The Outlook said, on July 31, 1918:

"If a child is injured in the street and sent to some hospital, the human hand of Tammany reaches out to see that the child is cared for; that the mother is admitted to his presence; that her fears are calmed. Is it any wonder that Tammany has a grip on the hearts and the votes of the simple plain people, native and foreign born, in the crowded tenements of the metropolis?"

Notwithstanding the misdeeds of Tweed and a long line of wrong-doers who have done Tammany harm, Tammany has kept its control over the voters because for 365 days in the year its greater and lesser leaders go among the people, unostentatiously doing what they can for them in a human way. Therefore they do not have to worry about the votes of their friends on election day. Indeed, if corruption and partisan politics could be taken out of Tammany Hall, it would serve as an ideal party model for the rest of the country, because it probably gets nearer than any other political organization in a strictly human way to the daily human needs of the dwellers in its bailiwick.

These complete and scientifically run parties cannot be conducted without large funds, which are furnished by voluntary subscriptions in part. Too often, however, they have been raised by levies on office holders, candidates, corporations, and especially public utilities corporations; by the promise of favorable contracts; and worst of all by party revenue derived from the protection of saloons, gambling and vice in every form. So long as this is possible or necessary, corrupt politics cannot be kept out of our parties, nor wholly out of the executive, legislative and judicial branches. Why not admit that two and two make four?

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Artemus Ward used to say that it would have been ten dollars in his pocket if he never had been born. What would it have been in dollars and cents alone to the people of the United States-to say nothing of common decency and honesty and good government-if corrupt party politics had never been born or dominant among us? From now on our chiefest purpose must be to bring our political parties up to a higher level so that they shall tote fair" and do their fair share, with the executive, legislative and judicial branches, in enabling our purposive agencies to promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Our corrupt practices acts and our other election laws are steps in the right direction, but they should be extended and amended so as to take corrupt or small politics out of the political parties and out of every other part of our government; and this should be done with only one object in view-an increasingly better government of, by and for the people. No one could root corruption out of the body politic like a reformed and regenerated political party.

Our parties having thus become one of our educational agencies in regard to the conduct of our governments, corrupt or picayune partisan politics belong in them no more than in our ordinary educational departments, or in our agricultural experiment stations, or in many other educational and enlightening purposive agencies at Washington and in our States, which are so closely connected with our daily lives.

As a government becomes increasingly an ever present business instrumentality for good in the daily lives of its people, they realize that its chief purpose is not the winning of the next election, but the expanding and development of its purposes, and there is at once a broader

meaning given to " the people" in the minds of the voters. One who has had some hard problem on his farm solved by direct appeal to the Government, or who has been able to send a sick child to the country in search of health, wishes to have his neighbor or intimate friend take his troubles to the same benign benefactor; and thereafter the winning of the next election by corrupt or criminal means becomes less desirable or important, and the general welfare grows into a living issue.

Our surest way to knock out partisan, class and corrupt legislation and government is to make all the people appreciate that their governments are vast and complicated business enterprises, constantly undertaking novel functions, but working in an orderly way; and that these will be as much upset by disorderly interference on the part of the voters or some of them, under the name of a selfish or corrupt political party management, as a train schedule of the Subway would be upset by a mob that should interfere with the orderly running of its trains.

We should have far more publicity as to what the purposive branches of our governments are doing and striving to do for the people, and this might well come in part through the party organization; and then men will understand that outside and uninformed interference with the actual running of our complicated governmental machinery is like throwing a monkey wrench into any other machinery.

The problems which the people are facing after the war in speeding up their government to reach 100 per cent. of its objectives are innumerable and of the most difficult and intricate nature. Their solution can be reached only when the people, so far as possible, lay aside every encumbrance, put every obstacle out of their path, use only the best instrumentalities to achieve success, and

ruthlessly abolish any corrupting influences which encourage doubt as to the necessity or purposes of the government itself. Too often the people have believed that the rich and powerful were living on the government and not under it. There has been too much justification for the claim that this is a government for the plutocrats, the bosses, the classes, the corporations and for those who were willing to pay to be allowed to exploit the people. These arguments are doing much harm with our proletariat in our large cities. Our notions of the rights, powers and procedure of the political parties must be entirely revamped, so that the people may be sure that their parties are constantly becoming better and more powerful aids in working out the purposes of our governments, rather than the thoroughly discredited agencies which are now considered only necessary evils.

XXVI

THE NATURE OF PURPOSIVE GOVERNMENT

BUSINESS

RUE government of and by the people, the authoritative and operative functions, must come through constitutions and laws which in

sure the political rights of all citizens.

On the contrary, government for the people, the purposive function, is not so much a question of statute as it is of wise and efficient application of good business judgment and practice to obtain the blessings of democratic liberty. The question is not one of political right, but of how far it is wise and safe and desirable at a particular time to set up some department of the government in lines of business which possibly neither it nor any other government has ever before undertaken successfully, or in which it may have to compete with private interests which for centuries have been carrying on and developing those lines of business. Usually a dispute on the extension of purposive government is not a question of political right, but of business expediency; and we must always be very careful that it does not degenerate with us into a mere political question.

Men who look into an uncertain business or political future are perfectly justified in differing honestly and without heat as to the results which will be obtained from setting in motion certain unknown forces, or from the application of well-known forces to new uses or in new ways in governmental business. This is really a differ