Belford's Magazine, Volume II, No. 8, January, 1889

From time to time pawnbrokers called on him and tried to persuade him that his method of doing business was a mistake; that it was not only hurting their business, but was ruining himself. Rumble was not convinced. If his way of doing business took from the profits of other pawnbrokers, they were only meeting with justice, he said; they had made money enough out of the poor; he meant to treat his customers better. He admitted that he might not get his money back from some of his investments, but then the auction would make it all right; what he lost in one way he would get back in another. He looked to the auction as to a sort of Day of Judgment, when there would be a grand evening of accounts.

At last the great day came – the day of the auction. Rumble was full of the importance of the event, and had donned his best clothes in honor of the occasion. He had advertised the auction in several newspapers, and he expected a large attendance. He was somewhat disappointed when, a little while before the time set for the sale, it began to rain; but he hoped for the best.

When the auctioneer rapped on his desk and announced that he was about to open the sale, there were not more than a dozen people in the room. Among them Rumble recognized several pawnbrokers, and the others looked as though they might belong to the same guild. He wondered why they were there. Had they come to bid – to bid at his auction, on goods on which he had loaned more money than they would have loaned? He did not understand it.

When the sale began Rumble took a seat near the auctioneer and watched the proceedings. He soon understood why the pawnbrokers were there. The prices obtained were absurdly small. There was very little competition, and the sale had not gone far before it dawned on Rumble’s mind that the pawnbrokers had a tacit understanding that they would not bid against one another, but would divide the stock among them.

The poor old man’s heart sank, and great beads of perspiration appeared on his brow, as lot after lot went for almost nothing. All his worldly possessions were melting away before his eyes, and he had not the power to put out his hand and save them. Was he dreaming? No, for he could hear the auctioneer’s voice, loud and clear, crying:

“Going – going – gone!”

He turned his head and saw his daughter standing in the sitting-room, near the open doorway, with her eyes fixed upon him. Her face was white, white as the ’kerchief about her neck. She understood it all. Yes, it was all too real.

“Going – going – gone!”

Again those terrible words rang like a knell in his ears, and every time he heard them he knew that he was a poorer man; he knew that more of his little stock had gone at a sacrifice.

At last he scarcely heeded the words of the auctioneer, but sat staring before him like one spell-bound. The buzz of conversation about him seemed like a sound coming from afar, like the roll of waves on the seashore; and through it all, at intervals, like the faint note of a bell warning seamen of danger, came those words telling of his own wreck:

“Going – going – gone!”

When the auction was over Fanny went to her father’s side. He was apparently dazed. She helped him to rise. He leaned heavily upon her as she led him into the sitting-room, where he sank back into a chair, and did not utter a word for a long time. At last, when he found voice, he said:

“Going – going – gone! It’s all gone, Fanny, all gone! We are ruined!”

The sale on which Rumble had built so many hopes, realized but little more than enough to pay the rent he owed. He did not have money enough to continue his business, and a few days after the auction his pawnshop was closed.

In the meantime, to add to their distress, Fanny had received a letter from Arthur Maxwell, informing her that the railroad company with which he had found employment had failed, owing him several hundred dollars – all his savings. He wrote that there was a prospect that a labor-saving invention of his would be put in use in one of the mines. This was the only gleam of hope in the letter. Fanny answered it, giving Arthur an account of the misfortune which had befallen her father. Although she gave him the number of the new lodging into which they moved when her father’s shop was closed, she received no reply. She had hoped soon to have some cheering word from him, but none came. She could not understand his silence. This, in addition to her other troubles, seemed more than she could bear.

Since the auction Rumble had not been a well man. His nerves at that time had received a shock from which he had not recovered.

Between nursing her father, and earning what little she could by sewing, Fanny had a hard time. The pittance she got for her work did not go far toward meeting their expenses. Rumble had given up his shop in the early autumn, and the little money he had saved from the wreck had disappeared when winter set in. At last it became necessary to pawn some of their household goods. Fanny would not let her father go the pawnbroker’s, but went herself. When she returned, and showed him the little money she had obtained on the articles she had pledged, he said:

“Why, I would have given twice as much.”

“Yes, father,” answered Fanny, “but all pawnbrokers are not like you.”

“No, no,” muttered the old man. “If they were they would be poor like me.”

Although Rumble was not able to work, he was always talking of what he would do when he felt a little stronger. He worried continually because he was dependent upon his daughter, and every time she went to the pawnbroker’s he had a fit of melancholy.

At last, just before Christmas, he became seriously ill. The doctor, whom Fanny called in, said he had brain fever, and gave her little hope of his recovery. His mind wandered, and seemed to go back to the auction, of which he spoke almost constantly. Many times he repeated the words of the auctioneer, that had made such a deep impression on him: “Going – going – gone!”

It was a gloomy Christmas for Fanny, and when New Year’s eve came she was still watching by the bedside of her father, whose fever had reached its crisis.

Her thoughts went back to another New Year’s eve, when Arthur Maxwell had told her of his plans for the future. And it had been so long since she had heard from him!

She had to get some medicine which the doctor had ordered, and while her father slept, asking an acquaintance who lodged on the same floor to watch over him, she went out, taking with her a gold locket which she meant to pawn.

Although she knew that a pawnbroker had opened a shop where her father had kept his, she had never gone to it. But something seemed to lead her there that evening. When she reached the place her heart almost failed her; but, summoning courage, she entered the shop, and presented the locket to the pawnbroker. While he was examining it two men entered. The pawnbroker’s clerk waited on them. She seemed to feel their eyes on her.

When she gave the pawnbroker her name, he said:

“Rumble? Frances Rumble? Why, a young man was here to-day inquiring for Mr. Rumble, and some time ago the carrier brought two letters here for you. I could not tell him where you lived, and he took them away.”

Fanny’s heart beat wildly. She was sure that the letters were from Arthur, and that it was he who had inquired for her father.

“Is this Miss Rumble?” said one of the men who had followed her into the shop.

She turned and recognized Dixon. The person with him was Teague. Dixon had just pawned a watch, and had remarked that he wished Rumble still kept the shop.

When Fanny told them of her father’s illness and of his misfortune, Dixon and Teague insisted on going home with her, meaning to lend assistance in some way.

When they reached Fanny’s humble lodging, and followed her into her father’s room, they found Maxwell at Rumble’s bedside.

A cry of joy escaped Fanny as her lover folded her in his arms. She soon learned from him that he had never received the letter in which she wrote him about her father’s trouble and their removal from the old shop. It had missed him while he was moving about in the West. And then he told her of the success of his invention.

Rumble, whose mind was lucid for the moment, said:

“You will be happy at last, Fanny. Arthur has come for you.”

“And you, too, will be happy with us, father,” replied Fanny, taking his hands in hers.

The old man smiled faintly, and rolled his head to and fro on his pillow, as if he thought differently.

The clock began to strike; it was midnight, and the New Year was at hand. The sound of bells came to their ears, and a distant chime was heard.

Rumble’s mind once more began to wander; again he talked about the auction; again he muttered the words that had troubled him so much:

“Going – going – gone!”

They were his last words. The old man’s life went out with the old year.

Albert Roland Haven.

THE ROOT OF THE SPOILS SYSTEM

What is known as the spoils system of politics, in a measure common to all times and all forms of government, seems to have reached its highest development in our Republic. This fact justifies the suspicion that something in our form of administration is favorable to such development; and whether we regard the spoils system as praiseworthy or reprehensible, it will be instructive to inquire why it has prevailed in this country as among no other free people.

Most persons who deplore the spoils system urge as one of its greatest evils that it substitutes for the discussion of principles a mere scramble for office; that it teaches men to value the material prizes incident to government above political truth. Such reasoners have strangely mistaken cause for effect. The rarity of ideas in our political discussions is not an effect, but the immediate cause of the spoils system; and behind both, as the direct cause of the latter and the remote cause of the former, lies the difficulty of expressing the popular will in legislative enactment. In other words, we have substituted the pursuit of place for the discussion of principles, because the relations of the people to the law-making body are not sufficiently close.

No reader of this periodical needs to be reminded that when our present constitution was written the mass of freemen had not, as now, come to believe that a constitutional government should include a legislature promptly obedient to the popular will; a ministry dependent upon the support of a majority in the popular branch of the law-making body; and an executive powerless to interfere in legislation. It was natural, then, that our forefathers, imperfectly acquainted with this modern device of free peoples, should have believed that they had secured the prompt and certain efficacy of the popular will in government by placing no restriction as to national elections upon the wide suffrage already prevailing in most of the States, and providing that the chief magistrate and both branches of the national legislature should be elective and chosen for short terms. They could not foresee that in course of time a constitutional monarch would come to have less power than the executive head of the Republic; that an hereditary House of Lords less often than an elective Senate would dare to cross the will of the popular legislative body; that the popular branch of the legislature in a constitutional monarchy would, in effect, change at will the administrative head of the government, while in the new Republic premiers would retain power despite the adverse verdict of the people as expressed in legislative majorities; and, finally, that the enfranchised portion of a people dwelling under a constitutional monarchy would determine at the ballot-box every great question arising in their politics, and drive from power all men who should dissent from the popular decision, while the whole people of the Republic might be balked not only of their will in matters upon which they had distinctly made up their minds, but even of bringing questions thus potentially decided to the practical test of the ballot-box, and of introducing other important issues into the realm of popular discussion.

The difficulty of procuring from the people of the United States an unequivocal decision upon any political question, and of expressing that decision in legislative enactment, is familiar to every student of our history. The questions that occupy Congress now are in large part the same that were debated there forty years ago, save that the issue of slavery and the extreme States’ rights theory have disappeared. But even in these cases the exceptions prove the rule; for it is grimly significant of our legislative immobility that the two great questions of a century should finally have been settled by the sword. If the people declared for anything at the general election of 1884, they may be supposed to have declared for a revision of the tariff, since the platform of principles adopted by each great party at its National Convention affirmed the necessity of such revision; yet Congress not only failed to legislate for that object, but actually at one time refused to discuss a measure designed to meet the issue in question, and at another stopped in the midst of such legislation to test the popular will upon the very same matter. Furthermore, while it will be assumed by most persons that whatever the significance of the election four years ago, the contest just ended sets the seal of disapproval upon the recent effort of the House of Representatives to revise the tariff; yet we hear already that the LI. Congress can hardly escape some such legislation as has just been attempted. The truth is, that the election of 1884, as all our elections, was in the main a struggle for spoils. The question at issue was not tariff revision or any other great economic idea, but which party should administer during the next four years the great patronage of the Federal Government. In the contest of November last the people for the first time in twenty years had a living issue presented, but so unused were they to the discussion of economic principles that it may be questioned whether the verdict just delivered with so much apparent emphasis was really the expression of a well-ascertained public opinion. It is worthy of note, too, that believers in the spoils system of politics are already taunting the vanquished with the folly of presenting a political idea to the American people, and prophesying a more rigid exclusion of principles from politics in all time to come.

Such difficulties have beset us throughout all our history. Let men wince as they would under galling injustice and false economics, they could not work their will upon the body whose duty it is to express in legislation the political desires of the people. A mocking fate seemed to balk the accomplishment of our most earnest purposes, and men whose interests were adverse to the public good constantly took it upon themselves to declare that the people had not spoken upon whatever vital question was uppermost, or that their words had meant something other than they seemed to mean. The result of all this was what we see. A self-governing people must have some sort of political activity, and since it was early discovered that the discussion of principles was little better than a vain occupation, the pursuit of place soon became almost the sole object of political organization. If it was almost impossible to carry a question from the stage of popular discussion to that of legislative enactment, it was a very simple matter to elect presidents and congressmen who should see to a proper distribution of places. Since men could not accomplish the rational object of political endeavor, they strove for what was easily attainable. If they could not make the laws they could at least fill the offices. Then came the easy descent to Avernus. Politics having become a mere struggle for place, public affairs were left more and more in the hands of men who found such work congenial, and the mass of the people, to whom the hope of office is but a shadowy illusion, became less and less interested in a struggle that held for most voters neither the promise of gain nor the incentive of high purpose. The spoils system having thus been established, the causes that bred it were in their turn intensified by its reaction, and the evil round was complete. To make matters worse, the struggle for wealth, stimulated by the marvellous richness of a part of the country, claimed the attention of thousands to the exclusion of politics, and those who would naturally have led in affairs of State adopted the evil philosophy that it is cheaper to be robbed by professional politicians than to neglect private business for the sake of public duty.

Having sought thus to trace the steps by which our form of administration has begotten the spoils system, let us endeavor to prove the conclusion by another process of reasoning. Were our government a parliamentary system, such as exists among the free peoples of the Old World, we should have a legislature promptly responsive to movements of the popular will, a ministry sitting in one or the other house of Congress, and dependent for continuance in power upon the support of a majority in the Lower House, and an executive disarmed in whole or in part of the power to negative legislative enactments. The result would be to concentrate interest not as now upon the election of a president whose chief function is to distribute places, and whose part in legislation is almost purely negative, but upon the choice of the legislative body whose majority should determine the political complexion of the president’s advisers and the general policy of the administration. At each general election for members of the Lower House the issue would be some well-defined question then under hot discussion, and in most instances Congress would have been dissolved for the express purpose of taking the sense of the people upon the matter at issue. Public interest in political discussion would return, because great principles, such as have an important bearing upon the lives of all men, would be under debate, and the mass of voters would have such an incentive to activity as the shadowy hope of place could never furnish. The knowledge that the popular will would find prompt expression through the law-making power would render it impossible for the people to be turned from their purpose by the jugglery of place-hunters.

With a whole people interested in political discussion no conceivable abuse of patronage could balk them of their will, and the spoils system would disappear because the factitious importance of office-holders and office-seekers, favored by the defects of our present form of administration, could no longer obscure the vastly greater question of the public weal. This change in the popular attitude toward politics would be sufficient of itself to seal the doom of the spoils system; but if other influences were needed they would be found in the new relations of the ministry to the legislature and the people, since a cabinet bound to take the initiative in great lines of policy and required to give an account of itself to a hostile minority in Congress would have little time and less stomach for the nice apportionment of political rewards to partizan deserts. Finally, should we adopt the principle of a ministry dependent upon the support of a majority in the Lower House, the possibility of two changes of administration within a single year would make the spoils system, as we now have it, unendurable and unworkable. Indeed, it may be questioned whether a rigid application of the spoils system by the administration coming into office in March 1889 would not place the evils of that system in a peculiarly glaring light, when it is remembered that a very large number of those who would be asked to make places for party workers unversed in the routine of public office have exercised their official functions for barely four years, and but recently acquired the skill so necessary to the efficient transaction of business.

The attentive reader will have noted that it has been argued, first that the spoils system is the natural and inevitable outcome of the rigidity that seems unseparable from our form of administration; and second, that such a system, in its grossest development, is almost impossible under a parliamentary government. The latter line of argument has been taken less for its own sake than for the purpose of strengthening the conclusions reached by the former; and the writer would not be understood as insisting that to eliminate the spoils system we must adopt exactly such a parliamentary form as now exists among the free peoples of Europe. Any system that should make it easy to ascertain the popular will, and should insure the prompt and certain expression of that will in legislation, would accomplish the object of substituting principles for spoils in our politics. To suggest a plausible plan for grafting upon our system this far more democratic scheme of administration would be a stupendous work, calling for the highest exercise of trained political sagacity; but it is not difficult to indicate some of the things that need not be done. It is not necessary that the president should be reduced to any such mere figure-head as is the monarch in the half-dozen parliamentary governments of Europe. Perhaps the principle of a ministry sitting in the houses of Congress might be omitted; and it is not clear that the president’s veto would have to be altogether sacrificed. It is not positive, indeed, that a formal amendment of the constitution would be necessary to obtain the essentials of the reform under consideration. We have amended the spirit of the constitution in one highly important feature without changing the letter of that instrument. Perhaps the nearest way to the object in view lies through a more intimate relation between the cabinet and the committees of the Lower House.

Finally, the consideration presents itself that if the conclusions reached here are correct, those persons who have sought by statutory restriction and appeals to public conscience to abolish the spoils system have not employed the wholesome policy of attacking the evil at its source. They seem to be mowing rather than uprooting the weeds. Doubtless our political garden has been tidied, but the roots of the evil growth and the aptitudes of the soil remain. The reform system, as applied to the great body of minor clerical offices, will probably prevail from now on; but we can scarcely hope that the broad spirit of civil service reform can reign in this land until the people shall have made themselves immediate masters of the legislative power.

Edward V. Vallandigham.

UNCLE SCIPIO

Once more the wizard of the Christmas-time lifts his wand in our homes, brightening young eyes that look forward, dimming old ones that look backward. Thou hast prisms of hope for the young; prisms of tears for the old, but shining always in our souls with a light all thine own. We hail thee, lovely spirit of this matchless festival!

Would that words could paint to you a picture which I carry in my heart! I see it through a light brilliant, yet tender, that Christmas morning long ago in the old Georgia home. Those were dark days of war which I remember, and the shadow of death had already fallen on our house: but there was one day in the year when we did not feel its chill. What shadows can withstand the light of the Christmas fire in the heart of a child?

We had grown to be pretty thorough Bohemians, my little brother and I, in those war days, and were ready to take any stray bit of sport, asking no questions whatever for conscience’ sake. But the outlook was rather bad for us, one dreary December. The holidays were very near, and we saw no preparations for rendering the big dining-room royal with holly and cedar, as usual, for King Cole’s reception. We had already ceased to press our grievances in the “big house,” for we felt, through a child’s instinct, that we were standing in the presence of griefs greater than our own.

We began to fear that Santa Claus had been killed in the war, or that maybe he would not care to come to us now since the fire had grown so small in the huge fire-place, where it used to roar and flash around the back-log, until the polished floor was flooded in light, and the candelabra’s lights shone cold and pale as stars through a conflagration. Even the crimson rugs and hangings, that used to brighten up the dark old floor and furniture, had disappeared, one by one, to be transformed into haversacks and warm garments for our poor boys at the front, whose hearts were stouter and courage more lasting than their regimentals. And so, we thought, poor little infants! that perhaps our deity would desert the altars on which the fires burned so low, and would go, with all his wonderful store, to the happy children away in the North. There, we were told, the cities blazed with light and merriment for weeks before his coming; there the snow sometimes fell whole days at a time, until it lay like a white carpet along the streets, where children could walk without fear, and which never echoed to the tramp of foes; for there the heavy booming cannon never sounded to drown the chiming bells, and blanch the children’s laughing lips with terror. Why, we argued, should he not go there instead of driving his reindeer across bloody fields and deserted highways, to bring gifts to two poor little children? Truly we would have been comfortless in that sad time but for one old standby, who had never yet failed us. Dear old Uncle Scipio – his ebony face shines in the light of memory as it used to shine in the light of the kitchen fire. To him we turned in our trouble. We did not know all his worth then, but we knew him for the sympathizer in all our childish griefs. Oh, those preposterous old stories he used to tell us! but they could raise the sheeted dead then in every corner of the old kitchen, as we sat in awed silence on his knee, and watched the supper fire die out.