Alfred Byron Cruikshank

“ As the thrift of the worker is the root of our material prosperity, so is the thrift of the rich its flower and choicest fruit. What would America be, what would Europe be without the savings of the well-to-do, accumulated from generation to generation, and here now at our command and for our use manifested not only in railroads, ships, canals, banks and all the buildings and equipments of commerce and industry, but also in fine mansions, in elegant furniture, in beautiful lawns and gardens, in churches, cathedrals, hospitals, universities and museums? ”

“ The same class of politicians, the same methods, the same political games, the same corruption, the same boss rule, the same old rings, the same fraud, cheating, waste and general inefficiency remain the most striking features of our American public life. The same men, though not always holding the same places, remain in office year after year, and the rule of the oligarchy of professional politicians established eighty years ago goes on forever. ”

“ Indeed, in some minds the right to vote for something or for someone, is either confused or confounded with liberty itself, or is regarded as the guarantee or guardian of liberty, or its open and visible sign, or a combination of all three. To some, the universal ballot is a sort of fetish, which they distrust and despise yet dare not offend. There are even those who will grant all here recounted of the evils and stupidities of manhood suffrage, and yet will answer that all these, and more, if need be, must we endure for the sake of the preservation of liberty ”

“ In every family, in every occupation, in every quality and grade of life, the same absurd and degrading performance is to be repeated year by year, as long as men will subject themselves to the futile humiliation of appearing at the polls. All the way up and down the scale our women are notoriously inferior to our men in business and political knowledge and judgment; and all the way down and all the way up, all the votes of such of the wise and experienced males as may hereafter trouble themselves to vote are to be negatived and nullified by those of the ignorant and inexperienced females. ”

“ In fact, our present system only puts wealth, or the power which it represents, into the hands of the unscrupulous who can always use the proletariat for any irresponsible power that is wanted, and for plundering the community in some form, whether by taxation or blackmail. They have become so bold that they do not discuss the problems of government at all, but carry on their business with the audacity of pirates and the immunity of saints. ”

“ The cry was that the ballot is a natural right; that the republican legend is not that some men, white men, educated men, or propertied men may vote; but that all men have an absolute right to the suffrage; a right inherent in man as man: and was not the freedman a man and a native of the soil? The ballot, said they, is a weapon of defense, needed more by poor peasants and laborers be they white, black or brown than by any other class. What if the negroes were ignorant and easily led; give them the vote and they would swiftly acquire learning and strength of character. ”

“ It is the ambition of real statesmen to drive the state coach; while the mere politician is content to climb up behind, or to run up and down at the heels of the populace, like a servile flunkey after a demented master, whose follies he dares not correct, and out of whose worst extravagances he is ready to profit. Political leaders realize that a majority vote does not always, perhaps not often, represent the weight of the effective public opinion of the state ”

“ The various acts of repudiation took different shapes in different states, but in every instance the state government was a manhood suffrage institution; none of them have had any other system. It is perfectly fair to charge every dollar of these stolen and wasted millions and every repudiation spot and stain on the fame and record of these nine states to manhood suffrage. In fact the candid historian cannot, if he would, escape the damning record and the inevitable conclusion. Manhood suffrage has shamefully bankrupted and dishonored nine American states. ”

“ As we pass through a handsome well-kept American village let us give a thought of gratitude to the folk of all degrees of well-to-do, most of them now dead and gone, who planted and built well, who dressed, talked and lived like gentlemen and ladies; who improved the life and manners of their time and left the world better housed, better mannered and better looking than they found it. Of such is the history of the nation’s progress. Like the great artists and authors, they each contributed an offering to civilization ”

“ But this is a superficial understanding of the matter; the people cannot possibly rule themselves; the existence of any rule whatever implies rulers as well as those ruled over; to talk of the people ruling is nonsense, or at best a mere figure of speech to indicate that they have a choice of rulers. Here as elsewhere there is and must be a government ruling by force; here as elsewhere that government is a human machine wielding or intended to wield irresistible power over its subjects, and constantly menacing the disobedient with deprivation of property, liberty and life. ”

“ No thoroughly enlightened scheme of government of a great nation can do so, for pure majority government is merely the rule of brute force. Wisdom and ability are usually in the minority in this world; and a better saying would seem to be “let the minority rule”; in other words, let patriotic intelligence, justice and efficiency bear sway, and let them as far as possible lead the majority into a better way. In the practical affairs of every day life, people do not seek to learn of the majority, but of the few. ”

“ No doubt, the adoption of the manhood suffrage theory prepared the way for this result, first by promulgating the false doctrine of a natural right to vote, and second by weakening the electorate. When the principle of a qualified electorate was abandoned, we lost the only sane and safe basis on which a democratic government can possibly exist; once reject the rule of fitness, and there is no valid reason why all the deficient and worthless should not have their say in government, and the way is laid open for rule by ignorant and incapable numbers instead of by knowledge and capacity. ”

“ We all know that gross but hidden corruption may long fester in the body politic, or in a public institution, unknown to the world at large, until disclosed by some flagrant display, which like a spot on the surface of an apple reveals the decay and putridity within. And so here, the whole American political system has been corrupted by the virus of the controllable vote ”

“ As a matter of fact few of them ever are finally expelled from political life; they are merely transferred from time to time from one job to another. To one who knows, it is often pathetically ludicrous to hear a voter incensed by the tyranny or incapacity of some office holder threaten to withhold his vote from him “next time.” The irate citizen will probably forget all about “next time,” or will never hear of its having arrived; or the next office will be an appointive one, higher up. Even if he do carry out his threat it will be like putting a straw down in an elephant’s path ”

“ For the men who have acceded to it the most charitable excuse is indifference. The long continued operation of rotten politics has eaten into the civic fibre of our manhood; we have for generations seen elections turned into farces, public offices bargained and sold, and a vulgar oligarchy of rogues native and imported ruling this land, till our best men have almost ceased to care who votes or who is elected. ”

“ All the organs of public opinion are muzzled, controlled or terrified into silence by the politicians; and but few in public life whether newspaper men, clergymen, judges, politicians, teachers or public servants or officials; but few of those merely dependent upon or connected with politics or government, whether bankers, lawyers, physicians in hospitals, officers of public utilities or the like, have heretofore dared more than whisper to their closest friends their real hatred of the political despotism under which we are living today in the United States. ”

“ Let us now glance at the great man himself, the real Boss, the magnate, the prince of American Democracy, the man who of all men most thoroughly believes in manhood suffrage, understands it and profits by it; one of the real political rulers of the American people; he who makes and unmakes governors, senators and high judges; he for whom sheriffs, aldermen, assemblymen, state senators, and sometimes even our mayors of cities are glad to run errands and to wait in anterooms. ”

“ The cause of private property rights is in the truest sense the American cause and that to which all other national causes political and social are subordinate. Those rights involve almost everything which is dear to the American heart. Even our governmental institutions are of secondary importance, they are the instruments merely; the means whereby we seek to obtain among other aids and aims the protection of private property, the absolute assurance to each American of the use and enjoyment of the fruits of his toil, of his self denial and of his foresight. ”

“ They had heard the praises of American democracy trumpeted abroad, and they came here to see and take part in its perfect work; they found the country in the hands of sordid, corrupt and inefficient politicians, and they turned from democracy in despair. Seeing the misuse of money in our politics, they decided that the power of money should be abolished altogether. Like ourselves, they overlooked completely the fact that the real cause of the diseased condition of our American political life is not the purchasing power of money, but the existence of a purchasable electorate. ”

“ We are urgently reminded that our manhood suffrage government is by no means to be trusted; that the only hope of tolerable government is to arouse every good citizen to an attitude and a habit of constant distrust of our chosen representatives and rulers and to regard them with sleepless jealousy and suspicion. It is not enough to vote; you must attend primaries; nay more, you must anticipate the primaries and plan to elect certain primary candidates and to defeat others; even when your own men are chosen, you cannot safely trust them ”

“ In short, American Independence was schemed, the Union founded, the Constitution adopted, and all the foundations of the greatness and freedom of this country established, without the aid of manhood suffrage, without the unpropertied vote, and by men who believed in and practised a property qualification system. It is not even likely that an inferior class of men would have ever done the work, which required skill, experience and ripe wisdom; qualities more often found in the successful than in the unsuccessful, and never to be looked for in the populace. ”

“ The great objection to democracy in the minds of modern thinkers is, that originally created and idealized as the champion of individual rights, it has gone no further; it has failed to provide for capacity and efficiency, or to recognize its duty in that direction. On the contrary, its declared policy for the last century has been in the direction of degrading the quality of the voting mass by the process of increasing its volume from below. If democracy is to be the future governing force, it must absolutely and unreservedly commit itself to the principle of a thoroughly competent electorate ”

“ When one tries to imagine the world without the United States of America as a beneficent enlightening force, one is appalled at the bare possibility that such a calamity might have been allowed to fall upon the world ”

“ The consent of the governed can be given only to the mere form of government, said Webster, in a speech at the Charleston Bar Dinner, 1847, and further: “Liberty is the creation of law, essentially different from that authorized licentiousness that trespasses on right. It is a legal and refined idea, the offspring of high civilization, which the savage never understood and never can understand. Liberty exists in proportion to wholesome restraint; the more restraint on others to keep off from us, the more liberty we have. ”

“ Look at the community where you live and you will easily note how Society bestows influence, authority, distinction and esteem upon her own workers, the builders and creators of civilization and upon their children, and passes contemptuously by the unsocial and anti-social. You cannot fail to observe her disdain of the mere talkers and wasters and how she brings to naught the works and cheap distinctions of a manhood suffrage constituency. ”

“ The operation of manhood suffrage in our great cities has clearly been tyrannical, because of the absence of proper restraint upon evil doers. Can any one truly say that the people of these cities have been benefited in the slightest degree, by the so-called privilege of voting for their magistrates or rulers? Assuming that their political bosses would let them vote as they wished, or that the bosses are popular agents, and that the people do or can govern in their cities, where is the public benefit? ”

“ It is not merely an open affront to American manhood, but it is also an aspersion at once upon its training and its intelligence; for it is a declaration that after over a century of actual participation in business, in war, in politics and in government, our men are so incapable, that their women who have none of this experience, are more competent than they to counsel and direct in all these important matters. ”

“ It is difficult for an American to discuss the subject coolly even at this distance, when he realizes that this, the greatest calamity which ever befell the country, was perfectly avoidable and was due entirely to stupidity and mismanagement. It is time that the truth was told; the Civil War was caused, not by the difficulty of the questions to be dealt with but by a lack of statesmanship, by the dull selfishness and asininity of the politicians of the day and by the system of low politics which had long before been established among us. ”