THE AMERICAN ELECTIONS. T HE people of America—and, we may add,
many people in England—have watched the recent election for the Governorship of the State of New York with an interest which has been almost feverish. For one thing, such a contest is to a certain extent a test case, and gives a clue as to what may happen in the Presidential Election two years hence. For another, the character and deeds of one of the candidates have made him the most controversial figure in America, and into the fight there has entered an un- precedented. degree of private animus. But the main cause of the interest is that the battle has been one of principles, even though complicated by discordant per- sonalities. Kr. Hearst is by universal consent a, man with a doubtful past and an ambiguous present, the creator of "yellow " journalism, the ally of strange "bosses," the un- scrupulous purchaser of political influence. In so far as he is all this, he disgusts honest men of both parties. But he has also undertaken to use all his influence and wealth in a war to the death against the Trusts, and in this capacity he makes a real appeal to good citizens. Mr. Hughes represents the best element in American public life, and has won fame as the chief agent in exposing the insurance scandals. But the weight which his character and record would give him is discounted by the fact that behind him stand the rich men of the country, Wall Street, the Trusts, all the combinations that the public-spirited citizen is beginning to look upon with a deadly fear. Is it surprising that in such a quandary the average man should begin to talk about "measures, not men," and even give his vote to a candidate whom he would not suffer to enter his house ?
Mr. Hearst's career is one of the romances of modern politics. A man of great wealth, he has made power his hobby, and to secure this end he has become a vast news- paper owner. To this there is, of course, little objection in the abstract. But he has sought power by methods of indieeriminate abuse, of wild mendacity, of vulgar agitation, which have made his papers a byword. He is the familiar type of the demagogue in the laced coat, the very rich man who makes a deliberate appeal to the classes with nothing to lose and all to gain by agitation. By means of an enormous force of paid. agents he has been ground-baiting the country with a view to the Presidency. He stood for the Mayoralty of New York against the Tammany candidate, and now in alliance with the chief Tammany "boss," whom he aforetime denounced as a criminal, he has striven for the Governorship. Such a record compels us to discount the high professions which appear in his programme. He announces that his aim is the impartial enforcement of the laws, public ownership of public necessaries, political honesty, some modification of the extreme Protective policy, and, above all, the restraint and regulation by law of Trusts and monopolies. It says much for the passionate craving for such reforms in the heart of the nation that so many upright citizens have chosen to range themselves under Mr. Hearst's banner. They are for him in spite of himself. Much as they detest his methods, they yet see in him a force which may crush the evil, a man who, whatever his motives, is in deadly earnest about the end. And the result is that with all the Republican organisations, the better-class Democrats, and the whole of the reputable Press against him, as well as Mr. Roosevelt's unsparing words of condemnation, he has only lost by some 55,000 votes, while the rest of the Republican "ticket" in New York State has been defeated. Mr. Hearst is far from being "snowed under." He remains with his millions, his newspapers, and his army of retainers,—one of the two great personal forces in American politics.
Mr. Hearst's defeat is not a triumph for the Republicans, and still less for the Trusts. This the New York Press seem to recognise, and they agree in declaring that it is a "season for humiliation and searching of minds and hearts." The worst of candidates has secured the support of a large number of honest men, because they hate the abuses he is sworn to remove more than they hate him. The truth is, as Mr. Wells pointed out in the book we reviewed last week in these columns, that America is becoming self-critical. Her political creed has been individualism run mad, a cult of freedom which in the long run looks as if it would destroy freedom. The State should interfere with the private citizen as little as possible, for it has no concern with his life save to defend him and preserve law and order. Every man has an equal opportunity, and it rests with himself to sink or swim. But unfortunately such a creed in such a world as ours is self-contradictory. Unless equality of opportunity is maintained by constant State interference, opportunities will soon be flagrantly unequal. This fear of the State has led. to many surprising results. The law has become weak, politics have ceased to attract the best men because of the impotence of the political life, and as a consequence the country has set itself whole-heartedly to the getting of dollars, and has forgotten the higher duties of the State. And now we have large classes of men in that country of splendid horizons who have lost all horizon, who are as hopeless in their outlook as the most submerged of European proletariats. We see immense aggregations of wealth and immense areas of utter poverty. The law which should be the bulwark of the poor is too often the screen of the rich. It is not surprising that everywhere throughout the United States to-day there should be growing up a feeling of despair and a proneness to desperate remedies. What do the labourer, the broken- down retailer, the ruined small manufacturer care for Mr. Hearst's private character ? It is enough that he is prepared to wage implacable war against the forces that are ruining them, and to wage it at once.
The only alternative to Mr. Hearst is the President himself. The recent election is not much of a triumph for anybody; but we think that it may be said to be a tribute to the influence of Mr. Roosevelt. The Chief Magistrate • of the Republic has done a thing which has had no parallel since the days of Jefferson and Aaron Burr. He has interfered in a State election by means of his lieutenant, Mr. Root, and interfered with a denunciation of Mr. Hearst which covered both his political methods and his personal character. He was an "insincere, self-seeking demagogue," a fomenter of crime, an accessory in spirit to the murder of President McKinley. The Press of New York, instead of taking offence, hailed this speech as a new proof of Mr. Roosevelt's courage. Clearly the President thought the matter of such terrible importance that he was prepared to break all rules; and yet—Mr. Hearst was not badly defeated. It is a signifi- 3ant fact, and to us there is only one moral. Mr. Hearst owes his strength to his representation of a great national longing ; he owes his defeat to the fact that the President also, in the eyes of sane men, represents this same longing, and that a majority still believe that the President's is the better way. The one man stands before the world discredited, hated, yet very much in earnest, so much in earnest that he is prepared to take short cuts to reach his goal. The other is one of the two or three fore- most reputations in the world, and he, too, is in earnest about reform. But he is a statesman, and' not a dema- gogue. He sees that while "so foul a sky clears not without a storm," it is well to limit the destruction. He does not seek to glut the appetites of the "Have nots " at the expense of the "Haves," but to introduce a better system where the State will enforce its own interest against all classes, and a nobler civic ideal will prevail than mere equality of opportunity in selfishness and wrong- doing. Mr. Hearst was defeated because the people of New York still trust the President. But at the same time the narrowness of the margin conveys a warning to America to set her house in order by reasonable methods or to prepare for a sterner discipline. The President in his campaign against lawless capital is handicapped by the opposition of many elements in his own party. The recent election should teach such opponents a little prudence. Change must come, the State must recover its own, and it is surely better that it should be by reform in the hands of a statesman than by revolution in the charge of a demagogue.
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