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THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN
To give them their fair share of power, no more and no less, is the aim of effective voting.
The old parties of Republicans and Democrats have each a noble record and some grand traditions; but in this breathing, suffering world, we can not live on a record or grow by mere tradition. Why shall the large, earnest minority of the Prohibitionists not have real representation? and if the Populists have a sixth part of the votes in a six-member district, or an eighth part in an eight-member electorate, why should they not carry in their preferred disciple as an apostle into the representative body? It is the same with the Socialists and with the Single Taxers. So long as all these are struggling for platform and their platform alone, the ticket is prepared by the caucus leaders, and the red-eyed corporations smile; but if all of these combined to demand equitable representation for all—including the Republican and the Democratic parties themselves—their strength would be irresistible, because the honest and conscientious Republican and Democrat, who submit to machine politics as a necessity, would be glad of a method which assures to the real majority a real ascendency, and to all minorities equitable representation.
Everywhere since I came to Chicago I have met with earnest reformers who desire to improve existing administrations of public matters, especially along the lines of poor laws and child saving. I find, that in Australia we have secured benefits which are not now in America. This is not because the Australians are more wise and more just than the Americans, but because you are thwarted and hampered by what you call “ politics,” which in that sense does not exist in Australia at all.
The taking of “ the children of the state,” as we call them, the dependent and destitute children, out of institutions, and placing them in foster homes to lead a natural life, both for the advantage of the child and the saving of public money, is opposed here by the politicians who want the patronage of institutions and who would turn out a good administrator, like the superintendent of your great Illinois Deaf and Dumb School, who really founded the institution, to put a Democrat in his place. In our changes of ministry, the only people who go out and who come in are the six responsible cabinet ministers themselves. The civil service has such security that even occasional vacancies must be filled up according to regulation, and the “outs” can not promise places to their adherents if they get in, nor are the present office-holders tempted to become active electioneering agents in order to retain the ministry, which alone can keep them in their places/
As for our municipal elections we only vote for mayor, councilors and auditors, and the political question does not interfere with these. It is character and business ability that are needed. Now, by your ward politics, by which the intelligent minorities are prevented from combining, your great cities are taxed heavily for work badly done or not done at all. Last week, within a stone’s throw of the Windsor Park Railway Station, surrounded by great hotels having thousands of inmates, a dead horse lay for six days under an August sun, seen and smelled by every one Vain were repeated remonstrances to the police; and I was told that the most effective means in England and in Australia, writing to the newspapers, would be useless here.
Verily, you Americans are the most much-enduring people in the world. Professor Bryce says the difficulty of getting enfranchised from “machine politics” is caused by the essential conservatism of the American people. Social freedom you have, and the whole atmosphere is sweet with it; but this seems to blind you to the slavery of the party machine in politics, and to the neglect of your city governments to do the work you are heavily taxed for. No city in Europe or in Australia would endure what citizens in Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia submit to with nothing but private and ineffectual grumbling And let no one say that it is on account of the foreign element in these great cities that municipal administration is so corrupt. Who uses this foreign element? Who pays the money and who profits by the bargain? Who is eager to put the ignorant alien on the roll? Americans, to be sure. Americans who prefer the triumph of party to the good of state. Who employ these