WHAT IS INVOLVED IN THE NEW YORK ELECTION ?
FEwpolitical events of recent times have attracted more eager attention than the municipal contest now being waged in New York, the issue of which will be decided on Tuesday next. In America the intensity of interest is only less than that displayed in a Presidential election, and on this side of the Atlantic all friends of public order and civic progress are painfully eager to know on which side New York will range herself. We have explained to our readers the positions of the various candidates, and the daily despatches from New York have enabled the British public generally to follow the develop- ments of the campaign and to speculate on the chances of the contest with almost as much knowledge as is avail- able on the spot.' This is not the time for prediction or for balancing the claims of opposing forces, since the issue is so soon to be determined, though one remark maybe made on this head, viz., that the chances of Mr. Low are improving, that all the best elements in New York civic life are rally- ing to his support as they never rallied before, and that, unless at the last moment a secret understanding is arrived at between the forces of Mr. Croker and Senator Platt (as we hinted before might probably be looked for), Mr. Low has a very fair prospect of election. In that case New York would probably enjoy the privilege of having in her service the ablest and most cultivated municipal administrator in the world. It would be a moral and political revolution for a city stained with a long record of municipal corruption, and it really seems almost too good to be true. For recollect what powers Mr. Low would wield, and how entirely independent he would be of the wirepullers and the doubtful elements. It is quite conceivable that either of the old parties might elect a candidate personally beyond reproach, but still in thraldom to the ring of office-seekers and party managers on his side, so that when he would do good evil would be ever present with him ; but the new charter is a tremendous weapon which may be either used for good or ill. In the hands of either a bad or weak man it would produce immense mischief, in the hands of a strong and honest man it will be powerful for good. Therefore if a man like Mr. Low, of proved capacity and high public spirit, can be elected, the Greater New York will begin well ; a high standard will at once be set up to which conformity will in the future be required, an impulse to good will have been imparted which will be felt all over the United States, and which will moreover, even beyond the borders of the Republic, revive the drooping spirits of the sincere friends of democratic institutions.
It is indeed precisely this element of deep interest in the possibility of the success of democracy which is causing all eyes to turn to New York, just as all eyes turned to America in the colossal conflict of a generation ago. The Republic started with certain democratic ideals ; can those ideals be realised, or must they be relegated to the limbo of exploded fancies and buried hopes whither so many fond illusions of the enthusiast have been con- signed? Is democracy, in short, the effusive outburst of a generous but mistaken enthusiasm for what. Carlyle scornfully called the "perfectibility of the species," or has it any grounds of rational and moral validity ? This great question is not settled ; it is still in abeyance. At this moment a majority of the best minds of the civilised world do not believe in democracy. They see the low level A desire and attainment which seems to satisfy the average man. They see that all the really well-managed institutions of the world are practically, if not nominally, under the control of a few. They do not believe that the immensely complicated problems of modern society can or ought to be submitted to the uneducated judgment of multitudes. They contrast the well-governed bureaucratic cities of Germany with the ill-governed democratic cities of America, and they ask you how you can help drawing the inference which they draw, that democracy is a demonstrated failure, and that it must in the nat ure of things break down, at least in all large, complex industrial communities. There are those who, without going so far as this, are of opinion that democracy has come too soon, and that the French and American Revolutions were ill- judged, premature attempts to bring to a sudden birth the embryo which was slowly forming itself in the womb of time. They think the mass of men needed another century of moral discipline and intellectual culture before they were fitted to take their public affairs into their own hands. The actual experience of democratic government has also disillusionised not a few ; not so much on the grounds hastily stated by Maine, but because of its tendency to produce almost the opposite result,—viz., to throw the masses into the hands of a few wirepullers, and so render them still the subjects of a rather sordid despotism while fancying themselves to be free and equal. Democracy, therefore, is at present under a cloud ; it has not performed, it is thought, what it promised, and it is suspected, or at least half suspected, that it never can. Our own attitude is that democracy must be accepted as a fact, as a necessary stage in human development, but that it has dangers of its own which are not yet under- stood, and certainly not guarded against. As Professor Goodnow, of Columbia University, has shown in his excellent work on " Municipal Problems," no possible gain could accrue to New York from reversion to restricted suffrage. It is precisely the people of leisure and wealth in New York who have allowed things to drift, who have deliberately abdicated their right of superior culture to direct the civic life of the place, and whose cowardice has led a horde of foreign-born office-seekers to fasten on America's greatest city as a prey. The discus- sion among the people of municipal questions also seems to be the one fruitful method by which the public interests and the daily thoughts of the mass can be raised to a higher level. Nobody can estimate the value, from an educational point of view, of a great campaign such as the present. Whatever happens, ideas will be brought home which cannot be permanently lost. We do not believe that democracy can escape from the rule of the strong, which will be less veiled than under forms nominally less democratic. But the real hope for demo- cracy is that this strong rule will be first honest, and next intelligently understood and supported by the people, just as the strong rule of Lincoln was supported in the Civil War, or as the strong rule of any really great Premier would be supported in England in a time of public anxiety. The chief problem, however, is to make the people see that every moment is a crisis, and that strength and wisdom never can be allowed to become weary and take their rest. Had constant vigilance been exerted in New York there would have been no desperate .efforts needed to rescue the city from the clutches of thieves.
The election of Mr. Low by a good majority over the Platt and Croker factions would help on a democratic revival in Europe by showing that an immense democracy could rise to the needs of the occasion, that it could recognise and support a strong and honest man, and that it could understand the significance of the issues entrusted to its hands. A great Tammany victory, on the other hand, would aid reaction everywhere. A movement would probably arise in America for limiting the suffrage and for hedging in municipal life with all manner of restric- tions, which would themselves be largely futile because they would be manipulated by party votes in the State Legislatures. People who do not wish to be robbed and misgoverned would be inclined to throw themselves more heartily into the hands of class rulers, preferring their arbitrary clean-handedness to the corrupt and incompetent rule of " the mob." We could not blame them for such in inference, yet it would evidently mean a long-continued period of political reaction. It would mean that the ?.volution of society since the Revolution was being thrust 'pack or deflected from its natural channel. It would reinforce the dreary political pessimism of the time by casting a lurid glow on the condition of American in- stitutions and the failure of the world's most democratic people to solve a problem vital to the wellbeing of society. It would, in a word, add to the forces of social despair. Superior culture would take up its parable at the " many- headed beast," which, in its turn, would seem once more to demonstrate its entire willingness to grovel at the feet of the most vulgar and corrupt demagogues, and to be indifferent to all that elevates and dignifies public life. And as the opportunity, under the new charter, for plundering the city successfully is held by many to be largely increased, it seems that the revival of the old era of Tammany contracts, blackmailing, and jobbery might, under a Tammany victory, make of New York a rotten, hopeless sink, at whose mere name self-respecting Americans would blush, and whose existence would prove the standing insoluble problem of American life.
We do not think we exaggerate the importance of this conflict. It is part of the great war of Ormuzd and Ahriman, of the powers of the light and the dark, and it is a very vital part. The popular imagination is right in fixing on this contest as of supreme interest and signifi- cance. The virus of corruption and misrule, either openly supported or privately winked at by some of the great moneyed corporations, has spread far and wide in American cities, even in some of the smaller municipalities of New England. A blow dealt at Tammany or its Republican ally would be felt everywhere ; not a city would escape its moral influence. It would hearten the average citizen by destroying that fatal and easily nursed superstition that the strongholds of corruption are impregnable. The movement for purity and efficiency thus spreading in America would, in a measure, reassure Europe as to the character and destiny of her Transatlantic offspring, and would so fling a much-needed ray of light on a European situation at present overcast.
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