Section 5

The Power of Government Passes into the Hands of Those Who Are Able to Direct the Majority of the Politically Ignorant How to Vote. They Constitute an Extra-legal but None the Less Real Government

The professional adviser and director to the politically ignorant voter aims to secure control of as much of the power of government as possible. His means to that end consist in becoming the most important single factor in the filling of the offices of the legal government. Success in advising and directing a majority of the politically ignorant voters how to vote places in his hands the power to fill by appointment all offices for which candidates are presented who are unknown to the electorate generally. Our political boss naturally tends to appoint men who are loyal to him and to his power, and by this means he naturally secures a certain control over part of the local governmental power. In the same way, the prize of a combination of successful local bosses is the power to appoint the majority of the officeholders of some more extensive and important local municipal government and thus obtain control of a part of its governmental power. When the state-wide organization of the feudal army of directors and advisers to the politically ignorant voter has been thoroughly perfected, with a man of great ability at its head, the prize to be obtained is the principal part of the entire governmental power, whether state or local. More and more such an organization will fill with men loyal to its leaders the local and state legislative bodies, the local and state executive offices, and even places upon the bench. Such an organization, when continuously successful for any length of time, will have actually filled all of the less conspicuous and less important offices in the executive, legislative, and judicial departments of the state and local governments.

But the influence of such an organization will go farther than this. Being in existence and efficient, it will often be a determining factor in nominating and electing a candidate for an office so important, and, viewed by itself, so conspicuous, that in a special election to fill that one office the intelligence of the electorate would be displayed at its maximum. For instance, if we look at the federal government alone, we find that the voter casts his ballot only for president, vice-president, and usually only one congressman. The congressman is selected for the most part from a fairly small district. Taking the federal government by itself, the voter’s function in selecting a congressman is so simple and direct that no professional advice or direction is needed except in the unusual case where the district is filled with an actual illiterate vote. But the moment the vote-directing organization is called into being in the congressional district because of the artificially produced political ignorance of the voter in respect to candidates for various local municipal offices and state offices, such an organization at once exercises an important control over the nomination and election of the congressman. In the same way the organization will gain a very considerable influence over the nomination and election of candidates for local municipal offices where they consist only of the mayor and an alderman from each ward, who are elected at a special election. Such an organization will have at all times a vast influence in the nomination and election of judges, even when they are chosen at a special election. There is no doubt that the nomination for governor of the state and president of the United States may from time to time be greatly influenced by politocrats whose power is based upon the political ignorance of the voter in respect to candidates for all manner of obscure offices in the state and local governments. Speaking generally, if the voter is habitually so ignorant politically that the politocrats have secured, to a considerable extent, the power to direct him how to vote, then the politocrats will exercise a great deal of influence in determining who shall be elected to offices so conspicuous and important that if they were the only ones filled by election the voter would exercise a high degree of independence and intelligence in making his selection and the services of the same politocrats would be wholly dispensed with.

A vote-directing organization which is steadily successful in a given state or local government for eight years will reach a point where it actually places in practically all the state and local offices that are filled by election, and also in the House of Representatives, in Congress, and in the United States Senate, men who are loyal to the organization and its leaders before everything else. The leader of such an organization may even have obtained a controlling influence with the governor of the state and the president of the United States, so far as their power extends to local appointments and affairs. When this occurs, the leaders of the state and local vote-directing organization have become the real though extra-legal government. The real power of government, both state and local, and an important influence in the power of the federal government are in their hands. Local and state executive officers and local and state legislators will take orders from these leaders. Judges in a more subtle way will take account of their wishes.

Thus we have, however imperceptibly, none the less effectively changed the character of our government. The very excess of our precautions to prevent the power of government from coming into the hands of the few has delivered the power of government into the hands of the few. So obviously and completely has the elaborate effort of our constitution-makers failed to keep governmental power out of the hands of the few that we might as well accept it as axiomatic that governmental authority in any highly organized society cannot be prevented from becoming concentrated in the hands of the few. Our form of government has indeed changed from the decentralized democracy of the frontier to the centralized politocracy of a highly organized civilization. We have turned our back upon the autocrat and the aristocrat only to find ourselves in the hands of the politocrat.