Reflections and Comments 1865 1895 by Edwin Lawrence Godkin

E >> Edwin Lawrence Godkin >> Reflections and Comments 1865 1895

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Now, if we said that a specimen of this society had been unearthed
in Brooklyn by the recent exposures, we should, doubtless to many
people, seem to say a very hard thing, and yet this, with the
allowances and reservations which have of course to be made for all
attempts to describe anything so vague and fleeting as a social
state, is what we do mean to say. That Mr. Beecher's preaching,
falling on such a mass of disorder, should not have had a more
purifying and organizing effect, is due, we think, to the absence
from it of anything in the smallest degree disciplinary, either in
the shape of systematic theology, with its tests and standards, or
of a social code, with its pains and penalties. What he has most
encouraged, if we may judge by some of the fruits, is vague
aspiration and lachrymose sensibility. The ability to dare and do,
the readiness to ask one's due which comes of readiness to render
their due to others, the profound consciousness of the need of sound
habits to brace and fortify morals, which are the only true
foundation and support of a healthy civilization, are things which
he either has not preached or which his preaching has only stifled.

"THE SHORT-HAIRS" AND "THE SWALLOW-TAILS"

There is a story afloat that Mr. John Morrissey made his appearance,
one day during the past week, in Madison Square, in full evening
dress, including white gloves and cravat, and bearing a French
dictionary under his arm, and that, being questioned by his friends
as to the object of this display, he replied that he was going to
see Major Wickham and ask him for an office in the only costume in
which such an application would have a chance of success. In other
words, he was acting what over in Brooklyn would be called "an
allegory," and which was intended to expose in a severe and telling
way the Mayor's gross partiality, in the use of his patronage, for
the well-dressed and well-educated members of society--a partiality
which Mr. Morrissey and his party consider not only unfair but
ridiculous. This demonstration, too, was one of the few indications
which have as yet met the public eye of a very real division of the
Democratic party in this city into two sets of politicians, known
familiarly as "Short-Hairs" and "Swallow-Tails"--the former
comprising the rank and file of the voters and the latter "the
property-owners and substantial men," who are endeavoring to make
Tammany an instrument of reform and to manage the city in the
interest of the taxpayers. Mayor Wickham belongs, it is said, to the
latter class, and has given, it seems, in the eyes of the former,
some proofs of a desire to reserve responsible offices for persons
of some pretensions to gentility, and exhibited some disfavor for
the selections of the "workers" in the various wards.

But we do not undertake to describe with accuracy the origin or
nature of the split; all we know is that the Short-Hairs are
disgusted, and that their hostility to the Swallow-Tails is very
bitter, and that when Mr. Morrissey proclaimed, in the manner we
have described, that a man needed to wear evening dress and to know
French in order to get a place, he gave feeble expression to the
rage of the masses. They have, too, concocted an arrangement which
embodies their idea of a well-administered government, and which
consists in compelling the departments to spend in wages in each
district at least $1.50 for each Democratic vote cast, and to
apportion the appropriations with strict reference to this rule, the
money, of course, to go to the nominees of Democratic politicians.
The plan departs from that of the French national workshops in that
it discriminates between laborers, but in other respects it has all
the characteristics of well-developed Communism. The way to meet it,
according to our venerable contemporary, the _Evening Post_, is to
have the taxpayers point out to the voters who are to receive the
money that they (the taxpayers) cannot well spare it, that they need
it for their own use, and that this mode of administering corporate
funds is condemned by all the leading writers on government. The
Swallow-Tails know so well, however, with what howls of mingled
mirth and indignation the Short-Hairs would receive such suggestions
that they never make them, but content themselves with confining the
distribution of the money to the members of their own division
quietly and unostentatiously, as far as lies in their power, which,
we candidly confess, we do not think is very far.

It would be doing the Short-Hairs injustice, however, if we allowed
the reader to remain under the impression that the unwillingness to
have the Swallow-Tails monopolize or even have a share of the office
was peculiar to them, or that John Morrissey's protest would be
unintelligible anywhere out of New York. On the contrary, when he
started out with his French dictionary he was giving expression to
a feeling which is to be found in greater or less intensity in
every State in the Union. The great division of politicians into
Short-Hairs and Swallow-Tails is not confined to this city. It is
found in every city in the country in which there is much diversity
of condition among the inhabitants. Nor did Morrissey mean simply
to protest against training as a qualification for the work of
administration, as the _Tribune_ assumed in a sharp and incisive
lecture which it read him the other day. We doubt if any pugilist in
his secret heart despises training. He knows how much depends on it,
and as he is not apt to possess much discriminating power, he is not
likely to mark off any particular class of work as not needing it.
What the Short-Hairs dislike in the Swallow-Tails is the feeling of
personal superiority which they imagine them to entertain, and which
they think finds a certain expression in careful dressing and in the
possession of certain accomplishments. In fact, the Swallow-Tails
whom the New York rough detests and would like to keep out of
public life, belong to the class known in Massachusetts as the
"White-cravat-and-daily-bath gentlemen," and which is there just as
unpopular as here, and has even greater difficulty in getting office
there than here.

The line of division in New York is, however, drawn much lower down.
The Massachusetts Short-Hair is a man of intelligence, of some
education, who wears a plain black neglige and rumpled shirt-front
and soft hat, and disregards the condition of his nails, and takes a
warm bath occasionally. The New Yorker, on the other hand, wears
such clothes as he can get, and only bathes in the hot weather and
off the public wharf. If he has good luck and makes money, either in
the public service or otherwise, he displays it not in any richness
in his toilet or in greater care of his person, but in the splendor
of his jewels. One of his first purchases is a diamond-pin, which he
sticks in his shirt-front, but he never sees any connection of an
aesthetic kind between the linen and the pin, and will wear the
latter in a very dirty shirt-front as cheerfully as in a clean
one--in fact, more cheerfully, as he has a vague feeling that by
showing it he atones for or excuses the condition of the linen. In
fact, the Short-Hair view of dress would be found on examination to
be, in nearly ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, something of this
kind: that the constant care of the person which produces an
impression of neatness and appropriateness, and makes a man look
"genteel," is the expression of a certain state of mind; that a man
would not take so much trouble to make himself look different from
the ordinary run of people whom he meets, unless he thought himself
in some way superior to them, or, in other words, thought himself a
"gentleman" and them common fellows, and that he therefore fairly
deserves the hatred of those of whom he thus openly parades his
contempt.

A New York Short-Hair seldom goes farther than this in his
speculations, though he doubtless has also a vague idea that a
well-dressed man is not so likely to stand by his friends in politics
as a more careless one. In New England, as might be expected, however,
the popular dislike of that "culte de la personne," as some Frenchman
has called it, which distinguishes "the white-cravat-and-daily-bath
gentleman," has provided itself with a moral basis. There is there a
strong presumption that the Swallow-Tail is a frivolous person,
who bestows on his tailoring, and his linen, and his bathing, and his
manners the time and attention which the Short-Hair or "plain blunt
man" reserves for reflection on the graver concerns of life, and
especially on the elevation of his fellow-men, and this presumption
even a career of philanthropy and the composition of the "Principia"
would not in many minds suffice to overthrow. We believe it is
authentic that General Grant never got over the impression produced
on him by seeing that Mr. Motley parted his hair in the middle, and
it is said--and if not true is not unlikely,--that Mr. R. H. Dana's
practice of wearing kid gloves told heavily against him in his
memorable contest with Butler in the Essex district. We may all
remember, too, the gigantic efforts made by Mr. Sumner and others in
Congress to have our representatives abroad prohibited from wearing
court-dress. What dress they wore was of course, _per se_, a matter
of no consequence, provided it was not immodest. The fervor on the
subject was due to the deeply rooted feeling that even the amount
of care for externals exhibited in putting on an embroidered coat
or knee-breeches indicated a light-mindedness against the very
appearance of which the minister of a republic ought to guard
carefully. It is partly to produce the effect of seriousness of
purpose, but mainly to avoid the appearance of airs of social or
mental superiority, that nearly all skilful politicians dress with
elaborate negligence. In most country districts no complaints can
be made of men in office such as the New York Short-Hair makes
against the Swallow-Tail. They fling on their easy-fitting black
clothes in a way that leaves them their whole time for the study
of public affairs and attention to the wants of their constituents,
and at the same time recalls their humble beginnings.

What strikes one, however, as most curious in the controversy
between the Short-Hairs and the Swallow-Tails is the illustration it
affords of the rigidity with which every class or grade in
civilization treats its own social conventions, whatever they may
be, as final, and as having some subtle but necessary connection
with morals. When the Indian squats round the tribal pot in his
breech-clout, and eats his dinner with his dirty paw, he is fully
satisfied that he is as well equipped, both as regards dress and
manners, not only as a man need be, but as a man ought to be. The
toilet, the chamber, and the dinner-table of a plain New England
farmer he treats as wasteful and ridiculous excess, and if good for
anything, good only for plunder. The farmer, on the other hand,
loathes the Indian and his ways, and thinks him a filthy beast, and
that he (the farmer) has reached the limits of the proper as regards
clothes and food and personal habits, and that the city man who puts
greater elaboration into his life is a fribble, who is to be pitied,
if not despised and distrusted. In short, we can hardly go one step
into the controversy without coming on the old question, What are
luxuries and what necessities? and, as usual, the majority decides
it in the manner that best suits itself. It may be said without
exaggeration that the progress of civilization has consisted largely
in the raising of what is called "the standard of living," or, in
other words, the multiplication of the things deemed necessary for
personal comfort, and, as this raising of the standard has always
been begun by the few, the many have always fought against it as a
sign of selfishness or affectation until they themselves were able
to adopt it.

The history of the bath furnishes a curious though tolerably
familiar illustration of this. The practice of bathing disappeared
from Western Europe with the fall of the Roman Empire. The
barbarians were themselves dirty fellows, like the Indians, and
their descendants remained dirty in spite of the growth of
civilization among them, putting their money, like the Short-Hair,
mainly into jewels and other ornaments. As long as linen was scarce
and dear, changes were, of course, seldom made, and the odor of even
"the best society" was so insupportable that perfumes had to be
lavishly used to overcome it. The increased cheapness of linen and
more recently of cotton, and the increased facilities for bathing,
have in our own day made personal cleanliness a common virtue; but
an occasional bath is still as much as is thought, through the
greater part of the world, compatible with moral earnestness and
high aims. Of late, indeed within the memory of the present
generation, persons mainly belonging to the wealthier class in
England have boldly begun to bathe every day, and they have finally
succeeded in establishing the rule that a gentleman is bound to
bathe, or "tub," as they call it, every day, and that the usage
cannot be persistently neglected without loss of position. Indeed,
there are few social casuists in England who would decide, without
great hesitation and anxiety, that any English-speaking man was a
gentleman who did not take a daily bath. That this view of the
matter should be accepted by the great body of those who would
rather not bathe every day is not to be expected, nor is it to be
wondered at that they should consider it offensive, and that the
practice of sponging one's self in cold water every morning should
in caucuses be looked on as a disqualification for political life.
There is, of course, a necessary and provoking, though tacit,
assumption of superiority in the display of greater cleanliness than
other people show, just as there is in coming into a room and
finding fault with the closeness of the air in which other people
are sitting comfortably. It is tantamount to saying that what is
good enough for them is not good enough for you, and they always
either openly or secretly resent it.

The popular distrust of the practice of wearing white cravats in the
evening may be traced to the same causes. The savage makes no change
of toilet for the evening. He dresses for war and religious
ceremonies, but he goes to a social reunion or feast in such clothes
as he happens to have on when the invitation finds him. The plain
man of civilized life, under similar circumstances, puts on a clean
shirt and his best suit of clothes. This suit, among the European
peasantry, is apt to be of simply the same cut and material as the
working suit, or, as it would be called in Brooklyn, "the garb of
toil." Among Americans, it is a black suit, like that of a
clergyman, and includes a silk cravat, generally black, but
permissibly colored. The whole matter is, however, one of pure
convention. Now, it has been found of late years a matter of
convenience, and of great convenience especially to hard-worked men
and men of moderate means who are exposed to the constant social
demands of the great cities of the world, to have a costume in which
one can appear on any festive occasion, great or small, which all,
gentle or simple, are alike expected to wear, which is neither rich
nor gaudy, and in which every man may feel sure that he is properly
dressed; and the dress fixed on for this purpose now throughout the
civilized world is the plain suit of black, with the swallow-tailed
coat, commonly called "evening dress."

Nothing can be simpler or less pretentious, or more democratic.
Nobody can add anything to it or take anything away from it. Many
attempts to modify it have been made during the last thirty years by
leaders of fashion, and they have all failed, because it meets one
of the great wants of human nature. It is only within the last
fifteen years that it has obtained a firm foothold in American
cities. People looked on it with suspicion, as a sign of some inward
and spiritual naughtiness, and regarded the frock-coat with its full
skirts as the only garment in which a serious-minded man, with a
proper sense of his origin and destiny, and correct feelings about
popular government, could make his appearance in a lady's parlor.
Why, nobody could tell, for there was a time, not very far back,
when the frock-coat was itself an innovation. Of late--that is,
within, perhaps, twenty years--the Swallow-Tails of the world have
exchanged the black or colored for a white cravat, and justify
themselves by saying that it not only looks cleaner, but is cleaner
of necessity than a silk one, and that you cannot look too clean or
fresh about your throat when you present yourself in a lady's house
on a festive occasion. Nevertheless, the plain, blunt men are not
satisfied. They do not as yet feel sure as to its meaning. They
think it indicates either over-thoughtfulness about trifles or else
a leaning, slight though it be, toward despotism and free-trade.
They will now all, or nearly all, wear evening dress with a black
cravat, but even those of them who will consent to put on a white
one do so with a certain shamefacedness and sense of backsliding,
and of treachery to some good cause, though they do not exactly know
which.

JUDGES AND WITNESSES

The proceedings in the recent Bravo poisoning case have raised a
good deal of discussion in England as to the license of counsel in
cross-examination--a question which recent trials in this country
have shown to possess no little interest for us also. In the Bravo
inquest, as in the Tichborne case and the Beecher trial of the last
year, the cross-examination of the witnesses was pushed into matters
very remotely connected with the issue under trial, so that the
general result of the inquiry was not, as in most cases, the
eliciting of a certain number of facts bearing on the question in
court, but a complete revelation of the whole private life of a
family, or of a certain part of it, and even of a whole circle of
families. The glaring exposure of matters usually kept close, and
not even talked about, formed in fact the great fascination of these
_causes celebres_. It was difficult at the first blush to see how in
the Beecher trial Tilton's eccentric nocturnal habits could have
thrown any light upon the question of Beecher's guilt; nor in the
Tichborne case was it at all apparent that an answer to the inquiry
put to some witness--whether he had, at some distant period of time,
had improper relations with some persons not connected with the
case--could even remotely tend to settle the claimant's identity.
The _Pall Mall Gazette_, discussing this kind of cross-examination
resorted to for the purpose of breaking down the credit of a
witness--of "showing him up" to the jury, and thus inducing them to
pay less attention to his evidence than they otherwise would--has
stated the case in the following manner: "Suppose, it says, that the
legislature of a free country were some fine morning to pass a law
authorizing anyone who chose to take it into his head to compel any
inhabitant of the country to answer any questions he might think fit
to put with regards to the other's moral character, his relations
with his parents, brothers and sisters, wife and children, his
business affairs, his property, his debts, and in fact his whole
private life, and to do all this without there being any dispute
between them or even any alleged grievance, what would be thought of
such a law? Would it be endured for an instant?" Now, this, the
_Pall Mall Gazette_ continues, is to-day the law of England. It is
just to this odious tyranny which anyone, by bringing a suit, can,
under the vague and almost unlimited power to punish for "contempt
of court," force submission.

The law on this subject is, generally speaking, the same in the
United States as in England, and this tyranny, if it really exists,
weighs upon us as heavily as it does upon Englishmen. The first
question that suggests itself is whether this is really a fair
statement of law, and, of course, the _Pall Mall Gazette_ admits
that there exist limitations of the right of cross-examination, but
it contends that these are so undefined as to amount to little or
nothing in the way of protection. The authorities contain little on
the subject, except that cross-examination as to credit is allowed
to go very far, and that judges may in their discretion stop it when
it goes too far. But judicial discretion is proverbially an
uncertain thing. It varies not merely with the court, but even in
the same judge it is affected by the state of his temper, his
curiosity, his feeling toward the counsel who is examining, and by
thousands of other things that no one can know anything about or
depend upon. Usually it is easier not to exercise than to exercise
discretion, and the result is that the right of cross-examination is
usually unchecked, and in most important cases which are widely
reported the right is pushed to lengths which, with witnesses of any
sensibility, amount to a process of slow torture. If the right is
abused in England, it is unquestionably abused here, and probably at
the time of the Beecher trial we should have had complaints about it
but for the fact that in the singular society in which the parties
to that case lives, a craving for notoriety had been developed which
made any discussion of their private affairs less disagreeable than
it is to most people. But with the great majority of mankind there
is nothing more odious than the extraction, by a sharp, hostile
lawyer, from their own unwilling lips, of the details of their moral
history. There is probably no one in existence, however good, and
however quiet his conscience may be, who can endure without a
shudder the thought of every transaction of his past life being
dragged out in a court of justice for the amusement of a gaping
crowd. Exactly how far the right is abused, and how far the
discretionary powers of courts to limit its abuse accomplish their
end, it is impossible to say, for it is only in sporadic cases of
unusual importance that interest in the result is strong enough to
warrant a lawyer's going to great length in cross-examination.
Usually, too, it should be said for the credit of the profession,
reputable lawyers shrink from outraging a witness's sensibility. But
after everything is admitted that can be admitted in favor of the
existing state of the law, it is impossible to deny that the door is
left very wide open to disgraceful assaults upon credit which
inflict serious and irreparable damage.

The difficulty is not in pointing out the evil, which is plain
enough, but in suggesting a remedy. The right of cross-examination
is one of the most important instruments provided by the machinery
of our law for the discovery of facts, and on the credibility of
witnesses all cases hinge. The moment we begin to limit it by fixed
rules we enter on dangerous ground. It might seem as if the solution
of the problem lay in the enactment of a rule that witnesses should
only be cross-examined as to their general reputation with regard to
truth, and as to the matters involved in the case directly affecting
their credibility; but this would by no means do. Suppose, for
instance, that the suit is a common action for the purchase-money of
a piece of cloth, and the defendant brings a witness who swears
that he saw the defendant pay the money to the plaintiff, while
the plaintiff has only his own evidence to rely upon in proof of
non-payment; if, in such case, the plaintiff were merely allowed to
cross-examine the witness directly, he would in all probability lose
the case. The testimony would be two to one against him, and the
story of the witness as the only disinterested person would probably
be believed by the jury. But suppose that, on cross-examination, it
turns out that this witness can give no good account of his manner
of earning his living or of his place of residence; that he had been
arrested not long before as a vagrant, and that down to the time of
the action he had no respectable clothes, and that he suddenly
became possessed of some; that he deserted from the army immediately
after getting his bounty-money, and so on, there can be little doubt
that his credit with the jury would be much impaired, and justly so,
although no direct evidence of his being a perjurer had been
introduced, and not a particle of his testimony had been strictly
controverted. Everyone who has followed with any care the evidence
taken in celebrated murder trials or divorce cases knows how
frequently a rigid cross-examination lays bare motives and
prejudices on the part of witnesses which, often without their
knowing it themselves, tend to bias their account of facts.

The problem, therefore, is to devise some means by which these
benefits of a searching cross-examination may be retained and yet
the abuse got rid of. The only feasible way of meeting the
difficulty yet proposed is that of drawing up a series of rules or
general directions as to evidence which shall not attempt to
prescribe formal limits for cross-examination, but shall lay down in
explicit words the general principles which should govern a judge in
such cases. These rules would practically be a definition of the
"discretion" he is now supposed to exercise. They would, for
example, direct him not to allow an examination into matters so
remote in time from the case in hand that they can have no bearing
on the credibility of the witness; not to allow questions to be put
which are plainly malicious and asked for the purpose of irritating
the witness; and not to allow any examination into transactions
which, though they may have a bearing on the character of a witness,
have none on his credibility, _e.g._, an inquiry, in a murder case,
of a witness in good standing, as to domestic difficulties with a
deceased wife. It is not easy to lay down beforehand any rules by
which we can discriminate the kind of evidence as to transactions
involving moral character which ought not to affect credibility, but
every one can easily imagine instances of such evidence. General
directions of the kind we have just suggested are no more than a
formal enunciation of the manner in which the "discretion" of a good
judge would be and is exercised. They do not change the law, but
they remind judges of what they may forget, and they may be appealed
to by a persecuted witness with far more certainty than judicial
"discretion." In the Indian Code, which is probably the best body of
law that the legal reform movement begun by Bentham in the last
century has yet produced, rules of this kind have been laid down,
and we believe have been found to work with success.

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