Chapter VII: Preface (6)

A similar course was followed in reference to the relations between the police and citizens generally. There had formerly been much complaint of the brutal treatment by police of innocent citizens. This was stopped peremptorily by the simple expedient of dismissing from the force the first two or three men who were found guilty of brutality. On the other hand we made the force understand that in the event of any emergency requiring them to use their weapons against either a mob or an individual criminal, the police board backed them up without reservation. Our sympathy was for the friends, and not the foes, of order. If a mob threatened violence we were glad to have the mob hurt. If a criminal showed fight we expected the officer to use any weapon that was necessary to overcome him on the instant; and even, if it became necessary, to take life. All that the board required was to be convinced that the necessity really existed. We did not possess a particle of that maudlin sympathy for the criminal, disorderly, and lawless classes which is such a particularly unhealthy sign of social development; and we were bound that the improvement in the fighting efficiency of the police should go hand in hand with the improvement in their moral tone.

To break up the system of blackmail and corruption was less easy. It was not at all difficult to protect decent people in their rights, and this was accomplished at once. But the criminal who is blackmailed has a direct interest in paying the blackmailer, and it is not easy to get information about it. Nevertheless, we put a complete stop to most of the blackmail by the simple process of rigorously enforcing the laws, not only against crime, but against vice.

It was the enforcement of the liquor law which caused most excitement. In New York we suffer from the altogether too common tendency to make any law which a certain section of the community wants, and then to allow that law to be more or less of a dead-letter if any other section of the community objects to it. The multiplication of laws by the Legislature, and their partial enforcement by the executive authorities, go hand in hand, and offer one of the many serious problems with which we are confronted in striving to better civic conditions. New York State felt that liquor should not be sold on Sunday. The larger part of New York City wished to drink liquor on Sunday. Any man who studies the social condition of the poor knows that liquor works more ruin than any other one cause. He knows also, however, that it is simply impracticable to extirpate the habit entirely, and that to attempt too much often merely results in accomplishing too little; and he knows, moreover, that for a man alone to drink whiskey in a bar-room is one thing, and for men with their families to drink light wines or beer in respectable restaurants is quite a different thing. The average citizen, who doesn’t think at all, and the average politician of the baser sort, who only thinks about his own personal advantage, find it easiest to disregard these facts, and to pass a liquor law which will please the temperance people, and then trust to the police department to enforce it with such laxity as to please the intemperate.

The results of this pleasing system were evident in New York when our board came into power. The Sunday liquor law was by no means a dead letter in New York City. On the contrary no less than eight thousand arrests for its violation had been made under the Tammany regime the year before we came in. It was very much alive; but it was only executed against those who either had no political pull, or who refused to pay money. The liquor business does not stand on the same footing with other occupations. It always tends to produce criminality in the population at large, and law-breaking among the saloonkeepers themselves. It is absolutely necessary to supervise it rigidly, and impose restrictions upon the traffic. In large cities the traffic cannot be stopped; but the evils can at least be minimized.

In New York the saloonkeepers have always stood high among professional politicians. Nearly two thirds of the political leaders of Tammany Hall have, at one time or another, been in the liquor business. The saloon is the natural club and meeting place for the ward heelers and leaders, and the bar-room politician is one of the most common and best recognized factors, in local political government. The saloonkeepers are always hand in glove with the professional politicians, and occupy toward them a position such as is not held by any other class of men. The influence they wield in local politics has always been very great, and until our board took office no man ever dared seriously to threaten them for their flagrant violations of the law. The powerful and influential saloonkeeper was glad to see his neighbors closed, for it gave him business. On the other hand, a corrupt police captain, or the corrupt politician who controlled him, could always extort money from a saloonkeeper by threatening to close him and let his neighbor remain open. Gradually the greed of corrupt police officials and of corrupt politicians, grew by what it fed on, until they began to blackmail all but the very most influential liquor sellers; and as liquor sellers were very numerous, and the profits of the liquor business great, the amount collected was enormous.

The reputable saloonkeepers themselves found this condition of blackmail and political favoritism almost intolerable. The law which we found on the statute books had been put on by a Tammany Legislature three years before we took office. A couple of months after we took office, Mr. J. P. Smith, the editor of the liquor-dealers’ organ, _The Wine and Spirit Gazette_, gave out the following interview, which is of such an extraordinary character that I insert it almost in full:

“Governor Flower, as well as the Legislature of 1892, was elected upon distinct pledges that relief would be given by the Democratic party to the liquor dealers, especially of the cities of the State. In accordance with this promise a Sunday-opening clause was inserted in the excise bill of 1892. Governor Flower then said that he could not approve the Sunday-opening clause; whereupon the Liquor Dealers’ Association, which had charge of the bill, struck the Sunday-opening clause out. After Governor Hill had been elected for the second term I had several interviews with him on that very subject. He told me, ‘You know I am the friend of the liquor dealers and will go to almost any length to help them and give them relief; but do not ask me to recommend to the Legislature the passage of the law opening the saloons on Sunday. I cannot do it, for it will ruin the Democratic party in the State.’ He gave the same interview to various members of the State Liquor Dealers’ Association, who waited upon him for the purpose of getting relief from the blackmail of the police, stating that the lack of having the Sunday question properly regulated was at the bottom of the trouble. Blackmail had been brought to such a state of perfection, and had become so oppressive to the liquor dealers themselves, that they communicated first with Governor Hill and then with Mr. Croker. The _Wine and Spirit Gazette_ had taken up the subject because of gross discrimination made by the police in the enforcement of the Sunday-closing law. The paper again and again called upon the police commissioners to either uniformly enforce the law or uniformly disregard it. A committee of the Central Association of Liquor Dealers of this city then took up the matter and called upon Police Commissioner Martin.[15] _An agreement was then made between the leaders of Tammany Hall and the liquor dealers, according to which the monthly blackmail paid to the police should be discontinued in return for political support._[16] In other words, the retail dealers should bind themselves to solidly support the Tammany ticket in consideration of the discontinuance of the monthly blackmail by the police. This agreement was carried out. Now what was the consequence? If the liquor dealer, after the monthly blackmail ceased, showed any signs of independence, the Tammany Hall district leader would give the tip to the police captain, and that man would be pulled and arrested on the following Sunday.”

Continuing, Mr. Smith inveighed against the law, but said:

“The (present) police commissioners are honestly endeavoring to have the law impartially carried out. They are no respectors of persons. And our information from all classes of liquor-dealers is that the rich and the poor, the influential and the uninfluential, are required equally to obey the law.”

There is really some difficulty in commenting upon the statements of this interview, statements which were never denied.

The law was not in the least a dead-letter; it was enforced, but it was corruptly and partially enforced. It was a prominent factor in the Tammany scheme of government. It afforded a most effective means for blackmailing a large portion of the liquor sellers and for the wholesale corruption of the police department. The high Tammany officials and police captains and patrolmen blackmailed and bullied the small liquor sellers without a pull, and turned them into abject slaves of Tammany Hall. On the other hand, the wealthy and politically influential liquor sellers controlled the police, and made or marred captains, sergeants, and patrolmen at their pleasure. In some of the precincts most of the saloons were closed; in others almost all were open. The rich and powerful liquor seller violated the law at will, unless he had fallen under the ban of the police or the ward boss, when he was not allowed to violate it at all.

Under these circumstances the new police board had one of two courses to follow. We could either instruct the police to allow all the saloonkeepers to become law-breakers, or else we could instruct them to allow none to be law-breakers. We followed the latter course, because we had some regard for our oaths of office. For two or three months we had a regular fight, and on Sundays had to employ half the force to enforce the liquor law; for the Tammany legislators had drawn the law so as to make it easy of enforcement for purposes of blackmail, but not easy of enforcement generally, certain provisions being deliberately inserted with the intention to make it difficult of universal execution. However, when once the liquor sellers and their allies understood that we had not the slightest intention of being bullied, threatened or cajoled out of following the course which we had laid down, resistance practically ceased. During the year after we took office the number of arrests for violation of the Sunday liquor law sank to about one half of what they had been during the last year of the Tammany rule; and yet the saloons were practically closed, whereas under Tammany most of them had been open. We adopted no new methods, save in so far as honesty could be called a new method. We did not enforce the law with unusual severity; we merely enforced it against the man with a pull, just as much as against the man without a pull. We refused to discriminate in favor of influential law-breakers. The professional politicians of low type, the liquor sellers, the editors of some German newspapers, and the sensational press generally, attacked us with a ferocity which really verged on insanity.

We went our way without regarding this opposition, and gave a very wholesome lesson to the effect that a law should not be put on the statute books if it was not meant to be enforced, and that even an excise law could be honestly enforced in New York if the public officials so desired. The rich brewers and liquor sellers, who had made money hand over fist by violating the excise law with the corrupt connivance of the police, raved with anger, and every corrupt politician and newspaper in the city gave them clamorous assistance; but the poor man, and notably the poor man’s wife and children, benefited very greatly by what we did. The hospital surgeons found that their Monday labors were lessened by nearly one half, owing to the startling diminution in cases of injury due to drunken brawls; the work of the magistrates who sat in the city courts on Monday for the trial of the offenders of the preceding twenty-four hours was correspondingly decreased; while many a tenement-house family spent Sunday in the country because for the first time the head of the family could not use up his money in getting drunk. The one all-important element in good citizenship in our country is obedience to law, and nothing is more needed than the resolute enforcement of law. This we gave.

There was no species of mendacity to which our opponents did not resort in the effort to break us down in our purpose. For weeks they eagerly repeated the tale that the saloons were as wide open as ever; but they finally abandoned this when the counsel for the Liquor Dealers’ Association admitted in open court, at the time when we secured the conviction of thirty of his clients and thereby brought the fight to an end, that over nine tenths of the liquor dealers had been rendered bankrupt because we had stopped that illegal trade which gave them the best portion of their revenue. They then took the line that by devoting our attention to enforcing the liquor law we permitted crime to increase. This, of course, offered a very congenial field for newspapers like the _World_, which exploited it to the utmost; all the more readily since the mere reiteration of the falsehood tended to encourage criminals, and so to make it not a falsehood. For a time the cry was not without influence, even with decent people, especially if they belonged to the class of the timid rich; but it simply wasn’t true, and so this bubble went down stream with the others. For six or eight months the cry grew, first louder, then lower; and then it died away. A commentary upon its accuracy was furnished toward the end of our administration; for in February 1897, the Judge who addressed the grand jury of the month was able to congratulate them upon the fact that there was at that time less crime in New York relatively to the population than ever before; and this held true for our two years’ service.

In re-organizing the force the Board had to make, and did make, more promotions, more appointments, and more dismissals than had ever before been made in the same length of time. We were so hampered by the law that we were not able to dismiss many of the men whom we should have dismissed, but we did turn out 200 men--more than four times as many as had ever been turned out in the same length of time before; all of them being dismissed after formal trial, and after having been given full opportunity to be heard in their own defence. We appointed about 1700 men all told--again more than four times as many as ever before; for we were allowed a large increase of the police force by law. We made 130 promotions; more than had been made in the six preceding years.

All this work was done in strictest accord with what we have grown to speak of as the principles of civil service reform. In making dismissals we paid heed merely to the man’s efficiency and past record, refusing to consider outside pressure; under the old regime no policeman with sufficient influence behind him was ever dismissed, no matter what his offence. In making promotions we took into account not only the man’s general record, his faithfulness, industry and vigilance, but also his personal prowess as shown in any special feat of daring, whether in the arresting of criminals or in the saving of life--for the police service is military in character, and we wished to encourage the military virtues. In making appointments we found that it was practicable to employ a system of rigid competitive examinations, which, as finally perfected, combined a very severe physical examination with a mental examination such as could be passed by any man who had attended one of our public schools. Of course there was also a rigid investigation of character. Theorists have often sneered at civil service reform as “impracticable;” and I am very far from asserting that written competitive examinations are always applicable, or that they may not sometimes be merely stop-gaps, used only because they are better than the methods of appointing through political endorsement; but most certainly the system worked admirably in the Police Department. We got the best lot of recruits for patrolmen that had ever been obtained in the history of the force, and we did just as well in our examinations for matrons and police surgeons. The uplifting of the force was very noticeable, both physically and mentally. The best men we got were those who had served for three years or so in the Army or Navy. Next to these came the railroad men. One noticeable feature of the work was that we greatly raised the proportion of native-born, until, of the last hundred appointed, ninety-four per cent. were Americans by birth. Not once in a hundred times did we know the politics of the appointee, and we paid as little heed to this as to their religion.

Another of our important tasks was seeing that the elections were carried on honestly. Under the old Tammany rule the cheating was gross and flagrant, and the police were often deliberately used to facilitate fraudulent practices at the polls. This came about in part from the very low character of the men put in as election officers. By conducting a written examination of the latter, and supplementing this by a careful inquiry into their character, in which we invited any decent outsiders to assist, we very distinctly raised their calibre. To show how necessary our examinations were, I may mention that before each election held under us we were obliged to reject, for moral or mental shortcomings, over a thousand of the men whom the regular party organizations, exercising their legal rights, proposed as election officers. We then merely had to make the police thoroughly understand that their sole duty was to guarantee an honest election, and that they would be punished with the utmost rigor if they interfered with honest citizens on the one hand, or failed to prevent fraud and violence on the other. The result was that the elections of 1895 and 1896 were by far the most honest and orderly ever held in New York City.

There were a number of other ways in which we sought to reform the police force, less important, and nevertheless very important. We paid particular heed to putting a premium on specially meritorious conduct, by awarding certificates of honorable mention, and medals, where we were unable to promote. We introduced a system of pistol practice by which, for the first time, the policemen were brought to a reasonable standard of efficiency in handling their revolvers. The Bertillion system for the identification of criminals was introduced. A bicycle squad was organized with remarkable results, this squad speedily becoming a kind of _corps d’elite_, whose individual members distinguished themselves not only by their devotion to duty, but by repeated exhibitions of remarkable daring and skill. One important bit of reform was abolishing the tramp lodging-houses, which had originally been started in the police stations, in a spirit of unwise philanthropy. These tramp lodging-houses, not being properly supervised, were mere nurseries for pauperism and crime, tramps and loafers of every shade thronging to the city every winter to enjoy their benefits. We abolished them, a municipal lodging-house being substituted. Here all homeless wanderers were received, forced to bathe, given night-clothes before going to bed, and made to work next morning, and in addition they were so closely supervised that habitual tramps and vagrants were speedily detected and apprehended.

There was a striking increase in the honesty of the force, and there was a like increase in its efficiency. When we took office it is not too much to say that the great majority of the citizens of New York were firmly convinced that no police force could be both honest and efficient. They felt it to be part of the necessary order of things that a policeman should be corrupt, and they were convinced that the most efficient way of warring against certain forms of crime--notably crimes against person and property--was by enlisting the service of other criminals, and of purveyors of vice generally, giving them immunity in return for their aid. Before we took power the ordinary purveyor of vice was allowed to ply his or her trade unmolested, partly in consideration of paying blackmail to the police, partly in consideration of giving information about any criminal who belonged to the unprotected classes. We at once broke up this whole business of blackmail and protection, and made war upon all criminals alike, instead of getting the assistance of half in warring on the other half. Nevertheless, so great was the improvement in the spirit of the force, that, although deprived of their former vicious allies, they actually did better work than ever before against those criminals who threatened life and property. Relatively to the population, fewer crimes of violence occurred during our administration of the Board than in any previous two years of the city’s history in recent times; and the total number of arrests of criminals increased, while the number of cases in which no arrest followed the commission of crime decreased. The detective bureau nearly doubled the number of arrests made compared with the year before we took office; obtaining, moreover, 365 convictions of felons and 215 convictions for misdemeanors, as against 269 and 105 respectively for the previous year. At the same time every attempt at riot or disorder was summarily checked, and all gangs of violent criminals brought into immediate subjection; while on the other hand the immense mass meetings and political parades were handled with such care that not a single case of clubbing of any innocent citizen was reported.

The result of our labors was of value to the city, for we gave the citizens better protection than they had ever before received, and at the same time cut out the corruption which was eating away civic morality. We showed conclusively that it was possible to combine both honesty and efficiency in handling the police. We were attacked with the most bitter animosity by every sensational newspaper and every politician of the baser sort, not because of our shortcomings, but because of what we did that was good. We enforced the laws as they were on the statute books, we broke up blackmail, we kept down the spirit of disorder, and repressed rascality, and we administered the force with an eye single to the welfare of the city. In doing this we encountered, as we had expected, the venemous opposition of all men whose interest it was that corruption should continue, or who were of such dull morality that they were not willing to see honesty triumph at the cost of strife.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] _Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1897.

[15] My predecessor in the Presidency of the Police Board.

[16] The italics are my own.

IX

THE VICE-PRESIDENCY AND THE CAMPAIGN OF 1896[17]

The Vice-President is an officer unique in his character and functions, or to speak more properly, in his want of functions while he remains Vice-President, and in his possibility of at any moment ceasing to be a functionless official and becoming the head of the whole nation. There is no corresponding position in any constitutional government. Perhaps the nearest analogue is the heir apparent in a monarchy. Neither the French President nor the British Prime Minister has a substitute, ready at any moment to take his place, but exercising scarcely any authority until his place is taken. The history of such an office is interesting, and the personality of the incumbent for the time being may at any moment become of vast importance.

The founders of our government--the men who did far more than draw up the Declaration of Independence, for they put forth the National Constitution--in many respects builded very wisely of set purpose. In some cases they built wiser than they knew. In yet other instances they failed entirely to achieve objects for which they had endeavored to provide by a most elaborate and ingenious governmental arrangement. They distrusted what would now be called pure Democracy, and they dreaded what we would now call party government.

Their distrust of Democracy induced them to construct the electoral college for the choice of a President, the original idea being that the people should elect their best and wisest men who in turn should, untrammeled by outside pressure, elect a President. As a matter of fact the functions of the electorate have now by time and custom become of little more importance than those of so many letter-carriers. They deliver the electoral votes of their states just as a letter-carrier delivers his mail. But in the presidential contest this year it may be we shall see a partial return to the ideals of the men of 1789; for some of the electors on the Bryan-Sewall-Watson ticket may exercise a choice between the vice-presidential candidates.

The distrust felt by the founders of the constitution for party government took shape in the scheme to provide that the majority party should have the foremost place, and the minority party the second place, in the national executive. The man who received the greatest number of electoral votes was made President, and the man who received the second greatest number was made Vice-President, on a theory somewhat akin to that by which certain reformers hope to revolutionize our system of voting at the present day. In the early days under the present constitution this system resulted in the choice of Adams for President and of his anti-type Jefferson as Vice-President, the combination being about as incongruous as if we should now see McKinley President and either Bryan or Watson Vice-President. Even in theory such an arrangement is very bad, because under it the Vice-President might readily be, and as a matter of fact was, a man utterly opposed to all the principles to which the President was devoted, so that the arrangement provided in the event of the death of the President, not for a succession, but for a revolution. The system was very soon dropped, and each party nominated its own candidates for both positions. But it was many years before all the members of the electoral college of one party felt obliged to cast the same votes for both President and Vice-President, and consequently there was a good deal of scrambling and shifting in taking the vote. When, however, the parties had crystallized into Democratic and Whig, a score of years after the disappearance of the Federalists, the system of party voting also crystallized. Each party then as a rule nominated one man for President and one for Vice-President, these being voted for throughout the nation. This system in turn speedily produced strange results, some of which remain to this day. There are and must be in every party factions. The victorious faction may crush out and destroy the others, or it may try to propitiate at least its most formidable rival. In consequence, the custom grew of offering the vice-presidency as a consolation prize, to be given in many cases to the very men who were most bitterly opposed to the nomination of the successful candidate for President. Sometimes this consolation prize was awarded for geographical reasons, sometimes to bring into the party men who on points of principle might split away because of the principles of the presidential candidate himself, and at other times it was awarded for merely factional reasons to some faction which did not differ in the least from the dominant faction in matters of principles, but had very decided views on the question of offices.

The presidency being all important, and the vice-presidency of comparatively little note, the entire strength of the contending factions is spent in the conflict over the first, and very often a man who is most anxious to take the first place will not take the second, preferring some other political position. It has thus frequently happened that the two candidates have been totally dissimilar in character and even in party principle, though both running on the same ticket. Very odd results have followed in more than one instance.

A striking illustration of the evils sometimes springing from this system is afforded by what befell the Whigs after the election and death of the elder Harrison. Translated into the terms of the politics of continental Europe of to-day, Harrison’s adherents represented a union between the right and the extreme left against the centre. That is, the regular Whigs who formed the bulk of his supporters were supplemented by a small body of extremists who in their political principles were even more alien to the Whigs than were the bulk of the regular Democrats, but who themselves hated these regular Democrats with the peculiar ferocity so often felt by the extremist for the man who goes far, but not quite far enough. In consequence, the President represented Whig principles, the Vice-President represented a rather extreme form of the very principles to which the Whigs were most opposed. The result was that when Harrison died the presidency fell into the hands of a man who had but a corporal’s guard of supporters in the nation, and who proceeded to oppose all the measures of the immense majority of those who elected him.

A somewhat similar instance was afforded in the case of Lincoln and Johnson. Johnson was put on the ticket largely for geographical reasons, and on the death of Lincoln he tried to reverse the policy of the party which had put him in office. An instance of an entirely different kind is afforded by Garfield and Arthur. The differences between these two party leaders were mainly merely factional. Each stood squarely on the platform of the party, and all the principles advocated by one were advocated by the other; yet the death of Garfield meant a complete overturn in the _personnel_ of the upper Republican officials, because Arthur had been nominated expressly to placate the group of party leaders who most objected to the nomination of Garfield. Arthur made a very good President, but the bitterness caused by his succession to power nearly tore the party in twain. It will be noted that most of these evils arose from the fact that the Vice-President under ordinary circumstances possesses so little real power. He presides over the Senate and he has in Washington a position of marked social importance, but his political weight as Vice-President is almost _nil_. There is always a chance that he may become President. As this is only a chance it seems quite impossible to persuade politicians to give it proper weight. This certainly does not seem right. The Vice-President should, so far as possible, represent the same views and principles which have secured the nomination and election of the President, and he should be a man standing well in the councils of the party, trusted by his fellow party leaders, and able in the event of any accident to his chief to take up the work of the latter just where it was left. The Republican party has this year nominated such a man in the person of Mr. Hobart. But nominations of this kind have by no means always been the rule of recent years. No change of parties, for instance, could well produce a greater revolution in policy than would have been produced at almost any time during the last three years if Mr. Cleveland had died and Mr. Stevenson had succeeded him.

One sure way to secure this desired result would undoubtedly be to increase the power of the Vice-President. He should always be a man who would be consulted by the President on every great party question. It would be very well if he were given a seat in the Cabinet. It might be well if, in addition to his vote in the Senate in the event of a tie, he should be given a vote, on ordinary occasions, and perchance on occasions a voice in the debates. A man of the character of Mr. Hobart is sure to make his weight felt in an administration, but the power of thus exercising influence should be made official rather than personal.

The present contest offers a striking illustration of the way in which the Vice-President ought and ought not to be nominated, and to study this it is necessary to study not only the way in which the different candidates were nominated, but at least in outline the characters of the candidates themselves.

For the first time in many years, indeed for the first time since parties have fairly crystallized along their present lines, there are three parties running, two of which support the same presidential candidate but different candidates for the vice-presidency. Each one of these parties has carried several states during the last three or four years. Each party has a right to count upon a number of electoral votes as its own. Closely though the Democratic and Populistic parties have now approximated in their principles as enunciated in the platforms of Chicago and St. Louis, they yet do differ on certain points, and neither would have any chance of beating the Republicans without the help of the other. The result has been a coalition, yet each party to the coalition has retained enough of its jealous individuality to make it refuse to accept the candidate of the other for the second position on the ticket.

The Republican party stands on a normal and healthy party footing. It has enunciated a definite set of principles entirely in accord with its past actions. It has nominated on this platform a President and Vice-President, both of whom are thorough-going believers in all the party principles set forth in the platform upon which they stand. Mr. McKinley believes in sound finance,--that is, in a currency based upon gold and as good as gold. So does Mr. Hobart. Mr. McKinley believes in a protective tariff. So does Mr. Hobart. Mr. McKinley believes in the only method of preserving orderly liberty,--that is, in seeing that the laws are enforced at whatever cost. So does Mr. Hobart. In short, Mr. Hobart stands for precisely the same principles that are represented by Mr. McKinley. He is a man of weight in the community, who has had wide experience both in business and in politics. He is taking an active part in the campaign, and he will be a power if elected to the vice-presidency. All the elements which have rallied behind Mr. McKinley are just as heartily behind Mr. Hobart. The two represent the same forces, and they stand for a party with a coherent organization and a definite purpose, to the carrying out of which they are equally pledged.

It will be a matter of much importance to the nation that the next Vice-President should stand for some settled policy. It is an unhealthy thing to have the Vice-President and President represented by principles so far apart that the succession of one to the place of the other means a change as radical as any possible party overturn. The straining and dislocation of our governmental institutions was very great when Tyler succeeded Harrison and Johnson succeeded Lincoln. In each case the majority of the party that had won the victory felt that it had been treated with scandalous treachery, for Tyler grew to be as repulsive to the Whigs as Polk himself, and the Republicans could scarcely have hated Seymour more than they hated Johnson. The Vice-President has a three-fold relation. First to the administration; next as presiding officer in the Senate, where he should be a man of dignity and force; and third in his social position, for socially he ranks second to the President alone. Mr. Morton was in every way an admirable Vice-President under General Harrison, and had he succeeded to the presidential chair there would have been no break in the great policies which were being pushed forward by the administration. But during Mr. Cleveland’s two incumbencies Messrs. Hendricks and Stevenson have represented, not merely hostile factions, but principles and interests from which he was sundered by a gulf quite as great as that which divided him from his normal party foes. Mr. Sewall would make a colorless Vice-President, and were he at any time to succeed Mr. Bryan in the White House would travel Mr. Bryan’s path only with extreme reluctance and under duress. Mr. Watson would be a more startling, more attractive, and more dangerous figure, for if he got the chance he would lash the nation with a whip of scorpions, while Mr. Bryan would be content with the torture of ordinary thongs.

Finally, Mr. Hobart would typify as strongly as Mr. McKinley himself what was best in the Republican party and in the nation, and would stand as one of the known champions of his party on the very questions at issue in the present election. He is a man whose advice would be sought by all who are prominent in the administration. In short, he would be the kind of man whom the electors are certain to choose as Vice-President if they exercise their choice rationally.

The men who left the Republican party because of the nomination of McKinley would have left it just as quickly if Hobart had been nominated. They do not believe in sound finance, and though many of the bolters object to anarchy and favor protection, they feel that in this crisis their personal desires must be repressed and that they are conscientiously bound to support the depreciated dollar even at the cost of incidentally supporting the principles of a low tariff and the doctrine that a mob should be allowed to do what it likes with immunity. There are many advocates of clipped or depreciated money who are rather sorry to see the demand for such currency coupled with a demand for more lawlessness and an abandonment by the government of the police functions which are the essential attributes of civilization; but they have overcome their reluctance, feeling that on the whole it is more important that the money of the nation should be unsound than that its laws should be obeyed. People who feel this way are just as much opposed to Mr. Hobart as to Mr. McKinley. They object to the platform upon which the two men stand, and they object as much to the character of one man as to the character of the other. They are repelled by McKinley’s allegiance to the cause of sound money, and find nothing to propitiate them in Hobart’s uncompromisingly honest attitude on the same question. There is no reason whatever why any voter who would wish to vote against the one should favor the other, or _vice versa_.

When we cross the political line all this is changed. On the leading issue of the campaign the entire triangle of candidates are a unit. Mr. Bryan, the nominee for the presidency, and Messrs. Sewall and Watson, the nominees for the vice-presidency, are almost equally devoted adherents of the light-weight dollar and of a currency which shall not force a man to repay what he has borrowed, and shall punish the wrong-headed laborer, who expects to be paid his wages in money worth something, as heavily as the business man or farmer who is so immoral as to wish to pay his debts. All three are believers in that old-world school of finance which appears under such protean changes of policy, always desiring the increase of the circulating medium, but differing as to the means, which in one age takes the form of putting base metal in with the good, or of clipping the good, and in another assumes the guise of fiat money, or the free coinage of silver. On this currency question they are substantially alike, agreeing (as one of their adherents picturesquely put it, in arguing in favor of that form of abundant currency which has as its highest exponent the money of the late Confederacy) that “the money which was good enough for the soldiers of Washington is good enough for us.” As a matter of fact the soldiers of Washington were not at all grateful for the money which the loud-mouthed predecessors of Mr. Bryan and his kind then thought “good enough” for them. The money with which the veterans of Washington were paid was worth two cents on the dollar, and as yet neither Mr. Bryan, Mr. Sewall, nor Mr. Watson has advocated a two-cent copper dollar. Still, they are striving toward this ideal, and in their advocacy of the fifty cent dollar they are one.

But beyond this they begin to differ. Mr. Sewall distinctly sags behind the leader of the spike team, Mr. Bryan, and still more distinctly behind his rival, or running mate, or whatever one may choose to call him, the Hon. Thomas Watson. There is far more regard for the essential fitness of things in a ticket which contains Mr. Bryan and Mr. Watson than one which contains Mr. Bryan and Mr. Sewall. Mr. Watson is a man of Mr. Bryan’s type, only a little more so. But Mr. Sewall is of a different type, and possesses many attributes which must make association with him exceedingly painful, not merely to Mr. Watson, but to Mr. Bryan himself. He is a well-to-do man. Indeed in many communities he would be called a rich man. He is a banker, a railroad man, a shipbuilder, and has been successful in business. Now if Mr. Bryan and Mr. Watson really stand for any principle it is hostility to this kind of success. Thrift, industry, and business energy are qualities which are quite incompatible with true Populistic feeling. Payment of debts, like the suppression of riots, is abhorrent to the Populistic mind. Such conduct strikes the Populist as immoral. Mr. Bryan made his appearance in Congress with two colleagues elected on the same ticket, one of whom stated to the present writer that no honest man ever earned $5000 a year; that whoever got that amount stole it. Mr. Sewall has earned many times $5000 a year. He is a prosperous capitalist. Populism never prospers save where men are unprosperous, and your true Populist is especially intolerant of business success. If a man is a successful business man he at once calls him a plutocrat.

He makes only one exception. A miner or speculator in mines may be many times a millionaire and yet remain in good standing in the Populist party. The Populist has ineradicably fixed in his mind the belief that silver is a cheap metal, and that silver money is, while not fiat money, still a long step toward it. Silver is connected in his mind with scaling down debts, the partial repudiation of obligations, and other measures aimed at those odious moneyed tyrants who lend money to persons who insist upon borrowing, or who have put their ill-gotten gains in saving banks and kindred wicked institutions for the encouragement of the vice of thrift. These pleasurable associations quite outweigh, with the Populist, the fact that the silver man himself is rich. He is even for the moment blind to the further fact that these pro-silver men, like Senator Stewart, Governor Altgeld, and their compeers, strenuously insist that the obligations to themselves shall be liquidated in gold; indeed this particular idiosyncrasy of the silver leaders is not much frowned upon by the bulk of the Populists, because it has at least the merit of savoring strongly of “doing” one’s creditors. Not even the fact that rich silver mine owners may have earned their money honestly can outweigh the other fact that they champion a species of currency which will make most thrifty and honest men poorer, in the minds of the truly logical Populist.

But Mr. Sewall has no fictitious advantage in the way of owing his wealth to silver. He has made his money precisely as the most loathed reprobate of Wall Street--or of New York, which the average Populist regards as synonymous with Wall Street--has made his. The average Populist does not draw fine distinctions. There are in New York, as in other large cities, scoundrels of great wealth who have made their money by means skilfully calculated to come just outside the line of criminality. There are other men who have made their money exactly as the successful miner or farmer makes his,--that is, by the exercise of shrewdness, business daring, energy and thrift. But the Populist draws no line of division between these two classes. They have made money, and that is enough. One may have built railroads and the other have wrecked them, but they are both railroad men in his eyes, and that is all. One may have swindled his creditors, and the other built up a bank which has been of incalculable benefit to all who have had dealings with it, but to the Populist they are both gold bugs, and as such noxious. Mr. Sewall is the type of man the contemplation of which usually throws a Populist orator into spasms. But it happens that he believes in free silver, just as other very respectable men believe in spirit rapping, or the faith-cure, or Buddhism, or pilgrimages to Lourdes, or the foot of a graveyard rabbit. There are very able men and very lovely women who believe in each or all of these, and there are a much larger number who believe in free silver. Had they lived in the days of Sparta they would have believed in free iron, iron coin being at that time the cheapest circulating medium, the adoption of which would give the greatest expansion of the currency. But they have been dragged on by the slow procession of the centuries, and now they only believe in free silver. It is a belief which is compatible with all the domestic virtues, and even occasionally with very good capacities as a public servant. Mr. Sewall doubtless stands as one of these men. He can hardly be happy, planted firmly as he is, on the Chicago platform. In the minds of most thrifty, hard-working men, who are given to thinking at all about public questions, the free-silver plank is very far from being the most rotten of the many rotten planks put together with such perverted skill by the Chicago architects. A platform which declares in favor of free and unlimited rioting and which has the same strenuous objection to the exercise of the police power by the general government that is felt in the circles presided over by Herr Most, Eugene V. Debs, and all the people whose pictures appear in the detective bureaus of our great cities, cannot appeal to persons who have gone beyond the unpolished-stone period of civilization.

The men who object to what they style “government by injunction” are, as regards the essential principles of government, in hearty sympathy with their remote skin-clad ancestors who lived in caves, fought one another with stone-headed axes, and ate the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros. They are interesting as representing a geological survival, but they are dangerous whenever there is the least chance of their making the principles of this ages-buried past living factors in our present life. They are not in sympathy with men of good minds and sound civic morality. It is not a nice thing to wish to pay one’s debts in coins worth fifty cents on the dollar, but it is a much less nice thing to wish to plunge one’s country into anarchy by providing that the law shall only protect the lawless and frown scornfully on the law-abiding. There is a good deal of mushy sentiment in the world, and there are always a certain number of people whose minds are weak and whose emotions are strong and who effervesce with sympathy toward any man who does wrong, and with indignation against any man who chastises the criminal for having done wrong. These emotionalists, moreover, are always reinforced by that large body of men who themselves wish to do wrong, and who are not sentimental at all, but, on the contrary, very practical. It is rarely that these two classes control a great political party, but at Chicago this became an accomplished fact.

Furthermore, the Chicago convention attacked the Supreme Court. Again this represents a species of atavism,--that is, of recurrence to the ways of thought of remote barbarian ancestors. Savages do not like an independent and upright judiciary. They want the judge to decide their way, and if he does not, they want to behead him. The Populists experience much the same emotions when they realize that the judiciary stands between them and plunder.

Now on all these points Mr. Sewall can hardly feel complete sympathy with his temporary allies. He is very anxious that the Populists shall vote for him for Vice-President, and of course he feels a kindly emotion toward those who do intend to vote for him. He would doubtless pardon much heresy of political belief in any member of the electoral college who feels that Sewall is his friend, not Watson,--Codlin, not Short. He has, of course, a vein of the erratic in his character, or otherwise he would not be in such company at all, and would have no quality that would recommend him to them. But on the whole his sympathies must lie with the man who saves money rather than with the man who proposes to take away the money when it has been saved, and with the policeman who arrests a violent criminal rather than with the criminal. Such sympathy puts him at a disadvantage in the Populist camp. He is loud in his professions of belief in the remarkable series of principles for which he is supposed to stand, but his protestations ring rather hollow. The average supporter of Bryan doubtless intends to support Sewall, for he thinks him an unimportant tail to the Bryan kite. But, though unimportant, he regards him with a slight feeling of irritation, as being at the best a rather ludicrous contrast to the rest of the kite. He contributes no element of strength to the Bryan ticket, for other men who work hard and wish to enjoy the fruits of their toil simply regard him as a renegade, and the average Populist, or Populistic Democrat, does not like him, and accepts him simply because he fears not doing so may jeopardize Bryan’s chances. He is in the uncomfortable position always held by the respectable theorist who gets caught in a revolutionary movement and has to wedge nervously up into the front rank with the gentlemen who are not troubled by any of his scruples, and who really do think that it is all very fine and glorious. In fact Mr. Sewall is much the least picturesque and the least appropriate figure on the platform or platforms upon which Mr. Bryan is standing.

Mr. Watson, whose enemies now call him a Georgia cracker, is in reality a far more suitable companion for Mr. Bryan in such a contest. It must be said, however, that if virtue always received its reward Mr. Watson and not Mr. Bryan would stand at the head of the ticket. In the language of mathematicians Mr. Watson merely represents Mr. Bryan raised several powers. The same is true of the Populist as compared to the Democratic platform. Mr. Bryan may affect to believe that free silver does represent the ultimate goal, and that his friends do not intend to go further in the direction of fiat money. Mr. Watson’s friends, the middle-of-the-road Populists, are much more fearless and much more logical. They are willing to accept silver as a temporary makeshift, but they want a currency based on corn and cotton next, and ultimately a currency based on the desires of the people who issue it. The statesmanlike utterance of that great financier, Mr. Bryan’s chief rival for the nomination and at present his foremost supporter, Mr. Bland, to the effect that he would “wipe out the national debt as with a sponge,” meets with their cordial approval as far as it goes, but they object to the qualification before the word “debt.” In wiping out debts they do not wish to halt merely at the national debt. The Populists indorsed Bryan as the best they could get; but they hated Sewall so that they took the extraordinary step of nominating the Vice-President before the President so as to make sure of a really acceptable man in the person of Watson.