Examples of the operations of these societies are easily found, since they by no means hide their lights. It will be sufficient here to refer to a recent one as a sample. In January 1917, and again in April 1917, one of the best known of the associations, the City Club of New York, filed with the Governor a complaint against the District Attorney, charging him in effect with gross misconduct in connection with certain prosecutions for homicide. The Club employed lawyers to prosecute the charges and there was a furious, scandalous and prolonged controversy in the courts, in the public press and before the Governor, involving beside the District Attorney himself some of his assistants and others. Another powerful watchdog association is the well-known Chicago Voters League, established in 1896. The League claims that at that time of the sixty-eight members of the Chicago City Council only ten were even liable to a suspicion of honesty, while the rest were organized into a gang for plunder and blackmail. To correct this situation the League was established and still operates. Its self-perpetuating Executive Committee of Nine publicly opposes and condemns candidates for the City Council and directs the citizens how to vote. This, of course, amounts to a qualified oligarchy; in conformity with the usual tendency of manhood suffrage, to create ring government in one way or another.
The whole attitude of these watch dog associations towards the constituted civil authorities is most extraordinary, in view of the respectability of most of their membership, and strikingly illustrates the deplorable results of manhood suffrage. Their general scheme of action is founded on the open assumption of each of them that its members are superior in wisdom, honesty, patriotism and knowledge of public affairs to the officials whom they denounce, lecture and admonish; and, by implication that these members are superior also to the constituents who elected these office holders. The state legislature and other public bodies are watched closely, and when a measure in which any of these societies or their controlling members actually have or choose to feign a great interest is before any legislative body or official board for action or determination, the agents of the interested association begin to interfere; the public officials having the matter in hand are not allowed to deliberate and decide impartially and coolly even should they desire to do so; they are scolded, coaxed, threatened, bullied and wheedled into doing what the association desires. Some of these private associations have funds subscribed by individuals, or arising from the collection of dues; they are therefore able to employ lawyers to prepare arguments and briefs and political agents to go about soliciting signatures; arrangements are made for a systematic campaign directed towards the officials concerned, who are bombarded with letters, telegrams, postal cards and petitions; sometimes public meetings large or small are organized, and resolutions couched in peremptory language are passed and presented at the proper quarters. Should the officials prove refractory, they are apt to find their motives impugned, their “records” and personal history unearthed, and their characters publicly assailed, all from the same source. All this, which often amounts to coercion, is so frequently practised upon public bodies and their members as to have become a recognized feature of American public life.