A good test of the character of a man or an institution is public reputation; let us apply that test in this case. Manhood suffrage, its methods, its politics, and its officialdom are generally not merely distrusted, but scorned, held in utter contempt and openly repudiated by the most intelligent classes of Americans. With the exception of a few among them who consider it their bounden duty to do civic missionary work, those classes take no active part in politics; many of them do not even vote, others only vote for president, entirely disregarding state and local elections; most of them totally neglect the primaries; many of them do not even know the names of their representatives in Congress. As for the obscure politicians who sit in the city and state legislatures they are absolutely beneath the social or political vision of most of our well-to-do and well-educated people. No really worldly wise American father recommends his son to enter public life; its snares and dangers and the lack of esteem in which public officials are held are too well known. Of course to many ambitious and inexperienced young men there is much temptation in a political career. The prospect of addressing political meetings, of being called “Senator” or “Judge,” of receiving mail addressed “Hon.,” of dealing with public measures, and of figuring in the newspapers, is alluring to many a young college graduate; while poor young lawyers are often tempted to struggle for public office by the salary attached thereto. They find later that the reward of politics is Dead Sea fruit that turns to ashes on the lips; even the successful ones are usually disappointed; the pay is small; it is part of the manhood suffrage meanness to court the applause of the low-waged rabble or the no-wage loafers by keeping down official salaries; the incidental expenses are many and annoying, including small loans to hangers on and other petty exactions; to get money out of politics it is necessary to be crafty and more or less dishonest. The young adventurer is disappointed in his aspirations for glory; the newspaper notices are few and frequently uncomplimentary; he finds that the platform at public meetings is usually reserved either for a notoriety of some sort or a blatherskite; and instead of enjoying public respect he encounters a pushing familiarity, which is most offensive even when it comes disguised as flattery from obsequious job hunters. Probably no business or profession has been in such disrepute, or has offered so much that is mean, sordid and repulsive to a noble nature, as has politics since manhood suffrage was ordained in this country.

Under the property qualification rÉgime young politicians had the inspiration of great and highly respected leaders, and the incentive of a prospect of ultimately filling their places. Among such leaders in New York in the first quarter of the nineteenth century were Alexander Hamilton; John Jay; James Kent; De Witt Clinton; John Lansing; Rufus King; Gouverneur Morris; Robert R. Livingston; Brockholst Livingston; William W. Van Ness; Daniel D. Tompkins; Nicholas Fish; Erastus Root; John C. Spencer and William L. Marcy; fifteen distinguished names; a number proportionately according to population equivalent to one hundred and fifty at the present time. Each of them was eminent in something; most of them in several things; and all are still illustrious in the annals of the state. Some of their political acts are open to criticism, but they were all men of superior mentality, for the old system put the best brains we had into politics, while the present system inevitably puts into public place the cheapest and poorest, so that we are now, as Bagehot says, “deprived of the tangible benefits we derive from the application to politics of thoroughly cultivated minds.”

The present public attitude towards officialdom not only indicates a steady consciousness of its inferiority, but a disbelief in its honesty and a plain distrust of its intentions. By many persons, officialdom and the people are supposed to be engaged in chronic warfare, and office holders as soon as chosen are assumed to be potential rascals; so that it becomes the presumptive duty of every patriotic organization and of every public-spirited citizen to watch their every movement and to sound the alarm at each of their expected attacks on the rights of the people. Eternal vigilance is popularly urged as the only means of security against the misconduct or calamitous blundering of the office-holding politicians. Nor is this attitude confined to the upper classes. Politicians are fond of pretending affection for the working people and that the manhood suffrage was a gift especially to that class. But none more than the wage earners mistrust politicians; they are the first to suspect official misconduct, and the most outspoken in its denunciation. Listen to their comments when a public question comes up in which they are concerned. They are not then heard to say that their interests are safe in the hands of the good officials chosen by the people; they are more apt to complain of improper influence, “frame-ups,” bribery actually suspected or expected, “playing politics” and the like. Many of them in despair of democracy have become socialists, and find in the rascality and inefficiency of the manhood suffrage government of the day ample material for argument. The remainder unable to see any possibility of a remedy usually assume an attitude of resignation, evincing a desire to profit by whatever little pickings may be had from the political feasts of the more fortunate. The attitude of the intelligent middle classes is more frankly hostile and aggressive than that of the wage earners; it does not, unfortunately, take the shape of a demand for a higher basis for suffrage, but of a persistent opposition to the characteristic operations of manhood suffrage government, such as appropriation of the spoils, and to its various political expedients to please the rabble or bamboozle the public. It is practically assumed by the middle class citizen, that officialdom is inimical to the public welfare; and, especially in the great cities, there is a steady and outspoken demand for a remedy for the present notorious misgovernment; that something be done to protect Society against its enemies, the politicians in and out of office.

This feeling of American distrust of our own public servants is frequently apparent in legislation enacted as a result of agitation following one of the numerous revelations of official misconduct. Thus, in some cities the police power has been taken entirely out of the hands of the local authorities and lodged in the government of the state. One reform city charter of St. Louis provided that the mayor elected for four years could not remove any official till his own third year in office. These and many similar statutes are in effect formal assertions of the complete breakdown of manhood suffrage; that the elected municipal officials cannot be trusted either to police the city or to remove or appoint subordinate officers. The mayor under such a system has to manage the best he can with deputies over whom he has little or no control. It seems as if political imbecility could go no farther than to create a system under which the mayor of the city is certain to be untrustworthy and must therefore be deprived of power to control his subordinates. And yet no doubt these provisions were but the recognition of the desperate situation of a manhood suffrage municipality. In one of the instances just referred to the object of the city charter seems to have been to vary the misery; two years chaos and two years ring-rule, turnabout.

This feeling of despondent suspicion is constantly being voiced by the middle-class newspapers and by groups of prominent citizens, by committees of fifty, of one hundred, etc., in circular appeals distributed by the ten thousand to all men of any standing in the community, urging them to “fight” as it is called, day and night, to save the town, city, county, state and nation from disaster. A stranger reading one of these urgent calls would naturally ask with curiosity for the names of the enemies to be thus attacked; are they Huns, Bolsheviki, hoodlums, gunmen, rioters or what? The grotesquely pathetic answer is that they are all our neighbors, our fellow citizens, nay, our “Honorable” fellow citizens; elected by ourselves by large majorities last year, last month, or yesterday perhaps, or appointed by men whom we have ourselves recently elected; they are his honor the mayor; honorable members of the city or state legislature; of boards of supervisors; of Congress; of this and that public commission; of the state governments; officials of every class, both elective and appointed, county, city, state, and federal. It is not against hostile outsiders or natural adversaries, but against our own manhood suffrage officials that we have to “fight”; it is these officials and their associates, agents, and party superiors or “bosses” who we are told by press and pulpit, in newspaper, book and magazine, in private conversation and in public address, and above all at the meetings of independent citizens and reformers, are the actual or potential enemies, furtive or open, conscious or unconscious, of good government, of our pocket-books, our health, our comfort, and our lives. We are urgently reminded that our manhood suffrage government is by no means to be trusted; that the only hope of tolerable government is to arouse every good citizen to an attitude and a habit of constant distrust of our chosen representatives and rulers and to regard them with sleepless jealousy and suspicion. It is not enough to vote; you must attend primaries; nay more, you must anticipate the primaries and plan to elect certain primary candidates and to defeat others; even when your own men are chosen, you cannot safely trust them; you must doubt every member of Congress, every legislator and every official, including those just seated by your own vote; you must suspect every new proposal, every legislative bill, every municipal ordinance; a good citizen will watch them all; he will at private expense procure advance copies of all of them; he will if he can employ a lawyer to study them; he will join all kinds of political organizations and attend all their meetings, and will use constant vigilance to see that these organizations are not “captured” or purchased by the politicians, and that he himself is not captured without suspecting it, so wily are these political experts and so cunning and numerous are the snares and temptations of political life. Nor is even this all; he must work up and join deputations to the sessions of the municipal administration and to those of the town and county authorities, to the state capitol, to Washington; he must write to the newspapers, he and others must at times bombard Congress and the state legislature and their committees with letters and telegrams. In short the system is this: you select the incapable and worthless for office and then wear your soul out in efforts to keep them from blundering and plundering. Common sense would suggest the selection in the first place of men who could be trusted; and if the method of selection failed, to replace it by a better one; but this cannot be done; manhood suffrage though rotten is sacred, and those who have the patience and courage continue their endeavors to make a marble temple of justice out of a mud electorate.

This widespread attitude of suspicion and resentment toward public officials, originally private and individual, has of late years become open, formal and public through the systematic activities of clubs and associations of supposedly disinterested and public-spirited citizens principally located in large cities; non-partisan in character, and organized for the purpose of preventing or undoing the more flagrant of the illegal, immoral and improper operations of state and local governments. In plain words, just as we have detectives to watch thieves, so we have voluntary associations to watch public officials. This sounds queer, but it is true. And these societies founded on contempt and distrust of officialdom are not made up of eccentrics; they include some of the most intelligent men in their respective communities; they are kept busily employed a large part of every year; and are sustained by the best public opinion in their open opposition to the measures proposed by the manhood suffrage officials, and in their frequent active hostility to the officials themselves. These associations may well be called “watch dog” societies, their function being to protect the community from political wolves; to bark loudly on any attempt of theirs to rob the sheepfold and thus either to scare them off or to give such warning as will result in their designs being frustrated. Thus we have in almost every city and town “Taxpayers Associations”; “Citizens Associations”; “Good Government Clubs”; “Public Welfare Societies”; “Patriotic Societies”; “Security Leagues”; and the like; some temporary but others permanent bodies, formed for general supervision and bringing to book of legislators and public officials. These watch dog societies are always on the alert; ready to receive complaints from any source; to investigate them through committees, and to attack anybody and anything in what they may choose to consider the public interest. They even employ private detectives and lawyers in these enterprises, just as in pursuit of criminal offenders; and they are usually able to get newspapers to support them and to publish bitter attacks not merely upon individual office holders but on entire boards, departments, committees, legislatures and congresses, and sometimes the courts; whereby the public are told over and over again that these official bodies, composed as they are of from five to five hundred men each, are inefficient and corrupt. There is no pretence on the part of some of these societies of concealment of their mean opinion of the office holders, especially those elected by the popular vote. One of them, the New York Citizens Union, publishes an annual statement containing notes of the character and record of each of the local representatives in the state legislature, some of them far from complimentary, and all critical and superior in tone, like the report of a master of a reform school on the behavior of the pupils. In fact, though these watch dogs do not directly attack the institution of manhood suffrage, their attitude towards its creatures in state and city government is that of a policeman toward a professional criminal. This practice of auxiliary and supervisory government by organized meddlers is well expounded in a book ably written by W. H. Allen of New York, Director of the Bureau of Municipal Research; a man of sufficient experience in political life to have learned its diseased condition, and to earnestly desire a palliative of its evil symptoms, but who is without apparent hope of discovering or extirpating the cause of the disease. He wrote the book for the purpose of inducing citizens, especially women, to attend to their civic duties, and he urges his readers to join one or more of these watch dog organizations and to actively prosecute their work. (Woman’s Part in Government.)

Examples of the operations of these societies are easily found, since they by no means hide their lights. It will be sufficient here to refer to a recent one as a sample. In January 1917, and again in April 1917, one of the best known of the associations, the City Club of New York, filed with the Governor a complaint against the District Attorney, charging him in effect with gross misconduct in connection with certain prosecutions for homicide. The Club employed lawyers to prosecute the charges and there was a furious, scandalous and prolonged controversy in the courts, in the public press and before the Governor, involving beside the District Attorney himself some of his assistants and others. Another powerful watchdog association is the well-known Chicago Voters League, established in 1896. The League claims that at that time of the sixty-eight members of the Chicago City Council only ten were even liable to a suspicion of honesty, while the rest were organized into a gang for plunder and blackmail. To correct this situation the League was established and still operates. Its self-perpetuating Executive Committee of Nine publicly opposes and condemns candidates for the City Council and directs the citizens how to vote. This, of course, amounts to a qualified oligarchy; in conformity with the usual tendency of manhood suffrage, to create ring government in one way or another.

The whole attitude of these watch dog associations towards the constituted civil authorities is most extraordinary, in view of the respectability of most of their membership, and strikingly illustrates the deplorable results of manhood suffrage. Their general scheme of action is founded on the open assumption of each of them that its members are superior in wisdom, honesty, patriotism and knowledge of public affairs to the officials whom they denounce, lecture and admonish; and, by implication that these members are superior also to the constituents who elected these office holders. The state legislature and other public bodies are watched closely, and when a measure in which any of these societies or their controlling members actually have or choose to feign a great interest is before any legislative body or official board for action or determination, the agents of the interested association begin to interfere; the public officials having the matter in hand are not allowed to deliberate and decide impartially and coolly even should they desire to do so; they are scolded, coaxed, threatened, bullied and wheedled into doing what the association desires. Some of these private associations have funds subscribed by individuals, or arising from the collection of dues; they are therefore able to employ lawyers to prepare arguments and briefs and political agents to go about soliciting signatures; arrangements are made for a systematic campaign directed towards the officials concerned, who are bombarded with letters, telegrams, postal cards and petitions; sometimes public meetings large or small are organized, and resolutions couched in peremptory language are passed and presented at the proper quarters. Should the officials prove refractory, they are apt to find their motives impugned, their “records” and personal history unearthed, and their characters publicly assailed, all from the same source. All this, which often amounts to coercion, is so frequently practised upon public bodies and their members as to have become a recognized feature of American public life.

A large addition to the list of political scandals contained in this book might be made by recourse to the archives of these watch dog associations and to the published reports of the charges made by them from time to time against the membership of the state and city legislative and administrative bodies, and to the evidence collected by them in support thereof, but space will not permit even the most condensed recital of this material. Let it suffice to present here the societies themselves, composed as they are of thousands of our citizens of best standing and information, as witnesses to the bad character and reputation of manhood suffrage. By their very existence they go far to establish the significant fact that the manhood suffrage state and local governments of the United States have utterly forfeited the respect and confidence of the American people.

It must not be supposed that by the work of these watch dog associations the evil of manhood suffrage operations is sensibly alleviated. On the contrary, when carefully considered, that work, though presumably well intended, must be considered as a public misfortune, and as resulting in an aggravation rather than a diminution of the evils of our misgovernment. In an individual instance their efforts may produce good effects limited to that special transaction, just as might be said of any voluntary interference with constituted authority; but in theory and in principle and in the large and final results, the practice of such interference is and must be politically noxious, and the case to justify it even in one instance must be indeed extreme. The public-spirited citizens who form an important part of their membership probably do not realize just what they are doing when they coerce the will of the chosen representatives of the people. They would be horrified at the suggestion of using physical force or physical threats upon legislators to compel them to deviate from their own best judgment; and yet they do not scruple to use what they call moral force to the same purpose, and such moral force as almost amounts to physical stress and coercion. The difference in effect between threatening a member of the legislature with a cudgel or with printed defamation issued by a powerful clique or league is not always appreciable. In either case the general result is the adoption of measures or modifications thereof reflecting rather the views of the threatening meddler than those of the public official in question or of the majority who elected him. This is a clear usurpation of power. Again, the watch dog operations do not offer any permanent result in return for this trampling down of popular government; their programme includes no method of improving the quality of our officials but only one for watching and nagging them. Third, it offers no security whatever that the volunteer or self-appointed government censors shall themselves be competent or worthy, or that they shall be anything more than idle and presumptuous fools or designing hypocrites. Fourth, others less worthy and disinterested, are by the example of these societies encouraged to similar acts. So that the final result of the watch dog plan is likely to amount to no more or other than this actual situation: A number of corrupt, weak and worthless legislatures, town boards, city councils, boards of supervisors, etc., constantly nagged, worried, insulted and pulled this way and that, by all kinds of people, including watch dog associations and their officers, newspaper men, cranks, fanatics, busybodies generally and possibly scamps and adventurers. Even suppose we make the extravagant supposition that no knaves or fools whatever, but only the better type of citizens do and will respond to the appeal to organize to boss the bosses, the system is still impracticable, and if practicable would be mischievous; since it would result in oligarchical tyranny. For the work proposed for these civic organizations and for their members would be enormous; it would require an acquaintance with legislative and other political methods far beyond that possible to any one who has any other business; it would necessitate among other things the careful scrutiny and thorough understanding of every bill or resolution introduced into the state or municipal legislature, and a steady watch from day to day of each of these bills, and of the members of the bodies where they may be pending, and especially of those of the committees having them under consideration. Besides this it involves the defense of every step taken, at the cost of endless controversy. As the ordinary citizen cannot possibly undertake this labor of supervising oversight of government activities, it is evident that if done at all by this volunteer method, it must fall to a comparatively few people who have means and leisure, or who have special interests to serve; or more likely, to hirelings employed by those people.

The result of the watch dog programme even if successfully carried out, would therefore be the creation of an imperium in imperio; an irresponsible self-created governing oligarchy acting through the present class of worthless and corrupt politicians. A more complicated and mischievous political system nor one more likely to produce tyranny and public scandals could scarcely be devised. But though the watch dog scheme cannot be approved, its actual existence is a strong argument against manhood suffrage; for though bad reputation is not of itself proof of misconduct, yet it usually accompanies wrong doing; and when evidence of evil reputation is here added to the general as well as particular proof already furnished of the mischiefs resulting from manhood suffrage, the case against that system can hardly fail to be so materially strengthened as to be practically unanswerable.

The weakness and inferiority of our public officials afford opportunity for interference by another set of meddlers in public affairs who are of inferior breed to the watch dogs, and for the infusion of eccentric and fanatical ideas and theories into legislation and administration, such as would not occur in a well-founded governmental system. The class referred to is composed of political adventurers, eccentrics, cranks, and fanatics; people whose mental vision is inaccurate; who are out of harmony with nature and its operations, and whose undisciplined minds are filled with impracticable theories. Many of them are well-to-do idlers able to give time to the agitation of any cause they may happen to espouse. Compared with the watch dogs they are as the yellow dogs of politics. They function in every state as promoters of crank legislation, the history whereof in the United States would no doubt make, if compiled, a very interesting volume, containing many surprises to the general reader. While sane and prudent men are content to confine their attention to their private affairs, and while modest men, be they ever so well informed, are apt to doubt their own capacity in affairs of state, a certain class of cranks are always eager to meddle with politics; full of conceit they are not troubled with doubts as to the correctness of their own opinions. When one such takes up a fad, religious, moral, political or social, he becomes more and more engrossed in it; nothing else matters to him half so much; family and business are neglected; he writes for the newspapers; he attends and organizes public meetings; he serves on committees; he makes speeches; he circulates literature; he contributes to the cause within his means, which sometimes are large, and collects for it from others. When a “movement” as it is called is once fairly started it is sure to be joined by many with ulterior motives, impelled by vanity, by mere love of notoriety, by fondness for excitement; by those who seek the pleasure of serving on committees, of speaking in public, or of seeing their names in print; others come to make new acquaintances; to escape ennui; to become politically important. Under a strong and intelligent government these collections of faddists, adventurers, humbugs and fools would do little more harm than so many debating societies; but when, as now, those in power are of mediocre ability, weak calibre or politically timid, such societies are potent for mischief. The ordinary politician holding an office obtained perhaps by a majority of a few votes, or otherwise precarious in its tenure is easily frightened by a show of organization. Where the proposed new measure is one opposed to the pecuniary or political interests of the bosses the cranks get but slight attention; but where there are only principles involved their chances for success are often very good indeed. The fact that they are armed with theories however foolish, makes them appear mysterious and redoubtable antagonists to small politicians, who cannot understand principles or the motives of people professing principles. The official finds himself confronted and baited by an inexorable pack of those yellow dogs, small in number, but terrible in noise and clamor, who give him no rest; while on the other hand the sane and sensible folk of his constituency are not only silent and apparently indifferent but scarcely seem aware (as indeed most of them are not) of his name or existence. Getting no orders from his boss, who takes no interest in the matter one way or another, what wonder if the weary legislator or administrator, either becomes half convinced by the din of arguments which he is too weak or ignorant to answer, or frightened by the criticism he is receiving, yields at last with a sigh of relief. And so the crank project often goes through without public notice except the applause of the agitators, who print a triumphant account in the newspapers of the adoption of another “reform measure” and get one of their members to write it up in some magazine with a laudatory reference to himself and his associates. The effect of “crank” or yellow dog influence upon our weak state governments is another of the evil results of manhood suffrage.