think favorably of it, and even the good offices of Claude G. Bowers, the party's historian, did not induce them to accede to it.

Old parties adopt new ideas but slowly, no matter who may be their proponents.

Ο

NLY Governor Smith was mentioned as a possible recipient of the nomination for the Presidency, and he only by Governor Ritchie. Yet there were, even at the speakers' table, many who have been looked at with appraising eyes. Governor Ritchie himself; Senator Reed, who, like Ritchie, has been regarded as of the "liberal" or wet wing, but who, unlike Ritchie, declared that prohibition must not be made an issue in the forthcoming campaign; Evans Woollen, lawyer and financier, essentially a scholar of reclusive tastes, advocate of scientific tariff reform; John W. Davis certainly he never made a more favorable impression upon his fellowDemocrats than he made that night.

The Democratic Party is not, whatever may have been said to the contrary, short on timber for the making of a candidate. And practically every speaker declared that it is not short on issues, though nobody in plain words named one except Ritchie, and his was rejected.

In the Recording Angel's
Office

(Continued from page 145)

body. Suppose you were in a place where you were simply mean, without anything to be mean with; where the souls about you could see, without any possibility of your hiding it behind spectacular philanthropies or any kind of excuses, just how mean you were.

"Suppose your soul floating in such a medium that your spiritual specific gravity automatically located the level at which you would float. Naturally, the mean soul would find his level among the mean; the generous, among the generous. I judge that is what the writer of the Apocalypse had in mind when he wrote, 'He that is filthy, let him be filthy still.'"

All this made me pretty uncomfortable; but the odd fact is that as this feeling increased I imagined that the hand on my dial seemed to edge up a couple of millionths. And the young man's smile seemed somehow less irritating.

"Here's something else," he said. He led me to another dial, which I had not noticed before. A large dial labeled, COSMOS TOTAL

As I looked at it I sensed the fact that every quiver of the hands on the small dials was reflected in the fluttering of the hand on the large dial. Even the couple of millionths registered on mine had lifted the big one an infinitesimal fraction of a hair's-breadth!

"If you knew how the faintest little flicker of a lift in yours gives a boost, not only to this big one, but to all the others to little things, souls and lives everywhere. If you knew it, with the certainty with which you know that fire burns, wouldn't it make a difference in the way you'd look after your own specific gravity?"

DID not answer. In fact, the whole scene was fading like a dream. The last thing I saw was the face of the young man, who looked like myself, smiling at me; then his face became the face of the dial with my own name over it, and it seemed to me that the needle on it was lifting possibly a billionth.

The Street of Finance

(Continued from page 148) the System to deprive the speculators of the material for their operations. Quite possibly, money might flow away from the stock market through both channels.

With the supply of funds materially reduced, could the general level of prices be maintained? Even conditional stock market predictions are precarious, but most bankers and other financial authorities are inclined to answer no. It might seem strange to see the stock market declining, merely because money was scarce, when industry was regaining its stride, but it would be no stranger than the spectacle of the last eight or nine months, when the market has maintained a fairly consistent upward trend, merely because money was plentiful, while the trend of industrial activity was downward.

Theoretically, toppling prices are dangerous only to speculators and, in a lesser degree, to security holders, but there is always the possibility that business men will interpret a market decline as a warning signal and adopt an excessively conservative attitude. The very nature of the stock market, though, necessitates a rigorous shake-out every so often, and both the security markets and the business and industrial community should be benefited if some of the poisons always accumulated during a long rise were eliminated. No real damage was done by the break in March, 1926. The Stock Exchange list needs an occasional cathartic.

THE OUTLOOK, February 1, 1928. Volume 148, Number 5. Published weekly by The Outlook Company at 120 East 16th Street, New York, N. Y. Subscription price $5.00 a year. Single copies 15 cents each. Foreign subscription to countries in the postal Union, $6.56. Entered as second-class matter, July 21, 1893, at the Post Office at New York, N. Y., and December 1, 1926, at the Post Office at Dunellen, N. J., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Copyright, 1928, by The Outlook Company.

TH

HE statement is rather dismaying. Obviously, The Outlook does not view ideas or people or events in the black and whites, let us say, of Mr. Mencken and his followers. Neither is it a defender of Babbitry like Dr. John Roach Straton. In fact, being an authority to or on other people-from either side of the fence-isn't conducive, in our view, to getting what we are after. It is true that the antics of both sides afford us considerable amusement. Piethrowing is always fun-even if the piethrowers themselves get to be authorities merely on throwing pies-and nothing else. But the limited sort of fame which they receive in exchange for an open mind does not attract us. And their philosophy, if any one takes it seriously, results only in again setting up some one else's authority as our guide through life. And this isn't to our taste.

S°

O what is a "true perspective"? Well, certainly every intelligent man realizes that he doesn't know very much about most things. So that he wants the facts set before him by people of his own kind—people on whose honesty and judgment he can rely. You may remember that "The Education of Henry Adams" meant the life of Henry Adams. And that his "education" lasted until the day of his death. And that the more he knew, the less sure he was of all so-called "authorities”—and the more amazed he was at the variety of man and the complexity of the universe.

OME such thing, we think, is the experience of most wise men in life. By and large, the man who has set ideas which he thinks other people than himself should also accept has closed his mind-whether he be a Mr. Mencken or a pope. His mind is no longer amazed at anything, and he has no perspective on life's affairs at all. He has become an "authority."

HIS is the opposite gate from the

THIS

one through which we hope to depart this life. The Outlook does not wish loudly to pronounce. It wishes to select and present, to understand and interpret-in a word, to pursue the fascinating path of a "liberal education." If this is a "true perspective" on life's affairs, we will let it go at that.

Francis Profers Bellamy

Volume 148

February 1, 1928

Number 5

S

INCE it is not impossible that the Democrats will nominate a Tammany man for President of the United States, we shall hear much in the next few months about Tammany Hall. For the name of Tammany is firmly established in people's minds as the symbol of corrupt government, and any one who has to face the voters outside of New York with a Tammany label attached to him has a heavy prejudice to overcome. Of anything connected with Tammany most Americans are inclined to believe the worst. They greet the claim that there is a new Tammany with cynical suspicion.

It may be useful to inquire why this prejudice has become so firmly established. Offhand, it would be said, I suppose, that from the days of William Marcy Tweed to the days of Richard Croker the Tammany organization practiced all the political vices-the defilement of elections, the seduction of ignorant voters, the prostitution of justice; that it grew rich, fat, and defiant upon commercialized vice, the sale of public offices, the plunder of the treasury, the blackmailing of business, and the betrayal of the taxpayer. Tammany, it would be argued, has such a bad name because it has such a bad record. And yet I do not believe that this explanation really accounts for the feeling which is aroused by the word Tammany. New York City has been corruptly governed under Tammany. But its corruption is not unique. Scandal for scandal, the evil record of Tammany can be matched in the history of many, if not most, other American cities. The story of the Philadelphia Gas Ring is in every aspect as disgraceful as Tammany's. Cities like Chicago, San Francisco, Cincinnati, have experienced fully as bad government as ever came out of Tammany Hall. I

By WALTER LIPPMANN

think one can go further and assert that the corruption which has made Tammany notorious, far from being unique, was really typical of American local government in the period between the close of the war between the States and the beginning of the twentieth century. Tammany at its worst was never a solitary flower of evil growing in a garden of lilies.

The whole age in which Tammany disgraced itself was an age of extraordinarily low public morality. With the exception of the few years after the European War in which the Ohio gang was operating in Washington, there has been no time in the history of the Republic when honest men were so timid and dishonest men were so bold. But of the foul traditions of that age Tammany has managed somehow to assimilate to itself the whole odium. In point of fact, it was one corrupt political ring among many. But in the minds of most Americans it is the symbol of all corruption.

THIS is due, I feel morally certain, to

three main causes: The Tammany machine operated in New York City, and so it was very conspicuous. It had a picturesque name. Its operations have been exposed repeatedly and effectively, and have therefore lent themselves to discussion by students of government and writers of text-books. Obliterate the word Tammany, transfer the practices of the organization to a town less in the spotlight of the world's opinion, and cancel out the exceptionally rigorous exposures to which New Yorkers have subjected Tammany, and it would hardly be believed that the corruption practiced by Tammany differed much from that of dozens of other political machines of its time.

What was unique was not its crookedness but its prominence. "I begin with New York," wrote Bryce in 1894, when he was discussing the perversions and corruption of democratic government, "because she displays on the grandest scale phenomena common to American cities, and because the plunder and misgovernment from which she has suffered have become specially notorious over the world."

I do not think I exaggerate the consequences of the fact that Tammany's corruption took place in New York City. The concerns of New York City are advertised beyond those of any other locality in the United States. New York is the financial capital of the country. It cannot, therefore, long be out of the country's mind. New York is the publishing center of the United States. Its local press is read by editors and leaders of opinion throughout the Nation. In New York there are published, and in considerable measure written, a very large part of the periodicals read by Americans. New York is the port of entry for almost all Europeans. It is the first thing in America they see, and, unfortunately, often the only thing they

see.

Whatever happens in New York achieves a degree of publicity that is unique. New York murders, New York divorces, New York political scandals, receive public attention altogether out of proportion to their intrinsic interest or importance. They are exceptional news because they take place in New York. I do not say this is good. But it is a fact. Tammany's wickedness, like Lindbergh's pajamas and President Coolidge's griddle cakes, is known throughout the world because New York is known throughout the world.

But even then the wickedness of Tammany would not have been so well

lodged in the public mind if the organization were known simply for what it is, as the Democratic political machine in the borough of Manhattan. Its outlandish name has enabled people to personify it as something very distinct and strange. We have, for example, a local Republican machine in New York which has surely been as corrupt in its intentions, though it has had smaller opportunities, than Tammany. But nobody apparently outside of New York City has ever heard of this local Republican machine. It is just another Republican machine, whereas the Democratic machine is notorious as Tammany Hall.

T

HIS name goes back to 1805, when a patriotic order called the Columbian Society decided to indulge itself in a characteristic bit of American monkeyshines. Just as we have societies which like to play at being sultans and pashas, and others which like to play at being knights and wizards and dragons, so this Columbian Society decided to play at being red Indians. It adopted as a mock patron saint the name of an Indian chieftain called Tamanend or Tammany. It organized itself into twelve "tribes" each with a "sachem," and put a "grand sachem" over them all. It appointed a master of ceremonies called a "sagamore," and the doorkeeper took upon himself the tremendous title of "wiskinski." In 1817 it showed its sturdy moral qualities by issuing an address to the city of New York denouncing the spread of the foreign game of billiards among young men of the upper classes. And once, it is said, the society owned a natural history museum, which it sold to P. T. Barnum.

This age of innocence lasted, roughly, until about 1850, although Tammany was from the beginning a force in the affairs of New York. In 1834 the Mayoralty became directly elective. In 1842 full manhood suffrage was established. After 1846 the great period of Irish and German immigration began. The Tammany which the world knows grew up in the twenty years which followed-the period, let us recall, of the war and of the Western expansion and of the absorption of the older American leaders in great National affairs. As early as 1850 the Common Council of New York City was already known as the Forty Thieves. In 1863 William Marcy Tweed became the Boss of Tammany Hall. By 1871 Tweed had looted the treasury to a tune which raised the bonded debt of the

city nearly 300 per cent in less than three years. By July of 1871 the New York "Times" had exposed the Tweed Ring, and Tammany's name was indelibly branded throughout the world. By November, 1873, Tweed was in jail, and in 1876 he was dead.

The American tradition about Tammany was created at that time. It was created by the New Yorkers who fought it, by the brilliant and courageous journalism of the New York "Times," by Nast's cartoons in "Harper's Weekly," by the thunder of Samuel J. Tilden. The tradition has been kept alive by New Yorkers. For, although Tweed was dead, his political heirs carried on for

contracts, for real estate speculation, for law practice based on political pull. In the lower strata of the organization there is no doubt considerable petty profiteering on those who wish to have our multitudinous laws generously nonenforced. But along with this there are in Tammany Hall men of high personal integrity who are really interested in the art of government, liberal in their sympathies, and extraordinarily deft in their understanding of human nature. The organization, in brief, is not wholly predatory nor wholly philanthropic. It is simply an American political machine in a big city.

righteousness in New York has almost been synonymous with a crusade against Tammany. I was brought up in this anti-Tammany tradition, and I remember well how uncomfortable I felt when in voting for Al Smith in 1920 I cast my first vote for a Tammany man. Since then I have learned to vote enthusiastically for Smith, but I confess that I still wince when it comes to supporting a Tammany ticket on which his name does not appear. For, although I know that the present Tammany is above the average in political machines, and in all respects more competent than the local Republican machine, I have never been able to conquer altogether the prejudice which the name Tammany

arouses.

No political organization ever had a worse reputation to live down than Tammany. Yet it is the simple truth to say that in the last ten years or so New Yorkers who are well informed have gradually had their anti-Tammany complex dissolved. Today in New York a Republican politician who raises an outcry about Tammany is looked upon about as the country looks upon a Republican who tries to cadge votes by waving the bloody shirt. I do not mean to say that the Tammany of this generation is composed of disinterested lovers of mankind who have renounced worldly ambition and material desires to serve the state. I do mean to say that the new Tammany will bear comparison as to its honesty, its public spirit, and its efficiency with any other political organization which operates successfully anywhere in the country. It is a governing machine which controls its following by the usual mixture of buncombe and idealism, personal favors and special influence. Its members have a good, normal, healthy appetite for jobs, for

to New Yorkers. What interests the country about it is its relation to Al Smith. To understand that relationship properly it is necessary to realize and to keep clearly in mind that Tammany is a local political machine, and that its main concern is with the city of New York. In so far as Tammany is still predatory, it has far richer opportunities in the city than it has anywhere else outside the city.

In backing Al Smith for Governor and for President Tammany is not reaching out for plunder. The four administrations of Al Smith have proved that beyond all possibility of argument. Those administrations have given the State of New York the most enlightened government it has known in this generation. No breath of scandal has ever touched Governor Smith. His tenure at Albany has been criticised on this point or that. But no serious person has ever questioned its integrity or its public spirit. Now Governor Smith in all this time has had the fervent support of Tammany Hall. If Tammany is purely predatory, how is that to be explained? The answer is that the career of Governor Smith means to Tammany not plunder but prestige, not an opportunity for corruption but a chance to save its political soul, not petty politics but large politics. In Smith, for the first time in its history, Tammany has experienced the pleasure of a good name. The new generation of Tammany men, although they are interested in taking care of themselves, have learned what many big business men have learned, that the rewards of good government may be more satisfactory and enduring than the profits of bad government. I put the matter on no higher ground than that because if I went on to say, what I personally believe to be the fact, that there is a gen