i partisans. Mr. Cleveland, however, if he has not done all the good that sanguine reformers hoped, seems to have acquiesced in less evil than many reformers expected.

I do not venture to express an opinion on what is in America a matter of keen controversy, but that he did not make a clean sweep of office-holders, whether belonging to the classes covered by the Pendleton Act or to any others, may be gathered from the complaints that arose from Democratic spoilsmen, who think the presidency is hardly worth winning if it does not bear fruit for the class they belong to.

The Act of 1883 applies to only about 14,000 out of nearly 120,000 posts in the Federal government. But its moral effect has been greater than this proportion represents, and entitles it to the description given of it at the time as "a sad blow to the pessimists." It strengthens the hands of any President who may desire reform, and has stimulated the civil service reform movement in States and municipalities. Several States have now instituted examinations for admission to their civil service; and similar legislation has been applied to New York, Brooklyn, Boston, and other cities. Some years must pass before the result of these changes upon the purification of politics can be fairly judged. It is for the present enough to say that while the state of things above described has been generally true both of Federal and of State and city administration during the last sixty years, there is now reason to hope that the practice of appointing for short terms, and dismissing in order to fill vacancies with political adherents, has been shaken; and that the extension of examinations will tend more and more to exclude mere spoilsmen from the public service.

CHAPTER LXVI

ELECTIONS AND THEIR MACHINERY

I CANNOT attempt to describe the complicated and varying election laws of the different States. But there are some peculiarities of election usage common to most or all States, which have told so much upon practical politics, especially on the Machine politics of cities, as to require a passing notice.

All expenses of preparing the polling places and of paying the clerks and other election officers who receive and count the votes, are borne by the community, not (as in England) by the candidates.

All popular elections, whether for city, State, or Federal offices, are in all States conducted by ballot, which, however, was introduced, and has been regarded, not so much as a device for preventing bribery or intimidation, but rather as the quickest and easiest mode of taking the votes of a multitude. Secrecy has not been specially aimed at, and in point of fact is not generally secured. Accordingly the preparation and distribution to voters of the voting papers has been (I think universally ) left to the candidates and their

1 I do not venture to make statements concerning all the States, because there are many variations in State laws. For the purpose of the present chapter it is of small importance to ascertain exactly what rules prevail in each and every State. What the text describes is the general practice.

friends, that is, to the parties, and the expense of printing and distributing these papers is borne by the latter.

An election is a far more complicated affair in America than in Europe. The number of elective offices is greater, and as terms of office are shorter, the number of offices to be voted for in any given year is much greater. To save the expense of numerous distinct pollings it is usual, though by no means universal, to take the pollings for a variety of offices at the same time, that is to say, to elect Federal officials (presidential electors and congressmen), State officials, county officials, and city officials on one and the same day and at the same polling booths. Presidential electors are chosen only once in four years, congressmen once in two. But the number of State and county and city places to be filled is so large that a voter seldom goes to the polling booth without having to cast his vote for at least eight or ten persons, candidates for different offices, and sometimes he may vote for twenty or thirty.'

It

This has given rise to the system of slip tickets. A slip ticket is a list, printed on a long strip of paper, of the persons standing in the same interest, that is to say, recommended by the same party or political group for the posts to be filled up at any election. is issued by the party organization on the eve of the election, and contains the names of the party nominees, with the offices for which they are respectively candidates. Copies of the slip, proportioned to the number of voters, are struck off by the party committee and

1 Sometimes as many as six distinct ballot boxes are placed to receive votes for different sets of offices.

2 A ticket includes more names or fewer, according to the number of offices to be filled, but usually more than a dozen. The Note at the end of this chapter contains several specimen tickets used at elections in 1887.

handed to their agents, who take their stand in front of the polling booths and distribute the tickets to the voters as they come up and enter. Each party of course looks first after its own adherents, but gladly supplies its tickets to every voter who consents to take them. There is no secrecy; the voter may be seen taking the ticket from the agent of his party, and can be followed by watchful eyes from the moment of his having taken it till he deposits it in the ballot box. If he is an average sort of person, he drops it in just as he has received it. This is called voting the "regular" or straight" ticket. If, however, he be a man of some independence, and dislikes one or more of the names he finds on his party ticket, he strikes out those names, and probably writes in some other name instead. This is called "scratching." To facilitate such action, the practice has grown up for agents to be placed at the voting place who supply small slips of paper gummed at the back, and bearing on the front the name of some other candidate for one or more of the posts vacant. Such slips are called "pasters" or "stickers," because the independent voter pastes them over the name or names of the person or persons he objects to on the ticket which he is about to place in the box, thus saving himself the trouble of "scratching," and securing the result he desires, that of voting his party ticket subject to the variations he prefers. Thus the degree to which pasters are used in a given election is a measure either of the badness of the lists of candidates issued by the parties, or of the independence of the voters, or of both phenomena together. Unfortunately, the number of candidates is often so great, and the knowledge which the average citizen has of many of them so small, that many who would be glad to "scratch" or "paste" have really no

data for doing so, and, especially in large cities, vote the party ticket in despair.

There are two questions that may be asked regarding
One is, whether it is honestly
To this question, as it

an election system.

carried out by the officials? regards the United States, no general answer can be given, because there are the widest possible differences between different States; differences due chiefly to the variations in their election laws, but partly also to the condition of the public conscience. In some States, such as, for instance, New York, the official conduct of elections is now believed to be absolutely pure, owing, one is told, to the excellence of a minutely careful law. In others, frauds, such as ballot stuffing and false counting, are said to be common, not only in city, but also in State and Federal elections. I have no data to determine how widely frauds prevail, for their existence can rarely be proved, and they often escape detection. They are sometimes suspected where they do not exist. Still there is reason to think that in some few States they are frequent enough to constitute a serious reproach.1

The other question is: Does the election machinery prevent intimidation, bribery, personation, repeating, and the other frauds which the agents of candidates or parties seek to perpetrate? Here too, there are great differences between one State and city and another, differences due both to the laws and to the character of the population. Of intimidation there is but little. Repeating and personation are not rare in dense populations

1 They were specially frequent, and are not extinct, in some of the Southern States, being there used to prevent the negro voters from returning Republican candidates. It was here that the use of "tissue ballots" was most common. I was told in San Francisco that elections had become more pure since the introduction of glass ballot boxes, which made it difficult for the presiding officials to stock the ballot box with voting papers before the voting began in the morning.