Now consider, on the other hand, what party organization has done for the government. The powers of government moved steadily to political bosses and business corporations. Boss-rule, party domination and combinations of capital filled in the gaps in the system of government we inaugurated in the eighteenth century. The marriage of business and politics, while it has been the chief factor in entrenching the party system, was the outcome of that system, or rather it was the outcome of the various unworkabilities of our official government. The expansion of big business, with its control of politics, evasion of law, was inevitable; we simply had no machinery adequate to our need, namely, the development of a vast, untouched continent. The urge of that development was an overwhelming force which swept irresistibly on, carrying everything before it, swallowing up legal disability, creating for itself extralegal methods. We have now, therefore, a system of party organization and political practice which subverts all our theories. Theoretically the people have the power, but really the government is the primaries, the conventions, the caucuses. Officials hold from the party. Party politics became corrupt because party government was irresponsible government. The insidious power of the machine is due to its irresponsibility.
The evils of our big business have not come because Americans are prone to cheat, because they want to get the better of their fellows, because their greed is inordinate, their ambition domineering. Individuals have not been to blame, but our whole system. It is the system which must be changed. Our constitutions and laws made possible the development of big business; our courts were not “bought” by big business, but legal decision and business practice were formed by the same inheritance and tradition. The reformation of neither will accomplish the results we wish, but the nationwide acceptance, through all classes and all interests, of a different point of view.
The next step was the wave of reform that swept over the country. The motive was excellent; the method poor. The method was poor because the same method was adopted which these reform movements were organized to fight, one based on pure crowd philosophy. It was a curious case of astigmatism. The trouble was that the reformers did not see accurately what they were fighting; they were fighting essentially the non-recognition of the individual, but they did not see this, so they went on basing all their own work on the non-appreciation of men. Their essential weakness was the weakness of the party machine—all their efforts were turned to the voter not the man. Their triumphs were always the triumphs of the polls. Their methods were principally three: change in the forms of government (charters, etc.), the nomination of “good” men to office, and exhortation to induce “the people” to elect them.
The idea of “good” men in office was the fetish of many reform associations. They thought that their job was to find three or four “good” men and then once a year to hypnotize the electorate to “do their duty” and put these men into office, and then all would go well if before another year three or four more good men could be found. What a futile and childish idea which leaves out of account the whole body of citizenship! It is only through this main body of citizenship that we can have a decent government and a sound social life. That is, in other words, it is only by a genuine appreciation of the individual, of every single individual, that there can be any reform movement with strength and constructive power. The widespread fallacy that good officials make a good city is one which lies at the root of much of our thinking and insidiously works to ruin our best plans, our most serious efforts. This extraordinary belief in officials, this faith in the panacea of a change of charters, must go. If our present mechanical government is to turn into a living, breathing, pulsing life, it must be composed of an entire citizenship educated and responsible.
This the reform associations now recognize, in some cases partially, in some cases fully. The good government association of today has a truer idea of its function. The campaign for the election of city officials is used as a means of educating the mass of citizens: besides the investigation and publication of facts, there is often a clear showing of the aims of government and an enlightening discussion of method. Such associations have always considered the interests of the city as a whole; they have not appealed, like the party organizations, to local sentiment.
I have spoken of the relation of the reform movement of the last of the nineteenth century to the body of citizenship. What was its relation to government? The same spirit applied to government meant patching, mending, restraining, but it did not mean constructive work, it had not a formative effect on our institutions. Against any institution that has to be guarded every moment lest it do evil, there is a strong a priori argument that it should not exist. This until recently has not been sufficiently taken into account. Now, however, in the beginning of the twentieth century, we see many evidences that the old era of restraint is over and the constructive period of reform begun. We see it, for instance, in our Bureaus of Municipal Research; we see it in the more progressive sections of our state constitutional conventions. But the chief error of the nineteenth-century reformers was not that they were reactionary, nor that they were timid, nor that they were insincere, nor that they were hedgers. They were wanting in neither sincerity nor courage. Their error was simply that they did not appreciate the value of the individual. Individualism instead of being something we are getting away from, is something we are just catching sight of.
And if our institutions were founded on a false political philosophy which taught
