Behind the Mirrors: The Psychology of Disintegration at Washington

g extended. His arms were cramped from being decently arranged across his breast. The circulation starting in his members produced disag

sensations in its members, from blocs, from lack of leadership, from indifference to party, from factionalism, from individualism, from incapacity to do business.

y body is scandalized over them for fear that a vi

lized than the senile persons whom the newspapers respectfully call its "leaders"?

n nerves, who claps his hands for the Senate pages as if they were not of the same flesh and blood with himself, and who would, if he could follow his instincts, clap his hands in the same way to summon the majority

tant chairmanships in the Senate were disposed thus: Finance, the most powerful committee, Senator Penrose, a dying man; Foreign Relations, Senator Lodge, 72; Interstate Commer

various sections, classes, and, let us say, kinds of property and business in

o the system that made their tenure possible. Only a Congress which had long been a subject of public contempt could have fallen into and c

d hands. And by taking predominance in foreign relations away from the Executive and transferring it to themselves, the elderly and infirm "leaders,"

nited States, a dangerous enough beginning for persons who were merely tolerated because Congress was nearly negligible and it was a matter of little difference to the public who

arm Bureau Federation instead of from the White House. Then the House leaders in open defiance of the "head of the party" prepared and reported a soldiers' bonus bill which contr

elson, and the others, rest except upon party authority? Not upon representing any real o

ty, when there is no Republican party, no union on principles, no st

lates about among the faithless pleading in the name of party loya

after its founder was dead used to dress up a lay figure to resemble him and drive it about the marketplace, to reassure the faithful and confir

t. The arrival of power causes as much consternation on the hill as the outbreak of war does am

as one interest a generation ago, there are many interests today, each trying to place the burden of taxation upon others a

ES E. WATSO

or years it has been the home of small men concerned with petty things which it approached in a petty spirit, incompetent, wasteful, and hypocritical, a trial to the Executive, almost a plague to the country. It has shared with state legislatur

ing such little things," as Mr. Root said after his six years in the Senate. Natur

ll so indirectly that the public gave them little attention. The control of the budget virtually passed out of the hands of Congress, for executive departments habitually exceeded

stry grew strong enough to hold its own market against competition and to compete itself in other markets. With the subsidence of the tariff as an issue Congress lost its last power to impose taxes in whic

fy the Executive. Power has to go somewhere, and it went down Pennsylvania Avenue. And this movement coincided with the development of

Congress on their hands," to write of "the shame of the Senate," and when any issue existed between the two parts of the government to throw the force of public opinion on

was agreed that incompetence should suffer no disabilities. All that

childhood. Even more, incompetence banded together jealously to protect itself against competence and shunted it into mino

the first place, the people were visiting Congress with indifference, or worse than indifference, and ambition will not serve under indifference. In the next place that great power which makes legisla

ollowed his example in even deeper disgust. A Tammany Congressman

ting of the persistence of Paganism in Catholicism, says that no religion ever dies but lives on in its successor. So no government ever dies but lives on in its successor. Why take the trouble to govern yourselves when your vital interests are so wel

be required? We are still near enough the pioneer age to adhere to

we should not in that office, for it is a waste of material and a misdirection of effort in self-government to throw away a first-class public man on a four-year job. Into the Senate and the House, into the Cabinet, where a lawyer without previous experience of int

seen the Colonel at meetings of the Supreme Council tell the amazing story that he was a silent and uneasy figure in the conferences of Mr. Llo

ions. The picture of the robustious C

world, Mr. Myron Herrick, a retired business man. Senator Foraker said of him, at a critical moment of his public career, "De mortuis nil." "Don't you wish to finish that quotati

rate on the executive at the expense of the legislative, the obstacles to ability which mediocrity has erected in Congress, we have not explained the present extraordinary confusion and demoralization in

s, with one voice they reply: "Lack of leadership." Everybody cackles of leadership as if lack of leadershi

EDERICK H. GILLET

den on the taxpayers? Who could lead representatives of farmers who demand that a large share of the credit available in this country be mobilized by the government for the subvention of agriculture and representatives of commerce and manufacture who wish to keep the government from competing with them for the stock of credit? Or labor which insists that the way

t operated with rough justice, to all levels of society, like water from a reservoir on a hill reaching all the homes of a city. When you

happy and rich, give the soldiers a five-billion-dollar bonus and start them buying? Give the farmers a several-billion-dollar guarantee of their staples and start prosperity on the farm. Give labor high wages and start prosperity

d ineffective revolution of 1905. All parties in Russia united against absolutism. A measure of representative government being established and the

question the unregulated descent of favors from the top. They doubted the force of gravity that used to fill dinner pails. They demanded

have use of the credit, who shall profit by lowered freight rates, re

Today's chiefs of state are of smaller stature. Mr. Harding has been a drifter all his life; he has not the native force of Mr. Roosevelt, the sheer vitality which gloried in overc

, whether it was in religion or morals or politics. He may not have put it so to himself, but behind everything that he did lay the tacit assumption that the business system was divinely ordained.

Mr. Hanna spoke for this divinely ordained system which was developing an undeveloped continent as one had n

the commandments handed down to him on the mountain. With God so much on his side a much lesser man

shed church. He had behind him a power of organization in business and Congress that Hanna had not.

ly in the United States. He was the spokesman of business, and even if faith was decaying no one seriously ques

he heads of the business organization kept a little too much of the newly created wealth to themselves, but at least everyone shared in it and it was

ion of him survives except that he managed the Senate machine efficiently. In type he was the business executive. He represented more

ensing of favors. He bestowed public buildings and river improvements in return for votes. Leaders hav

tached his name to the grotesque Aldrich-Vreeland currency act. The work of the monetary commission of which he

nator has, he was no better leader than any one of half a dozen present Senators would be if the aim of business were accepted today by the

to the heads of the business organization every possible favor and immunity, as the distribution best serving the intere