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were hired to prevent meetings; to avoid bribery, rooms were rented for a week or two for guests that were never to come; men were hired by the dozen at enormous wages to erect campaign polls, and other squads of "floaters" were hired at equally munificent rates to guard them; that is, to remain in the nearest public house, and to look toward them a few times a day. Wives of needed voters were hired to make banners and uniforms, and their children to carry torches. Probably no imaginable method of corruption was overlooked. And yet their law is said to have practically ended the corruption, only here and there a vote being purchased now.

The English parliamentary elections are much simpler than ours, as only the one office is to be filled, so that their law would need much modification for adoption here. It may be, too, that some of its features would not be well adapted to our country, either because poorly suited to our people, or because we could not hope to secure their enactment. A law might be passed, however, were there a strong desire for reform, that might do much good. The following provisions are suggested:

Let the amount that can be expended for each candidate on the ticket be strictly limited; a certain small sum for a ward or town office, a larger sum for a county office, and a still larger for a congressional or State office, etc. The amounts should be liberal for all legitimate needs, and might be graded more or less by the number of voters, the size of the district, etc. Each candidate should be permitted to pay only his own personal expenses, for traveling, postage, etc. These sums should be limited, and he should be compelled to account under oath for every cent so expended. The rest of his contribution should go to his committee or manager. Every candidate representing a party should be compelled to have his campaign managed by his party committee. All the regular expenditures, except the personal ones mentioned above, should be made by the treasurer of the committee, and he should make a sworn, itemized return of every penny that comes into his hands. An independent candidate should select a manager who, under like conditions of accountability, should manage his canvass. The number of workers under pay at the polls on election day should be strictly limited, and the amount of their compensation prescribed. The English law does not permit the agents at the polls to vote. If their number is limited, however, I do not see the necessity for disfranchisement. Of course all bribery, promises of offices, etc., treating, and all such practices, should be forbidden, as well as expenditures for certain purposes that, though innocent, are really unnecessary, and which are

readily used to avoid bribery laws. Opinions might differ as to the nature of the expenditures to be forbidden; but whenever a practice, innocent in itself, becomes a cover for crime, expenditure of campaign money for it should be forbidden. Under this head in England come expenditures for torch-light processions and parades, bands of music, payment for carriages or horses to bring voters to the polls, payment of railway fares, expenditures for flags, cockades, ribbons, or other marks of distinction, etc. Some of these methods of conducting a campaign may arouse enthusiasm; but they can hardly be said to be educative, and politicians say that processions, music, even campaign speeches, affect few votes. If one party has them, the other must; but excepting the speeches, all might be forbidden with no harm to the voter, though I question if we have in the country a legislature bold enough to pass such a bill.

Many people defend the practice of bringing voters to the polls in carriages at the expense of the party, paying railway fares of those temporarily absent from home, etc. It is said that many a cripple, or poor man living at a distance, would otherwise be deprived of his vote; that the students in colleges, traveling salesmen, and others could often not afford to come home at election time, and that they would thus be disfranchised. So far as the matter concerns the crippled and infirm, while hired carriages do bring them to the polls, the carriages are not hired especially on their account, but rather for the sake of the owners and drivers, and that of the lazy and careless voters, whose votes are worse than useless to the country. The infirm, were no carriages hired by the committees, would hire carriages for themselves or be brought by public-spirited friends. As for the other classes, the trouble of bringing themselves to the polls would make their ballot of more value than it now is, and would make the right more highly appreciated. If they are to be aided at all,—a practice that seems to me undesirable,—it should be at the public expense, not at that of the candidate. No thoughtful, honest voter casts his vote as a favor to any man or party; he votes for his country's good.

This practice of paying for such expenditures has led very many of our farmers to feel that they should receive pay for their time, and that of their men, on election day, and has led college students to feel that they may honorably receive their expenses home. Why? They feel that they are voting for the good of the candidate. Why should he not pay them their necessary expenses? But no man can take such expenses, and thereafter cast an independent ballot. We ought not to blind

voters to the real significance of the ballot. I think it very doubtful if a law could be enacted here at present forbidding such expenditures; I have no doubt that, in connection with other laws, it would be desirable.

But to the provisions mentioned should be added the measure that has proved in England perhaps the most advantageous of all, the one recommended by Governor Hill in his annual message of 1890. By this law any successful candidate against whom can be proved a charge of bribery or of a corrupt practice, either on his own part or on that of his party managers, may be deprived of his seat by a writ of quo warranto, and his competitor, who brings the suit, may take the seat in his stead, unless the defendant shows that the petitioner also has been guilty of bribery, either through himself or his committee. This act, as a rule, makes it more advantageous, especially for the weaker candidate, to be honest than to be guilty of bribery; and, as experience in England and Canada has shown, self-interest in this way works better results than honest intentions merely. With this act it seems to me that we might be able to go further in accordance with the spirit of our institutions, and, in fact, not merely in the statutes, as we sometimes do now,-disfranchise for a longer or shorter period any man found guilty of bribery or corrupt practice, either as giver or receiver. The fundamental principle upon which all democratic government is founded is that of personal responsibility. The true basis of suffrage is not property, or education, but personality. When one has lost this by failing to exercise his independent right to a vote, through yielding his principles to the will of another, he might well be deprived of his right to vote. Certainly a candidate for office, unseated because of bribery, should be disfranchised, as by the English law.

A system of proportional representatives, or a law providing that all nominations, whether first made in convention or not, must be made by petitions, and all candidates be given an equal chance of prominence on the ballots, would tend to weaken the influence of the "machine." Any law that tends to make the prizes for corruption less will be likely to have a good influence. But back of all these laws must be a favorable public opinion. At the present time in New York State, according to all appearances, no law would be more beneficial to the Democratic party than one that in reality established purity of elections. The Democratic managers concede that the Republicans have the advantage in vote-buying, because, as they say, "We have to buy not merely Republican votes, but our own as well." By far the larger portion of the purchasable vote is

probably normally Democratic. The Republicans, too, for several years, in the general opinion, have been able to raise money more easily than the Democrats. Men standing high in the councils of the Republican party have said to me that the greatest blow that the Republican party in New York had received for many years was the present ballot-reform law. And yet, with the legislature Democratic in both branches, and with a Democratic governor, no attempt has been made to extend the election laws in this direction, although Governor Hill recommended repeatedly-sincerely, his friends say; insincerely, say his enemies— such extension, along the lines of the best experience of Europe. What is the explanation of this neglect? The Democratic leaders say that public opinion is not with them. By public opinion, of course, they include the opinion of the "floaters" as well as of all of their own party managers. The leading Democrats, those high in the councils of the party, the leading machine politicians, would doubtless be glad to see the practice stopped, but the ward "heelers," those who have the money to handle, and who make good profits by handling the money, would be opposed to the stopping of the practice.

So, again, most of the "floaters" would be unwilling to see the practice stopped. The party managers cannot carry out the act unless public opinion is so strong in its favor that they can afford to alienate more than merely a large portion of the "floaters." They cannot afford to do it until the pressure of public opinion is strong enough to gain them by their act as many votes as they would lose by alienating the lower class of their party workers. County managers say that the men who handle their money regularly keep out good pay for themselves, twenty or thirty dollars at least, on election day, when much money is paid. It is the opinion of more than one that two thirds of these "buyers" could readily be bought for no great sum, being in party fealty little above the "floater" proper. I know of one in the West, who, in 1890, offered for $200 to use his influence in his own party for the candidate for county clerk of the opposite party, the money to be paid on condition of the success of the candidate. It was feared that he was seeking to get evidence against the candidate, and no bargain was made.

In 1890, in Ohio, an expert workman in one of the rolling-mills in the interior of the State was hired by the candidate for Congress, a man since given a high executive office, to aid him in his campaign. He was first given $400; then, for election day, $1000 more. After election he had $800 of it retained, on which capital he, within a few weeks, started a saloon. The head roller in the same establishment, a man earning from fifteen to twenty dollars a day, was

offered twice his wages for two weeks' work in electioneering for the same candidate, but he declined. These men, of course, were expected to influence the labor vote in the trades-unions, but the first one kept a large part of the money given him, and doubtless could have been bought by the opposition.

The opinion of many of our most intelligent classes is in favor of reform, though the measures of reform that they advocate may be sometimes unpractical, as the politicians charge; but there is as yet no popular demand on the part of the great mass of voters for this reform. Public opinion must be created, and here is the work for the reformers. We need the old Cobden cry, "Agitate, agitate, agitate!" Public interest, perhaps, can best be achieved by letting the people know through papers, periodicals, and books what is really done. This is by no means generally comprehended. And then, too, must be shown the evils that come from these practices.

So, again, as public opinion is slow to move, it may well be worth while to have the principles of rational, honest politics taught in our schools and colleges to a greater extent than is at present done. We hear much talk in school conventions of "teaching patriotism." But how is it to be taught? The practice of cheering the flag, of learning the biographies of some of our leading statesmen, or of learning to believe, without knowing why, that our country is the strongest and best on earth, will have little effect toward remedying our present political evils. Civil government is something

more than the written constitution, the names of the officers, the dates of election, and other such facts as are taught in our text-books on civil government. The civil government that will help our children to get ideas which later will be of practical use in politics is that which shows the principles of party government, the methods of making nominations, of carrying elections, of making appointments to offices, and all the other details of our political life as it in fact is managed, together with the facts of history and political science which show that, however valuable in carrying single elections, and advancing local interests, dishonest political scheming may be, in the long run the interests of states, as of individuals, are furthered by honest principles; that great public questions are not settled till they are settled right, because "the power in men that makes for righteousness" is, after all, when men's eyes are opened, the dominant one.

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Lombroso, in his great work on criminals, has well said that each state has the criminals that it deserves. So, too, in a much truer sense, may it be said that each state has the laws, the institutions, the benefits, the evils that it deserves. Many of our best citizens, considered by themselves, are unjustly treated in our corrupt election practices; but taking our people as a whole, they have what they wish, though the wishing may be ignorant. When we, by the means suggested, have so enlightened our public that they demand improvements in these methods, the improvements will come, and that in a way to be effective.

Jeremiah W. Jenks.

TOPICS OF THE TIME.

Money in Elections.

'HE preceding article by Professor J. W. Jenks, of Cornell University, on the corrupt uses of money in elections, is in many ways one of the most notable contributions yet made to the discussion of this important subject. It does not deal in generalities, but gives in specific form an amount of detailed information as to the ways in which money is used improperly which will startle persons who are not familiar with the mechanism of what is called "practical politics." Yet every one who is familiar with that mechanism must admit that all that Professor Jenks sets forth is true in every particular. The poll-books, which he describes as being used by the campaign committees throughout the rural districts of New York State for the purpose of keeping track of the purchasable voters, are very well known to all persons who interest themselves in politics at all. Indeed, the use of them has so hardened the consciences of the practical politicians that they make little or no concealment of their

contents. In some sections of the State the number of purchasable voters enrolled on these books is said to exceed the number of those belonging to either party.

What is true of New York is, in a greater or less degree, true of nearly every other State of the Union in which the strength of the two great parties is evenly balanced. In Rhode Island, for example, where money has been used corruptly in every election since the war, and in some before and during the war, there are known to be about 5000 purchasable voters in a total of 54,000, or nearly ten per cent. of the whole number. These are distributed over the State, ranging from ten in the smaller towns to 1000 in the cities; but in every case their names and individual prices are matters of record. In one town, according to a careful analysis of the record by the "Providence Journal," whose figures we are quoting, all but ten of the total registered voters were set down as purchasable. Prices range from $2 to $5 a head, according to the demand.

It is worse than useless for the American people to shut their eyes to the existence of this evil, or to ima

gine that it will cure itself in time. It must be met in this country, as it has been met in England and other countries, with restrictive and prohibitive measures of the most comprehensive and stringent character. Bad as our condition is, Professor Jenks is quite correct in saying it is not so bad as that of England was before the enactment of its Corrupt Practices Act in 1883. Our bribery methods are in some respects different from what the English were, and are less open and less general, but they are all as easily reached by law as theirs were found to be.

In all American efforts to meet the evil by legislation the mistake has been made of trying to accomplish the end in a brief and more or less general statute. The authors of the various bills, while drawing their ideas mainly from the English act, have been afraid to imitate its great length and minuteness lest their measures be condemned as "too complex" and "too cumbersome" for the simple needs of free American election methods. When ballot reform was first discussed, the opponents of it raised the same cry against the bills which its advocates prepared, and sought to have substituted for them measures of their own invention which were said to be simple and direct. Experience has shown, however, that in practice the simple and direct laws have all been failures, while those condemned as complicated have succeeded so perfectly as to furnish the accepted model of all subsequent ones. This lesson ought to be of use to us in preparing our corrupt practices laws. It is true that the English act is long, but it is also true that it was so completely successful from the moment of its application to an election that it abolished corruption and bribery at a single blow. The minuteness of the law covered every form of corruption so surely that its practice without detection was found to be impossible. Any law which fails to do this is too short, no matter what its length. The English act, as one of its ablest commentators, Mr. Henry Hobhouse, says, "is pervaded by two principles: the first is to strike hard and home at corrupt practices; the second is to prohibit, by positive legislation, any expenditure in the conduct of an election which is not absolutely necessary." Both these principles were embodied in the act with such thoroughness that bribery disappeared instantly from English elections, never to return.

We can accomplish the same purification in this country, whenever public opinion reaches the point at which it is demanded. We must, as Professor Jenks points out, limit the expenditures in every instance, grading the maximum sum according to the office, and must require the sworn return of every penny received or expended, either by the candidate, or his agent, or his campaign committee. On every point the law must be drawn with such minuteness and clearness that evasion or violation will be impossible without detection and punishment. Then, too" assessments" upon candidates must be forbidden, and voluntary contributions from them must be limited, and the uses made of money strictly accounted for; every loophole of escape from the publication of every penny expended must be closed and barred. That is the strength which makes the length of the English statute, and we must have the sense as well as the courage to imitate it.

One new evil has sprung up here recently which Professor Jenks does not mention, and that is the hiring of registered voters to remain away from the polls. By VOL. XLIV.-124.

this method the briber is able to get positive proof that the bribed voter has kept his bargain. This practice would be broken up by the requirement of strict accountability for every penny expended. Like all the other evils, it exists only because of a kind of dullness of the public conscience, which, while it may not exactly condone bribery in elections, is not equal to the exertion of declaring that it will no longer be tolerated. Professor Jenks's words on this question of public responsibility are strong and to the point, and we commend them to the serious consideration of our readers. Public opinion is king in the United States, and it must bear the responsibility of all the sins which its own supineness or indifference permits corrupt politicians to commit.

What the Columbian Exhibition will do for America.

THE fact which most strongly impressed all visitors to the international exhibition at Paris in 1889 was its artistic character. Far beyond any of its predecessors in any land as a triumph of industry and a triumph of science, it was still more remarkable as a triumph of beauty. To perceive this fact, one did not need to enter the vast and stately palace filled with pictures and statues which showed the current work of all civilized countries, and, as in a splendid historical panorama, France's own work for a century past. Nor did one need to examine the buildings, or to study the sculptured decorations with which buildings and grounds were lavishly adorned. The most impressive, the most beautiful thing at the Paris Exposition was the conception of the exhibition as a whole: the choice and arrangement and planting of the site, the placing of the buildings, their design considered as factors in a great coherent yet diversified scheme, and the way in which all individual factors worked together toward a magnificently harmonious general effect. It was the general effect of this exhibition — the fine combining of its architectural, sculptural, and natural features -- which gave it unique importance as an artistic spectacle.

All Americans who saw it must have said: "Only in Paris could such a result be achieved. Only the most artistic nation in the world could have achieved it; and even this nation could not if its artistic powers had been unorganized, uncontrolled. France possesses a far larger number of great artists than any other land. These artists have been trained in the same schools, are inspired by the same practical and esthetic ideals, and are used to working together, and to working under official control; and this exhibition is an official, Government enterprise. Under such conditions such success was possible; under other conditions it would be impossible. Under American conditions how could we hope to see it even remotely approached? How can we hope soon to see in America anything very different from what we saw at Philadelphia in 1876: a big industrial show, a triumph of commercialism and applied science, an exaltation of material wealth, where beauty existed only in certain collections almost altogether drawn from foreign sources, and where the desire for beauty, when it could be elsewhere divined, had been stunted by crude ignorance, limited by economy or deformed by the love of mere display, and stultified by the lack of any common ideal and the absence of any general scheme of arrangement and design? We

are not nearly so artistic a people as the French," we said to ourselves in Paris. "Such artistic power as we do possess is largely untrained, and such trained talents as we have are accustomed to work independently and along different paths. Whatever we may do will be done by unorganized public, not by organized official, effort; and so we can never have an exhibition which, as a whole, will approach the beauty of this one, or be half so useful in teaching how artistic talents of various kinds may best be utilized."

We said this in Paris, and, a year or so later, when the Columbian Exhibition of 1893 was decided upon, we said it again, and perhaps more emphatically, in the belief that such an enterprise would be less well carried out in a Western city than it might have been in Washington, as a Government enterprise, or in New York, the center of the artistic life of our continent. As the city of Chicago would appear to the eyes of the world if, for artistic importance, it were compared with the city of Paris, nearly so, all Americans feared, might the artistic importance of the Chicago Exhibition contrast with that of the last Paris Exhibition. Artistic capabilities, we knew, had vastly developed in our country since 1876. But our people, we thought, still did not rightly feel the difference be tween skill and ineptitude, between beauty and ugliness, and still did not rightly value skill and beauty even when it recognized them. And still there was no likelihood that the many hands which would have to plan and build the exhibition would agree upon any scheme of arrangement and treatment broad and firm enough to secure that fundamental harmony between part and part without which dignity, beauty, and impressiveness of general aspect could not be secured, and without which even the possible excellence of individual features would fail of its right effect. The very progress we had made in art during the past fifteen years seemed to make a harmonious exhibition improbable, for it had been progress along many diverging paths, and had meant rather the accentuation of artistic individuality than a growing concord in taste. Chicago, we thought, might show us some buildings and some collections much more beautiful than any we had seen in Philadelphia, but it would not show us a beautiful exhibition. The commercial, utilitarian side of American endeavor might not be so crudely set forth as in 1876; but at best we could expect only a carnival of conflicting individual efforts, where art, pseudo-art, frank utilitarianism, and a childish or a vulgar love of display would meet and struggle together.

Such anticipations as these were universal two years ago. We need not explain how radically mistaken they have already been proved. Mr. Van Brunt has told our readers how the great exhibition of 1893 was organized and how its site was selected—or, more truly, how the place for its site was chosen and then the site itself was almost literally created. He has told how architects of proven ability from various parts of the country were intrusted with the chief buildings, and how these architects consulted with each other and with the landscape architects as regarded the placing and the designing of their works. And he has described some of the buildings in detail, and has hinted at the harmonious grandeur and beauty of their general effect. He has shown that we are to have a very beautiful

exhibition, and has shown that it will be beautiful because those who are making it are working together in a brotherly spirit, according to a wise and well-defined artistic scheme, and with a distinct and lofty general ideal in their minds. He has shown that an association of practical American business men, securing funds for the most part by their own efforts, and employing a band of artists hitherto accustomed to work in entire independence of one another, will create an exhibition similar in interest, as a homogeneous artistic spectacle, to the one created by the Government of the most artistic nation in the world, exerting unlimited powers, and employing a corps of artists accustomed from thei: earliest student days to tread in the same paths and to work hand in hand.

But there is even more than this to be said. We con fidently assert, on the evidence of all the most experienced judges of art whom it has been possible for us to consult, that the Chicago Exhibition will far surpass even the Paris one of 1889 when considered in its entirety and for its artistic interest. A much more beaatiful, scholarly, and monumental type of architecture has been adopted for its main buildings; accessory works of an ornamental kind will be more numerous, more imposing, and more original, while at least equally artistic in character; greater care is being taken tha harmony of effect shall not be injured by the aspect of minor works of utility or decoration; and the neighborhood of the great lake, and the novel and skilful way in which wide expanses of water and varied plantations have been made the basis of the plan of the grounds themselves, will much more than compensate for the absence of a rushing river like the Seine and a dominating hill like the Trocadéro. The Eiffel Tower is a marvelous, an interesting, and hardly an ugly structure; but it is not an artistic structure. It did not conflict with its surroundings at Paris. But anything resembling it - anything remarkable chiefly for size or for mechanical ingenuity—would look painfully out of place on the Chicago grounds. This fact suffices to prove their higher degree of beauty; and the fact that no conspicuous structure appealing in any way to mere curiosity, or to the love of the new or the marvelous, has been contemplated by the authorities at Chicago, proves how seriously and wisely artistic a spirit is cor trolling the great enterprise.

Those who fail to see the exhibition of 1893 will fi to see the most beautiful spectacle which has been of fered to the eyes of our generation. But those whe have time to see only its general aspect, without studying any of its collections - wonderfully interesting though these will be-will have seen the very best of it.

When we remember what a great impulse was given to the popular love of art by the collections shown a the exhibition of 1876, what may we not expect as a result of the stately, beautiful, and truly poetic paanrama of art that will be unrolled before the eyes of the nation in 1893? It will show for the first time, to scores of thousands of Americans who have never travele abroad and can scarcely hope to do so, what is the meaning of the word beauty, what is the significan of the word art. It will convince them, as nothing else but long and intelligent foreign travel could, the beauty is an enjoyable thing, that art is a thing worth striving for and paying for. Indeed, no amount of for

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