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lature is said to run from $500 up to $1000, and for one of the better judgeships as high as $5000; but this is largely matter of conjecture. Of course much less will be given if the prospects of carrying the election are doubtful the prices quoted must be taken to represent cases where the party majority makes success certain. Naturally, the salaries of officials have to be raised in order to enable them to bear this charge, so that in the long run it may be thrown upon the public; and a recent eminent boss of New York City defended, before a committee of the legislature, the large salaries paid to aldermen, on the ground that "heavy demands were made on them by their party."2

1 "A judgeship," says Mr. F. W. Whitridge, "costs in New York about $15,000; the district attorneyship the same; for a nomination to Congress the price is about $4000, though this is variable; an aldermanic nomination is worth $1500, and that for the Assembly from $600 to $1500. The amount realized from these assessments cannot be exactly estimated but the amount raised by Tammany Hall, which is the most complete political organization, may be fixed very nearly at $125,000 (£25,000). This amount is collected and expended by a small executive committee who keep no accounts and are responsible only to each other."-Article " Assessments" in Amer. Cyclop. of Political Science.

In 1887 the Democratic Rings in New York City demanded $25,000 for the nomination to the Comptrollership, and $5000 for that to a State Senatorship. The salary of the Comptroller is $10,000 for three years, that of Senator $1500 for two years, i.e. the senatorial candidate is expected to pay $2000 more than his salary.

2 "Before a committee of the New York legislature the county clerk testified that his income was nearly $80,000 a year, but with refreshing frankness admitted that his own position was practically that of a figurehead, and that all the work was done by his deputy on a small fixed salary. As the county clerk's term is three years, he should nominally receive $240,000, but as a matter of fact two-thirds of the money prob ably goes to the political organizations with which he is connected."Mr. T. Roosevelt in Century magazine for Nov. 1886. A county officer answered the same committee, when they put what was meant to be a formal question as to whether he performed his public duties faithfully, that he did so perform them whenever they did not conflict with his political duties! meaning thereby, as he explained, attending to his local organizations, seeing politicians, "fixing" primaries, bailing out those of his friends who were summoned to appear before a justice of peace, etc.

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CHAPTER LXIV

LOCAL EXTENSION OF RINGS AND BOSSES

To determine the extent to which the Ring and Boss system sketched in the preceding chapters prevails over the United States would be difficult even for an American, because it would require a minute knowledge of the local affairs of all the States and cities. Much more, then, is it difficult for a European. I can do no more than indicate generally the results of the inquiries I have made, commending the details of the question to some future investigator.

It has been pointed out that rings and bosses are the product not of democracy, but of a particular form of democratic government, acting under certain peculiar conditions. They belong to democratic government, as the old logicians would say, not simpliciter but secundum quid: they are not of its essence, but are merely separable accidents. We have seen that these conditions are

The existence of a Spoils System (= paid offices given and taken away for party reasons).

Opportunities for illicit gains arising out of the possession of office.

The presence of a mass of ignorant and pliable

voters.

The insufficient participation in politics of the "good citizens."

If these be the true causes or conditions producing the phenomenon, we may expect to find it most fully developed in the places where the conditions exist in fullest measure, less so where they are more limited, absent where they do not exist.

A short examination of the facts will show that such is the case.

It may be thought that the Spoils System is a constant, existing everywhere, and therefore not admitting of the application of this method of concomitant variations. That system does no doubt prevail over every State of the Union, but it is not everywhere an equally potent factor, for in some cities the offices are much better paid than in others, and the revenues which their occupants control are larger. In some small communities the offices, or most of them, are not paid at all.1 Hence this factor also may be said to vary.

We may therefore say with truth that all of the four conditions above named are most fully present in great cities. Some of the offices are highly paid: many give facilities for lucrative jobbing. The voters are so numerous that a strong and active organization is needed to drill them; the majority so ignorant as to be easily led. The best citizens are engrossed in business and cannot give to political work the continuous attention it demands. Such are the phenomena of New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Brooklyn, St. Louis. Cincinnati, San Francisco, Baltimore, and New Orleans. In these cities Ring-and-bossdom has attained its amplest growth, overshadowing the whole field of politics.

1 For instance, the "selectmen " of a New England Town are not paid. 2 Of course the results are not equally ad in all these cities.

Of the first two of these I need not speak in detail here, proposing to describe their phenomena in later chapters. Chicago, Baltimore, and San Francisco are little if at all better. I subjoin some remarks bearing on five other cities, with which I have been favoured by leading citizens resident therein, in reply to interrogatories which I addressed to them. The importance of the subject may excuse the length of these quotations. Knowing how apt a stranger is to imagine a greater uniformity than exists, I am anxious to enable the reader to understand to what extent the description I have given is generally true, and with what local diversities its general truth is compatible.

Cincinnati (population in 1880, 255,139)—

“Our Ring is in a less formal shape than is sometimes seen, but dishonest men of both parties do in fact combine for common profits at the public expense. As regards a Boss, there is at this moment an interregnum, but some ambitious men are observed to be making progress towards that dignity. Rings are both the effect and the cause of peculation. They are the result of the general law of combination to further the interest of the combiners.

"Where a Ring exists it can always exclude from office a good citizen known to be hostile to it. But a good easy man who will not fight and will make a reputable figurehead may be an excellent investment.

"The large cities are the great sufferers from the Spoils System, because in them power gives the greatest opportunity for profit and peculation. In them also it is easy to make a more or less open combination of keepers of tippling shops and the 'bummers,' etc., who congregate in them. Here, too, is the natural home of the class of vagabonds who will profess devotion to the party or the man who will pay them, and who combine to levy blackmail upon every candidate, and in turn are ready to stuff ballot-boxes, to buy votes, to 'repeat,' etc. These scoundrels 'live by politics' in their way, and force their services upon more prominent men, till there comes to be a sort of 'solidarity' in which men of national reputation find themselves morally compromised by being obliged to

recognize this sort of fraternity, and directly or indirectly to make themselves responsible for the methods of these 'henchmen' and followers. They dare not break with this class because its enmity would defeat their ambitions, and the more unscrupulous of them make fullest use of the co-operation, only rendering a little homage to decency by seeking to do it through intermediates, so as not too disgustingly to dirty their own hands.

"In such a condition of things the cities become the prey of the 'criminal class' in politics, in order to ensure the discipline and organization in State and national politics which are necessary to the distinguished leaders for success. As a result it goes almost without saying that every considerable city has its rings and its actual or would-be bosses. There are occasional 'revolutions of the palace' in which bosses are deposed, or 'choked off,' because they are growing too fat on the spoils, and there is no such permanence of tenure as to enable the uninitiated always to tell what boss or what ring is in power. They do not publish an Almanach de Gotha, but we feel and know that the process of plunder continues. A man of genius in this way, like a Tweed or a Kelly, comes occasionally to the front, but even in the absence of a ruler of this sort the ward politicians can always tell where the decisive influences reside.

"The size of the city in which the system reaches full bloom depends upon its business and general character. Small towns with a proportionately large manufacturing population are better fields for rings than more homogeneous communities built up as centres of mercantile trade. The tendency however is to organize an official body of workers' in even the smallest community; and the selfishness of man naturally leads to the doctrine that those who do the work shall live by it. Thus, from the profits of rotation in office' and the exercise of intrigue and trick to get the place of the present incumbent, there is the facilis descensus to regarding the profits of peculation and the plunder of the public as a legitimate corrective for the too slow accumulation from legal pay. Certain salaries and fees in local offices are notoriously kept high, so that the incumbent may freely 'bleed' for party use, or, what is the same thing, for the use of party bummers.' Thus we have had clerks of courts and sheriffs getting many times as much pay as the judges on the bench, etc. From this, jobbing in contracts, bribery, and unblushing stealing are reached by such easy steps that perhaps the local politician is hardly conscious of the progress in his moral education."