Assassination and the Spoils System [pp. 145-170]

7THE PLAINCE T0N RE VIEW.
with revenue collections in other countries at that time, they
cost in the United States three times as much as in France, four
times as much as in Germany, and five times as much as in
Great Britain.
In the State and city government of New York the same
system prevailed. There was partisan proscription of subordi nates from those of the judge and school-trustee to the floor washer, the office-boy, and the scavenger. The city paid many
times the value of its public buildings. Its treasury was pillaged.
Crime and violence alarmingly increased. Judicial decisions
were sold. Enormous fabrications of naturalization-papers were
committed. Election frauds were unexampled. Ignorant, im moral partisans rose rapidly in politics, while worthy citizens
neglected them in despair. Barnard, Tweed, and Kelly, as well
as Conkling and Platt, speak for the spoils system. Everybody
knows the humiliating story. The contemporary abuses at
Washington are well remembered-the whiskey frauds, the credit
inobilier scandals, the infamous Sanborn contracts, the Belknap
transactions, the gross corruption in the District of Columbia
among them.
We get a one-sided view of the spoils system if we do not
look at its side toward the elections and the public. The
methods and discipline of the spoils system were carried back to
the primary meetings of the people. The civil officials were the
spoils-system generals, colonels, and captains. The obedient
partisan workers were the soldiers. The two classes together
held the gates of all the.primary meetings for political purposes.
These two classes were held to constitute the party. No one outside of the political folds they guarded were allowed to come in,
except on servile conditions inconsistent with true manhood in
politics. No outsider had any rights or hearing in the party.
The Republicans inherited this "primary system," of which
Tammany Hall is still the powerful leader on the Democratic
side. Nothing is more remarkable or more degrading in American politics than these New York spoils-system "primaries."
Neither the resignation of the New York Senators, their confidence of a re-election, nor the strength of the reaction that defeated them can be comprehended without understanding these
primaries.
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