The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10Brann, William Cowper
General
The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast — Volume 10
Brann, William Cowper
Brann, William Cowper, 1855-1898; Essays; Reformers
It is the simplest of French doggerel and means, freely
translated, that while the fat-headed and the weakly foolish do a
great deal of jawing when mistreated by the powerful, the
sensible man picks himself up and totes himself far from the
neighborhood wherein he is unwelcome and never says a word. Of my
twenty congressmen but one offered a translation. That was the
dead William H. Crane, of Texas. The men were taken at random,
and I may say that I did not expect any translations when I
started out. Most frequently a man gets to congress through a
practically acquired knowledge of dirty politics backed by the
ability to make a stump speech, to tell a smutty story, and to
plead for his job with a slavish lickspittleism that would
disgust a Digger Indian. The ordinary congressional candidate
when smitten upon one cheek will turn the other, and when smitten
upon the other will hoist his coat-tail and request the honor of
a kick.
It is but natural that a job which is obtained by eating filth
and drinking filth and sleeping in filth is held to with a
tenacity that rises superior to all manliness and all decency.
The congressman knows but one God--the people who elected him. He
has but one object--to pleasure those people and get a
renomination. He does not represent the United States of America.
He represents his district. His idea of statesmanship is to get
as many federal jobs for the voters of his District and as many
and large federal appropriations for his District as he can. That
is all of it. Any individual Congressman, if he had his way would
fill the government places entirely from his District and erect a
Federal post-office and custom house at every cross roads in his
Districts. If he could do these things, he thinks he would be
certain of reelection, and he is right. Federal patronage is a
fanged whip that hangs ever above his shoulders and occasionally
it falls. The recipient of the blow cringes, cowers and howls
like a beaten hound, but he does not resent. When Grover
Cleveland called the Fifty-third congress into extraordinary
session, the object being to repeal the Sherman act and utterly
demonetize silver, thus completing the vast robbery of 1873, he
knew that there was a pro-silver majority against him, but he
knew also that he held the handle of the patronage whip in his
fat beer-swelled hand and that his slaves would troup to do his
will at the first crack of its lash. The result justified his
confidence. The Democratic party had a majority of nearly 100 in
the house of representatives, but that majority voted directly
against its convictions. It was told that it would get no jobs
for constitutents until it had surrendered its honesty. American
history contains no such pitiful instance of cowardice and
grovelling meanness. Instead of one Benedict Arnold selling his
soul for temporary gain, we had fifty. It did the soul of me good
to read the returns of the next Congressional election and to
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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