Rev. Dr. Patton On Political Duties

REV. DR. PATTON ON POLITICAL DUTIES NO SOCIAL PROBLEM WHERE EVERY MAN DOES BEST. To Be Successful Politics Must Be Made a Business - Minority Should Be Represented.

The Reverend Carl S. Patton held the attention of his audience last Sunday evening in a masterly discourse on the political duty of the Christian man. His purpose was to explain and enlarge on the contents of a volume written by Prof. John R. Commons entitled "The Church and Social Reform." Dr. Patton said:

Prof. Commons begins with the query, is there a social question? That is to say, is there anything wrong about the relation of one part of society to another which will not be set right by the simple method of each man tending more strictly to his own business? Is there anything that ought to be a burden upon the conscience of men at large, and especially of Christian men, until it is set right?

Many intelligent and well-to-do persons would answer this question in the negative. Individual rich men, they would say, may be inconsiderate and greedy. Individual working-men may be poor, but that is because they are shiftless or incompetent. Every man has a fair chance. Every man has as good an opportunity as every other, and the lot of the average man is becoming continually and rapidly better. If any man fails to prosper it is his own fault. Let every man do his individual best and, there will be no social problem.

To this it must be replied, that a certain portion of the world of working- people (meaning by that ambiguous phrase the people who work with their hands) is better off than it was thirty years ago, but another portion of it is apparently not so well off. Skilled workmen get better wages and steadier work now than they did thirty years ago. Unskilled workmen, apparently, get neither so good wages nor so steady work. There is reason to suppose that the average man who works with his hands, does not get, today, so large a share of the wealth which he helps to create, as he did thirty or forty years ago. Besides, if he did, that is not the while question, nor indeed the real question. The real question is, does he get his proper share? Does he get as much as he ought to, compared with what someone else gets? It is the growing conviction of economic students that he does not. If this is the case, this in itself is enough to constitute a ocial question.

But this is not all. It is also true, that for the last thirty years crime is and has been increasing at an unaccustomed rate. Ex. - No means of verifying; different interpretations. There are more people than ever before who follow the rule of total abstinence, and yet there is more intemperance than there was a generation ago. Pauperism has assumed a place which it never held in human history before. Among large portions of the American population anything that can properly be dignified by the name of home-life has become practically impossible. It is not true, apparently, as Mr. George used to contend, that the poor are growing poorer while the rich are growing richer; but it is true that while the facilities by which rich people grow richer are every day multiplying, the facilities by which poor people grow less poor are not so good as they have at other times been; the poor do not grow richer in any such ratio as the rich do; and therefore the gap between these two extremes of society is every day growing wider. At the same time it is upon the poor that taxation falls most heavily. Certain abuses which ought long ago to have become impossible, and which fall upon the poor, are apparently upon the increase - such as child labor in the South, and even in great cities of the North, like Chicago. It is the poor who have no voice in politics, and no influence in legislation.

These evils, be it observed, do not tend to correct themselves. On the contrary, the same causes which have brought them about, tend to increase and perpetuate them.

These facts, then, and others that are like them and go necessarily with them, constitute our social problem. That problem may be stated in different ways. You may say it is the problem of the distribution of wealth; or you may say it is the problem of the equalization of opportunity; how may very man have a fair chance, not a chance exactly like that of every other man, but such a chance as he needs and can use - a chance to be the best man and live the best life, that he can? But however you state it, it is the same problem: at bottom, it is merely the question, how shall the privileges which have been and still are the monopoly of the few, be given to the many - and the people some to their due in heritance? in the earth This is the social question; and it is the only really great question that rises upon our horizon today- the question of which all others are but parts or phases; the question that must find an answer.

What is responsible for the existence of this social question? In large measure, answers Professor Commons, the Christian religion is responsible for it. That is to say, it is our Christian ideals, that have made us abhor injustice and inequality; without these ideals the same conditions might exist as now, but they would not constitute a social question. Equality of opportunity, free scope for development and exercise of such gifts as we have, are the logical conclusions of Christianity." It is because we have grown accustomed to these Christian ideals that we have a social question.

Professor Commons then lays down the proposition: "It is the failures of Christians." To this we might be disposed to demur; but what he means by it appears to be true; "that perpetuate and intensify social problems." "Both sides," he goes on to say, "are to blame. Wage-workers misunderstand the rich, and hate them. The well-to-do misunderstand the workmen and fail to give them sympathy. The fault of this exil condition is in the Christian church. Christians have the wealth and intelligence of the country. It is their duty to make the first advances." Christianity is the great mediating power. To make men understand each other who now misunderstand each other, to temper the asperity of noe section of mankind for another, to introduce mutual concession and good will in the place of hatred and strife, is the work of the Christian church. It is the work which the Christian church can do better than any and all other agencies, and if it is not done, the Christian church is responsible.

How shall the Christian church, or the Christian people, do this work?

This is the crucial question. Hundreds of writers and speakers on social matters are all right until they come to this point. Almost anyone can sail along to here. But this is, after all, the only point. What shall we, any of us and all of us, do?

It does not seem to me that Prof. Commons' answer to this question is a sufficient one; but it does seem to me that it is good as far as it goes.

He begins by saying that the Christian church must make the cause social betterment its now, and that every church should be, in part, a school of Christian sociology. This of course is true, but there is nothing distinctive about it: This is just what everybody says.

But now we come to the specific remedy which Mr. Commons prescribes. That remedy is simply this: that every Christian man should go into politics. But why into politics? Because whenever you attempt any social reform, you find the path to it blocked by some legal situation; or else the road to it lies by way of some legal reform. "Run over in your mind any of the reforms most earnestly agitated in these days, and you will find that every one of them requires legislation. The administration of prisons, the protection of children, the care of the poor and the incapacitated, the character of public education; monopolies, trusts, money, cooperation, arbitration, all turn upon the formation and administration of laws." Law sets the economic standard; determines custom; defines privilege; allows or prevents abuses. There is a great deal that law can not do, but you can scarcely do anything without the right kind of laws.

What kind of men do we send to our legislative bodies, to make the laws which shall govern society? Aside entirely from the question of incompetence and ignorance the striking fact is that from one-third to one-half of them are always new men. That is to say, every here in this country our laws are always being made by men who have never tried their hands at law-making before. Many of them also, as is no secret, are in politics for the good of nobody but themselves. A new force must be introduced into politics before much can be done for society; and this must be the force of intelligent, disinterested Christian man. Every Christian should go into politics.

Nor primarily, however, says Prof. Commons, into national politics. National questions are not usually the ones upon which progress of the people really depends. "Protection and free-trade, silver and foreign affairs, are of comparatively little consequence." The vital political questions belong to the city or village. Here is where corporations are created, and their rights and duties defined. It is here that questions of prison and contract labor, of local taxation, schools, child labor, public ownership of public utilities, are settled.

Every Christian man, then, is to go into politics, and especially into local politics. What for? To this question the answer of Prof. Commons is explicit. He should go into politics, to study the needs and promote the interests of the working people. The wealthy and the educated do not need help. They can hire the best talent, and all they need of it. They have never yet lacked for representation or influence in any of our legislative bodies. Most of the laws we now have have been inspired from their point of view, and enacted with the purpose of promoting their interests. The people at large, on the other hand, do need guidance. They need leadership, and the honest political services of intelligent and disinterested men. It is in their interests, now, that laws should be passed. and courts administered. The Christian man is the man to see that this is done. Not that he is to pose as the leader of the people, nor imagine himself the apostle of a movement, nor make an unnecessary martyr or nuisance of himself; but that quietly and without ostentation or advertisement, but with a clear understanding of what is best for the people, he should vote and labor for that thing.

But as matter of fact we find that most Christian men who go into politics with such high ideas as these, soon get out again. If they get into office it is apparently by mistake, and as soon as the mistake is discovered it is rectified. If they attempt to influence political action in a less direct and obstrusive manned, such as by going the caucuses, a few expert politicians turn them down without the slightest difficulty as soon as they discover what they are about. Everyone has now for some time been talking about the political duties of the educated and the Christian man, but the educated and Christian man makes no headway in politics.

All this Prof. Commons acknowledges. But he does more than this; he points out the reason for it. Politics is, he says, and as everybody knows, a business; and no man can succeed in it who does not make it a business. No man can give himself to political life and at the same time devote himself to anything else. It is not to be expected that the good people who are not politicians, but who have spasmodic intentions of helping along, can stand for a moment before the men who make politics their business.

Such being the case, what is to be done? Simply this: Politics being a business, we must give up the attempt to get good men to play at it, and must make it possible for good men to go into it as a business.

The way toward this Prof. Commons considers a very simple one. Our present political machinery elects a man to an office by a bare majority. When the man is elected he is the representative of all the people who voted, whether they voted for him or against him. He is the representative of those who despise him and hate his methods, and who perhaps despise the work, and with reason, after election more than before, as well as of those who believe in him and admire his policy. In other words, for this is what it amount to, a little less than half the people are never represented at all. Now reforms always start in a minority. A few people see some improvement which should be introduced in the schools, some better methods of the care of criminals of insane persons, some improvements in factory laws, of the regulation of public monopolies, but what can these few do? Nothing, until they get to be a majority. They may vote and vote and vote, but every vote they cast, up to the time when they can cast more than those who are voting against them, is a vote which absolutely does not count. Natural as this may seem to our democratic notions, this is precisely why good men can not be elected to office, and why better methods cannot be made to take the place of worse.

In such a state of affairs, what ought to be done? Why, that is as plain as the situation itself. What ought to be done is to give the minority a representation. Out of a thousand voters in a city there are four hundred and fifty who want some civic improvement - better laws, cleaner streets, more liberal and at the same time more economical administration. What can these 450 do against the 550 that vote against them? Nothing. There are ten men in the city government in this city. Each man is elected from his own ward, by an average majority of ten votes. When ten men are elected they all represent no-improvement forces. There have been 45 votes in each ward, or 450 in the whole city, cast for political improvement; but the city government is precisely what it would have been if these 450 votes had not been cast at all. Suppose now that instead of this arrangement the 550 who vote for political and social improvement should be represented in the city government by six men - that is their proportion; let the 450 be represented by four men - that is their proportion. The four men will still be out-voted, to be sure, in the city government, by the six. But an immense gain will have been made. The city government will have four good men in it instead of ten bad ones. Reform will have got its voice. It will have been organized, and started upon a career. Four men out of ten, cannot indeed get what the other six are intent upon their not having; but they can show the people the situation as it is; they can make a stand; they can uncover abuses; they can plead their case; they are in a position from which they can make an appeal to the people. Under such a system as this, in the worst city on the globe, a fair proportion of the men in office would always be of the best sort. Once give the forces that believe in improvement this nucleus of good men in office around which to grow; once give Christian man the assurance which he would have, that, be the ignorant and immoral vote as large as it may, his position is guaranteed to him by the votes of the minority who do believe in him and in his plans for social betterment, and good men will be in politics as a business - to stay there as long as they were useful and honest - and moral ideas will have a decent chance in politics not merely once in a while, but all the time. Under our present political methods the election is never an index of the wish of the people as a whole; it is not even an index of the will of the majority; it is merely an indication of the will of that little surplus which divides the minority from the majority. Thus we get our balance of power in politics; and this balance is always a thing that can be bought by the candidate and delivered by the boss. This is the real power in all our politics given into the hands of a few unscrupulous men who follow it as a profession, who are both ignorant and indifferent to the needs of the people. Thus it happens that while we always have a deluge of legislation the things which would really put the people ahead are for the most part never touched. And so simple a thing would remedy all this.

But how to get this simple change in our politican methods? There you come back to the proposition of Prof. Commons, that every Christian man should be a politician.

Whether all this, or a large part of it, seems to you like idle talk, I do not know. To me it certainly does not. I am not sure, as I intimated before, that this course will settle all social difficulties. I am sure that as Prof. Commons maintains, the right sort of politics is the key to the undoing of a vast amount of wrong; and that no better sort of politics can be expected until Christian men have an influence in it proportionate to their numbers.

A few years ago there was passed in this state a law allowing judges to impose indeterminate sentence. This indeterminate sentence is the back-bone of the scientific and Christian treatment of crime. But this law was declared unconstitutional. I am told now that at the November election, this law is to come before the people, in the form of a constitutional amendment. I venture the assertion that the passage of such an amendment is more important for the Christianization of this state than the establishment of a dozen or even a score of new churches. Will Christian people take as much interest in it?

When Christian people realize that that tool which is now being used too often for the demoralization of society, may in the right hands be used for its Christianization; when politics, now a synonym for corruption and jobbery and injustice, becomes a synonym for honor and fairness ad the public good, we shall have taken a long step toward the kingdom Heaven. Anything less than an earnest and persistent attempt to bring this about comes short of our Christian duty.