Puslapio vaizdai
PDF
„ePub“

alizing business disappear, and with it the legislative "jobbers" and "strikers" it has bred and nourished until they have made popular government a mockery, and the halls of legislation, in more than one instance, a den of thieves?

There has never been any corruption in politics, in any nation that the world has ever seen, in which the responsibility did not rest upon the man who offered the bribe rather than upon the man who took it. It does not lessen this responsibility if there be one or a dozen middlemen between the bribe-giver and the bribe-taker. What is wanted is a moral sense which will be as keen in political matters as it is in private and commercial matters. No reputable man ought to give a dollar for political purposes unless he can have in return an accounting for its use. Every man who contributes to a large campaign fund, to be expended by a professional corruptionist without any public or private accounting of the uses to which it is put, is an accomplice in a gigantic scheme of bribery which he has helped to make possible. Every man who contributes a penny to the blackmail levied against him, either as an individual or as a member of a corporation, is an accomplice in the systematic debauching of popular government which is in progress in the legislative bodies of this country to-day.

Why is it that it is so difficult to secure a more honest administration of the government of a great city like New York? There are many reasons, but the chief of them is not the cupidity and ignorance of the lower class of voters. Why do men not only consent to pay 66 assessments to the Tammany dictators as the price of nominations for office, but why do they also consent to contribute directly to its campaign funds under fear of hostile treatment in case they refuse? An instance is within our knowledge in which the members of a firm were as individuals deeply interested in the campaign of the People's Municipal League against Tammany Hall in 1890, and as individuals were contributors to the League's fund, yet as a firm they contributed also to the Tammany Hall fund in order to be on good terms with Tammany after election. The idea that their moral obligations as good citizens were greater than their business interests did not occur to them, or, if it did, was not powerful enough to control their conduct. Instead of being the source of our political corruption, the ignorant voter is the victim of it. If he be foreign-born, almost the first lesson he receives in American politics is that elections are controlled by corrupt men for corrupt purposes, and that the rich and respectable members of American society supply money for this work of debauchery. Instead of educating him to a high and just conception of his duties and privileges as a citizen, we are teaching him the lowest one possible. The dangerous consequences of such teaching need not be pointed out. Every instinct of patriotism, as well as every moral obligation, ought to show to every man who loves his country what his duty is in the premises.

A New Movement in Municipal Reform. A FEW public-spirited young men in New York City have set on foot a project which ought to find imitators in all other large cities of the land. They have founded a City Club, composed of men who are in favor of better municipal government, and who are sufficiently

anxious to obtain it to work together for that end without regard to the considerations of national politics. It is proposed to have a club-house which, in addition to the usual accompaniments of such buildings, will have facilities for publishing and distributing documents and other educational literature. The minimum membership of 500, proposed as a beginning, was quickly reached, and the membership is approaching its first thousand. The idea is to organize ultimately the intelligence and morality of the community as thoroughly as the cupidity and ignorance of it have for years been organized by the political machines, and thus to make the former a power which shall drive the latter from the control of the government.

The alacrity with which eminent citizens of all political faiths have joined in the movement furnishes evidence, as encouraging as it is surprising, that there is an abundance of public spirit in the city which has generally been accused of having less of that quality than almost any other in the country.

But in how many other cities do the most intelligent elements of the population neglect entirely municipal affairs for the greater part of the time, taking only a brief and often misdirected interest in them for a few weeks preceding an election? The men who make politics their occupation and means of livelihood devote all their energies to the business every day in the year. They have their meeting-places, or halls, and their or ganization is in constant readiness for a contest. They would never make the blunder of allowing their organization to go to pieces after each election, trusting to luck to get it together again in time to carry the next election.

There is not a city in the land in which the respectable and intelligent citizens are not in an overwhelming majority. Bad municipal government in the United States, which is the almost universal rule, exists only because of the refusal of these citizens to take control of their own affairs. They allow themselves, in the first place, to be divided into two factions because of their national political affiliations. This gives the politicians who get their living out of bad municipal government their most important point of vantage: they have the enemy surely and permanently divided. Having given the politicians this advantage at the outset, the intelligent and respectable citizens give them the further advantage of refraining from all permanent organization. These are notorious facts, and it is unnecessary to dwell upon them, or upon the results which flow naturally from them.

The City Club idea is aimed directly at the two worst evils of our present system. It requires its disciples to say that they will leave national politics out of the problem, and that they will enroll themselves as members of a permanent organization, paying annual dues for its support and for the prosecution of its work, and holding themselves in readiness at all times to unite in a common movement for a common purpose. It is based on the belief that the intelligent citizen will find in civic pride an incentive to political work as powerful and absorbing as the ignorant and corrupt politician finds in the spoils of office. We do not believe that this is a misplaced confidence. There is no lack of civic pride in any city of America. It exists everywhere in constantly increasing volume, because of the shame which the scandals of municipal misgovernment are bringing upon us as a people. With proper organization it can be converted into a tremendous power for good, and

such organization the City Club idea seems surely to promise.

Every patriotic citizen, and every sympathizer with the hardships and sufferings of his fellow-creatures, ought to rejoice at an opportunity to join an organization of this character. Municipal misrule is a scandal and a shame, but its most deplorable aspect is the suffering which it causes to the most helpless portion of every city's population, the poor. It is upon them that the evil of dishonest and ignorant government bears most heavily in the end. In the model governments of cities like Glasgow, Berlin, Edinburgh, and Birmingham, it is the poor whose health, happiness, and security are most carefully provided for and protected. In many of our cities the government not merely ignores their needs, it brutally aggravates and multiplies their distresses. It does nothing to soften the hardness of their lives, but nearly everything possible to make their burdens heavier.

Another Word on "Cheap Money." WITH the failure of the free-coinage bill in Congress, the danger that this country might be called upon to pass through the quagmire of a fresh cheap-money experiment seems to have been averted, for the present surely, and in all probability for a long time to come. It is apparent now that whatever of popular sentiment there may have been behind the free-silver movement at its beginning, there was very little behind it at the time of the free-coinage bill's failure, and even less at this moment than there was then. The American people have always shown great quickness in educating themselves on financial and economic questions, and the sudden subsidence of the free-silver "craze" shows that the work of education, so far as that form of cheap money is concerned, has been practically accomplished.

THE CENTURY rejoices sincerely in the assurances which have come to it from many sources that its efforts to assist in this work of education have not been unsuccessful. Now that the work is ended for the present, it may not be amiss, in taking leave of the subject in these columns, to quote a few striking passages, on the evils of cheap money, from the writings of two masters of vigorous English who studied different phases of those evils in former times. The truth of their forcible language will be all the more appreciated now, since we are coming more and more each day to a proper realization of the perils from which, as a nation, we have had so narrow an escape.

In 1722 one William Wood, a hardware merchant, obtained from the British crown a patent to coin copper money for Ireland to the amount of £108,000. He had no power to compel any one to take his halfpence, which he coined under this grant and sent to Ireland; and when a large batch of them arrived there the people refused to take and use them as money. They were made of such base metal, and were so much smaller than the English halfpence, that they were worth in gold or silver not more than a twelfth of their face-value. When the Irish people refused to accept them as money, there was talk of Wood's obtaining orders from the crown compelling the king's commissioners and collectors of customs in Ireland to take them as money, and thus force them into circulation. Upon this proposition Dean Swift, then in the full vigor of his won

derful powers as a controversialist, published a series of pamphlets or letters addressed to the tradesmen, shopkeepers, farmers, and common people in general, on the subject of the debased coin, which made a powerful impression in both England and Ireland, and hastened the repeal of Wood's patent. These letters were signed "Drapier," and are known in the collections of Swift's works under that title. We shall make a few quotations from them with a view to showing how perfectly his arguments against the folly of debased or cheap money, made 170 years ago, apply to the proposal to inflict upon the American people a debased silver dollar worth only 70 cents.

It was urged in defense of Wood's money that copper halfpence were scarce in Ireland; that the people needed more copper money for the transaction of their business; and that if the supply were greater everybody would be more prosperous. All that sounds very familiar. It was also said, in answer to a query as to whether Wood would keep his coinage within the £108,000 limit, that he would be guided in that respect by the" exigencies of trade." That phrase also sounds very familiar. Here is what Swift says on that point:

less the exigencies of trade require it: First, I observe Wood proposes that he will not coin above £40,000 unthat this sum of £40,000 is almost double to what I proved to be sufficient for the whole kingdom, although we had not one of our old halfpence left. Again I ask, who is to be judge when the exigencies of trade require it? Without doubt he means himself, for as to us of this poor kingdom, who must be utterly ruined if his project should succeed, we were never once consulted till the matter was over, and he will judge of our exigencies by his own; neither will these be ever at an end till he and his accomplices will think they have enough.

In reference to the effects of cheap halfpence on the people of Ireland, Swift said:

Mr. Wood will never be at rest but coin on: so that in some years we shall have at least five times four score and ten thousand pounds of this lumber. Now the current hundred thousand pounds in all; and while there is a money of this kingdom is not reckoned to be above four silver sixpence, these blood-suckers will never be quiet. When once the kingdom is reduced to such a condition I will tell you what must be the end: The gentlemen of estates will all turn off their tenants for want of payment, because the tenants are obliged by their leases to pay sterling, which is lawful current money of England; then they will turn their own farmers, run all into sheep where they can, keeping only such other cattle as are necessary; then they will be their own merchants, and send their wool and butter and hides and linen beyond sea for ready money and wines and spices and silks. The farmers must rob or beg or leave the country. The shopkeepers in this and every other town must break and starve, for it is the landed man that maintains the merchant, and shopkeeper, and handicraftsman. I should never have done, if I were to tell you all the miseries that we shall undergo if we be so foolish and wicked as to take this cursed coin... In short, those halfpence are like the accursed thing, which, as the Scripture tells us, the children of Israel were forbidden to touch; they will run about like the plague and destroy everyone who lays his hands upon them."

Carlyle, in his "French Revolution," uses scarcely less vigorous, and even more picturesque, language in regard to the assignats which were issued in France between 1789 and 1796. These were in the form of paper money, based at first upon the security of confiscated church lands, and afterward upon all the national domains and other property. They were issued to the amount of over forty-five billion francs, and be

fore they were withdrawn depreciated to less than one three hundredth of their face-value. Carlyle records that a hackney-coachman in Paris demanded six thousand livres, about fifteen hundred dollars, as fare for a short ride, in the last days of the assignats. In regard to the first issue, he says in the first volume of

the "French Revolution":

Wherefore, on the 19th day of December, a papermoney of "Assignats," of Bonds secured, or assigned, on that Clerico-National Property, and unquestionably at least in payment of that,-is decreed: the first of a long series of like financial performances, which shall astonish mankind. So that now, while old rags last, there shall be no lack of circulating medium: whether of commodities to circulate thereon is another question. But, after

all, does not this assignat business speak volumes for modern science? Bankruptcy, we may say, was come, as the end of all Delusions needs must come: yet how gently, in softening diffusion, in mild succession, was it hereby made to fall;-like no all-destroying avalanche; like gentle showers of a powdery impalpable snow, shower after shower, till all was indeed buried, and yet little was destroyed that could not be replaced, be dispensed with! To such length has modern machinery reached. Bankstanding miracle. ruptcy we said was great; but indeed Money itself is a

The miracle of the assignats consisted in creating what appeared to be something out of nothing; but it returned in due season to nothing, leaving ruin and desolation behind it.

OPEN LETTERS.

The Disputed Picture in Sparks's "Washington."

CENTURY for February, 1892, Charles

Henry Hart undertakes to "refute" what is stated in my volume, "George Washington and Mount Vernon," concerning the error of Sparks in publishing a portrait of Washington's sister as that of his wife. But Mr. Hart, in his comparative study, deals with the wrong picture! He contrasts the Sparks engraving with a picture from Clarke County shown in our Centennial Loan Exhibition in 1889. Although to me it is plain that the exhibited picture was meant for the same person as the Sparks picture, it is a wretched daub, and looks like some local artist's attempt to paint Betty Lewis in advanced age with the dress of her early portraits. However this may be, it is aside from the issue. The portrait to be compared with the supposed Martha Washington is the unquestionable Betty Lewis at Marmion, of which an engraving appeared in THE CENTURY for April.

A satisfactory comparison cannot, however, be made between the two engravings. The Sparks engraver has made the lady much younger than she is in the original, and has slightly rearranged her beads, so far as I can judge from a blue photograph of the original now before me. On the other hand, the Marmion lady appears older in black and white than in the original, which is represented in New York by a full-sized copy, made many years ago by a competent artist for the late Captain Coleman Williams, one of the Lewis family. Since seeing the picture in the April CENTURY, I have closely compared the pictures again, and believe the only important difference between the undisputed Betty Lewis and the supposed Martha Washington is in a slight rearrangement of hair over the forehead. In the originals the two appear to be of the same age, and the portraits were probably taken successively, Colonel Fielding Lewis ordering one picture of his bride for himself, another for her brother. In order to show that they were not replicas, the artist has altered the hair slightly, and some few details; the flower held in the right hand is changed, and the figure, standing in one case, is seated in the other. If Mr. Hart will call on me, he shall be shown the copy of the Marmion portrait beside the Sparks picture, and a photograph from the original represented by the latter. I do not doubt that he will

be convinced that, unless they be the same, no two unrelated ladies ever so miraculously resembled each other, or dressed so alike, even to the loops of the bow-knot at

the breast, and ribbons floating out in the same way. I think, too, that Mr. Hart will admit that nothing less than a miracle could transform the lady of the Sparks picture, especially as seen in my photograph from the original, into the Mrs. Washington by Charles Willson Peale reproduced in his article in the February CENTURY.

It is not necessary for me to venture any theory as to the origin of the error in Sparks; but having some Virginia sentiment concerning the families connected by Mr. Hart with the matter, who are placed as I think in a false position, I must question the authenticity of his statement that G. W. P. Custis and Mr. and Mrs. Law. rence Lewis are responsible for the publication in Sparks. If indeed they believed the portrait to be that of Martha Washington, they may have got the notion from the book of Sparks, who might have got it from a negro housekeeper. None of them could remember Betty Lewis or Mrs. Washington at so early an age as that of the portrait, and they might easily have been misled. But were they misled? Mr. Custis does seem to allude to this portrait as that of his grandmother, but evidently had no definite knowledge about it. He says it was painted in 1757-the terrible year in which Martha Custis, after the death of her two children, saw her husband sinking into the grave. Is it to be sup posed that then, or in any of those years of affliction, this bereaved mother and widow was painted in décolletée costume, and gayest colors, as shown in the original of the Sparks picture?

In 1855 Colonel Lewis Washington, who pointed out the error in Sparks, made a careful investigation of all the family pictures, and corresponded with Mr. Custis on the subject. In a letter to Colonel Lewis Washington (August 4, 1855), Mr. Custis speaks of the "majestic" Betty Lewis, and adds, "There is a good por trait of her." To what portrait did he refer? Certainly not to the wretched daub with which alone Mr. Hart has compared the Sparks picture. No sane man could describe that as good, or its subject as majestic. Mr. Cus tis could hardly mean Colonel Lewis Washington's own picture of Betty Lewis. The "good portrait" may have been that at Marmion, whose characteristics he might

not remember. Or, finally, Mr. Custis may have been convinced in 1855, when Colonel Lewis Washington called his attention to the matter, that the portrait at Arlington, which Sparks had engraved, was that of Betty Lewis.

Moncure D. Conway.

A Word More on the Distribution of Ability. IN the abundant comment upon the article about "The Distribution of Ability in the United States " which appeared in the September CENTURY, much criticism was mingled. To reply to this criticism in detail would be needless, and would occupy too much space. But all of it, I think, can be met by a few general statements, and the more easily as most of it proceeds from a misapprehension of the original inquiry and of the system upon which it was conducted.

In the first place, I did not create the statistics; I merely collected them, and they are as free from error as it is possible to be in tallying and classifying over fifteen thousand names. I should have been glad to give figures which would have gratified every one's local and race sensibilities; and if I had been making up the lists as a work of the imagination solely to please myself, I should not have reached the conclusion that Connecticut among the States and the Huguenot French among the race stocks showed the highest percentage of ability. I gave the results exactly as I found them, and had no idea what they would be until all the names had been tallied, classified, and finally counted.

Another criticism has come from a failure to recognize the plainly stated system upon which the work was done. I adopted, for instance, a certain race classification. It is perfectly fair to criticize that classification as such, but it is absurd to say that I have misrepresented facts because the results of a different classification are not the same as mine. For example, I classified the Irish and the Scotch-Irish as two distinct race stocks, and I believe the distinction to be a sound one historically and scientifically. It is possible, of course, to take another view of this arrangement of races, and perhaps to defend it. But to add a large part of the Scotch-Irish to the Irish, as one of my critics has done, and then to accuse me of misrepresentation because his result based on one classification differs from mine based on another and entirely different one, is unfair and meaningless, and does not touch my conclusions. The Scotch-Irish from the north of Ireland, Protestant in religion and chiefly Scotch and English in blood and name, came to this country in large numbers in the eighteenth century, while the people of pure Irish stock came scarcely at all during the colonial period, and did not immigrate here largely until the present century was well advanced. There seems no good reason why a people who were not here except in very small numbers should perform the impossible feat of producing more ability than races which were here and which outnumbered them many times. In the table of persons born in the United States the number of pure Irish stock is small because there was very little of it. On the other hand, in the emigrant table, which represents ability after the Irish movement began, the Irish stand high. The Scotch-Irish and Huguenots show the reverse. They stand very high in the tables of persons born here, and almost disappear in the emigrant table. In

other words, the figures correspond, as they ought, with the facts of history and with the race movements.

The same principle holds true in regard to States. Communities cannot begin to produce native-born ability until they have been in existence as communities for at least the lifetime of one generation. For this reason the total amount of ability becomes less as we pass from the old thirteen States to those founded just after the Revolution, and thence through the different stages until the newest States are reached, where practically nothing is shown in the tables, simply because there has not been time for men and women to be born and to grow to maturity, and the active and able part of the population has of necessity come from outside. The criticism that birthplace should not be the test for the classification by communities seems hardly to require an answer, for a moment's reflection ought to convince any one that no other is practicable. Place of birth is no test of race, although it may be an indication, but it is a test for determining the community which produced a given man or woman. If we attempt to credit a person to the community in which he grew up or was educated, or in which he achieved his reputation, our only guide is discretion, and the classification could be disputed in every instance. The place of birth may sometimes be misleading as to the community which really produced a man or woman, but these errors are comparatively few; they balance, or tend to balance, one another, and the test itself is not open to dispute and is not a matter of personal discretion.

In addition to these general points, there is one specific objection which I wish to meet. Some of my critics said that it was not surprising that New England and New York showed such high figures, because "Appleton's Cyclopædia of National Biography" was a Northern and Eastern publication, and its editors were a New-Yorker and a New-Englander. It was intimated that if the "Cyclopædia" had been edited and published elsewhere, and by other persons, the result would have been different, and that the place of publication and the unconscious bias of the editors had given the States which showed the best results an undue advantage. This criticism was susceptible of a test which I have accordingly made. In regard to American ability the "Encyclopædia Britannica," whatever its merits or defects otherwise, is at least a disinterested witness, unswayed by either the State or race partialities of the United States. In the index of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" I find 317 names of Americans, who are not merely mentioned in lists, but of whom some account is given either under their own names or in connection with some general subject. Of these at least 250 would be placed without dispute among the 300 most distinguished Americans. Of the remaining 67 the right of some to be in the list would be disputed, while that of others would be rejected, by American judges. These last names, however, whether removed or left in, are so divided among races and States as to make no difference in the general result. These 317 names, therefore, selected by an entirely outside authority, I have classified and arranged just as I did those in the original article, and the results are given below. These tables explain themselves. It will be seen that they not only confirm the general trend and results of the Appleton tables, but accentuate the differences among the States shown by the latter, and fully sustain the conclusions of the original articl

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Kentucky

3

6

Ohio

5

6

Indiana

I

3

Georgia

I

Louisiana.

Illinois

I

73248

97 30 69 3 28 726 9 8 21 7 8 3 1 317

H. C. Lodge.

2

2

Note on "The Distribution of Ability."

THE writer of "The Distribution of Ability in the United States" has omitted to mention one circumstance which strikes me as a very material one. Be one's ability what it may, it is the pen alone that can confer upon him even the immortality of the biographi cal dictionary. Nearly all the writers and chroniclers of the country have been Northerners, and largely

97 30 69 3 28 7 26 9 8 21 7 8 3 1 317 New-Englanders. As a consequence, local prominence,

[blocks in formation]

of whatever sort or degree, stood a much better chance there of falling in the way of the encyclopedia-maker, than if achieved among a people with whom literature was by far the most backward of all pursuits.

It has been said that a happy people have no history. It is self-consciousness and discontent, rather than naturalness and cheerfulness, that fill the libraries. Thus the Southerner, I opine, has come to be a maker of books.

But this is somewhat from the point. It is of course impossible even to estimate the effect of a State's backwardness in literature on the fame of her sons. That 87 it must have some weight the author of the article mentioned will, I am sure, admit. Sallust said of the Athenians:

54

[ocr errors]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][subsumed][ocr errors]

The exploits of the Athenians doubtless were great; and yet I believe they were somewhat less than fame would have us conceive of them. But because Athens abounded in noble writers, the acts of that republic are celebrated throughout the whole world as most glorious; and the gallantry of those heroes who performed them has had the good fortune to be thought as transcendent as the eloquence of those who have described them.

KITTRELL, NORTH CAROLINA.

David Dodge.

[blocks in formation]
[blocks in formation]
« AnkstesnisTęsti »