The apologists for our present unsatisfactory political system point to this universal democratic tendency to mediocrity as a reason for acquiescing in the present evil condition which they say is an incident of democracy everywhere, deplorable but unavoidable. This is a mistaken attitude. In adopting the democratic rÉgime we have not bargained to perpetuate its errors; it is our business to correct and abolish them. Having observed the democratic tendency to produce inferiority in public life it is for us to be specially careful to adopt measures to avoid that danger. It is plainly due to inferiority in the voting mass and the obvious remedy is to elevate the character of the electorate. The inferior product referred to by Faguet and others is that of a democracy of mere numbers, where there is failure to give proper effect to natural civilizing influences. On the other hand, in the administration for example of the great cities of Europe where property is represented and character and reputation are taken into account, the operation of the democratic system is comparatively satisfactory.

America is not lacking in men competent for public life. The field of choice is large and the material is there. A member of Congress represents a constituency of about 300,000, or say 60,000 male voters. The average state legislator may represent a constituency of 50,000 or say ten thousand male voters. The ablest man in the district of 50,000 people or among say ten thousand men is apt to be a superior man; the ablest man of the 60,000 men in a congressional district must be a very superior man indeed. Such are the types of men who ought to be in the legislature and in Congress and who under a proper system would be found there; a type far superior to that which manhood suffrage has actually produced for us after ninety odd progressive years; progressive in everything else except the quality of our government. Comparisons are odious, and it would not be permissible, even if physically possible in a work like this, to discuss severally by name the four hundred actual members of Congress, still less the ten thousand actual members of our State Legislatures, or any part of them. But it must be admitted that those occupying these places are not as a rule first-class men; they do not even measure up to second-class; some of them are very far down on the list indeed. Recently when engaged in the most severe struggle of its history, the nation found that its best and ablest men were in private life; and not only had there been no demand for them to permanently enter public service, but its business had been committed to the care of small, needy politicians, political adventurers, men without political experience or training, who had been sent to the state or national capitol as a reward for cheap political work, or for money contributions, or for subserviency to the political boss or the machine. Such are the fruits of manhood suffrage in the most enlightened country in the world.

M. de Tocqueville, a distinguished Frenchman, who visited this country in 1831, ten years after manhood suffrage had been widely established, was struck by the vulgar aspect of the men whom he found in the House of Representatives at Washington. He said: “They are for the most part village lawyers, dealers or even men belonging to the lowest classes.” No one would have said that of the Continental Congress nor of any Congress before Jackson’s time.

The very latest observers give similar testimony. Mr. Godkin notes the disappearance from Congress and from public life of the class of statesmen and great political leaders of former days, such as Webster, Clay, Calhoun, Silas Wright, Marcy and Seward, and ascribes it to the political bosses who will tolerate no independence. Mr. Bryce says:

And again:

Writing of Congress in 1907 Professor Commons says:

Professor Commons does not further attempt an answer to his own question, but it is not difficult to find one. When an inferior choice is made, the fault is always with the chooser. Congress is inferior because the electorate is inferior, and because the manhood suffrage machine insists on mediocrity and slavishness in Congress and everywhere else and has lowered the political spirit of the nation. Writing about 1899 Professor Hyslop of Columbia University, New York, says:

This deterioration is observable in our public men generally.

As late as the present year, 1919, Brooks Adams, in one of his writings, refers to the undoubtable deterioration of the standard of our public men as compared with the time of his grandfather, John Quincy Adams. Ostrogorski writes that:

Professor Reinsch alludes to this moral degradation in striking language. Referring to the bosses, he says:

Next, John Stuart Mill, a champion of democracy:

J. Bleecker Miller of New York writes:

Let us give a moment’s special attention to our state legislatures. There manhood suffrage has a chance to do its best. Both houses are elected usually by manhood or universal suffrage. What do we find? It is notorious that the reputation of the membership in most of them is so bad that reputable and able men absolutely refuse to serve. It is also notorious that every meeting of a state legislature is anticipated with alarm and anxiety by the industrial and business classes. Their well founded fear is of some piece of narrow or blundering legislation in the interest of some class, or which will be inimical to some industry or business, either in the way of restriction, taxation or other unfairness. The chronic degradation of these bodies is evidenced by the ever increasing limitations upon them in the state constitutions. It is a matter of public belief that three-quarters of our state legislation is useless, and that a considerable proportion of it is injurious; that many of the members spend a large part of their time planning for the promotion of their personal interests, or for procuring places for themselves or their supporters. And yet in this case the facts probably surpass the rumors. The public hardly realizes the infamous character of much of our state legislation. It is a frequent practice of legislators to introduce bills injuriously affecting corporations for the mere purpose of blackmail. The corporation is expected to pay tribute in the shape of cash bribes to the members of the committee having the bill in charge; and sometimes to other members or to the boss to prevent this legislation. On such payment being made the proposed measure is in one way or another defeated or allowed to lapse. Such extortions are variously called “hold-ups,” “strikes,” “sandbaggers,” “fetchers,” or “old friends,” “bell-ringers” and “regulators.” During a legislative investigation into insurance scandals in 1906 a president of one of the insurance companies declared that eighty-five per cent of all legislative bills were hold-up measures. A great part of the session is sometimes occupied in manoeuvring these scandalous bills. Enormous sums of money must be obtained either by legislators or bosses by such means; and all sorts of methods, including that of a friendly game of poker are used in these transactions in the transfer of the cash, some of which no doubt is ultimately used to influence elections, thus completing the vicious circle.

The following is from a recognized authority:

In an article on “Phases of State Legislation,” Theodore Roosevelt stated that about one-third of the members of the New York Legislature wherein he sat were corrupt or open to corrupt influences. He had been a member of that legislature three times and in his American Ideals (1897) he gives some account of his experiences there. While careful not to attack manhood suffrage, he pictures these legislative bodies as very inferior and corrupt assemblies whose best men were commonplace and narrow-minded; whose worst men were venal, ignorant and semi-barbarous. The best he could say was that among its one hundred and fifty members, “there were many very good men”; but he added “that there is much viciousness and political dishonesty, much moral cowardice and a good deal of actual bribe taking in Albany, no one who has had any practical experience in legislation can doubt.” After a careful examination, he and some fellow members learned “that about one-third of the members were open to corrupt influences in some form or other.” (Pp. 64-68.) He mentions four other states which are equally as badly off in the character of their legislators, if not worse. Mr. Godkin writing on the subject says:

The same writer states that the more intelligent class have withdrawn from legislative duties; that it is increasingly difficult to get able men to go to Congress, and almost impossible to get them to consent to go to the state legislature. He might have added that it would be impossible for them to get the favor of the parties or the machines so as to be elected. He describes a great part of the actual legislation as absolutely absurd. He tells of the vicious practice of log-rolling, that is, the exchange between individual members of Congress and of the legislature of support of one bad measure in return for the support of another equally bad. He tells how inferior and shiftless men are sent to the legislature in order that they may get the salary to help them through the winter. He complains of the immense legislative output which in these days is about twenty thousand new laws each year. He describes how corporations are at the mercy of state bosses who manipulate the legislature, and therefore have it in their power to raise their taxes, or in the case of gas or railroad companies to lower their charges or to cause annoying and harassing investigations of their affairs. To avoid this oppression the corporations are, of course, ready to pay blackmail in the shape of campaign contributions to the bosses, some part of which probably remains in the pockets of the boss, but a large part of which goes into a fund to purchase and control the lower classes of voters. As a result large corporations are in the habit of employing an agent to remain at the state capitol during the session, so as to be on hand to forestall these schemes by paying in advance. From another writer:

This is from Professor Lecky:

In 1910 in a speech in Chicago Roosevelt said of the Illinois Legislature, referring to recent disclosures, that it “was guilty of the foulest and basest corruption.” (New Nationalism, p. 111.)

Referring to the Gas Ring misgovernment in Philadelphia in and prior to 1870, Bryce says:

Bryce describes the condition of the California state government in 1877:

And later, writing in 1894, he says there is no improvement in that State. (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, pp. 430 and 441.) No wonder that by its state constitution California has felt itself obliged to disable its legislature by prohibiting to it thirty-three different classes of state legislation.

Professor John R. Commons of the University of Wisconsin, writing in 1907, quotes the San Francisco Bulletin as saying:

The author himself says:

The same malign control by bosses and rings heretofore so often referred to is directly responsible for this sad condition of affairs.

Professor Reinsch in his work hereinbefore referred to (American Legislatures) gives an extended account of the means and methods of legislative bribery through the lobby, resulting in “commercial governments” and a situation where “any business man can get what he wants at a reasonable price.” He describes the “boss” as the fruit and flower of the system, his absolute authority, his endless tenure of power, and the degrading influence of the machine. The reader will find in this work much of interest on the subject of corrupt state legislation which cannot be reproduced here.

The legislative evil record still continues to be made. The tree and the fruit are the same year after year. In the session of 1919 forty-six bills affecting New York City which passed both houses of the New York Legislature were so flagrantly bad as to require and receive vetoes. The Citizens Union of New York reported that twenty-eight additional noxious city bills actually became laws. Allowing an equal grist for the rest of the state and we have a total of one hundred and forty-eight mischievous measures which passed both houses in one session. Of the work of this very recent session of the New York Legislature, the New York Evening Post, a very respectable paper, says (August 11, 1919),

Charges against congressmen and state legislators of accepting bribes have been frequently made, and instances are given in this book of public exposures in consequence. Some years ago the writer was informed by a leading politician that the truth far exceeded public rumor, and his information elsewhere obtained leads him to believe that this offense has been common. Bryce says in substance that bribery in Congress is confined to say five per cent of the whole number; that it is more common in the legislatures of a few states; that it is rare among the chief state officials and state judges; that the influence of other considerations than money prevails among legislators to a somewhat larger extent; that one may roughly conjecture that from fifteen to twenty per cent of the members of Congress, or of an average state legislature, could thus be reached, and that the jobbery or misuse of a public position for the benefit of individuals is common in large cities. That is to say, about twenty members of each Congress are for sale for cash, and from sixty to eighty can be bought for “other considerations.” According to Bryce, and he is probably very conservative, one can calculate that about one thousand, all told, members of Congress and the various state legislatures sitting at one time are absolutely corrupt. (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 164.) Looking through the pages of Bryce’s great work, one meets casual references to noted instances of such improprieties; as for instance, secret influences brought to bear upon legislatures in reference to the Granger laws; improper relations between railroads and legislators, amounting to secret control of the legislatures by the railroads, and to blackmailing of the railroads by the legislatures; thus requiring the presence of adroit railway agents at the state capitals, well supplied with money, to defeat legislative attacks made by blackmailers, or the tools of rival roads. (American Commonwealth, Chap. CIII.)

And in the same article it is stated that “State Legislatures are less subject to bribery than are City Councils, but here also the cases of proven or confessed bribery are numerous.”

It is difficult to imagine what can be said by the defenders of manhood suffrage in reply to these charges and proofs. The witnesses are mostly Americans, friends of democracy, men of trained minds and high standing, speaking from observation and common report. Look again at the array of names: James Bryce; Theodore Roosevelt; John Stuart Mill; Professor Garner; M. Faguet; E. L. Godkin; Professor Commons; Professor Hyslop; Ostrogorski; Lecky; Professor Reinsch; Albert Shaw; J. Bleecker Miller; M. de Tocqueville; Reemelin; Brooks Adams; New York Evening Post; Appleton’s Cyclopedia; San Francisco Bulletin; American Political Science Review; no one can impeach such testimony. It covers the whole period under survey. These witnesses charge that the present system of election of legislators by manhood suffrage in the two most enlightened countries where practised, namely, France and the United States, has produced inferior legislators; that the tendency to widen the suffrage has everywhere brought about like results; that the quality of the membership of the United States Congress has strikingly deteriorated under the manhood suffrage rÉgime, while the state legislatures composed of still inferior men have actually become infested by blackmailers and the like; that the legislature of New York is like a school of vice, while that of California is vile, an assemblage of bandits; that the others are similarly corrupt; their members being the tools of political machines, and that highly cultivated men therefore refuse to accept seats in these bodies. A great part of what they thus assert is within the knowledge or reach of knowledge of most of us. Is the American reader of these lines willing to continue to tolerate longer this atrocious system? Whether he believes in a property qualification for voters or not, the writer calls upon him to resolve that this present foul system be forever destroyed, and be replaced by something which an American can think of without rage and shame.