A Preface to Politics | Page 8

about it is that we do not see it, cannot use it, and
are compelled to submit to it. The nature of political power we shall not
change. If that is the way human societies organize sovereignty, the
sooner we face that fact the better. For the object of democracy is not to
imitate the rhythm of the stars but to harness political power to the
nation's need. If corporations and governments have indeed gone on a
joy ride the business of reform is not to set up fences, Sherman Acts
and injunctions into which they can bump, but to take the wheel and to
steer.
The corruption of which we hear so much is certainly not accounted for
when you have called it dishonesty. It is too widespread for any such
glib explanation. When you see how business controls politics, it
certainly is not very illuminating to call the successful business men of
a nation criminals. Yet I suppose that all of them violate the law. May
not this constant dodging or hurdling of statutes be a sign that there is
something the matter with the statutes? Is it not possible that graft is the
cracking and bursting of the receptacles in which we have tried to
constrain the business of this country? It seems possible that business
has had to control politics because its laws were so stupidly obstructive.
In the trust agitation this is especially plausible. For there is every
reason to believe that concentration is a world-wide tendency, made
possible at first by mechanical inventions, fostered by the disastrous
experiences of competition, and accepted by business men through
contagion and imitation. Certainly the trusts increase. Wherever politics
is rigid and hostile to that tendency, there is irritation and struggle, but
the agglomeration goes on. Hindered by political conditions, the
process becomes secretive and morbid. The trust is not checked, but it
is perverted. In 1910 the "American Banker" estimated that there were
1,198 corporations with 8,110 subsidiaries liable to all the penalties of
the Sherman Act. Now this concentration must represent a profound
impetus in the business world--an impetus which certainly cannot be
obliterated, even if anyone were foolish enough to wish it. I venture to
suggest that much of what is called "corruption" is the odor of a
decaying political system done to death by an economic growth.

It is our desperate adherence to an old method that has produced the
confusion of political life. Because we have insisted upon looking at
government as a frame and governing as a routine, because in short we
have been static in our theories, politics has such an unreal relation to
actual conditions. Feckless--that is what our politics is. It is literally
eccentric: it has been centered mechanically instead of vitally. We have,
it seems, been seduced by a fictitious analogy: we have hoped for
machine regularity when we needed human initiative and leadership,
when life was crying that its inventive abilities should be freed.
Roosevelt in his term did much to center government truly. For a time
natural leadership and nominal position coincided, and the
administration became in a measure a real sovereignty. The routine
conception dwindled, and the Roosevelt appointees went at issues as
problems to be solved. They may have been mistaken: Roosevelt may
be uncritical in his judgments. But the fact remains that the Roosevelt
régime gave a new prestige to the Presidency by effecting through it the
greatest release of political invention in a generation. Contrast it with
the Taft administration, and the quality is set in relief. Taft was the
perfect routineer trying to run government as automatically as possible.
His sincerity consisted in utter respect for form: he denied himself
whatever leadership he was capable of, and outwardly at least he tried
to "balance" the government. His greatest passions seem to be purely
administrative and legal. The people did not like it. They said it was
dead. They were right. They had grown accustomed to a humanly
liberating atmosphere in which formality was an instrument instead of
an idol. They had seen the Roosevelt influence adding to the resources
of life--irrigation, and waterways, conservation, the Panama Canal, the
"country life" movement. They knew these things were achieved
through initiative that burst through formal restrictions, and they
applauded wildly. It was only a taste, but it was a taste, a taste of what
government might be like.
The opposition was instructive. Apart from those who feared Roosevelt
for selfish reasons, his enemies were men who loved an orderly
adherence to traditional methods. They shivered in the emotional gale;
they obstructed and the gale became destructive. They felt that, along

with obviously good things, this sudden national fertility might breed a
monster--that a leadership like Roosevelt's might indeed prove
dangerous, as giving birth may lead