The Twentieth Century American Part 12

In England, on the other hand, the process that has been going on has been quite involuntary and is as yet almost entirely unconscious.

We have spoken so far of only one factor in that process--namely, the democratisation of the English people which is in progress and the blurring of the lines between the cla.s.ses. Co-operating with this are other forces. Just as the most well-bred persons can afford on occasions to be most careless of their manners--just as only an old-established aristocracy can be truly reckless of the character of new a.s.sociates whom it may please to take up--so it may be that the well-educated man, confident of his impeccability and altogether off his guard, more readily absorbs into his daily speech cant phrases and even solecisms than the half-educated who is ever watchful lest he slip. The American has a way of writing, figuratively, with a dictionary at his elbow and a grammar within reach. There are few educated Englishmen who do not consider their own authority--the authority drawn from their school and university training--superior to that of any dictionary or grammar, especially of any American one.[220:1] So it has come about that, while the tendency of the American people is constantly to become more exact and more accurate in its written and spoken speech, the English tendency is no less constantly towards a growing laxity; and while the American has been sternly and conscientiously at work pruning the inelegancies out of his language, the Briton has been lightheartedly taking these same inelegancies to himself. It is obviously impossible that such a twofold tendency can go on for long without the gulf between the quality of the respective languages becoming appreciably narrower.

The American writers who now occupy places on the staffs of London journals are thoroughly deserving of their places. They have earned these and retain them on the ground of their capacity as news gatherers, and through the brilliancy of their descriptive writing. They possess what is described as "newspaper ability" as opposed to "literary ability." It is, nevertheless, the fact that in the majority of the newspaper offices, the "copy" of these writers is permitted to pa.s.s through the press with an immunity from interference on the part either of editor or proof-reader, which, a decade back, would not have been possible in any London office. Thus the British public, unwarned and unconscious, is daily absorbing at its breakfast table, and in the morning and evening trains, American newspaper English, which is the output of English newspaper offices. It is not now contended that this English is any worse than the public would be likely to receive from the same cla.s.s of English writers, but the fact itself is to be noted. I am not prepared to agree with Mr. Andrew Lang in holding the English writer necessarily blameworthy who "in serious work introduces, needlessly, into our tongue an American phrase." Such introductions, however needless, may materially enrich the language, and I should, even with the permission of Mr. Lang, extend the same lat.i.tude to the introduction of Scotticisms.

A more important matter for consideration is the present condition of the copyright laws of the two countries. English publishers understand well enough why it is occasionally cheaper, or, taking all the conditions together, more advantageous to have put into type in the United States rather than in Great Britain the work of a standard English novelist, and to bring the English edition into print from a duplicate set of American plates. On the other hand, it is exceptional for a novel, or for any book by an American writer, to be put into type in England for publication in both countries. For the purpose of bringing the text of such books into line with the requirements of English readers, it is the practice of the leading American publishers to have one division of their composing-rooms allotted to typesetting by the English standard, with the use by the proof-readers of an English dictionary. It occasionally happens, however, that the attention of these proof-readers to the task of securing an English text limits itself to a few typical examples, such as spelling "colour" with a "u"

and seeing that "centre" does not appear as "center," while all that const.i.tutes the essence of American style, as compared with the English style, is pa.s.sed unmolested and without change.

Such a result is, doubtless, inevitable in the case of a work by an American writer who has his own idea of literary expression and his own standard of what const.i.tutes literary style, but the resulting text not infrequently gives ground for criticism on the part of English reviewers, and for some feeling of annoyance on the part of cultivated English readers.

In the case of books by English authors which are put into type in American printing-offices, there is, of course, no question of modification of style or of form of expression, but with these, as stated, the proof-readers are not always successful in eliminating entirely the American forms of spelling.

The English publisher, even though he give a personal reading to the book in the form in which it finally leaves his hands, (and, in the majority of cases, having read it once in ma.n.u.script, he declines to go over the pages a second time, but contents himself with a cursory investigation of the detail of "colour," of "centre,") is not infrequently dissatisfied, but it is too late for any changes in the text, and he can only let the volume go out. In the case of books printed in England from plates made in America, there is nothing at all to warn the reader; while in the case of books bound in England from sheets actually printed in the United States, there is nothing which the reader is likely to notice; and in nine cases out of ten the Englishman is unconscious that he is reading anything but an English book. The critic may understand, and the man who has lived long in the United States and who can recognise the characteristics of American diction, a.s.suredly will understand, but these form, of course, a very small cla.s.s in the community; and when the rest of the public is constantly reading American writing without a thought that it is other than English writing, it is hardly strange that American forms of speech creep daily more and more largely into the English tongue. What is really strange is that the educational authorities have been prepared to accept and to utilise in English schools many American educational books carrying American forms of speech and American spelling.

The morality or the wisdom of the English copyright laws is not at the moment under discussion, but it is my own opinion (which I believe to be the opinion of every Englishman who has given any attention to the matter) that not on any ground of literary criticism, or because of any canons of taste, but merely as a matter of pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence to England, and for the sake of securing additional employment for British labour, the laws of copyright are in no less radical and urgent need of amendment than the English postal laws. What we are here concerned with, however, is the effect of the present condition of these laws as one of the contributory factors which are co-operating to lessen the difference, once so wide and now so narrow, between the American and the English tongue.

Nor can there be any doubt of the result of this twofold process if it be allowed to continue indefinitely, working in England towards a democratisation and Americanisation of the speech, and in America towards a higher standard of taste, based on earlier English literary models. The two currents, once divergent, now so closely confluent, will meet; but will they continue to flow on in one stream? Or will the same tendencies persist, so that the currents will cross and again diverge, occupying inverse positions?

In a hundred years from now, when, as a result of the apparently inevitable growth of the United States in wealth, in power, and in influence, its speech and all other of its inst.i.tutions will come to be held in the highest esteem, is it possible that Londoners may vehemently put forward their claim to speak purer American than the Americans themselves--just as many Americans a.s.sert to-day that their speech is nearer to the speech of Elizabethan England than is the speech of modern Englishmen? Is it possible that it will be only in the common language of Englishmen that philologists will be able to find surviving the racy, good old American words and phrases of the last decades of the nineteenth century--a period which will be to American literature what the Elizabethan Age is to English. It may, of course, be absurd, but already there are certain individual Americanisms which have long been _taboo_ in every reputable office in the United States, but are used cheerfully and without comment in London dailies.

Once more it seems necessary to take precaution lest I be interpreted as having said more than I really have said. It would be a mere impertinence to affect to p.r.o.nounce a general judgment on the level of culture or of achievement of the two peoples in all fields of art and effort; and the most that an individual can do is to take such isolated examples drawn from one or from the other, as may serve in particular matters as some sort of a standard of measurement. What I am striving to convey to the average English reader is, of course, not an impression of any inferiority in the English, but only the fact that the Englishman's present estimate of the American is almost grotesquely inadequate.

FOOTNOTES:

[214:1] Mr. Archer, I find, has this delightful story: "A friend of mine returned from a short tour in the United States, declaring that he heartily disliked the country and would never go back again. Enquiry as to the grounds of his dissatisfaction elicited no more definite or d.a.m.ning charge than that 'they' (a collective p.r.o.noun presumed to cover the whole American people) hung up his trousers instead of folding them--or _vice versa_, for I am heathen enough not to remember which is the orthodox process."

[215:1] But I cannot resist recording my astonishment at finding in Ben Jonson the phrase "to have a good time" used in precisely the sense in which the American girl employs it to-day, or at learning from Macaulay that Bishop Cooper in the time of Queen Elizabeth spoke of a "platform"

in its exact modern American political meaning.

[220:1] Though it is worth noting that incomparably the best dictionary of the English language yet completed is an American one.

CHAPTER IX

POLITICS AND POLITICIANS

The "English-American" Vote--The Best People in Politics--What Politics Means in America--Where Corruption Creeps in--The Danger in England--A Presidential Nomination for Sale--Buying Legislation--Could it Occur in England?--A Delectable Alderman-- Taxation while you Wait--Perils that England Escapes--The Morality of Congress--Political Corruption and the Irish-- Democrat and Republican.

The American people ought cordially to cherish Englishmen who come to the United States to live, if only for the reason that they have never organised for political purposes. In every election, all over the United States, one hears of the Irish vote, the German vote, the Scandinavian vote, the Italian vote, the French vote, the Polish vote, the Hebrew vote, and many other votes, each representing a _clientele_ which has to be conciliated or cajoled. But none has ever yet heard of the English vote or of an "English-American" element in the population. It is not that the Englishman, whether a naturalised American or not, does not take as keen an interest in the politics of the country as the people of any other nation; on the contrary, he is incomparably better equipped than any other to take that interest intelligently. But he plays his part as if it were in the politics of his own country, guided by precisely the same considerations as the American voters around him.[227:1]

The individual Irishman or German will often take pride in splitting off from the people of his own blood in matters political and voting "as an American." It never occurs to the Englishman to do otherwise. The Irishman and the German will often boast, or you will hear it claimed for them, that they become a.s.similated quickly and that "in time," or "in the second generation," they are good Americans. The Englishman needs no a.s.similation; but feels himself to be, almost from the day when he lands (provided that he comes to live and not as a tourist), of one substance and colour with the people about him. Not seldom he is rather annoyed that those around him, remembering that he is English, seem to expect of him the sentiments of a "foreigner," which he in no way feels.

More than once, it is true, during my residence in America I have been approached by individuals or by committees, with invitations to a.s.sociate myself with some proposed political organisation of Englishmen "to make our weight felt;" but in justice to those who have made the suggestion it should be said that it has always been the outcome of exasperation at a moment either when Fenianism was peculiarly rampant in the neighbourhood, or when members of other nationalities were doing their best to create ill-will between Great Britain and the United States. The idea of organising, as the members of other nationalities have organised, for the mere purpose of sharing in the party plunder, has, I believe, never been seriously contemplated by any Englishmen in America; though there are many communities in which their vote might well give them the balance of power. It would, as a rule, be easier to pick out--say, in Chicago--a Southerner who had lived in the North for ten years than an Englishman who had lived there for the same length of time. It would certainly be safer to guess the Southerner's party affiliation.

The ideas of Englishmen in England about American politics are vague.

They have a general notion that there is a great deal of politics in America, that it is mostly corrupt, and that "the best people" do not take any interest in it. As for the last proposition, it is only locally or partially true, and quite untrue in the sense in which the Englishman understands it.

The word "politics" means two entirely separate things in England and in the United States. Understanding the word in its English sense, it is conspicuously untrue that the "best people" in America do not take at least as much an interest in politics as the "best people" take in England. Selecting as a representative of the "best people" of America, any citizen eminent in his particular community--capitalist, landed proprietor or "real-estate owner," banker, manufacturer, lawyer, railway president, or what not,--that man as a usual thing takes a very active interest in politics, and not in the politics of the nation only, but of his State and his munic.i.p.ality. He is known to be a pillar of one party or the other; he gives liberally of his own funds and of the funds of his firm or company to the party treasury[229:1]; he is consulted by, and advises with, the local committees; representatives of the national committees or from other parts of the State call upon him for information; he concerns himself intimately with the appointments to political office made from his section of the country; he attends public meetings and entertains visiting speakers at his house; as far as may be judicious (and sometimes much further), he endeavours by his example or precept to influence the votes and ways of thought of those in his service. The chances of his being sent to Congress or to the Senate, of his becoming a cabinet minister, being appointed to a foreign mission, or accepting a position on some commission of a public character, are vastly greater than with the man of corresponding position in England.

So far from not taking an interest in politics, as Englishmen understand the phrase, he is commonly a most energetic and valuable supporter of his party.

But--and here is the nub of the matter--politics in America include whole strata of political work which are scarcely understood in England.

When the English visitor is told in the United States that "our best people will not take any interest in politics," it is usually in the office of a financier, or at a fas.h.i.+onable dinner table, in New York or some other of the great cities. What is intended to be conveyed to him is that the "best people" will not take part in the active work in munic.i.p.al politics or in that portion of the national politics which falls within the munic.i.p.al area. The millionaire, the gentleman of refinement and leisure, will not "take off his coat" and attend primary meetings, or make tours of the saloons and meet Tammany or "the City Hall gang" on its own ground. As a matter of fact it is rather surprising to see how often he does it; but it is spasmodically and in occasional fits of enthusiasm for Reform, "with a large R." And, whatever temporary value these intermittent efforts may have (and they have great value, if only as a warning to the "gangs" that it is possible to go too far), they are in the long run of little avail against the constant daily and nightly work of the members of a "machine" to whom that work means daily bread.

I have said that it is surprising to see how often these "best people"

do go down into the slums and begin work at the beginning; and the tendency to do so is growing more and more frequent. The reproach that they do not do it enough has not the force to-day that once it had.

Meanwhile in England there is little complaint that the same people do not do that particular work, for the excellent reason that that work does not exist to be done. It would only be tedious here to go into an elaborate explanation of why it does not exist. The reason is to be found in the differences in the political structure of the two countries--in the much more representative character of the government (or rather of the methods of election to office) in America--in the multiplication of Federal, State, county, and munic.i.p.al office-holders--in the larger number of offices, including many which are purely judicial, which are elective, and which are filled by party candidates elected by a partisan vote--in the identification of national and munic.i.p.al politics all over the country.

Of all these causes, it is probably the last which is fundamentally most operative. The local democracy, local republicanism everywhere, is a part of the national Democratic or Republican organisation. The party as a whole is composed of these munic.i.p.al units. Each munic.i.p.al campaign is conducted with an eye to the general fortunes of the party in the State or the nation; and the same power that appoints a janitor in a city hall may dictate the selection of a presidential candidate.

Until very recently, this phenomenon was practically unknown in England.

The "best person"--he who "took an interest in politics" as a Liberal or as a Conservative--was no more concerned, as Liberal or Conservative, in the election of his town officers than he was accustomed to take part in the weekly sing-song at the village public house. National politics did not touch munic.i.p.al politics. Within the last two decades or so, however, there has been a marked change, and not in London and a few large cities alone.

Englishmen who have been accustomed to believe that the high standard of purity in English public life, as compared with what was supposed to be the standard in America, was chiefly owing to the divorcement of the two, are not altogether gratified at the change or easy in their mind as to the future. London is still a long way from having such an organisation as Tammany Hall in either the Moderate or Progressive party; but it is not easy to see what insuperable obstacles would exist to the formation of such an organisation, with certain limitations, if a great and unscrupulous political genius should arise among the members of either party in the London County Council and should bend his energies to the task. It is not, of course, necessary that, because Englishmen are approximating to the American system in this particular, they should be unable to avoid adopting its worst American abuses. But it will do no harm if Englishmen in general recognise that what is, it is to be hoped, still far from inevitable, was a short time ago impossible. If Great Britain must admit an influence which has, even though only incidentally, bred pestilence and corruption elsewhere, it might be well to take in time whatever sanitary and preventive measures may be available against similar consequences.[232:1]

Meanwhile in the United States there is continually being raised, in ever increasing volume, the cry for the separation of local and national politics. It is true that small headway has yet been made towards any tangible reform; but the desire is there. Again, therefore, it is curious that in politics, as in so many other things, there are two currents setting in precisely opposing directions in the two countries--in America a reaction against corruptions which have crept in during the season of growth and ferment and an attempt to return to something of the simplicity of earlier models, and, simultaneously in England, hardly a danger, but a possibility of sliding into a danger, of admitting precisely those abuses of which the United States is endeavouring to purge itself. The tendencies at work are exactly a.n.a.logous to those which, as we have seen, are operating to modify the respective modes of speech of the two peoples. What the ultimate effect of either force will be, it is impossible even to conjecture. But it is unpleasant for an Englishman to consider even the remotest possibility of a time coming, though long after he himself is dead, when the people of America will draw awful warnings from the corrupt state of politics in England, and bless themselves that in the United States the munic.i.p.al rings which dominate and scourge the great cities in England are unknown.

At present that time is far distant, and there can be no reasonable doubt that there is much more corruption in public affairs in the United States than in England. The possibilities of corruption are greater, because there are so many more men whose influence or vote may be worth buying; but it is to be feared that the evil does not exceed merely in proportion to the excess of opportunity. Granted that bribery and the use of undue influence are most obvious and most rampant in those spheres which have not their counterpart in Great Britain--in munic.i.p.al wards and precincts, in county conventions and State legislatures--it still remains that the taint has spread upwards into other regions which in English politics are pure. There is every reason to think that the Englishman is justified in his belief that the motives which guide his public men and the principles which govern his public policy are, on the whole, higher than those which guide and inspire and govern the men or policies of any other nation. Bismarck's (if it was Bismarck's) confidence in the _parole de gentleman_ is still justified. In America, a similar faith in matters of politics would at times be sorely tried.

Perhaps as good an ill.u.s.tration as could be cited of the greater possibilities of corruption in the United States, is contained in a statement of the fact that a very few thousand dollars would at one time have sufficed to prevent Mr. Bryan from becoming the Democratic candidate for the Presidency in 1896. This is not mere hearsay, for I am able to speak from knowledge which was not acquired after the event. Nor for one moment is it suggested that Mr. Bryan himself was thus easily corruptible, nor even that those who immediately nominated him could have been purchased for the sum mentioned.

The fact is that for a certain specified sum the leaders of a particular county convention were willing to elect an anti-Bryan delegation. The delegation then elected would unquestionably control the State convention subsequently to be held; and the delegation to be elected again at that convention would have a very powerful influence in shaping the action of the National Convention at St. Louis. The situation was understood and the facts not disputed. Those to whom the application for the money was made took all things into consideration and determined that it was not worth it; that it would be better to let things slide. They slid. If those gentlemen had foreseen the full volume of the avalanche that was coming, I think that the money would have been found.

It was, however, better as it was. The motives which prompted the refusal of the money were, as I was told, not motives of morality. It was not any objection to the act of bribery, but a mere question of expediency. It was not considered that the "goods" were worth the money.

But, as always, it was better for the country that the immoral act was not done. The Free Silver poison was working in the blood of the body politic, and it was better to let the malady come to a head and fight it strenuously than to drive it back and let it go on with its work of internal corruption. Looking back now it is easy to see that the fight of 1896 must have come at some time, and it was best that it came when it did. The gentlemen who declined to produce the few thousand dollars asked of them (the sum was fifteen thousand dollars, if I remember rightly, or three thousand pounds) would, a few weeks later, have given twice the sum to have the opportunity back again. Now, I imagine, they are well content that they acted as they did.

As ill.u.s.trating the methods which are not infrequent in connection with the work of the State legislatures, I may mention that I once acted (without premeditation) as witness to the depositing of two thousand dollars in gold coin in a box at a safety deposit vault, by the representative of a great corporation, the key of which box was afterwards handed to a member of the local State legislature. The vote and influence of that member were necessary for the defeat of certain bills--bills, be it said, iniquitous in themselves--which would have cost that particular corporation many times two thousand dollars; and two thousand dollars was the sum at which that legislator valued the aforesaid vote and influence.

It is not always necessary to take so much precaution to secure secrecy as was needed in this case. The recklessness with which State legislators sometimes accept cheques and other easily traceable media of exchange is a little bewildering, until one understands how secure they really are from any risk of information being lodged against them. A certain venerable legislator in one of the North-western States some years ago gained considerable notoriety, of a confidential kind, by being the only member of his party in the legislature at the time who declined to accept his share in a distribution which was going on of the mortgage bonds of a certain railway company. It was not high principle nor any absurd punctiliousness on his part that made him decline. "In my youth," said he to the representative of the railway company, "I was an earnest anti-slavery man and I still recoil from bonds." It was said that he received his proportion of the pool in a more negotiable form.

It would be easy, even from my own individual knowledge, to multiply stories of this cla.s.s; but the effect would only be to mislead the English reader, while the American is already familiar with such stories in sufficiency. The object is not to insist upon the fact that there is corruption in American public life, but rather to show what kind of corruption it is, and that it is largely of a kind the opportunity for indulgence in which does not exist in England. The method of nominating candidates for Parliament in England removes the temptation to "influence" primaries and bribe delegations. In the absence of State legislatures, railway and other corporations are not exposed to the same system of blackmail.

Let us suppose that each county in England had its legislature of two chambers, as every State has in America, the members of these legislatures being elected necessarily only from const.i.tuencies in which they lived, so that a slum district of a town was obliged to elect a slum-resident, a village a resident of that village; let us further suppose that by the mixture of races in the population certain districts could by mere preponderance of the votes be expected to elect only a German, a Scandinavian, or an Irishman--in each case a man who had been perhaps, but a few years before, an immigrant drawn from a low cla.s.s in the population of his own country; give that legislature almost unbridled power over all business inst.i.tutions within the borders of the county, including the determination of rates of charge on that portion of the lines of great railway companies which lay within the county borders--is there not danger that that power would be frequently abused?

When one party, after a long term of trial in opposition, found itself suddenly in control of both houses, would it always refrain from using its power for the gratification of party purposes, for revenge, and for the a.s.sistance of its own supporters? Local feeling sometimes becomes, even in England, much inflamed against a given railway company, or some large employer of labour, or great landlord, whether justly or not. It may be that in the case of a railway, the rates of fare are considered high, the train service bad, or the accommodations at the stations poor.

At such a time a local legislature would be likely to pa.s.s almost any bill that was introduced to hurt that railway company, merely as a means of bringing pressure to bear upon it to correct the supposed shortcomings. It obviously then becomes only too easy for an unscrupulous member to bring forward a bill which will have plausible colour of public-spirited motive, and which if it became a law would cost the railway company untold inconvenience and many tens of thousands of pounds; and the railway company can have that bill withdrawn or "sidetracked" for a mere couple of hundred.

Personally I am thankful to say that I have such confidence in the sterling quality of the fibre of the English people (so long as it is free, as it is in England, from Irish or other alien influence) as to believe that, even under these circ.u.mstances, and with all these possibilities of wrong-doing, the local legislatures would remain reasonably honest. But what might come with long use and practice, long exposure to temptation, it is not easy to say. Some things occur in the colonies which are not comforting. If, then, the corruption in American politics be great, the evil is due rather to the system than to any inherent inferiority in the native honesty of the people. Their integrity, if it falls, has the excuse of abundant temptation.

The most instructive experience, I think, which I myself had of the disregard of morality in the realm of munic.i.p.al politics was received when I a.s.sociated myself, sentimentally rather than actively, with a movement at a certain election directed towards the defeat of one who was probably the most corrupt alderman in what was at the time perhaps the corruptest city in the United States. Of the man's entire depravity, from a political point of view, there was not the least question among either his friends or his enemies. Nominally a Democrat, his vote and policy were never guided by any other consideration than those of his own pocket. On an alderman's salary (which he spent several times over in his personal expenditure each year), without other business or visible means of making money, he had grown wealthy--wealthy enough to make his contributions to campaign funds run into the thousands of dollars,--wealthy enough to be able always to forget to take change for a five-dollar or a ten-dollar bill when buying anything in his own ward,--wealthy enough to distribute regularly (was it five hundred or a thousand?) turkeys every Thanksgiving Day among his const.i.tuents. No one pretended to suggest that his money was drawn from any other source than from the public funds, from blackmail, and from the sale of his vote and influence in the City Council. In that Council he had held his seat una.s.sailably for many years through all the s.h.i.+fting and changing of parties in power. But a spirit of reform was abroad and certain public-spirited persons decided that it was time that the scandal of his continuance in office should be stopped. The same conclusion had been arrived at by various campaign managers and bodies of independent and upright citizens on divers preceding occasions, without any result worth mentioning. But at last it seemed that the time had come. There were various encouraging signs and portents in the political heavens and all auguries were favourable. There were, it is true, experienced politicians who shook their heads. They blessed us and wished us well.

They even contributed liberally to our campaign fund; but the most experienced among them were not hopeful.

It was a vigorous campaign--on our side; with meetings, bra.s.s bands, constant house-to-house canva.s.sing, and processions _ad libitum_. On the other side, there was no campaign at all to speak of; only the man whom we were seeking to unseat spent some portion of every day and the whole of every night going about the ward from saloon to saloon, always forgetting the change for those five-dollar and ten-dollar bills, always willing to cheer l.u.s.tily when one of our processions went by, and, as we heard, daily increasing his orders for turkeys for the approaching Thanksgiving season.