of hostile conditions. Admiration will go out
to the men who did not submit, who bent things
to human use. We may see the entire tragedy of
life in being driven.

Half-truths and illusions, if you like, but tonic.
244



THE MAKING OF CREEDS

This view will suit our mood. For we shall be
making and the makers of history will become
more real to us. Instead of urging that issues
are Inevitable, Instead of being swamped by
problems that are unavoidable, we may stand up
and affirm the issues we propose to handle. Per-
haps we shall say with Nietzsche:

"Let the value of everything be determined
afresh by you."



245



CHAPTER VIII



THE RED HERRING



AT the beginning of every campaign the news-
papers tell about secret conferences in
which the candidate and his managers decide
upon "the line of attack." The approach to is-
sues, the way in which they shall be stressed, what
shall be put forward in one part of the country
and what in another, are discussed at these meet-
ings. Here is where the real program of a party
is worked out. The document produced at the
convention is at its best nothing but a suggestive
formality. It is not until the speakers and the
publicity agents have actually begun to animate
it that the country sees what the party is about.
It is as if the convention adopted the Decalogue,
while these secret conferences decided which of
the Commandments was to be made the issue.
Almost always, of course, the decision is en-
tirely a "practical" one, which means that each

24i6



THE RED HERRING

section of people is exhorted to practice the com-
mandment it likes the most. Thus for the burg-
lars is selected, not the eighth tablet, but the one
on which is recommended a day of rest from
labor; to the happily married is preached the
seventh commandment.

These conferences are decisive. On them de-
pends the educational value of a campaign, and
the men who participate in them, being in a posi-
tion to state the issues and point them, determine
the political interests of the people for a con-
siderable period of time. To-day in America,
for example, no candidate can escape entirely that
underlying irritation which socialists call poverty
and some call the high cost of living. But the
conspicuous candidates do decide what direction
thought shall take about this condition. They
can center it upon the tariff or the trusts or even
the currency.

Thus Mr. Roosevelt has always had a remarka-
ble power of diverting the country from the tariff
to the control of the trusts. His Democratic op-
ponents, especially Woodrow Wilson, are, as I
write, in the midst of the Presidential campaign
of 19 1 2, trying to focus attention on the tariff.
In a way the battle resembles a tug-of-war in
which each of the tWo leading candidates Is try-

247



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

ing to pull the nation over to his favorite issue.
On the side you can see the Prohibitionists en-
deavoring to make the country see drink as a
central problem; the emerging socialists insisting
that not the tariff, or liquor, or the control of
trusts, but the ownership of capital should be the
heart of the discussion. Electoral campaigns do
not resemble debates so much as they do compet-
ing amusement shows v/here, with bright lights,
gaudy posters and persuasive, insistent voices, each
booth is trying to collect a crowd. The victory in
a campaign is far more likely to go to the most
plausible diagnosis than to the most convincing
method of cure. Once a party can induce the
country to see its Issue as supreme the greater
part of its task is done.

The clever choice of Issues Influences all politics
from the petty manceuvers of a ward leader to
the most briUIant creative statesmanship. I re-
member an instance that happened at the begin-
ning of the first socialist administration In Sche-
nectady: The officials had out of the goodness
of their hearts suspended a city ordinance which
forbade coasting v/ith bob-sleds on the hills of
the city. A few days later one of the sleds ran
into a wagon and a little girl was killed. The
opposition papers put the accident Into scareheads

248



THE RED HERRING

with the result that public opinion became very
bitter. It looked like a bad crisis at the very
beginning and the old ring politicians made the
most of It. But they had reckoned without the
political shrewdness of the socialists. For in
the second day of excitement, the mayor made
public a plan by which the main business street
of the town was to be lighted with high-power
lamps and turned Into a ''brilliant white way of
Schenectady." The swiftness with which the
papers displaced the gruesome details of the little
girl's death by exultation over the business future
of the city was a caution. Public attention was
shifted and a political crisis avoided. I tell this
story simply as a suggestive fact. The ethical
considerations do not concern us here.

There is nothing exceptional about the case.
Whenever governments enter upon foreign in-
vasions in order to avoid civil wars, the same
trick Is practiced. In the Southern States the race
issue has been thrust forward persistently to pre-
vent an economic alignment. Thus you hear from
Southerners that unless socialism gives up its de-
mand for racial equality, the propaganda cannot
go forward. How often in great strikes have
riots been started In order to prevent the public
from listening to the workers' demands! It is

249



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

an old story — the red herring dragged across the
path In order to destroy the scent.

Having seen the evil results we have come to
detest a conscious choice of issues, to feel that
it smacks of sinister plotting. The vile practice
of yellow newspapers and chauvinistic politicians
is almost the only experience of it we have. Re-
ligion, patriotism, race, and sex are the favorite
red herrings of foul political method — they are
the most successful because they explode so easily
and flood the mind with those unconscious preju-
dices which make critical thinking difficult. Yet
for all its abuse the deliberate choice of issues is
one of the high selective arts of the statesman.
In the debased form we know it there is little
encouragement. But the devil is merely a fallen
angel, and when God lost Satan he lost one of his
best lieutenants. It is always a pretty good work-
ing rule that whatever is a great power of evil
may become a great power for good. Certainly
nothing so effective in the art of politics can be
left out of the equipment of the statesman.

Looked at closely, the deliberate making of
issues is very nearly the core of the statesman's
task. His greatest wisdom is required to select
a policy that will fertilize the public mind. He
fails when the issue he sets is sterile; he is in-

250



THE RED HERRING

competent If the Issue does not lead to the human
center of a problem; whenever the statesman
allows the voters to trifle with taboos and by-
products, to wander into blind alleys like "i6 toi,"
his leadership Is a public calamity. The news-
paper or politician which tries to make an issue
out of a supposed ''prosperity" or out of admira-
tion for the mere successes of our ancestors is
doing its best to choke off the creative energies in
politics. All the stultification of the stand-pat
mind may be described as Inability, and perhaps
unwillingness, to nourish a fruitful choice of
issues.

That choice is altogether too limited In America,
anyway. Political discussion, whether reactionary
or radical, is monotonously confined to very few
issues. It is as if social life were prevented from
irrigating political thought. A subject like the
tariff, for example, has absorbed an amount of
attention which would justify an historian in call-
ing it the Incubus of American politics. Now the
exaltation of one issue like that Is obviously out
of all proportion to its significance. A contribu-
tory factor it certainly is, but the country's des-
tiny is not bound up finally with its solution. The
everlasting reiterations about the tariff take up
altogether too much time. To any government

251



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

that was clear about values, that saw all problems
in their relation to human life, the tariff would
be an incident, a mechanical device and little else.
High protectionist and free trader alike fall under
the indictment — for a tariff wall is neither so high
as heaven nor so broad as the earth. It may be
necessary to have dykes on portions of the sea-
shore; they may be superfluous elsewhere. But
to concentrate nine-tenths of your attention on
the subject of dykes is to forget the civilization
they are supposed to protect. A wall is a wall:
the presence of it will not do the work of civiliza-
tion — the absence of it does not absolve anyone
from the tasks of social life. That a statecraft
might deal with the tariff as an aid to its purposes
is evident. But anyone who makes the tariff the
principal concern of statecraft is, I believe, mis-
taking the hedge for the house.

The tariff controversy is almost as old as the
nation. A more recent one is what Senator La
Follette calls *'The great issue before the Amer-
ican people to-day, . . . the control of their
own government.'' It has taken the form of an
attack on corruption, on what is vaguely called
"special privilege" and of a demand for a certain
amount of political machinery such as direct
primaries, the initiative, referendum, and recall.

252



THE RED HERRING

The agitation has a curious sterility: the people
are exhorted to control their own government,
but they are given very little advice as to what
they are to do with it when they control it. Of
course, the leaders who spend so much time de-
manding these mechanical changes undoubtedly
see them as a safeguard against corrupt politi-
cians and what Roosevelt calls ''their respectable
allies and figureheads, who have ruled and legis-
lated and decided as if in some way the vested
rights of privilege had a first mortgage on the
whole United States." But look at the way these
innovations are presented and I think the feeling
is unavoidable that the control of government is
emphasized as an end in itself. Now an observa-
tion of this kind is immediately open to dispute:
it is not a clear-cut distinction but a rather subtle
matter of stress — an impression rather than a
definite conviction.

Yet when you look at the career of Judge
Lindsey in Denver the impression is sharpened
by contrast. What gave his exposure of corrup-
tion a peculiar vitality was that it rested on a
very positive human ideal: the happiness of
children in a big city. Lindsey's attack on vice
and financial jobbery was perhaps the most con-
vincing piece of muckraking ever done in this

253



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

country for the very reason that It sprang from
a concern about real human beings Instead of ab-
stractions about democracy or righteousness.
From the point of view of the political hack,
Judge LIndsey made a most distressing use of
the red herring. He brought the happiness of
childhood Into political discussion, and this opened
up a new source of political power. By touching
something deeply Instinctive In millions of people.
Judge LIndsey animated dull proposals with hu-
man Interest. The pettifogging objections to
some social plan had very little chance of survival
owing to the dynamic power of the reformers.
It was an excellent example of the creative re-
sults that come from centering a political problem
on human nature.

If you move only from legality to legality, you
halt and hesitate, each step is a monstrous task.
If the reformer is a pure opportunist, and lays
out only "the next step," that step will be very
difficult. But If he aims at some real human end,
at the genuine concerns of men, women, and
children, If he can make the democracy see and
feel that end, the little mechanical devices of
suffrage and primaries and tariffs will be dealt
with as a craftsman deals with his tools. But to
say that we must make tools first, and then begin,

264



THE RED HERRING

is to Invert the process of life. Men did not
agree to refrain from travel until a railroad was
built. To make the manufacture of Instruments
an Ideal Is to lose much of their Ideal value. A
nation bent upon a policy of social Invention
would make Its tools an Incident. But just this
perception is lacking in many propagandists. That
is why their Issues are so sterile; that Is why the
absorption In "next steps" Is a diversion from
statesmanship.

The narrowness of American political issues is
a fixation upon Instruments. Tradition has cen-
tered upon the tariff, the trusts, the currency, and
electoral machinery as the Items of consideration.
It is the failure to go behind them — to see them
as the pale servants of a vivid social Ufe — that
keeps our politics in bondage to a few problems.
It is a common experience repeated In you and
me. Once our profession becomes all absorbing
it hardens into pedantry. "A human being," says
Wells, "who is a philosopher in the first place,
a teacher in the first place, or a statesman in the
first place Is thereby and inevitably, though he
bring God-like gifts to the pretense — a quack."

Reformers particularly resent the enlargement
of political issues. I have heard socialists de-
nounce other socialists for occupying themselves

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A PREFACE TO POLITICS

with the problems of sex. The claim was that
these questions should be put aside so as not to
disturb the immediate program. The socialists
knew from experience that sex views cut across
economic ones — that a new interest breaks up the
alignment. Woodrow Wilson expressed this same
fear in his views on the liquor question: after
declaring for local option he went on to say that
*'the questions involved are social and moral and
are not susceptible of being made part of a party
program. Whenever they have been made the
subject matter of party contests they have cut the
lines of party organization and party action
athwart, to the utter confusion of political action
in every other lield. ... I do not believe
party programs of the highest consequence to
the political life of the State and of the nation
ought to be thrust on one side and hopelessly
embarrassed for long periods together by making
a political issue of a great question which is es-
sentially non-political, non-partisan, moral and
social in its nature."

That statement was issued at the beginning
of a campaign in which Woodrow Wilson was
the nominee of a party that has always beea
closely associated with the liquor interests. The
bogey of the saloon had presented itself early:

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THE RED HERRING

It was very clear that an affirmative position by
the candidate was sure to alienate either the tem-
perance or the "liquor vote." No doubt a sense
of this dilemma is partly responsible for Wilson's
earnest plea that the question of liquor be left
out of the campaign. He saw the confusion and
embarrassment he speaks of as an immediate
danger. Like his views on immigration and
Chinese labor it was a red herring across his
path. It would, if brought into prominence, cut
the lines of party action athwart.

His theoretical grounds for ignoring the ques-
tion in politics are very interesting just because
they are vitalized by this practical difficulty which
he faced. Like all party men Woodrow Wilson
had thrust upon him here a danger that haunts
every political program. The more issues a party
meets the less votes it is likely to poll. And
for a very simple reason: you cannot keep the
citizenship of a nation like this bound in its
allegiance to two large parties unless you make
the grounds of allegiance very simple and very
obvious. If you are to hold five or six million
voters enlisted under one emblem the less specific
you are and the fewer issues you raise the more
probable it Is that you can stop this host from
quarreling within the ranks.

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A PREFACE TO POLITICS

No doubt this is a partial explanation of the
bareness of American politics. The two big
parties have had to preserve a superficial homo-
geneity; and a platitude is more potent than an
issue. The minor parties — Populist, Prohibition,
Independence League and Socialist — have shown
a much greater willingness to face new problems.
Their view of national policy has always been
more inclusive, perhaps for the very reason that
their membership is so much more exclusive. But
if anyone wishes a smashing illustration of this
paradox let him consider the rapid progress of
Roosevelt's philosophy in the very short time
between the Republican Convention in June to
the Progressive Convention in August, 19 12. As
soon as Roosevelt had thrown off the burden
of preserving a false harmony among irreconcila-
ble Republicans, he issued a platform full of
definiteness and square dealing with many issues.
He was talking to a minority party. But Roose-
velt's genius is not that of group leadership. He
longs for majorities. He set out to make the
campaign a battle between the Progressives and
the Democrats — the old discredited Republicans
fell back into a rather dead conservative minority.
No sooner did Roosevelt take the stump than
the paradox loomed up before him. His speeches

£58



THE RED HERRING

began to turn on platitudes — on the vague ideal-
ism and indisputable moralities of the Decalogue
and the Sermon on the Mount. The fearlessness
of the Chicago confession was melted down into
a featureless alloy.

The embarrassment from the liquor question
which Woodrow Wilson feared does not arise
because teetotaler and drunkard both become in-
toxicated when they discuss the saloon. It would
come just as much from a radical program of land
taxation, factory reform, or trust control. Let
anyone of these Issues be injected into his cam-
paign and the lines of party action would be cut
**athwart." For Woodrow Wilson was dealing
with the inevitable embarrassment of a party
system dependent on an Inexpressive homogeneity.
The grouping of the voters into two large herds
costs a large price: it means that Issues must be
so simplified and selected that the real demands
of the nation rise only now and then to the level
of political discussion. The more people a party
contains the less it expresses their needs.

Woodrow Wilson's diagnosis of the red herring
in politics is obviously correct. A new issue does
embarrass a wholesale organization of the voters.
His desire to avoid it in the midst of a campaign
is understandable. His urgent plea that the

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A PREFACE TO POLITICS

liquor question be kept a local issue may be wise.
But the general philosophy which says that the
party system should not be cut athwart is at least
open to serious dispute. Instead of an evil, it
looks to me like progress towards greater re-
sponsiveness of parties to popular need. It is
good to disturb alignments : to break up a super-
ficial unanimity. The masses of people held to-
gether under the name Democratic are bound in
an enervating communion. The real groups dare
not speak their convictions for fear the crust will
break. It is as if you had thrown a large sheet
over a mass of men and made them anonymous.

The man who raises new issues has always been
distasteful to politicians. He musses up what
had been so tidily arranged. I remember once
speaking to a local boss about woman suffrage.
His objections were very simple: ''We've got
the organization in fine shape now — we know,
where every voter in the district stands. But you
let all the women vote and we'll be confused as
the devil. It'll be an awful job keeping track
of them." He felt what many a manufacturer
feels when somebody has the impertinence to
invent a process which disturbs the routine of
business.

Hard as it is upon the immediate plans of the
260



THE RED HERRING

politician, it is a national blessing when the lines
of party action are cut athwart by new issues.
I recognize that the red herring is more often
frivolous and personal — a matter of misrepresen-
tation and spite — than an honest attempt to en-
large the scope of politics. However, a fine thing
must not be deplored because it is open to vicious
caricature. To the party worker the petty and
the honest issue are equally disturbing. The
break-up of the parties into expressive groups
would be a ventilation of our national life. No
use to cry peace when there is no peace. The
false bonds are best broken: with their collapse
would come a release of social energy into politi-
cal discussion. For every country is a mass of
minorities which should find a voice in public
affairs. Any device like proportional representa-
tion and preferential voting which facilitates the
political expression of group interests is worth
having. The objection that popular government
cannot be conducted without the two party system
is, I believe, refuted by the experience of Europe.
If I had to choose between a Congressional caucus
and a coalition ministry, I should not have to
hesitate very long. But no one need go abroad
for actual experience: in the United States Senate
during the Taft administration there were really

261



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

three parties — Republicans, Insurgents and Demo-
crats. Public business went ahead with at least
as much effectiveness as under the old Aldrich
ring.

There are deeper reasons for urging a break-
up of herd-politics. It Is not only desirable that
groups should be able to contribute to public
discussion: it is absolutely essential if the par-
liamentary method Is not to be superseded by
direct and violent action. The two party system
chokes off the cry of a minority — perhaps the
best way there Is of precipitating an explosion.
An Englishman once told me that the utter free-
dom of speech in Hyde Park was the best safe-
guard England had against the doctrines that
were propounded there. An anarchist who was
invited to address Congress would be a mild per-
son compared to the man forbidden to speak in
the streets of San Diego. For many a bomb has
exploded Into rhetoric.

The rigidity of the two-party system is, I be-
lieve, disastrous : It ignores issues without settling
them, dulls and wastes the energies of active
groups, and chokes off the protests which should
find a civilized expression In public life. A recog-
nition of what an incubus It Is should make us
hospitable to all those devices which aim at mak-

S62



THE RED HERRING

ing politics responsive by disturbing the align-
ments of habit. The initiative and referendum
will help : they are a method of voting on definite
issues Instead of electing an administration in
bulk. If cleverly handled these electoral devices
should act as a check on a wholesale attitude
toward politics. Men could agree on a candidate
and disagree on a measure. Another device is
the separation of municipal, state and national
elections: to hold them all at the same time is
an Inducement to prevent the voter from splitting
his allegiance. Proportional representation and
preferential voting I have mentioned. The short
ballot is a psychological principle which must be
taken into account wherever there is voting: it
will help the differentiation of political groups
by concentrating the attention on essential choices.
The recall of public officials Is in part a police-
man's club, in part a clumsy way of getting around
the American prejudice for a fixed term of office.
That rigidity which by the mere movement of the
calendar throws an official out of office in the
midst of his work or compels him to go cam-
paigning is merely the crude method of a
democracy without confidence in itself. The re-
call Is a half-hearted and negative way of dealing
with this difficulty. It does enable us to rid our-

263



A PREFACE TO POLITICS

selves of an officer we don't like instead of hav-
ing to wait until the earth has revolved to a
certain place about the sun. But we still have
to vote on a fixed date whether we have anything
to vote upon or not. If a recall election is held
when the people petition for it, why not all elec-
tions?

In ways like these we shall go on inventing
methods by which the fictitious party alignments
can be dissolved. There is one device suggested
now and then, tried, I believe, in a few places,
and vaguely championed by some sociahsts. It
is called in German an "Interessenvertrag" — a
political representation by trade interests as well
as by geographical districts. Perhaps this is the
direction towards which the bi-cameral legislature