Carl Schurz

“ Enterprises requiring large aggregations of capital have become necessary to make the vast resources of the country available, to bring the producer and consumer together, and to create wealth by the employment of hired labor on a great scale, thus largely changing the relations which formerly existed between man and man. Great corporations have grown up, wielding a power which may challenge that of the Government itself. New interests have developed themselves, and with them new conflicts, some of them beyond the reach and control of local self-government. ”

“ No mere party cry is potent enough to cover the short-comings of political leaders. The quarrels going on within the existing organizations have sharpened the spirit of minute inquiry and given an unusual stimulus to universal and thorough investigation. While the factions may be bent upon mere malicious fault-finding with one another without a higher aim, the real public opinion of the country has gradually become accustomed to the application of higher standards to the methods of administration, as well as to the men charged with power and responsibility. ”

“ Paradoxical as it may seem: although almost all the professional politicians are strenuously opposed to civil service reform, yet the introduction in good faith of a system of appointments to office without any kind of political favoritism, for ascertained business fitness alone, upon the strictest reform principles, will – aside from its effects upon the efficiency and morality of the service itself – be the only effective measure of peace for the party. Every other policy will intensify the broil. But the Republican party must, above all things, recognize its true element of strength. ”

“ In consequence, we have a people with a new social organization, new wants, new grievances, and new aspirations, and becoming more and more accustomed to look to a central authority for things which formerly were not considered within the range of its functions. Whether we consider these tremendous changes as good or evil, as fraught with danger or full of promise, they are the natural outgrowth of a development bound to come and to go on, and they cannot remain without great effect upon the nature and working machinery of the Government. ”

“ The disturbances of the public peace in the South which, for several years, had a disquieting effect upon the Northern mind, are fast yielding to an eager desire for good order and for the friendly coöperation of Northern capital and enterprise in developing Southern prosperity. The “solid South,” as a dangerous political power, is rapidly losing, or has already lost, its terrors in consequence of the evident tendency of political forces in that section to divide, and thus to be solid no more. ”

“ The slave-power, which had gradually constituted itself the strongest, in fact the controlling, organized force in the Democratic party, rebelled against the constitutionally expressed will of the people and put itself outside of the Union. Although a large number of Northern Democrats went into the Union army, many of them without giving up their party affiliation, the Democratic party as a political organization made the fatal blunder of assuming a suspicious position in a struggle for national existence. Its attitude sometimes permitted serious doubt as to its patriotic impulses. ”

“ They are apt to stay away from the polls, or even to give the opposition a more positive advantage, when their own party displeases them and they think it needs a lesson. The gradual disappearance of great definite issues from party contests, the drifting of the Republican organization into that kind of “machine politics” which consists in mere struggles for power and plunder, and the repulsive spectacle of the selfish quarrels of factions, have made them much more indifferent to mere party success than ever before. ”

“ A new party, the Republican, came into being, as it were, in a day. The pro-slavery Whigs went to the Democrats, the anti-slavery Whigs became Republicans. Those who were neither one nor the other lingered on as the mere shadow of a party until the civil war broke out. A large accession from the Democratic ranks made the Republicans so strong that in their first presidential campaign they were almost successful, and in their second they achieved a decisive victory. ”

“ In one word, while the South may not in all respects be what it ought to be, or what the people of the North desire it to be, its condition has so greatly improved, and its development is so clearly in the right direction, that it can no longer inspire any serious apprehension. The Southern question is, therefore, practically eliminated from our party contests. This became very evident to every candid observer already in the presidential election of 1880, when the attempt of a Republican leader to make the “solid South” the key-note of the campaign resulted in a most significant failure. ”

“ The intercourse of the people of the different States is infinitely more intimate, not only because the increased facilities of locomotion encourage travel, but because the interests of all classes of business pursuits are, in their various relations, constantly overleaping all geographical and political lines of division, and many of those interests feel themselves in closer contact with the national government than with any home authority. ”

“ The question what new duties they will impose upon the Federal power has not yet become sufficiently clear to present itself as a distinct issue between political parties, although it is likely to do so some day. Whether the parties, divided by that new issue, will be the Republican and Democratic parties as they exist to-day is very questionable. Certainly, however loudly old distinctions of that kind may, in the traditional way, be re-asserted by politicians in quest of a party cry, they are practically no living and distinct issues between the parties at present. ”

“ The Greenback party, if it may be called a party at all, owes its existence to some crude financial schemes which, in a period of business stagnation, were brought forward, partly by well-meaning but immature theorists, partly by demagogues, as an unfailing remedy for hard times. Their fallaciousness has been exposed, not only by argument, but by the evidence of events, and although the Greenback organization still lingers on in a shadowy way, it is manifestly without vitality. The “anti-monopoly” movement is of greater importance. ”

“ When a party has been so long in power as the Republicans have, there is always a current of popular desire for a change. That desire grows stronger as years roll on. The Republicans must, therefore, impress the people with the belief that no sweeping change is necessary, or that those changes of more or less importance which may be desirable can be more safely intrusted to it than to the opposition. ”

“ The general public is seeking, and rapidly acquiring, a knowledge of the details of the governmental machinery, and of its working, which it formerly did not possess. It is growing less and less accessible to mere catch-words and vague generalities. “Pointing with pride” and “viewing with alarm,” in party platforms, has lost its charm with all thinking men. The demand for knowledge and solid business ability, as well as integrity, in official station is constantly growing not only more exacting, but also more intelligent. ”

“ It is their evident interest to be so, for if the equality of the States, as political factors in the Government, were ever called into question, the smallest States would be the most likely to suffer. Thus, while the Democrats of the South may still pretend to be most uncompromising as to the doctrine of States-rights and as opponents of centralization in point of theory and profession, most of them are ready to permit an enlargement of the powers of the Federal Government as it may appear necessary to benefit them locally. ”

“ The public mind is, more or less unconsciously perhaps, occupying itself with a problem which, in a period of transition like the present, naturally presses forward, and which goes beyond any definite measure of reform yet proposed. It is the problem of creating an administrative system adapted to the new circumstances which the changes in our social and economical condition during the last fifty years have brought forth. ”

“ Neither do the independent movements we observe in several States distinctly foreshadow new party formations on the field of national politics. They are protests against “machine” rule, as in Pennsylvania, or against a narrow-minded and vicious use of party power by factions, as in some of the Southern States, and may result in taking the controlling influence within the old parties from one set of persons to give it to another, or even in permanent defections and eventual transfers of considerable bodies of voters from one of the old parties to the other. ”

“ The truth is that, under existing circumstances, the tariff question, however great its importance, does not appeal with sufficient force to the popular mind to take the first place. The resources of the country are so abundant, their development so rapid, and the increase of the national wealth so great under all sorts of customs policy, that the masses of the people have not taken sufficient interest in the latter to subordinate all other questions to it. ”

“ The relation of the central government to the States and the people has been seriously modified during the last fifty years, not only in consequence of the civil war and the constitutional amendments, or of a change in constitutional doctrine, but through the introduction of new means of communication which have annihilated the distances formerly separating the different parts of the country and their people, and through the creation of a community of enterprise and interest between them which formerly did not exist. ”

“ Many men who are dissatisfied with the Republicans, while no longer believing that the accession of the Democratic party to power would result in the ruin of the country, would still hesitate to intrust it with that power, for fear that more might be lost than gained by the change. ”

“ To turn such a situation to advantage for the public good will be, in a great measure, the task of the “independent voter,” who has of late made himself felt, and grown to the estate of a distinct political force. ”

“ The American people have, therefore, become more the people of one great country and less the people of a number of different States, and the central government has become to them, even in the remotest corner of the land, a thing of vastly greater interest and importance than ever before. ”

“ In the North they have been mostly inclined to associate with the Republican party, not from mere habit and tradition, but because they found in the ranks of that party those elements of intelligence and public spirit with which their endeavors are most likely to find congenial lodgment. But they are always willing to consider whether a defeat or a victory of that or any other party would best serve the public objects they have in view, and to act accordingly. ”

“ While most of the odium which attached to the Democratic party in consequence of its ancient pro-slavery policy and its attitude during the war has gradually faded away, it has, by its vacillating and aimless conduct with regard to the practical questions of the time, produced the impression of a lack of capacity as to the management of the affairs of the Government, and therefore failed to make great progress in the confidence of the country. It has patriotic and able men among its leaders, but they are not strong enough to guide it. ”

“ It might suddenly assume formidable proportions, and become an overshadowing issue in our politics, if the great corporations which control the transporting business should venture upon oppressive measures of extortion. This, however, they are not likely to do. Aside from the general decrease of freight-rates in consequence of the more systematic and economical working of railroad lines, some of the corporations have of late shown rather a tendency to fight one another by warlike competition among themselves, thus incidentally benefiting the public. ”

“ It consists in the assurance the party gives to the people that the cause of good government, the prosperity, the peace, the good name – in one word, the conservative interests – of the country, will be safer in its hands than in the hands of any other. ”

“ It cannot be denied that a large majority of the Republicans are in favor of protection and uphold it as a part of their party creed. But it is also true that there are many friends of a policy tending toward free trade in the Republican ranks, who remained there partly because they considered other questions as of greater immediate importance, or because they saw reason to think that nothing would be gained for it by strengthening the Democratic organization. ”

“ A way has to be found to make more available and useful to the Government, in all its branches, the best intelligence and character in the country, now in great part excluded from public employment by the peculiar nature of our constituencies and the working of the party machinery, or withdrawn from it by the superior advantages of private pursuits. ”

“ This is undoubtedly so, but the factionists are becoming constantly more inclined to coalesce with similar elements on the other side, and the number of men who, without taking much personal interest in any of the warring factions, feel their party allegiance sit lightly upon their shoulders, and who would enter into new combinations, is also growing larger from day to day. And that number is increased by those who are disgusted by the selfishness and demagoguery displayed in the unseemly quarrels within the organizations to which they have been attached. ”