Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1881-08-05
PRACTICAL POLITICS.

cred about this time by careful study OF
the various nominating conventions now
at work in San Francisco, and especially
those OF the several factions of Democrats.
For weeks past the San Francisco papers
have been publishing columns every day
about these conventions. The intelligent
foreigner who had acquired all his knowl-
edge of our institutions from books, and
who had been accustomed to regard them
as the most complete and successful meth
DDS of government hitherto devised by
mankind, would find it somewhat difficult
to harmonic his theories with the facts
presented to his bewildered observation.
There are county and city officers to be
elected before long, and these conventions
are assembled to make nominations. OF
course, our intelligent foreigner thinks, the
people of San Francisco have assembled
and chosen representatives. to do this work
for them, and these representatives will
doubtless make their selections in the most
careful manner, and on the ground of fitness
alone. But when in the course of his IN
yestigation he enters the several halls
where the conventions meet, he discovers
that the people of San Francisco have a
very peculiar taste in delegates. For he
finds assembled at these places the most
motley crowds imaginable. There are the
habitues of corner groceries and rum-shops,
with fair sprinkling of those potent poll
ticians, the larger saloon keepers there
are smaI-fry Office. holders and offceseek-
ers; pettifogging attorneys of the kind
known on the street as "Police Court
.shysters;" glossy hated managers, "
suggesting in external appearance cross
between the esport and the gay g drum
mer; :" and a solid background OF ignorant,
blatant, venal men, whose presence is
evidently required to give effect to the die
tates of their political bosses, and who will
be seen when the election takes place
working actively at the polls.
He will find that there is really no ques-
ton of principle or fitness in any of these
assemblages, but that their talk is all Of
compromises and =" trades, and various
arrangements by which the contending fac.
lions seek to effect such an agreement
as will secure to all of them some portion
of the spoils. 1t is great scramble over
these same spoils, in fact. The people of
San Francisco are nowhere in the fight.
Their intellect, their wealth, their enlight-
eminent, their interests, are alike ignored
and thrust out of sight The management
of the public business is being quarreled
for by band of low. browed, greedy, vul-
gar men, who do not represent anything
beyond their own impudence and rapacity,
in the community, who pay little or no
taxes who neither know nor care anything
about the science of government, who are
opposed to every reform which aims at the
prevention of such modes of governing as
they are familiar with, who are ready to
support any rascal who by hook or crook
can secure the "party" nomination, and
who look with anything but disfavor upon
the kind OF candidates who usually come to
grief before their terms are out, by yield
ing to the seduotions Of the turf, the bag.
Mo, and the gin-shop.
The intelligent foreigner would in
time realize that although these conven.
tions make great deal OF stir and pother
they really do not in any just sense stand
for the preferences of the community at
all. The people of San Francisco have
nothing to do with them, practically.
They pursue their ordinary business in the
usual way, and if they think of the pol
iticians at all, do SO with hopeless shrug
of the shoulders. But though the people
of San Francisco have no voice in the pro-
ceedings of the Yosemite" and Man
"hattan" and other local organizations,
when the time comes for choosing officers
they viii be restricted to selection from
three or four tickets similarly prepared,
and the officers elected by their votes are
as likely as not to be the nominees of one
of these curious assemblages. The whole
machinery, the intelligent foreigner will
perceive, has been SO arranged as to pre-.
vent any thing like enlightened, disinterest-
ed, careful selections. Whoever wishes to be
nominated must first make his peace with
some one of the various self-eonstituted
managers of local politics. He must mort
gage his Office in advance. He must put
it out of his power to serve the
public faithfully, by agreeing to take as
his subordinates the friends of men Of
whom he only knows that their selections
are sure to be untrustworthy. 1t is in
fact an admirably devised method of strain
ing out all the better elements from can
didature, and keeping the standard of the
public service as low as possible.
No self.respecting, conscientious, sincere
man can gain his own consent to seek
Office under such conditions. The system
sets a premium upon all the vile arts of
demsgogism, and excludes all the qualities
which should alone be regarded. The
local government of San Francisco is taken
out Of the hands OF the people, and put into
the hands of its least responsible elements.
It is no matter for surprise that men elected
under these conditions should constantly
prove faithless to their task; that there
should be public defalcations, and iobbing
and corruption in all the Boards aud Com
missions; that certain Offices should be
commonly regarded as certain to be filed
by dishonest men; that it should have be-
come almost impossible to make the public
believe in the integrity of Supervisors, for
instance; that School Boards should be re-
garded as reeking with corruption; that
fraudulent contracts should be made; that
millions of public money should be squan-
dered upon rank jobbery in public build.
ings and other works; and that at last
no party name should any more be
guarantee for the responsibility of candi-
dates. These are the natural and unavoid-
able results of the system. 81 Practical