598 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



regarded with more abhorrence than the members of the opposition ; 

 they are treated with a greater wealth of contempt and hatred, and 

 often pursued with the malignant vindictiveness of the crudest sav- 

 ages. " I submit," said Mr. Wanamaker in one of his speeches 

 against the Quay machine, " that the service of self-respecting men is 

 lost to the Republican party by vile misrepresentations of reputable 

 people, employment of bogus detectives, venomous falsifiers, a sub- 

 sidized press, and conspirators who dare any plot or defilement, able 

 to exert political control, and by protecting legislation and by domina- 

 tion of legal appointees of district attorneys and others not in elective 

 but appointive offices." During the memorable campaign of 1896, 

 when political bitterness and intolerance reached perhaps the high- 

 est point in the history of the United States, thousands of voters, 

 driven by the scourge of " party regularity," either concealed or dis- 

 avowed their convictions, and marched under banners that meant 

 repudiation of public and private obligations. Even one of Mr. 

 Cleveland's Cabinet officers, who had stood up bravely for the gold 

 standard, succumbed to party discipline and became an apostate. 

 The intolerant spirit of politics extends to dictation of instruction of 

 students. The prolonged assaults of the protectionists upon Pro- 

 fessor Perry and Professor Sumner are well known. The same spirit 

 inspired the attack upon President Andrews, of Brown University, 

 the dismissal of the anti-Populist professors in the Agricultural Col- 

 lege of Kansas, and the populistic clamor against certain professors in 

 the universities of Missouri and Texas. That politics produces the 

 same contempt for culture and capacity that war does, evidence is not 

 lacking. " There is," said Senator Grady, of Tammany Hall, apolo- 

 gizing for the appointment of some illiterate to office in New York 

 city, " a class of persons, chiefly the educated, who thinks that if a 

 man begins a sentence with a small letter, or uses a small ' i ' in re- 

 ferring to himself, or misspells common words, that he is unfit for 

 public office. Nothing could be further from the truth," he con- 

 tinues, using an argument that the barbarians that overran Europe 

 might have made; " it is an idea that only the aristocracy of culture 

 could hold. . . . We do not want the people ruled by men," he adds, 

 giving a demagogic twist to his reasoning, " who are above them, or 

 who fancy they are because they have wealth or learning or blood, 

 nor by men who are below them, but we want them ruled in a genu- 

 ine democracy by men who are the representatives in all their ways 

 of thinking, feeling, speaking, and acting, of the average man." 

 What is wanted, in other words, is not men anxious to acquit them- 

 selves with ability and fidelity to the public interests, but men that 

 will look after the interests of their organization and do the other 

 work of political condottieri. It can, of course, be a matter of no 



