptions, con “In the large cities, with New York at their head, practice established a sort of tariff for each set of offices according to the length of the term and the importance of the place. Thus a judgeship, that is to say, the nomination to it amounted to $15,000; a seat in Congress was rated at $4,000; for membership of a state legislature $1,500 was demanded; a like amount for the position of alderman in a city council, etc.” (Ostrogorski, Idem, p. 70.) “Candidates for the judiciary in New York City have paid Tammany Hall $5,000 to $10,000 for their offices.” (Commons on Proportional Representation, p. 303.) Dr. Clark writing in 1900 says: “By credible accounts as much as $100,000 has been paid to get nominated by the Convention of the dominant party for Clerk, Register or Sheriff of the County of New York; half that sum for Treasurer of Pennsylvania, and, in proportion to their opportunities The figures contained in Bryce’s American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 119, as to ruling rates for political nominations under this much prized system of political brigandage are these: Alderman, $1,500; Legislature, $500 to $1,500; Judgeship, $5,000 to $15,000; Congress, $4,000. The New York County Clerk at one time collected about $80,000 a year in fees, of which the political machine required him to hand over two-thirds. Writing in 1899 Dorman B. Eaton states the regular price of a high judicial nomination is $10,000 to $15,000. (Government of Municipalities, p. 107.) Another more recent writer gives the figures for political assessments for the large city as follows: For County Clerk and Register, $15,000; Alderman, $13,000; Sheriff, $25,000; Comptroller, $10,000; Mayor, $20,000; Police Justice, $6,500. Not only the offices but the party itself is sometimes for sale in this or that ward or city. The bargains between the Republican and Democratic machines in New York City and elsewhere have been so frequently denounced and exposed by the politicians themselves as to need no proof. It is a matter of common knowledge that the bosses are able at times in shrewd transactions with opposing bosses to barter certain public offices, batches of offices and measures for other similar merchandise, and to carry out the bargain; thus causing the votes cast at an election to have directly the opposite effect from that supposed to be desired by the voters, though perhaps many of the floaters or regulars among them would be perfectly satisfied with the “deal.” It must be borne in mind that the ultimate object of all these “deals” and this political traffic is money; the party managers are not looking for public honors but for cash; they are actually engaged in build An instance of the friendly relations between rival machines is mentioned by Bryce in writing of the effort to get the Democratic machine in Philadelphia in 1870 to help oust the Republican Gas Ring: “But the Democratic wire-pullers, being mostly men of the same stamp as the Gas Ring, did not seek a temporary gain at the expense of a permanent disparagement of their own class. Political principles are the last thing which the professional city politician cares for. It was better worth the while of the Democratic chiefs to wait for their turn, and in the meantime to get something out of occasional bargains with their (nominal) Republican opponents, than to strengthen the cause of good government at the expense of the professional class.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 411.) And Eaton mentions an instance in New York City of the leaders of one political party being in the pay of the other. (Government of Municipalities, p. 116—Note.) Here, to make the sketch complete must be said a brief word about the lobby, by which expressive term is designated the class of paid agents of public service corporations and others, who frequent the lobbies of the state legislatures and of Congress in order to promote legislation favorable to their principals and to watch and fend off “strikes,” “hold-ups” and other legislative attacks upon them. In a country where ridiculously small salaries are paid to members of legislative bodies the lobby does much to make a legislator’s career profitable. Details of those lobby transactions have been often published as newspaper sensations, and some of them will be referred to in this book later on. A short quotation from Prof. Commons will suffice here to give an idea of their character: “It is not to be inferred that the lobby alone is responsible for corrupt legislatures and councils. It is equally true that corrupt legislatures are responsible for the lobby. Law-makers introduce bills attacking corporations for the express purpose of forcing a bribe. This is called a ‘strike,’ and has become a recognized feature of American legislation, to meet which the corporations are compelled to organize their lobby.” (Commons, Proportional Representation, p. 47.) A word from Bryce, on the lobby: “All legislative bodies which control important pecuniary interests are as sure to have a lobby as an army to have its camp followers. Where the body is, there will the vultures be gathered together. Great and wealthy States, like New York, and Pennsylvania, support the largest and most active lobbies.... Thus there are at Washington, says Mr. Spofford, ‘pension lobbyists, tariff lobbyists, steamship subsidy lobbyists, railway lobbyists, Indian ring lobbyists, patent lobbyists, river and harbour lobbyists, mining lobbyists, bank lobbyists, mail-contract lobbyists, war damages lobbyists, back-pay and bounty lobbyists, Isthmus canal lobbyists, public building lobbyists, State claims lobbyists, cotton-tax lobbyists, and French spoliations lobbyists. Of the office-seeking lobbyists at Washington it may be said that their name is legion. There are even artist lobbyists, bent upon wheedling Congress into buying bad paintings and worse sculptures; and too frequently with success.’” He also says that women are said to be among the most active and successful lobbyists at Washington, and that they have been widely employed and efficient in soliciting members of the Legislature with a view to the passing of private bills and the obtaining of places. (American Commonwealth, Vol. I, p. 680; Vol. II, p. 732.) So here let us end the chapter on the politicians, with the picture of a purchasable legislature created by a political machine and representing a purchasable manhood suffrage constituency, and of the traffic conducted by bosses and rings |
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