CHAPTER XXXIII — PROBLEMS OF GOV

197.

ERNMENT

“An Old War Horse" (1880)

BY WILLIAM HENRY MCELROY

McElroy, a journalist, has written numerous articles for periodicals under his own name and also under his pseudonym of "Richard Scudder."

Bibliography: Bowker

and Iles, Reader's Guide in Economic, Social, and Political Science, 115-116. MY DEAR NEPHEW

WHE

7HEN I left you on Commencement Day I urged you to lose no time in getting into politics, promising that I would help you push your fortunes as occasion offered. Since then I have received a letter from you, in which you write that you have read Story on the Constitution, Benton's Thirty Years in the United States Senate, Greeley's American Conflict, two or three works on Political Economy, and De Tocqueville on America. I suppose there can be no objection to such reading. Likely enough it has its value. But what I particularly desire, my dear nephew, is that you should become a practical politician, — a thoroughly practical politician. I never remember reading any of the works you have mentioned, or any like them, unless, indeed, you call Barnum's How to Make Money a treatise on finance. And yet, cast your eyes over the salient points of my career. I have been alderman, supervisor, mayor, state representative, state senator, and congressman. For many years I have been chairman of our state and county committees. I can hardly remember the time when I didn't carry the vote of my own ward in my vest pocket, and of my own city in my trousers pocket, and I've got them there yet. For going on half a century I have had things pretty much my own way in caucuses and primaries, and the like. What has been the secret of my unusual success? I in strict confidence, as you will understand to give you some plain, blunt, non-partisan hints for your guidance in politics which may serve to answer the question.

will try

I. Never allow yourself to lose sight of the fact that politics, and not

poker, is our great American game. If this could be beaten into the heads of some presumably well-meaning but glaringly unpractical people, we should hear less idiotic talk about reform in connection with politics. Nobody ever dreams of organizing a reform movement in poker.... And yet political reform clubs, designed to reform politics from the inside or the outside, are springing up on all sides. Of course, it is just as well not to attempt to argue the masses out of their deeply rooted notion that politics is what Noah Webster defines it to be," that part of ethics which has to do with the regulation and government of a nation or state." Ethics is very good in connection with politics. But then Webster, it must be remembered, was simply a learned lexicographer, and not a practical politician. No, no. Don't try to reason with the masses in this matter. The public has no head for such things. It will not understand.

II. Mr. Lincoln, a very estimable and justly popular, but in some respects an impracticable man, formulated another widely diffused error in regard to politics. He held that ours is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. I maintain, on the contrary, that it is a government of politicians, by politicians, for politicians. If your political career is to be a success, you must understand and respect this distinction with a difference.

III. Not a few capable but unpractical people, when they fall to discussing our governmental system, argue that the existence of parties is necessary to the welfare of our country. But long experience has taught me that the more sensible way for a practical politician to look at it is that the existence of the country is necessary to the welfare of parties. Thank Heaven, my dear nephew, that we have a country!

IV. You have received your commission as postmaster of your village. A post-office is a capital political opening for a young man who has sense enough to discover how to make the right use of it. You will of course leave all matters touching the postal service to your deputy. Never forget that your pivotal duty as postmaster will be to nurse the party in your section. As a practical man, you must see, if you reflect a moment, that postmaster and local party-master must be convertible terms with you if you expect to be approved by the great party leaders, and to become a great leader yourself, some day. . . . In your selection of clerks you will be guided primarily by a determination to have only such men around you as will register your will every time at caucuses and conventions.

V. I sincerely hope it is not necessary that I should counsel you always to vote the regular ticket, the whole regular ticket, and nothing but the regular ticket. Hold fast, I beseech of you, to the doctrine of the infallibility of your party in convention assembled. Delegates, like kings, "can do no wrong." The voters who scratch ballots or bolt nominations are to be regarded as the bane of politics, just as certain other reformers have been the bane of religion. They all belong in the same category, and all are equally deserving of the execration of every practical man, as exponents of the pestiferous doctrine of the right of private judgment. And just here a word in reply to the familiar question, Would you vote for the devil if he received the party's regular nomination? I have no hesitation in affirming that I certainly would. Let's look at it. If the day ever comes when the devil is nominated, the other side will be pretty sure to run Gabriel against him. Of the two, my choice would be the devil. To be sure, it would not be an ideal nomination, — but then, neither is ours an ideal world. I am aware that the devil has split hoofs, pronounced horns, and a bifurcated tail. But do we choose candidates for their good looks? As to his moral character, I frankly admit it is not all I could desire; but after criticism has exhausted itself, the fact remains, conceded by both parties, that he is not as black as he is painted. On the other hand, he has many qualities that ought to commend him to practical men. He is self-made, he is thoroughly in earnest in all he undertakes, he is an untiring worker, he is one of the shrewdest of wire-pullers, he possesses vast and versatile accomplishments, he is unsurpassed in ability to find and manipulate the springs that move men, he has a positive genius for making friends. Gifted, popular, magnetic, at home in all circles, from the highest to the lowest, he would be certain to make a splendid run. As for Gabriel, I have only to say that, while his intellectual and moral endowments are undoubtedly of the highest order, there is great reason to fear that he would not succeed in the realm of practical politics. If elected to office, it is more than likely that he would prove more of a botheration than a boon to his party. He would be living up to the promises made during the canvass; he would resolutely decline to let well enough alone. Let me not be misunderstood. I yield to no one in my regard for Gabriel. But, as a practical man, I would feel called upon to vote against him, and do all I could for his opponent. In my own ward, where my influence is most potent and my political theories most approved of, I feel convinced that the devil would have a very large

majority. This hypothetical case is of course an extreme one, and is never likely to occur. I have dealt with it simply for the sake of showing you that the position of those who insist upon the invariable support of regular nominations is sound in the last analysis.

VI. How are scratchers and bolters to be dealt with? It is an exceedingly difficult question. I myself am at a loss to determine whether it is better to be extremely tender or awfully rough with them. Each policy is good at times, and in making a choice you must be guided by circumstances. In a sterner age than ours, an age that had less stomach for nonsense, gentlemen who were convicted of the crime of private judgment were burned at the stake. It is not permitted us in these latter, laxer days to make it as warm for scratchers and bolters as it was once made for John Huss; still we can show that we possess the sturdy practical views of those who flung Huss to the fagots, by pelting the scratchers and bolters with jeers, sneers, and innuendoes, by crediting them with the meanest of motives, and insisting that they are either traitorous, inconsequential knaves, or silly, inconsequential fools. As for those upon whom such treatment is lost (and I confess that I suspect it fails with the majority of scratchers and bolters), try what is known to practical politicians as the postponement treatment. . . . Those who employ it with the most gratifying results allow the impression to be produced in the patient's mind at the outset that, although they have never happened to find an election at which scratching or bolting could be indulged in without perfectly harrowing injury to public interests of colossal moment, yet, nevertheless, they heartily and unreservedly approve of scratching and bolting in the abstract. . . .

Be it yours to consult the expedient, leaving it to the purists of the party to consult the highly proper. Beware of those who take sentimental views of unsentimental matters. A man who would "rather be right than be president" by all means ought to decline a presidential nomination, and run for a position in a theological seminary, a Sundayschool, or Vassar College; while he who holds that "one with God is a majority" antagonizes the system of reckoning which has come down to us from the fathers, and which has the approval of every practical inspector of American elections. Be practical in your politics, be practical, ever more be practical.

[William Henry McElroy] An Old War Horse to a Young Politician, in Atlantic Monthly, June, 1880 (Boston, etc.), XLV, 761-765 passim.

198. Experiences in a State Legislature (1882-1884)

BY THEODORE ROOSEVELT (1888)

Roosevelt began his public career by serving for three terms in the New York legislature. Since then he has been prominent in many phases of public affairs, being noted for his advocacy of practical reforms and, at the same time, for party loyalty. He has been successively national civil-service commissioner, police commissioner of New York City, assistant secretary of the navy, colonel of the "Rough Riders" during the Spanish War, governor of New York, and in 1901 vice-president of the United States. Bibliography: Bowker and Iles, Reader's Guide in Economic, Social, and Political Science, 96-101.

TH

HE representatives from different sections of the State differ widely in character. Those from the country districts are generally very good men. They are usually well-to-do farmers, small lawyers, or prosperous storekeepers, and are shrewd, quiet, and honest. They are often narrow-minded and slow to receive an idea; but, on the other hand, when they get a good one, they cling to it with the utmost tenacity. They form very much the most valuable class of legislators. For the most part they are native Americans, and those who are not are men who have become completely Americanized in all their ways and habits of thought.

It is from. great cities that the worst legislators come. It is true that there are always among them a few cultivated and scholarly men who are well educated, and who stand on a higher and broader intellectual and moral plane than the country members, but the bulk are very low indeed. They are usually foreigners, of little or no education, with exceedingly misty ideas as to morality, and possessed of an ignorance so profound that it could only be called comic, were it not for the fact that it has at times such serious effects upon our laws. It is their ignorance, quite as much as actual viciousness, which makes it so difficult to procure the passage of good laws or prevent the passage of bad ones; and it is the most irritating of the many elements with which we have to contend in the fight for good government.

In each of the last three Legislatures there were a number of us who were interested in getting through certain measures which we deemed to be for the public good, but which were certain to be strongly opposed, some for political and some for pecuniary reasons. Now . . . before taking any active steps, we had to "size up" our fellow legislators, to find out their past history and present character and associates, to find