The political oligarchies rule, have ruled and will continue to rule this country through the medium of the controllable vote. This is plainly inferable from what has already been said about the strength and operations of the Machine, and is in a vague way to some extent understood or at least suspected throughout the country. The object of this chapter is to emphasize it, to bring it home to the reader, to make him realize it, and to cause him to reflect upon it, and to thoroughly appreciate the absolute impossibility of throwing off the odious bondage of the politicians unless and until the suffrage is restricted to a well-qualified class of voters.

By the extension of the franchise to the unpropertied and thriftless class there was injected into the veins of the electoral body a new and poisonous element, the virus of cupidity. A certain portion of this class, the so-called floaters, is directly purchasable; another large portion is indirectly purchasable or controllable and capable of being organized on a basis of bargains made or understood. The vote therefore which by degrees as the organizations have developed has come to adhere to these predatory bands is not confined merely to the directly purchasable; it includes the controllables; all such as the organization reaches by the manipulation of low motives; by appeals to cupidity direct or indirect; by favors to themselves or their relatives, by rewards of public employment, whether as laborers, petty officers, policemen, firemen or the like; by protection, as in the case of gamblers, liquor sellers, and others who adhere to the organization for purposes of personal advantage. The organization therefore will always be permanent and effective because its members are materially interested in its existence and power.

The manner in which the controllable vote is marshalled to the polls is described by Eaton (Govt. of Municipalities, chap. V). Its existence is recognized by him as a reason why our great cities are not fit for home rule. He divides this vote into two classes: “the mercenary city vote” and “the vile city vote.” But this material is not confined to the large cities, it is to be found in towns and villages and wherever there are worthless, shiftless men. Writing in 1871 Sterne says: “The nomination for public offices is with us entirely in the hands of professional politicians” and this he states to be the case equally in both the country and cities. (Representative Government, p. 83.) The conditions have not changed since his time. The local political associations or bands organized for the securing, management and operation of the controllable vote have developed in the last century. They are now frequently able, especially in the large cities, to secure a considerable class of recruits of a type somewhat superior to the “floaters,” from among the social failures and misfits. Most of these are sloppy-minded fellows, who, tempted by social proclivities, or misled by weak ambitions and the appearance of political success, join the “Regular Organization” as they call it. Some of them are rather vicious; social degenerates or perverts; men who have not judgment and honesty enough to insure their voting right even in matters small enough to be within their mental grasp; and whose ideals are not honesty, justice, public honor, and intelligence, but smartness, cleverness and guile. Sometimes they are motived by prejudice and class hatred; often they are rabid, loud-mouthed radicals, anti-capitalists, etc. Others are weak and shiftless, people naturally harmless but incapable of correct observation in political and economic matters, or of correct reasoning upon what they observe; men who are recognized as failures in the world, more or less incapable of self-support; burdens on their relatives and friends, or on churches or societies with which they or their families are connected; men who never can get employment, or if they do, cannot keep it; fellows of lazy and careless habits who having failed to do their part in organized society have had to pay the penalty of their remissness. There are those who have got into a mental habit of chronic dissatisfaction with the established ethics of life and have finally grown to disbelieve in them altogether; who doubt whether honesty is the best policy; who are unable to recognize what it is that really constitutes success, or who fail to find the true path to reach it. To some of them the man who gets power or money at any price is the successful man and him they envy and applaud. They themselves hate to work or to deny themselves, merely in order to save or to accumulate; and yet they want money, and long for its possession, and finally grow to actually respect successful rogues political and other who seem to defy and triumph over the old established rules of social life. Bryce describes these organizations as he found them in New York City in 1894:

It is such organizations, and not the independent farmers or business men, which because they have united and practical aims and methods constitute the real political powers in the United States. They select and put forward candidates, regulate and carry primaries, combine with other associations, and constitute themselves a real effective working political force. The great extent of their power will not astonish anyone familiar with the effect of organization and discipline. The strength of the French Jacobin party lay in their clubs. The French Revolution, the American Revolution and the Russian Revolution were all carried to such success as they had by organized and active minorities. A magazine writer says this of these local political associations:

“The members of the organizations, like every one else, want power, money and place. That is the reason they are members. They get leaders who will deliver a part at least of what they want. Leaders who do not deliver are quickly decapitated.” Even should reformers get control of the party (the writer says) and win at the polls, these floaters will break down the new administration unless it yields the offices to them. (American Political Science Review, February, 1917.)

In the words of Bryce:

These predatory bands are encouraged and supported not only in the ways already mentioned, but by the money contributions of the well-to-do. At every important election enormous sums are raised and expended by both parties. In 1896 the Republican National Committee had at its disposal an immense fund, variously stated at $6,000,000 to $16,000,000, much of it obtained from business corporations; it was charged that part of this was used to purchase votes. It is through these local clubs and associations that such money is expended.

The case in a nutshell is that of an enlisted regular army, small in numbers with a poorly paid and unlettered rank and file, but well officered and capable of holding in check a whole population of unarmed, undisciplined and unorganized citizens. This trained and subsidized force cannot be permanently overthrown by any possible counter organization of reformers, and all attempts in that direction have always proved and always will prove futile. The mass of the citizens have no motive for permanent political organization; nor can one be supplied; for all such counter-organizations being merely sentimental, must lack a motive or rallying force such as cupidity affords to the “regulars,” holding them together and inspiring them with persistent energy. A noted illustration of this feature of politics appeared in the defeat in 1884 of the Reform Party in Philadelphia by the Gas Ring, after it had triumphed in 1881 and had effected many reforms. Its supporters got tired out and lost interest. They lacked the sustained motive which animated the spoilsmen. In an account published at the time, by two gentlemen connected with this reform movement, they stated, referring to its work:

Instances of the power of local and political organization built up on a manhood suffrage basis to force a notoriously unfit candidate through a contested election are extremely numerous. Practically the entire list of candidates at any election may serve to illustrate the practice; unfitness for their offices being the rule among our officials. Two examples will have to suffice here. John Morrissey of New York was for thirty years a notorious gambler and prize-fighter. After attaining manhood these were his occupations; he had no other except politics. The people of the City of New York with full knowledge of his record, elected him four times to office by large majorities. He was in the State Senate at his death, having previously served two terms in Congress. Here is his official record, taken from the Encyclopedia of Congress Biography.

Here is the record of his vote for Congress:

1867	McCartin (Ind. Dem.)	4,494
	Train (Rep.)	2,583
	Morrissey (Dem.)	16,064
1869	Taylor (Ind. Dem.)	6,503
	Elliott (Rep.)	2,293
	Morrissey (Dem.)	9,162

Comment on these figures is superfluous.

William M. Tweed of New York City had been for many years prior to 1871, the most notorious political boss and corruptionist in the United States; probably in the world. He and his confederates systematically plundered the City of New York for a long time by means of false vouchers, etc. The amount of his individual peculations was about $5,000,000. The total amount taken from the city by the Tweed ring has been estimated at $80,000,000. In July, 1871, these misdemeanors were discovered and exposed in the newspapers. During that summer the whole city was aroused, arrests, indictments and prosecutions of Tweed and his associates followed thick and fast. Many of the city and county officials were implicated, including several judges of the highest courts; two were driven from the bench of the Supreme Court. On September 4, 1871, an immense mass meeting was held at which the famous Committee of Seventy was created to prosecute the criminals and reorganize the city government. It appeared that the county court house, which was expected to cost $2,500,000, had cost no one knew how much, but from $8,000,000 to $13,000,000 without being finished. On October 28, 1871, Tweed was arrested and held to bail on charges of misappropriating public money. Notwithstanding these exposures and all the denunciations of Tweed and his confederates by the press, he was re-elected in November, 1871, to represent a senatorial district of New York City by an increased vote of three to his competitor’s one. The following are the figures for this and the previous election. Note the increase in Tweed’s vote following his exposure; and then reflect on the beauties of universal suffrage and on the value of publicity as the sure cure reform agent that we hear so much of nowadays.

1867	Leggatt (Rep.)	2,175
	Kerrigan (Ind. Dem.)	5,966
	Tweed (Dem.)	16,144
1871	Rossa (Anti Ring Dem.)	6,927
	Tweed (Dem.)	18,706

The organized power which manhood suffrage has in the past placed behind Morrissey and Tweed and tens of thousands of others continues in operation to this day. Writing in 1881, Reemelin says:

The New York Evening Post of November 14th of the year 1919 refers to a feature of the city election just held in San Francisco. One Schmitz of that city “after twice being elected mayor, underwent a sensational trial in 1907 on charges of corruption, and escaped the penitentiary when the State Supreme Court set aside the verdict against him on a technicality.” Nevertheless in 1915 he ran again for mayor and polled nearly one-third of the total vote; in 1917 he polled 33,000 votes for supervisor; in 1919 he again polled 34,128 votes for mayor out of a total of about 100,000. In other words, one-third of the San Francisco manhood suffrage electorate can be marshalled in support of a candidate with a notoriously smirched record.

We must not allow ourselves to be lulled into indifference by surface politicians who offer delusive hopes of substantial reform by flimsy measures which deal with symptoms leaving the electorate unswept and ungarnished to continue as the breeding place of the malady. Mr. Bryce, for instance, who is very shy of criticising manhood suffrage, likes to indulge in optimistic imaginings. He says:

It has also been stated that if the sky would fall we would catch larks. As Shakespeare says, “There is great value in your ‘If.’” The principal “dirt heap,” cunningly placed in the path by the professional politicians is the controllable vote; but Bryce, himself a politician belonging to a “Liberal” party, is very careful to shut his eyes every time he smells that particular dirt heap. But we Americans may as well, and if we desire results, we must, realize that the political oligarchies are irresistible under the present suffrage system; that they have never been defeated in the United States; that their organizations backed by the revenue derived from fat frying, contributions, blackmail, protection money, official fees and perquisites and the sale of offices and appointments have always been found in practice sufficiently strong not merely to hold their own against the public, but to prevent the possibility of any serious attempt to unseat the machine politicians as the masters of the country. In point of fact the rule of the machine politicians is practically unquestioned; and the battles at the polls are and for generations have actually been conflicts between two political machines, between two rival bands of political leaders and their followers, in which the public interest was only indirect. The citizens have the option, of course, either of falling in the rear of one of the political bands and helping swell its numbers and secure its triumph or of remaining aloof; the result in either case will be victory for the politicians on one side or the other.

Not only do the political oligarchies win at the polls by discipline and organization, but they gather strength by the adoption of popular fads and fancies. For example, if some fanatics start an agitation for special reform legislation so-called, the organization may determine to favor it as a means for creating new public offices and patronage for the faithful, and so on. The condition of a community or state desiring to have some notion put into legal effect would be pitiable without the aid of the party organizations. Most of the American people have no clear idea of the working of political machinery; and when they want anything done in politics they are apt to run to the very politicians they habitually denounce. In this way astute political leaders learn the course of the popular currents and can act accordingly, cunningly adjusting selfish motives, taking up popular cries and adding strength and prestige to the plunder bund. They have no principles that stand in the way of their espousing any cause. Is the war feeling rampant or can it be readily developed and made available? The politicians begin yelling for war and waving the banner. Is woman suffrage popular or can it be profitably used? We have a female suffrage plank forthwith put in the party platform by men not one of whom has the slightest belief in it. All this however is conditioned on the proviso that nothing be put forward against the interests of organized politics, for the politicians do not govern by yielding or catering to majorities, but by means of permanent organizations which gather in, build up, compel and control majorities. The organizations also get power by forming public opinion to suit their purposes. Their managers are not concerned in abstract or sentimental questions; but where their interests appear to be involved they are apt to intervene either to create issues or to mould public opinion or to give it a favorable twist in their direction.

Each political body controlled by one of these oligarchies has a moving force far beyond that of the sum of its individual members. The old conception of a constituency composed of voters who each spontaneously forms his individual opinion on all live political questions and expresses it at the polls by his vote was of village origin; applicable at most and only partially to small communities. In all cities and towns of over ten thousand inhabitants the citizen is seldom able to form his own opinion unaided even on matters of local politics. He is not familiar with the city budget, nor with its health conditions, nor with its public works, nor its administration generally; nor with its needs or its program for the ensuing year; nor is he usually personally acquainted with its officials. The larger the city the less each individual knows of its affairs. As to State matters the knowledge of the ordinary voter seldom goes beyond the name and politics of the governor and of the local members of the legislature. The citizen therefore usually needs someone to furnish him his opinions ready made. Indeed, beliefs political or other are seldom spontaneously created in the human mind; they are usually injected into it; and the ordinary citizen receives from without nearly all his opinions on matters not pertaining to his household or his business. Now, the rival organizations in order to catch the Independents, usually a conceited and gullible element, find it convenient to manufacture “political issues”; some trivial, empty controversy is started, often of a personal nature; the politician gives the cue to the newspapers, the papers pass on the tale to the reader, and there you have so-called public opinion. In this way was an opinion fabricated which helped elect Jackson to the presidency; he was wafted into the White House on the wind of lies invented for the purpose, and the process has been constantly repeated ever since. Therefore, the managers of these corrupt political organizations are able through them to materially influence the more honest and intelligent majorities by furnishing them ready-made opinions, which for lack of better they are compelled to adopt.

To resume: this is the situation. The independent vote being divided by honest and therefore shifting opinion, is not and never can be permanently organized. The controllable vote can be and is permanently organized on the basis of cupidity; and its organization is such that it not only controls the entire election machinery but is able to create, manage and use for its own purposes a considerable share of the public opinion of the country.

Thus it is that the politicians are firmly intrenched in power. And what is the extent and character of that power? Is it limited either in extent or by responsibility to the people? Neither. Within the limits of the state and federal constitutions the power of the political oligarchies is absolute and uncontrolled except so far as one political organization chooses to oppose or to interfere with the other. It is part of the common talk of the careless optimists among us and of the constant prattle of the newspapers that the people rule when they choose to do so; that the overwhelming majority are wise and good people, and that when they “rise in their might” they can and will set all things straight. The newspapers for their own purposes assist the illusion of popular choice at elections, and print declamatory rubbish of this sort to flatter their readers and to keep up their interest in the political game so that they will continue buying the papers. This claptrap has a mischievous effect, for it tends to prevent the people from realizing their real situation. The picture, were it a true one, of a community, relieving its ordinary dull submission to misgovernment and plunder by occasional bursts of rage is far from flattering to the electorate; but the facts are even worse; for the public never does “rise in its might” to overthrow its ruling oligarchy. It merely changes, or pretends to change one ruling band or machine for another. Nor do the politicians usually cater to the public, nor do they need to do so nearly as much as some of us fondly imagine. The common talk about our office holders being public servants is cant and humbug. The prevalent popular conceit that the politicians as a class need public support, and must and do defer to the public in order to exist, lacks support in the facts, though it derives some color from the appeals frequently made to the electorate for votes by parties or political machines. For though the voter always has a choice between two or more candidates, he is never permitted to go outside of the ranks of the political oligarchy, which exists and flourishes despite popular criticism and dislike.

Most of the office holders are practically independent of the people. In the cities especially, they occupy salaried places, obtained by the use of back stairs or secret influence. They could of course be ousted by a united public demand, but such demand as that is in most cases inconceivable and will never be made; no one but the politicians know these men, or have in mind the particulars of their duties and appointments: and none but politicians would have the patience or skill to manage a public movement to oust them. As a matter of fact few of them ever are finally expelled from political life; they are merely transferred from time to time from one job to another. To one who knows, it is often pathetically ludicrous to hear a voter incensed by the tyranny or incapacity of some office holder threaten to withhold his vote from him “next time.” The irate citizen will probably forget all about “next time,” or will never hear of its having arrived; or the next office will be an appointive one, higher up. Even if he do carry out his threat it will be like putting a straw down in an elephant’s path; the question whether the object of his wrath will go on the ticket will be decided not as the result of a public discussion, but of a secret conference, and whether elected or defeated, the majorities will be mostly composed of myriads of voters who have blindly obeyed the will of the machine and scarcely noticed the name of the candidate. The protest of the individual voter if too much emphasized, is most likely to injure himself. Even a great daily city newspaper usually finds it a hopeless task to attempt to down the machine or its candidates; indeed, the latter have been known to triumph over four or five dailies united. Sometimes an office holder is detected in a scandalous transaction and the machine deems it prudent to temporarily retire him; but if his dirty work was done for the organization’s behoof and benefit, he may soon be seen occupying a still higher appointive office, or placed on the state or county ticket at a presidential election and voted into power by an immense self-satisfied and innocent majority of the very people who a year or two ago condemned him mercilessly, and who in the meantime have actually forgotten his name.

This situation should be clearly understood, because there are in this country millions of people so blind, ignorant or innocent as to imagine that the public at large are really participants in the whole business of politics and government when in fact they have no share in it whatever. Let the reader who doubts this statement attempt to interfere as an amateur in politics. He will find it impossible to do so and that he cannot interpose with any, even the slightest effect except by himself joining one of the political gangs or parties, becoming one with them, submitting to their rules and methods and aiding in their schemes to purchase and manage the controllable vote. To the ordinary voter, and to the mass of millions of voters, to that populace which foolishly believes itself the ruler of the nation it is forbidden even to know what politicians intend or are doing. Each voter may meekly attend at the polls and ratify what one machine or the other has already determined on, but there he must stop. If he attempts to do more, to protest or to air his opinions he will be ignored; and if he persist he will be treated with the scorn and contempt due to a meddling fool.

The fact of the absolute control of our government by a political oligarchy has been frequently recognized and commented upon. Here, for instance, by a recent writer who favors the principle of a property qualification:

The reader now understands that there was no exaggeration in the statement heretofore made and repeated in this book that the government of this country is entirely in the hands of a political oligarchy. This being the case, what is the vote worth to a fair-minded independent American citizen, living in New York, Chicago or Boston, or in any one of the hundreds of cities in the land? What is the actual value to the unpropertied American of the yearly privilege of voting, which the twaddlers and the politicians keep saying is “inestimable”? Absolutely nothing except for purposes of sale to the politicians. This statement may be sweeping, but it is true. The boasted gift of the ballot has become a mockery to every honest man by being made the mere vehicle or form by which are registered the decrees and appointments of venal and corrupt political cliques. The only remedy lies in the destruction of the oligarchy of politicians, and of this there is no hope or prospect while the system of manhood suffrage continues to produce the controllable vote.

In other words, it is practically impossible to bring the rabble element to take an active part in good government. There is no possible organization of these corrupt groups save on the basis of corrupt leadership. Bryce made a study of the subject and devotes several pages to it (American Commonwealth, chap. cxviii), and although always optimistic, he is not able to point to any genuine source of relief. The “machine,” he says, “will not be reformed from within; it must be assailed from without.” His hopes for future relief are based on Civil Service reform, the secret ballot, and time. To rely on time is childish. Civil Service reform, if pushed to extremes, will give us a bureaucracy, such as has afflicted Germany and Russia. The secret ballot was the hope of political dreamers who imagined the rabble as possessed of hidden springs of knowledge and virtue; as secretly devoted to causes and leaders they never even heard of and never want to hear of. In the same chapter Bryce admits the possibility of future “strife and danger,” and closes it by speaking of “a hope that is stronger than anxiety.” This devil-may-care attitude may be appropriate to a foreigner, but no American worth his salt is willing to sit down in the face of such threatened danger and wait for time and chance to save the country. Those who will not make a move to save themselves are not worth saving. The Fortnightly Review recently says, in explanation of Bolshevism in Russia, that “the dregs of society have come to the surface, as they will anywhere when the ordered fabric of civilization built up on respect for law and personal rights is broken up.” But this is precisely what they are constantly invited to do by manhood suffrage. If it is not an invitation to the dregs to come to the surface, what is it? If they are in power it is because we have been silly enough to open the door. Today they are organized for party plunder; tomorrow they may combine to loot the country.