title: Undercurrents in American politics; comprising the Ford lectures, delivered at Oxford university and the Barbour-Page lectures, delivered at the University of Virginia in the spring of 1914,
text: 'oK ^ • * 1 'oK .V ■C .. •^ ••"' »° «^ '^^^ -SP/ /%. ••W^-" ** ^^ 'v^*' /"\ °- o V ^-^0^ • a .5<?iw • ■« 1^ V*^^ ^^o^c,^^ /,c^;4^.% .5°,c " V -^ J^ "^ ''^W^'^%* <Lr .'^''V. 1« UNDERCURRENTS IN AMERICAN POLITICS / UNDERCURRENTS IN AMERICAN POLITICS Comprising the Ford Lectures, delivered at Oxford University AND the Barbour-Page Lectures, delivered at The University of Virginia IN THE Spring of 1914 BY ARTHUR TWINING HADLEY President of Yale University NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXV ^ V Copyright, 1915 BY Yale University Press First printed May, 1915, 1000 copies M 2 1915 ©a,A401198 PREFACE In the spring of 1914 it was my privilege to deliver the Barbour-Page Lectures at the Univer- sity of Virginia and the Ford Lectures at Oxford University. As the two courses dealt with kindred subjects, I am publishing them in a single volume. The whole might well have been entitled ' ' Extra- Constitutional Government in the United States.'' The Oxford Lectures, on Property and Democracy, show how a great many organized activities of the community have been kept out of government con- trol altogether. The Virginia Lectures, on Politi- cal Methods, show how those matters which were left in government hands have often been managed by very different agencies from those which the framers of our Constitution intended. As the first three lectures were delivered to an English audience, they contain some explanations which are unnecessary for American readers; but it seemed on the whole better to print them in their original form. vi PREFACE When so wide a range of topics is treated in so small a book, it is impossible to give any adequate set of references to authorities. I have tried in the several lectures to make due acknowledgment to the men who have most nearly anticipated my lines of thought or have furnished me with the largest budgets of illustrative facts; but I have only been able to name a few among the many to whom I am thus indebted. Yale University, New Haven April 1915 TABLE OF CONTENTS PROPERTY AND DEMOCRACY Lecture I The Gradual Development op American Democracy ..... 3 Colonial organization was essentially aris- tocratic ...... 3 Keligious exclusiveness in New England, 4. Large land grants in middle colonies, 6. Effect of slavery in south, 8. Independence made no immediate change in this respect ..... 10 Universal suffrage not adopted, 11. High prop- erty qualifications, 11. Leaders of both parties aristocratic, 13. The turning point came in 1820 with the advent of a new generation ... 14 Effect of political watchwords, 15. Effect of Hamilton's land policy, 16. Western type of man and commonwealth, 20. Andrew Jackson, 20. Political democracy established before 1840, 22. The political change was attended with a social change, but not with an industrial one ....... 25 Contrast between Europe and America, 27. Absence of labor legislation, 27. Socialistic agi- tation not effective, 30. viii CONTENTS Lecture II The Constitutional Position of the Prop- erty Owner . . : . . 32 The American political and social system is based on industrial property rights . 33 Traditional opposition between military and in- dustrial classes in Europe, 33. No such tradition in America, 35. Working and fighting power in same hands, 36. These rights have been protected by a con- stitutional compact .... 37 Character of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, 38. Balance between home rule party and federal party, 39. Immunities given to the property owner, 40. The American doctrine of sovereignty, 42. No serious attempt has been made to amend the Constitutional provisions protecting property ...... 47 A democracy of small landowners, 48. Need of attracting capital, 49. Freedom of incorpora- tion, 51. Constitutional guarantees of corporate independence, 53. The Dartmouth College case, 54. The Fourteenth Amendment and the San Mateo case, 55. The Civil War produced industrial unrest, but not industrial reform ... 56 Emancipation of slaves, 56. Currency agitation, 57. High protective tariff, 58. The competitive system in America, 59. Its effect on industrial efficiency, 62. CONTENTS ix Lecture III Recent Tendencies in Economics and in Legislation ..... 64 Competition did not protect shippers against abuse of railway power . . 65 Sudden discovery of this fact after the civil war, 66. The Granger movement, 67. Eailway com- missions and the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887, 71. Failure of competition was not confined to railways ...... 72 Other public utilities put under control of com- missions, 73. Attempt to enforce competition in productive industry, 74. The Sherman Anti- Trust Act of 1890 not enforced for several years after its passage, 75. The present century has witnessed the first serious movement toward state socialism in America ..... 76 Humanitarian development in Nineteenth Cen- tury, 76. Labor agitation ineffective when it antagonized small landowners, 78. Change in Twentieth Century, 80. Small property owners now ranged against the money power, 81. Char- acter of new laws passed since 1903, 86. In- creased activity in enforcing old laws, 86. Symp- toms of a reaction, 88. Practical limits to state control in America today, 90. CONTENTS POLITICAL METHODS OLD AND NEW Lecture IV The Growth of Party Machinery . . 97 The perversion of party government . 97 Two distinct senses of the word party, 99. Either a means of organizing public opinion in- telligently, or an agency for controlling the offices of the country as a source of power and livelihood, 99. Second meaning tends to sup- plant the first, 101. Constitution makes no provision against this danger . . . . .102 Prescribed mode of election and duties of public officers, 105. Did not prescribe mode of nomi- nation or character of pledges that might be exacted of the candidate, 105. Actual agencies of nomination . . . 108 Caucus established 1796, 108. Overthrown 1824, 109. Substitution of the convention system, 110. Made power less responsible instead of more so, 110. Martin Van Buren, 111. Rewards of irresponsible activity . . 113 Municipal and state offices, 114. Jackson and the Federal civil service, 116. Franchises, local and national, 118. The tariff and the currency as party issues, 120. CONTENTS xi Lecture Y The Reaction against Machine Control . 122 Ineffective remedies .... 123 Turning one party out brings the machinery of another party into office, 123. Predatory pov- erty as dangerous a thing as predatory wealth, 125. Partially effective remedies . . . 127 Separation of local from national issues, 128. Brought to public notice by New York election of 1871, 129. Local politics made increasingly inde- pendent of national party affiliations, 131. Elec- tion of United States senators by the people, 132. Civil service reform, 134, What it has accomplished and what it fails to accomplish, 136. Present experiments and tendencies . . 137 Distrust of the legislature, 137. Direct legis- lation through state constitutions, 143. The referendum and initiative, 145. The direct pri- mary, 146. The recall, 147. Lecture VI The Seat of Power today .... 149 Unorganized political opinion ineffective . 149 New system transfers political chicane from party organization to groups of individuals, 151. Creation of public sentiment by newspapers, 152. xii CONTENTS Growth of the independent press . . 153 The slavery agitation, 154. The campaign against Tweed in New York, 155. Pulitzer's theory of journalism, 158. Lessened power of party leaders, 159. Government by popular opinion, 159. Unforeseen consequences of the change . 162 The appeal to emotion, 163. The appeal to im- patience, 167. Theory of popular omniscience, 170. Undervaluation of the expert, 172. True function of voters in a democracy, 174. Index ....... 181 PEOPEETY AND DEMOCEACY THE GRADUAL DEVELOPMENT OF AMEEICAN DEMOCEACY At the time of the adoption of the federal con- stitution in 1788 neither the United States as a whole, nor any of the several commonwealths of which it was composed, was a democracy in the modern sense of the word. Ever since their original settlement the political and social system of the English colonies in North America had been essentially aristocratic. Nowhere among them do we find universal suffrage. The right to vote was always confined to taxpayers, and almost always to freeholders. In one colony the minimum freehold qualification for the suffrage was a thousand acres. Nor were the voters as a body generally allowed the privilege of choosing the chief magistrates. The higher administrative officers were either appointed by the crown or elected by councils composed of a few of the richest and most influential citizens. The man of small means and unconsidered ancestry had very little direct participation in the affairs of state. 4 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS Of course the conditions varied in different parts of the country. The nearest approach to democracy was found northeast of the Hudson river, in the colonies of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. The settlers in this dis- trict were for the most part Puritans. The region was so inhospitable that it did not attract men of wealth. In three of the four colonies a religious rather than a commercial motive had been domi- nant in the foundation. There was no opportunity for the growth of a leisure class, nor would public sentiment have approved of it if there had been. But though the New England freeholders were poor, they were exclusive. Though they tilled their own lands, it did not prevent them from being politically arrogant, any more than the same cause had prevented a Cincinnatus or a Fabius from being politically arrogant in the early days of the Roman republic. The freeman of a Massachusetts commonwealth looked upon new settlers who aspired to become freemen with much the same suspicious eye with which the Roman patrician regarded his plebeian neighbors. These suspicions were most strongly manifested when the new settlers held a different creed from the older ones. The original emigrants to Massa- chusetts were Congregationalists. They looked DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 5 upon members of any other sect as men of doubtful character, not to be trusted with the administration of a growing commonwealth. Woe to the Episco- palian who held that his Lares and Penates were as good politically as those of his Congregational brother! During the earlier years of the history of Massachusetts the charter required that the freemen should be godly ; and the Puritan founders of the colony doubted very gravely whether the Thirty-nine Articles were a sufficiently acceptable road to godliness to make it wise to trust the Episcopalian with the franchise. Even when the franchise itself had been more liberally bestowed and political power had thus become diffused through the whole body of freeholders, the spirit of social exclusiveness remained almost unchanged. For a great deal of the work of New England society centered around the church rather than the state ; and the church was controlled by the descendants of the original settlers.* * The parallel between the aristocracy of New England and the aristocracy of the early Eoman republic has much interest and significance. In either case the aristocrats were at once farmers and fighters, tilling the soil and resisting the enemy by turns. In either case there was a body of outside or plebeian neighbors, some of whom were just as wealthy as any of the patrician aristocrats, who were for a time excluded 6 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS What was conspicuously true of Massachusetts was true to a somewhat less degree in the other New England colonies. They were societies of poor but proud aristocrats. Connecticut was in some respects the most independent and democratic of all the New England commonwealths. Yet even in Connecticut class distinctions were so strong that down to the very eve of the Revolution the names of the students in the catalogue of Yale College were arranged, not in alphabetical rank, but in the order of the respectability of their parentage. In the group of colonies immediately southwest from the offices and privileges of the state. The barrier which separated the different classes from one another, whether in Eome or in Massachusetts, was not primarily a political but a religious one. The plebeian had not the same gods as the patrician. The Episcopalian had not the same gods as the Congregationalist. Long after the plebeian had obtained equal rights to military offtces like the consul- ship or the dictatorship, he was excluded from semi-religious positions like that of the praetor. The same thing holds good in Massachusetts. Both in Eome and in New England the ruling class, when compelled to grant political equality, tried to keep a modicum of their old power by reserving a good deal of public authority to the representatives of the church of the founders. This authority the outsider could not claim to share merely because he shared the franchise or the right of holding military command, unless he had gone through the process which the Massachusetts Christian described in terms borrowed from the phraseology of pagan Eome — the process of ' ' sanctification and adoption.'' DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 7 of the Hudson river the social system was of a different kind. There was much less religious exclusiveness, there was much more commercial inequality. Neither the Dutch in New York, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, nor the Catholics who followed Lord Baltimore to Maryland, showed the same degree of bigotry and intolerance that ani- mated the settlers of New England. These colonies were to a greater or less extent trading ventures, in which the heads of the enterprise reserved for themselves the dominant influence in the direction and control of affairs. Instead of a religious aristocracy of small farmers, we therefore find a commercial aristocracy of traders and planters. The agricultural land of New York was largely held by a few patroons or semi-feudal overlords; a system originally established by the Dutch but not essentially altered or disturbed when the colony passed under British sovereignty. The charters of the other colonies in this region— New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland — either explicitly provided for a similar form of organization or tacitly encouraged it. In all these colonies, therefore, the influence of a comparatively small number of wealthy citizens was dominant. This dominance of wealth was even more marked south of the Potomac, in the colonies or plantations 8 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS of Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. The agricultural conditions of this region made a system of large holdings or plantations profitable both to the colonists themselves and to the fiscal agents of the mother country. Inequalities of wealth which in the middle colonies were an accident became in the southern colonies an indus- trial advantage if not an economic necessity. Moreover the southern plantations were particu- larly suitable to the employment of slave labor — first that of convicts or redemptioners, and after- ward of negroes imported for the purpose. As is generally the case where slavery prevails, the body of freemen graduallj^ divided itself into two classes: those who were rich enough to own slaves and those who were not. The former class, as is usual in such communities, succeeded in engrossing the political authority; partly by law, partly by political maneuvering, and partly by the force of social usage. According to a report of the Surveyor General of the Colonial Customs at the beginning of the eighteenth century, quoted by Hildreth,* there were * The account of colonial conditions given by Hildreth is in many respects better than that which we have received from later historians. Hildreth 's merits have been some- what underrated, owing to his intense partisanship in deal- DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 9 in Virginia on each of the four great rivers men in number from ten to thirty, who by trade and industry had "gotten very competent estates." These gentlemen took care to supply the poorer sort with goods and necessaries, and were sure to keep them always in their debt and consequently dependent on them. Out of this number were chosen the council, assembly, justices, and other officers of government. The justices, besides their judicial functions, managed the business and finances of their respective counties. Parish affairs were in the hands of self-perpetuating vestries, which kept even the ministers in check by avoiding induction and hiring them only from year to year. The twelve counselors possessed extensive author- ity ; their assent was necessary to all the governor 's official acts; they constituted one branch of the ing with American political history at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century; but his treatment of early colonial affairs is comparatively unaffected by this partisanship, and shows the good effect of contact, personal and social, with colonial traditions. The men with whom Hildreth had talked in his boyhood came of these colonial families whose methods and doings he described. They had retained to a surprisingly large extent the prejudices and feelings of their grandfathers. In spite of his late date Hildreth thus speaks in the character of an eyewitness. There is, I believe, no other American historian of whom this fact is true in approxi- mately equal extent. 10 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS Assembly; they exercised the principal judicial authority as judges of the General Court; they were at the head of the militia as lieutenants of the counties; they acted as collectors of the export duty on tobacco and the other provincial imposts, and generally also of the Parliamentary duties, while they farmed the king's quit-rents at a very favorable bargain. A majority of these counselors, united together by a sort of family compact, aspired to engross the entire management of the province. All this is doubtless somewhat overstated. Con- ditions were probably not as bad as this in 1705, when the report was written; they certainly were not as bad at the time of the Revolution. But we are quite safe in saying that Thomas Jefferson's doctrines of political equality were not drawn from an observation of the practices that prevailed in his immediate neighborhood. The Revolution of 1776 severed the relation of the colonies to the mother country but did not greatly alter the constitutions under which they were organized. These constitutions continued to follow the lines set down in the colonial charters in all respects except those which concerned the Eng- DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 11 lish overlord. Before the Revolution most of the colonies had been compelled to accept the governors appointed by the crown; after the Revolution the leading citizens elected their own governors and fixed the bounds of their authority; but with that exception the machinery was arranged and conducted in pretty much the same manner as before. No immediate attempt was made to extend the right of suffrage or to increase the proportion of elective offices. The property qualifications demanded of officeholders remained very high. In South Carolina, to quote an extreme instance, no man could serve as governor unless he owned property to the value of ten thousand pounds; which even in the depreciated currency was an enormous sum for that time. The social order was essentially an aristocratic one — not quite so much so as it was in England at that time, but very much more so than it is in England today. While the right to stand for office was not denied to qualified voters of proper age and substance, the actual holding of office was chiefly enjoyed by such persons as happened to belong to families of standing and consideration. Nor did the adoption of the Federal Constitution involve any necessary or immediate change in these particulars. This constitution indeed provided 12 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS that each of the several federated states should have a republican form of government. But to the makers of the Federal Constitution the word ''republican" did not mean democratic. The members of the convention that drafted it were representatives of the conservative class in the community. Their "republic" was the equivalent of Aristotle's "politeia, " or self-governing com- monwealth. Most of them would have been horror- stricken at the idea of universal suffrage. There was indeed in all the states a strong minority of real democrats, many of whom opposed the adop- tion of the Constitution. But the necessity of having an efficient central government was so obvious that the views of the conservative party prevailed decisively; and the outspoken champions of democracy were forced to acquiesce, as best they might, in the adoption of a polity which some of them regarded as a betrayal of the cause of popular liberty. The conservatives or Federalists remained in control for twelve years after they had secured the passage of the Constitution. Then it was the turn of the Democrats, who came into power with the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800. It is, however, significant of the state of popular feeling at the time that the advent of the popular party DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 13 to office was signalized by no important political or social changes.* Jefferson's administration illustrated the old adage, "A radical plus power equals a conservative." The leaders of the Demo- crats, like the leaders of the Federalists, were for the most part representatives of old families. Madison and Monroe bore as respectable names as "Washington or Adams. Aaron Burr, arch-democrat and corrupter of society, who taught Tammany Hall the methods which have made New York politics a byword, was of as good social standing as Alexander Hamilton, friend of Washington and founder of the republic's fiscal system. To make America a democracy, in fact as well as in name, it was not enough for one party to pass out of power. It was necessary for one whole generation to pass off the stage and give place to * The apparent change of front by the Democratic leaders in the years immediately following the adoption of the United States Constitution was due to two causes. In the first place, the formation of a centralized govern- ment under the new constitution was actually followed by a high degree of prosperity. The years preceding 1788 had been a time of depression. The decade that immediately followed was one of commercial expansion. It was natural, and in fact inevitable, that this change from depression to prosperity should be attributed to the Constitution and that that instrument should become popular with everybody who benefited by the commercial improvement. The views of the extreme Democrats were further dis- 14 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS a new generation with other antecedents and other ideals. Until about the year 1820 the citizens of the United States were British subjects who had accidentally transferred their allegiance without correspondingly altering their political instincts. The United States remained in many essential features a group of English colonies, separated from the mother country in 1776, somewhat against their will, by the want of tact of George the Third and his ministers, and united with one another in 1788, also somewhat against their will, by the extraordinary tact of the leaders of the Consti- tutional Convention. Colonial, however, they remained in feeling, and separate also to a large degree in feeling, for twenty or thirty years afterward. But with the advent of a new generation things were altered. Farrand, who among all our histo- credited by the history of the French Eevolution in 1792 and 1793. The excesses of the Eeign of Terror gave conservatives in America as well as in England strong arguments against putting unrestricted power in the hands of the masses, and made Democrats themselves doubt whether their own theories of popular government were as good practical guides as they had previously supposed. Jefferson and his immediate followers never abandoned their belief in the people, but they modified to some extent their desire to trust the people with the direct exercise of administrative authority. DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 15 rians is probably best qualified to judge of this point, dates the real beginning of distinctively American history, not from the declaration of independence in 1776 nor from the adoption of the Constitution in 1788, but from the close of the War of 1812. The years following this war witnessed the birth of a true national spirit, which was at once American and democratic. Several causes combined to produce this change. First among them was the effect of the Declaration of Independence itself upon boys who were taught to read it. ''We hold these truths to be self- evident," said the writers of the Declaration, ''that all men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalien- able rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." To the men of 1776 this sentence was simply a convenient phrase for justifying acts of armed resistance to England which had been committed by the several colonies in the past and were likely to be continued on a larger scale and with more organized purpose in the immediate future. The writers believed them in the same way that they believed other political doctrines of Locke or Rousseau; that is, they gave them a sufficient measure of intellectual assent to be able to use them as a basis of argument without 16 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS violating their consciences. But they were not ready to accept them as part of the sentiment which underlay their estimate of their fellow men and the conduct of their own daily life. With the next generation the case was different. What had been a phrase to the fathers was an article of faith to the sons. They had learned in their earliest and most impressionable years that this was the prin- ciple upon which the American nation was founded. It was this, they were taught, which more than anything else differentiated American society from European society. What had been at first a mere proposition regarding equality became under such influences a sentiment in favor of equality. The feeling of patriotism was enlisted to drive out the old feeling of caste prejudice. The sentiments of human equality and of national pride were in fact so closely bound up with one another that whatever strengthened the second strengthened the first. The war against England from 1812 to 1815, unfortunate as it was in many of its incidents, laid the foundation for a new intensity of patriotic feeling and new enthusiasm for human equality. Of equal importance in promoting the spirit of democracy was the system of land laws under which the West was settled. The greater part of the actual area of the United DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 17 States at the end of the eighteenth century was the property of the national government, unen- cumbered by claims of individuals or corporations. The thirteen states that formed the Union occupied only a small fringe along the Atlantic coast. Some of them held grants of land in the interior by virtue of their colonial charters ; but the total area effectively covered by these grants was not large in amount. Speaking broadly, the immense domain in the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi was at the disposal of the federal authorities. The power thus held by the United States Government was wisely used. Alexander Hamilton, Washing- ton's secretary of the treasury, was a man who understood the larger principles of statesmanship better than any other American of his age. He saw that in the disposal of this land fiscal consid- erations should be subordinated to political ones; that the most valuable thing which a democracy could do with a public domain was to settle it with as large a number as possible of actual freeholders. In pursuance of this policy, arrangements were made for the survey of the public lands at as early a date as possible. Lines were run at intervals of half a mile, both from north to south and from east to west, dividing the country into square sections of the area of a quarter of a mile, or one 18 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS hundred and sixty acres, each. These are the quarter sections so constantly alluded to in the land laws of the United States. On the lands thus surveyed the price was first fixed at $2.00 an acre, which was afterwards generally reduced to $1.25. But this cheap rate was not the only inducement offered to settlers. By a series of "preemption acts" from 1801 to 1841 a man who had actually settled upon public land without paying for it was given prior claim to its ultimate ownership. It was, as it were, reserved for a time when he might be ready to purchase. Nobody could buy it over his head. The result of these Preemption Acts was that a man who did not have the money to buy the land could enter and take possession of it, with the assurance that if he made proper improvements he would be given a chance not only to get the benefit of his improvements, but ultimately to buy the land itself out of the proceeds of his successful farming. Hamilton built even better than he knew. The political consideration that he felt most strongly was the danger of foreign invasion. The United States held the central and western parts of the continent by rather a precarious tenure. The colonies that had revolted from England were stretched along the Atlantic seaboard. A range DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 19 of mountains, not very high but rugged and almost unbroken, separated them from the interior valleys. The first settlement in these interior valleys had been made, not across the mountains but by the Mississippi on the south or the St. Lawrence on the north. Spain held the lower Mississippi; England held the lower St. Lawrence. Most of the permanent white residents of the Mississippi valley were French. The names of the older towns show the kind of population with which we had to deal: Yincennes, Terre Haute, St. Louis. The ideals and institutions of the newly founded United States had no particular attraction for the inhabitants of towns with names like these. A war with either England or Spain — or, for that matter, a war with France — ^might easily have deprived the states of the Atlantic seaboard of the slender hold they had on the interior. As a result of Hamilton's land policy the interior valleys of the West were rapidly settled by a population distinctively American in its ideals and senti- ments. This settlement, taken in conjunction with Jefferson's purchase of Louisiana and the upper Mississippi valley from the French and Spanish claimants, secured the country against the danger of war on the western frontier. This was the immediate and obvious effect of 20 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS Hamilton's policy. But it had also an effect on our internal constitution, less obvious but much more fundamentally important. It created a type of commonwealth and type of man which was distinctively American. Our lands were occupied by a body of men of great ability and enterprise but small capital; men who were ready to work and respected others in proportion to their readi- ness to work. In the region beyond the Alleghany mountains the sort of equality contemplated by the Declaration of Independence was in large measure realized. In the valleys on either side of the Ohio river America witnessed for the first time the growth of commonwealths that had never been colonies but grew up to statehood independently; communities that had never known crown governors and crown grants, but had developed under the American flag and the preemption law. Owing to the conditions under which they were founded, these western communities were intensely patriotic and intensely convinced of the essential equality of all mankind. Under the operation of these causes there arose a new democracy, different from anything which was readily conceivable by an earlier generation. Of this new American democracy Andrew Jackson, elected to the presidency in 1828, was the chosen DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 21 representative. Of all the presidents of the United States he was the one who sprang most directly from the people; and the years of his triumph were marked by the development of the distinctive features which we have been accustomed to regard as characteristic of American political life — the adoption of universal suffrage, the multiplication of elective ofSces, and the complex system of party organization which has lasted with but slight change until the present time.* * It is somewhat singular that the democratic America of a later generation should have so occupied the minds of historians as to crowd out the memory of the aristocratic America of earlier times. There are several reasons which may serve to account for this. In the first place, the foreign observers of America whose accounts were most widely read saw the country after the change instead of before it. The earliest of these accounts was that by Chevalier, who investigated the American trans- portation system and published his results in a masterly work, ' ' Les Voies de Communication en Amerique. ' ' The political change was not complete at the date of Chevalier's visit, but the parts of the country which he saw were those where development was most active and the new spirit of democracy most manifest. Another Frenchman whose books were more widely read and whose views had much larger influence than Chevalier's was Alexis de Tocqueville. De Tocqueville studied America carefully and was a man of eminent ability both as an observer and as a critic; but he was a thorough Frenchman, and he had a Frenchman's fondness for brilliant generali- zation. Taking the America of the fourth decade of the 22 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS These developments were not consciously intro- duced as party measures by the national govern- ment. Under the American Constitution they could not be. The several states have to decide for themselves what qualifications shall be required of their voters and how their officers shall be elected or appointed. It is all the more significant, therefore, that such a fundamental change in public opinion should have taken place in so many commonwealths at the same time, and that a nation, till then predominantly aristocratic in its social constitution, should have become so thoroughly democratic in so short a period. In the two decades from 1820 to 1840 new states were organized which gave full rights of sover- nineteenth century as he saw it, lie reasoned that the prin- ciples of political action which then prevailed were an inherent result of the American character, foreordained and predestined from the beginning. His observations concern- ing the times of which he wrote were so just that people attached undue weight to his statements of antecedent con- ditions, which were not based upon his own observation and were in some instances not correct. If De Tocqueville 's judgments had been unflattering to the American public, some of his historical generalizations would have been more readily challenged. But De Tocqueville, though not a ful- some critic, was a friendly one. His explanations furnished American readers with plausible excuses for many of the faults of their social system. When Mrs. Trollope criticised American manners malignantly, or when Charles Dickens did DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 23 eignty to all men who were personally free; and older states like New York and Massachusetts abolished property qualifications for the franchise that had previously existed. The number of officers directly chosen by the people was multiplied. The pecuniary qualification required for the various offices was lessened or abolished. The whole sys- tem of nomination and election was so modified as to give more immediate influence to the will of the people and less to that of the leading families. Even for those offices whose incumbents were appointed by the executive instead of being elected, the old principle of fixity of tenure during good behavior was quite generally abolished, and the office itself made a reward of party service. the same thing more goodnaturedlj and humorously, it was a pleasure to fall back on De Tocqueville and to say that these evils were but the incidental defects of an inherent spirit of democracy which had always prevailed in the United States and which made people disregard the niceties of custom and convention in order to appraise men at their true value. This is not intended as a criticism of De Tocqueville, who next to Bryce and possibly Ostrogorski, is the ablest foreign writer on American affairs; but to show why some of the less essential parts of his work gained undue influence over the public mind and contributed to a misunderstanding of earlier American history from which hardly any of our modern writers except Farrand and McMaster have been able to keep themselves wholly free. 24 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS These changes were more rapid and complete in the northern and central states than in the southern ones; but every section felt the effect of this movement in greater or less degree. With surprising speed and thoroughness the country as a whole passed from a political system which was in its essentials aristocratic and English to one which was democratic and American. Even more remarkable than the rapidity of the change itself was the absence of any reaction of feeling or retrogression of practice such as usually follows in the wake of rapid reform movements of this sort. When the Democrats went out of office and their opponents, now called Whigs instead of Federalists, came into power, there was no attempt to bring government back to its old basis. Parties divided on other lines. The Democrats stood for free trade, the Whigs for protection. The Democrats stood for home rule, the Whigs for national authority. A few years later, as a result of the struggle between home rule and nationalism, the Democrats stood for slavery and the Republicans (who had succeeded the old Whig party) for emancipation. But in none of these American political conflicts of the middle of the nineteenth century could one party claim the title of conservative and the other that of liberal, DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 25 as these titles were understood and used in the politics of contemporary European states. The political triumph of democracy was complete. This transformation of the political order was attended by a similar change in the social order; though the social change was for various reasons less rapid and complete than the political one. The society of the West had been from the first quite as democratic as its politics. There was but one important class distinction — that between workers and idlers. If a settler was willing to work he could get large returns with very little capital ; if he was not willing to work there was no place for him. Under such circumstances a man could achieve social position in three ways only: by hospitality, by professional efficiency, or by securing public office. Wealth without hospitality, education without efficiency, honorable descent without public service, were not regarded as social qualifications. They were despised rather than admired. These social standards — or, if you please, this absence of social standards — of the West had a marked effect on the Atlantic coast. Almost every Eastern family numbered among its members one or two who had "gone West"; who had proved their fitness as men under the new conditions, and 26 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS were inclined to despise the social order of older communities as artificial. These men were apt to be of a type strong enough to modify the views, not only of their own family circles, but of the whole community from which they came. In the northern Atlantic states this modification was very rapid. In the southern states it was slower. The North had been an aristocracy of small farmers who cultivated their own ground. The South had been an aristocracy of large planters who lived on the produce of the slaves. When members of slave-holding families moved westward they often carried their slaves with them, and by this means succeeded to some extent in perpetuating in the new country the class dis- tinction which had subsisted in the old. While the general structure of Northern social life began to change in 1820, that of the South remained un- changed for a generation more; until the civil war of 1861, with the resulting enfranchisement of the negro and impoverishment of the large land- holders, had taken away the physical basis on which it had rested for more than a century so securely. But these changes in the political and social order were not accompanied by any corresponding DEVELOPMENT OF DEMOCRACY 27 change in the industrial order. It has been a perpetual surprise to observers of American insti- tutions that complete political enfranchisement has not resulted in attempts to restrict the power of capital. For at least sixty years after the adoption of universal suffrage the tendency was all in the other direction — to legislate for the property owner rather than against him; to strengthen the powers of capital rather than to diminish them. Demo- crats, Whigs, and Republicans differed as to their aims and methods, but they vied with one another in protecting the rights of property. Even on the remote and comparatively lawless western frontier, where a man might kill a dozen of his fellow men with impunity and enjoy the continued respect of those about him, the stealing of a horse was punished by immediate hanging and by the for- feiture of all claim to social standing in this world or the next. The small protection given to the rights of man, as compared with that which was accorded to the rights of property, is a salient feature in the early history of every American state — and sometimes in its later history also. "While England was developing a large and on the whole highly beneficent body of factory Acts, the United States was doing nothing. It is only forty years since the 28 UNDERCURRENTS IN POLITICS first effective law regarding hours of labor was passed by the state of Massachusetts, limiting the hours of women and children to about ten a day ; and even this was regarded at the time of its passage as a piece of somewhat dangerous humani- tarianism. As late as 1885 the attempt to keep children out of factories until they were twelve years old was considered by many people a radical measure of interference with economic freedom. 