It is expressing oneself very mildly to say that manhood suffrage produces inefficiency; rather one may say that inefficiency is of its very essence. Preparedness is a major essential of the management of our successful business enterprises, while unpreparedness is a characteristic feature of our government administration. To take a concrete and conceded instance. The Spanish war of 1898 found us totally unprepared for war; without guns, powder, artillery, transports or officers trained for high command. (Alger, Spanish-American War, p. 455.) Our troops in that war were not properly equipped, rationed or cared for. The cause, says Stickney, was “the wholesale fraud and corruption which then permeated the entire administrative force in Washington. That fraud and corruption still continue in full force.” In the New York Sun of February 7th, 1920, the leading editorial was on American want of preparedness. The writer said, “We are a people who will not practice preparedness. We did not prepare for war, we did not prepare for peace. We have never prepared for anything. But sooner or later the man that will not prepare must be damned.” This well-recognized want of foresight in national matters is not an American failing; it is entirely due to the manhood suffrage habit of voting into responsible positions men of intrigue and oratory instead of men of business. Says Reemelin, “There is not a bank, a factory, a store or a farm, which if managed on the basis of American government would not impoverish its owner.” (American Politics, 1881, p. 324.)

In every department of human activity, including government, the chief desideratum is efficiency. In the primary struggle for a bare existence, it is efficiency that wins. The first and principal enemy of man is Nature; her wildness and inclemency must first be overcome, and food, shelter and clothing be forced from her bosom at the price of an endless and ceaseless vigilance. As human society grows older the efficiency which comes of systematic training becomes more essential to its maintenance. People may doubt whether the world improves or whether human existence becomes more precious and enjoyable with the passing of time, but no one can doubt that life is growing more complicated every year. The increase of population, the achievements of invention, the growth of knowledge of our environment, and the cultivation of new tastes and desires have all tended and are tending with accumulated force to make life more difficult for the uninstructed and to increase the necessity for scientific thinking and acting in dealing with new problems. As stated by Mr. Lowell the specialization of occupations is brought about by complexity of civilization, growth of accurate knowledge, progress of invention and the keenness of competition. A few years ago a private citizen could take up a new business without prior preparation; he can no longer safely do so. The use of experts is increasing in business concerns and industrial enterprises. Universities are erecting new specialized departments. Sixty years ago there was scarcely a school of engineers in the country; to-day there are many of them. The inexorable rule of the tendency of the fittest to survive is still an active force in the world, and the recent struggle with Germany gave terrible warning that efficiency is more than ever the price of existence.

Next to the struggle with wild Nature comes the contest with human disorder and the necessity for government, in order that men may best secure and enjoy the spoils and fruits achieved from Nature; and again efficiency is the essential quality. We hear much these days about moral force; but there is no force but material force; what is usually meant by moral force is the influence of moral ideas directing action, for without efficient action, moral ideas will be fruitless. They will not make crops grow nor cause a machine to operate, nor check the deadly velocity of a volley of musketry, nor save a sinking ship, nor check a conflagration; moral force will not win a battle, a campaign or a war, nor save a nation. Combe in his Constitution of Man, long ago pointed out that a pirate in a good sea-going ship was safer than a missionary in an unseaworthy one. Moral ideas may serve to give action a right direction; but training and force are necessary to make it effective; without training in action and a proper supply of material force, the moral ideas will never be manifested at all to our senses, and therefore efficiency in action is the final object of all practical teaching, and the true test of good government. Governmental efficiency means good order; wise legislation; foresight in public affairs; the proper selection of work to be done; the doing it well and expeditiously; speedy and impartial justice; good home administration generally and wisdom and firmness in foreign relations. It is difficult to see how a government which is efficient can be bad, or one which is inefficient can be good. In fact, efficiency makes more for human happiness than any other governmental quality. The ultimate object of the creation of the Federal Union was to secure increased efficiency in government. The old Confederation had been inefficient and was justly condemned and abolished; and the present Federal government was therefore established with powers as stated in the Constitution to levy and carry on war, to control and promote commerce, to establish and sustain postal facilities and a national coinage and to secure peace with foreign nations; all of which purposes might be included in the phrase “national efficiency.”

In an address delivered at Chicago, January 12th, 1918, by Otto H. Kahn, a patriotic and far-sighted New York business man familiar with German methods, he truly said:

He is right, and it is a well-recognized fact that German efficiency in the late war enabled her to make head for over three years against the most powerful combination of modern times.

Consider the vast importance of the work of our own Congress and of our state legislatures. Think of what is committed to the charge of these bodies; reflect for a moment on the importance of our state affairs; our harbors, canals, railroads, highways, schools, colleges, courts of justice, penal and charitable institutions, public utilities, all the manifold commercial, political and criminal legislation of the State; and then glance at the immense fields of Congressional authority: the power of declaring war and making treaties; the maintenance and support of the army and navy; foreign affairs, tariffs; interstate railroads; the post-office; the federal courts of justice. The human mind is appalled at the magnitude of the task of properly governing the enormous population and of safeguarding the immense wealth and interests of the United States. The future political existence of the country and its status as a nation may and very probably will depend on the capacity and ability of its legislators and administrators. Yet but few voters realize the necessity of business experience and of technical knowledge to members of the state or national legislatures. It is not sufficiently considered that by far the greater part of legislative work is made up of strictly business matters requiring special knowledge. Take for instance one item of Federal legislation, namely, that relating to the administration of 200,000 square miles of timbered land owned by the United States government—an area equal to France—where the people dwelling or operating in the lower regions derive their water from wooded uplands: and also relating to another area of 100,000,000 acres or 150,000 square miles containing petroleum, coal and other minerals. In these two tracts “The government will henceforth be selling standing timber to lumbermen, water power for electrical transmission, water for irrigation rights, and oil, coal, and mineral privileges, on an ever-increasing scale of magnitude; while it will rent grazing lands equal in extent to the greater part of the country east of the Mississippi River.” (Shaw on Political Problems, p. 114.)

This case is not exceptional in Congress as may be seen by the following list, which includes all the important general Federal legislation for the year 1917, which happens to be the latest at hand:

These measures are all of general effect and all require expert knowledge. It appears from a mere reading of the list that they are such as to presume and require in the legislators a knowledge of finance; taxation; shipping; food production; transportation; insurance; and other subjects.

New York state legislation for 1917 dealt with the following subjects, all or nearly all relating to business matters: Court officers and judicial procedure; decedents’ estates; domestic relations, including marriage and illegitimacy laws; penal and criminal statutes; civil service laws; state accounting and budget; state police; municipal government regulations; sales act; warehouse receipt act; partnership; cold-storage; negotiable instruments; extradition; land registration; probate of wills; highways and motor vehicles; dog licenses; railroad crossing protection; commercial regulations relating to trading stamps; patent medicines; food products; blue sky law; insurance laws; corporations; regulation of public utilities; conservation of resources; taxation laws; the care of the insane; building regulations; banking; education; public health; liquor dealing and labor laws. This list is not at all exceptional and the public need of trained and informed men in government service is more apparent every day.

Now, when manhood suffrage was established here as an institution; when, as the twaddlers like to say, the people took command, it became the privilege and the duty of the ruling populace to establish and enforce proper standards of qualification for its representatives and agents. Its orators professed that they were going to show the world great results of popular government. The wretched practical results we know. But what efforts did they make? What have they in fact done in three generations towards securing efficiency in their elective officers? Absolutely nothing. If any despot had ever shown such complete disregard of decency and propriety in his system of appointments as our manhood suffrage democracy has, he would be held up to public reprobation. Not only are and have been the state and national legislators and other elective officials commonplace or below commonplace in character and ability, but no effort whatever has been made or is being made; no scheme has been even proposed, whereby to secure men of efficiency for these important places in the gift of the people. The manhood suffrage electorates are reckless, unscrupulous and hopelessly behind the age; they never have recognized the growing need for efficiency. As Lowell says, “We are training men for all services but that of the public.”

In fact, the scheme of manhood suffrage makes no provision for efficiency, nor any serious pretence thereof; it ignores it completely in the selection of its agents and otherwise. Whatever efficiency may be secured in a democracy is obtained in some way other than by a manhood suffrage vote. The only test applied by the populace at an election is the oratorical test, and sometimes not even that. Its favorites at the polls are the talkers; by talk they become known; by talk they become candidates; by speeches they gain elections and by speeches they maintain their places. No one knows or cares whether they can do anything else but talk. No one ever heard of a candidate for an elective public office being required to produce proof of his equipment for the place. A candidate for alderman is not expected to have served an apprenticeship in any city department; nor to pass an examination in harbor facilities, sanitation, school management, public lighting, sewage, water supply, transportation nor any of the departments of city government. The candidate for mayor of New York is not required to know the contents of the Charter of the city. Congress is supposed to be the real governing body in this country, and would be such if it were not so scandalously incompetent and untrustworthy. But a man who can get by hook or crook on the machine ticket and can make what the rabble calls “a rattlin’ good speech” is qualified for a seat in Congress. Whoever heard of a candidate for Congress or a state legislature being required to know anything whatever about anything or to have ever done anything as a prerequisite to his candidacy? Such tests would be inconsistent with the very theory of manhood suffrage as now entertained. That standards will ultimately have to be applied even to elective offices if democracy is to prevail no far-seeing man can doubt. And there is nothing impracticable about the suggestion. Even now, in the states where judges are elective, custom requires that the candidate shall have previously passed an examination for admission to the bar. There is no reason whatever why all candidates for elective offices should not be required to be reasonably qualified for the offices they seek; nor why the electors themselves should not be such persons as are qualified to vote, and have proved their fitness for the ballot by the record of their lives in the community. But the essential quality of manhood suffrage is that it rejects all tests for voters, and so beginning at the very source of government its anti-efficient influence extends all along the line, and tends to neutralize every effort to elevate the standard of democratic administration. Its spirit is directly opposed to the demand for efficiency in governmental affairs. Efficiency is exclusive, it applies tests, and rejects those who fail. Beginning with the voter, manhood suffrage refuses to apply to him any tests whatever, and denies not only the policy of their application but the right to use them. It views the elective franchise as the personal belonging of the individual, even the most ignorant and degraded, to be used to justify his whim, his pleasure, his spite, his prejudice. The newspapers, unconsciously perhaps, voice this spirit. We constantly read in the public press urgent invitations to vote, addressed to the careless or indifferent in politics, those who presumably have no compelling opinions and are therefore quite unprepared and unfit to vote. Instead of being warned of the wrong and danger of frivolous and ignorant voting, they are urged by the newspapers to go to the polls as if to take part in an amateur baseball game: “Come, join in; even if you don’t do it well; it’s the national game! There are prizes too, the spoils; and though you don’t compete yourself you may have the fun of seeing them distributed, and root for the victors.” People are more careless in voting for high officials than in hiring an office boy. They vote for men whom they do not know even by sight; whose very names are unfamiliar; and are usually quite unashamed of trifling with the suffrage in a manner deserving punishment. This is one result of our cheapening of the franchise.

If the reader will peruse the list of measures passed or considered by Congress or his state legislature for the current year, he will perhaps be able to judge whether his representative in Washington or in the state capital is competent to deal with such matters. Not one in a hundred is fit for the job. For most of the subjects of legislation the average public representative has had no previous training whatever. And if after long service he happens to become proficient in any of them, the chances are that he will be sent back to private life by the vote of a manhood suffrage constituency under orders of the district boss. As a consequence it is well known that the legislative output is and has been for generations past very inferior indeed. The abuse of state legislation is dealt with elsewhere in this volume; it is so notorious that it needs no proof, and is so vast that its complete discussion is far beyond the compass of this work. The reader experienced in politics is probably well aware that Ostrogorski is right, in his brief summary (p. 374): “The laws are made with singular incompetence and carelessness. Their number is excessive, running into volumes each session; but they are mostly laws of local or private interest. The motives which enter into the making of these laws are often of an obviously mercenary nature.” (Democracy.)

Before the German war the state legislative output in the United States was about fifteen thousand enactments per year, of which about one-third were public or general laws and the remaining two-thirds special and local statutes. This year it is probably greater. In a recent single session of Congress upwards of twenty thousand bills and resolutions were introduced, of which about five thousand were passed, including nearly two thousand public or general laws. Probably nine-tenths of this legislation is unnecessary and a large part of it is undoubtedly vicious.

The just resentment of America’s business men is being constantly voiced at the manner in which business interests are being flouted by the doctrinaires and demagogues to whom our political system entrusts the reins of government. The following extracts from the address of Otto H. Kahn, before referred to, will serve to illustrate some phases of this attitude of business towards politics:

And further on:

This remonstrance of Mr. Kahn is but a sample which might be multiplied by the hundreds. It is typical of a constant stream of complaints which business men in all parts of the country are continually uttering. The universal testimony of our merchants, manufacturers and financiers is that neither at the federal or state capitols do they find men either capable of understanding the rules and operations of business or willing to study them, or interested in the business prosperity of the people. If the reader will but examine a list of members of any legislative body he will understand the cause of this deplorable situation. Let him study the names of the delegation at present representing in the state legislature the immense interests of the City of New York, her commerce, manufactures, wealth and population. She ought to be represented there by the class of honorable and successful active or retired merchants; financiers of high standing; manufacturers of note and ability and leaders in the professions; by publicists; scholars, and men of the first prominence in labor organizations; to be or to have been a member of a state legislature should be a badge of honor. On that list he will probably find not one name known outside the ranks of petty ward politicians; and men of the high character above described would feel it as a stigma to have it said that they had served in a legislative body.

Next, as to the judiciary. It is the property of evil to spread, and it is one of the curses of the manhood suffrage system, that not content with control of the legislature which is properly elective, it seizes upon and degrades the judicial and administrative branches of government which are both naturally appointive. Its effect upon the judicial bench has been necessarily bad, frequently covering the ermine with the mire of politics. During the period from 1865 to 1873 so many of the judges sitting in New York City were notoriously unfit and corrupt, that their doings furnished material for a great scandal. The state supreme court judges, elected by manhood suffrage, were the most conspicuous sinners, but many of the inferior judges, including those appointed by a manhood suffrage mayor, were equally unworthy. Bryce visited one of those courts, probably about 1870, and this is what he saw:

He further declares that at that time there were on the bench in New York City, bar room loafers, broken-down Tombs attorneys, needy adventurers, whose want of character made them absolutely dependent on their patrons. “They did not regard social censure, for they were already excluded from decent society. Impeachment had no terrors for them, since the state legislature, as well as the executive machinery of the city, was in the hands of their masters. It would have been vain to expect such people, without fear of God or man before their eyes, to resist the temptations which capitalists and powerful company could offer.” And further:

Although this extremely degraded judiciary has passed away, yet the whole story is as pertinent today as it ever was, for the vileness Bryce describes was the result of the operation of manhood suffrage in a large city; and the same causes are still in existence. In practice in the great cities the higher state judges are usually selected by the political bosses; and the election is often a mere form, or at most a contest between rival bosses in which the public takes but a languid and futile interest. When the boss is a rich man as often happens in a great city, he gets to know some able lawyers and sometimes makes fairly good selections for the higher judicial vacancies. This is far better than the populace would be likely to do if left to themselves. Another means of protection for judicial honor has been the influence of an educated bar, endeavoring to enforce the traditions of the past, and the examples of other civilized countries to the effect that judges should be exempt from political influence and bias. But when all is said and done it is largely a matter of luck even in the highest courts whether the judges are fit or otherwise. That the highest judges are still “bossed” is not a mere vulgar notion. How can they escape? In the election for judges of the highest New York courts in 1919, the charge that certain judicial candidates were “bossed” was publicly and persistently made by ex-judges and leading lawyers.

Of the California judges in 1877, Bryce says:

The most determined efforts of the lawyers of our great cities to make a manhood suffrage constituency understand a judicial election have been complete failures. It is sometimes amusing to see the straits to which lawyers and their intelligent friends are driven to keep the judiciary from degradation. In New York, for instance, where the judges are elected for fourteen-year terms, the lawyers hit upon the plan of demanding that sitting judges whose terms expire should always be renominated by the bosses, on pain of active opposition to the entire ticket, including their proposed successors. This really involved a violation of the spirit of the constitution, for it aimed at a life tenure for judges instead of the fourteen years fixed by that instrument, to which these lawyers had sworn allegiance. It further involved the absurdity of allowing the boss to select a judge, but never to drop him, no matter what his record; and it resulted that a candidate might be opposed by the bar the first time, but if elected would certainly be supported by them the next time without in either instance any real investigation of his record, character or attainments. All this absurdity has been and is committed by intelligent lawyers in their efforts to avoid the risk of manhood suffrage popular elections of high judges. The reader can judge from this how lively the fear of popular judicial elections must be in the hearts of the lawyers of the city of New York.

There is of course something repulsive in the very thought of a judge of a high court being selected in an election contest, and of his owing his place to the suffrages of a low populace. And then, there is the practical objection to an elective judiciary, that a judge’s qualities are special and such as can only be ascertained upon personal acquaintance and by men of superior attainments. The office is properly an appointive one, but with manhood suffrage in play, some of the worst selections for the bench have been made by state governors, in order to reward followers or venal newspapers. There is really no remedy and no way of taking the judiciary out of politics while either the judge himself or the appointing power is created by manhood suffrage. The trail of the serpent is over everything that comes from that quarter. As for the lower courts, the selections of their judges have been scandalous; men have been put on the bench who were ignorant of the first principles of law; drunkards, reckless politicians, ignorant, dishonest, uncouth, unmannerly specimens who have sought judicial office because they had no taste for hard work, or because their ignorance or habits were such that they were unable to earn an honest living at the bar. Some of them are notoriously owned by politicians. Senator Breen says that “After being whispered about among a coterie of closest friends it becomes well-known that this particular politician owns a certain judge and can get him to do anything.... The miserable creature who is robed in judicial honors reposes in perfect ignorance of the ignominy which his acts of dishonor are bringing on his name. This has been the fate of many a judge.” (Thirty Years in New York Politics, p. 25.) A New York newspaper in the Tweed days said that there was no quarter of the civilized world where the name of a New York judge is not a hissing and a byword. The New York bench has on the whole improved since 1871 when this was written; but it is very far from being what it ought to be, and its attainment of a high standard is impossible under manhood suffrage.

Taking the judicial system of the United States as a whole for the last three quarters of a century it must be said that the administration of justice has been inefficient; a large percentage of the judges have been and are unfit for their places; clerks and sheriffs corrupt and incapable; there have been chronic and intolerable delays; juries almost everywhere carelessly selected, and usually incompetent and morally weak or dishonest; inferior magistrates corrupt and unfit; many of the trial judges weak and slow and referees and masters grasping and extortionate. Congress and the several states have adopted the stupid policy of underpaying the bench, apparently on the theory that any lawyer is capable of being a judge; and of employing as few judges as possible in order to save some of the money elsewhere so wickedly squandered. These foolish economies to offset reckless waste are characteristic of the lower classes; they are given effect by universal suffrage, and harmonize with the whole inefficient outfit. The result is that in many cities important cases are on the trial calendars for months and even years waiting to be heard because there are not judges enough to hear them promptly; erroneous decisions of weak and ignorant judges keep the appellate courts busy ordering reversals and granting new trials; and a controversy that ought to be disposed of in a few months may drag along for years and until some of the witnesses have disappeared or died and others have forgotten all they once knew about the case. Mr. Bryce, in his American Commonwealth, treats the subject of the judiciary with great circumspection, and with an evident desire to speak well of the American bench, but is unable after “careful inquiries” to answer even in the matter of honesty for more than “nearly all the northern and most of the southern and western states.” He says that “In a few states, probably six or seven in all, suspicions have at one time or another within the last twenty years attached to one or more of the Supreme judges,” and has “never heard of a state in which more than two or three judges were the objects of distrust at the same time.” It is worth while to stop to realize what this amounts to: from twelve to twenty dishonest judges of the highest state courts in the United States, actually sitting day after day, dealing out infamy under the name of justice; criminals put on the bench by the election machinery; a judiciary in six or seven states so tainted that the foul smell reached the nostrils of a visitor from other lands. This state of things makes one suspect a low standard for the entire judiciary, or at least for that of each of those six or seven suspected states, for it indicates the unscrupulous power of politics. In a state where even two or three judges sell or barter justice for politics, who will not suspect that others, promoted by the same bosses, or by the same system, are incompetent, careless or otherwise unfit?

The third class of public officers, being that which is generally styled administrative, ought not, any more than the judiciary, to be affected by politics and should therefore never be chosen by popular election. The function of the legislator is to enact new measures in accordance with the progressive needs of the people, and he should therefore to a certain extent consult their wishes in framing legislation. But the administrative official is there to obey and to enforce the law as it exists; his duty is merely that of an honest, painstaking expert, and his office should be appointive and should never be treated as political. This distinction between legislative and administrative officials is plain and wide to the vision of any man with the least knowledge of government; and yet in preparing the constitutions and laws with which they deign to provide us, it is frequently ignored by politicians in pursuit of political power and patronage; the pretense being the furtherance of democratic institutions and the rule of the people. And so in the great state of New York the attorney general, the state engineer and surveyor, the secretary of state and the state treasurer have been made and are elective officials; and since female suffrage has been established in that state we have the edifying spectacle of those important offices being filled and their incumbents chosen, not by the governor of the state, nor by any body of experienced lawyers, engineers, business men or others somewhat acquainted with the workings of the respective offices and candidates, but by four millions of miscellaneous people; including motormen, hod carriers, servant maids, seamstresses, society ladies, firemen, boiler makers, farm laborers, gamblers, loafers, etc., of whom ninety-nine out of a hundred have no idea what an attorney general or a state engineer is, nor what are the duties of any of these officials, and would be unable the day after election even to name the candidates for whom they voted for those offices. In fact the gross ineptitude of the institution of manhood suffrage is nowhere more strikingly apparent than in the election of state officers in the Empire State.

Nowhere in private life is the principle of popular election applied to the choice of administrators or managers; such folly is confined to public affairs. The merchant service and the army and navy are not conducted upon the principle of universal suffrage; neither the crew nor the passengers, nor both united, are permitted to select the officers of a ship; nor are the rank and file permitted to vote for their officers in any navy, or in any well-disciplined army. The sick man does not choose his physician, nor the business man his lawyer or broker by taking the votes of his neighbors or friends. In all these instances, and in every similar case of necessary care in making a choice of an agent, the prerequisite which is insisted upon as first indispensable and controlling is efficiency; and such efficiency can only be obtained by intelligent selection. Administrative officials should always be possessed of character, experience, intelligence and other qualities which go to produce efficiency. Such possessions can only be recognized by those who are personally acquainted with the candidates and are competent to pass upon these qualities. Their selection should preferably be made by those who are to supervise their conduct in office, and to keep them up to the standard required. An appointing body is able to consider all the candidates who present themselves or whose friends present them; the electorate can only consider two or three to any advantage. The appointing body can examine personally all the candidates; the voters are incapable of properly examining any, and have neither the means nor the leisure for the careful scrutiny needed to estimate professional or expert qualifications. All administrative officers should therefore be placed in office by appointment of their superiors or supervisors who are to be held responsible for their conduct in office, and never by popular election at the polls. Of course, the politicians may reply, though they are not likely to do so, that the election of these state officers is a sham; that they are usually far from being the nondescripts whom the populace might choose if left unbossed; that they are really selected in secret long before election, by a political autocracy, which taking advantage of the ignorance and indifference of the mass of voters, sees to it that the powers and patronage of these offices go in the direction of selected favorites of the machine, not destitute of ability. This is at least partly true, for the tendency of manhood suffrage is to turn the elections into mere formal ratifications of the will of the bosses. And a machine appointment to an administrative office usually results much better for the public interest than a choice by manhood suffrage, especially where there are spoils in sight and where rival organizations sharpen their claws, as for instance in a mayoralty contest in a large city. Then ensues a real struggle, heightened by newspaper lies and clamor, with a tendency to give the victory to that one of the factions whose managers are most artful, impudent and mendacious. In the American Popular Science Review, February, 1918, p. 121, Edgar Dawson, speaking of the election of a city mayor, an office which under any rational system is treated as administrative, says:

“Does it require argument to prove to thoughtful people that wise choice is not likely to be made in the midst of the revel of hysteria, sham, demagogy, falsehood and ignorance, which we call a direct popular election of administrative officers? Is choice likely to be wise when nine out of ten of those who make it know nothing of the candidates they support or oppose, and are equally ignorant of the work the candidates ask the privilege of doing?”