Baltimore Evening Sun (2 June 1911): 6.

Now comes Prof. Dr. the Hon. Woodrow Wilson, that sapient psychologist, with the suggestion that all married men be barred from our Legislatures. The newspaper moralists denounce Dr. Wilson and the newspaper wits make fun of him, but a fair inspection of his proposal shows that it is quite serious, and what is more, that it is quite sensible. He is, in fact, merely echoing the sages of every age when he maintains that, all other things being equal, a bachelor is more apt to be intelligent, independent and honest than a married man.

The great curse of our Legislatures, as everyone knows, is bribery. The jackpot, indeed, probably has far more influence upon American legislation than the Ten Commandments. Every one of our State capitals, at the beginning of every legislative session, is besieged by the agents of persons and corporations who seek legislative favors. It is seldom that such agents make any effort to win votes by honest argument. It is seldom, in truth, that any honest argument is on their side. What they depend upon is the power of money.

In one hand of the agent is his proposal and in the other hand is a sum in cash. Sometimes the proposal is so vile that even the perfume of a wad of greenbacks cannot drown its stench. In that case it is rejected—and both the agent and the legislators mourn. But in many other cases the proposal is but mildly disgusting or the perfume of the greenbacks is irresistibly powerful—and then the deal goes through.

That is the usual or orthodox form of the game. There is, however, another method of playing it. By this other method a person or corporation already enjoying some legislative favor is threatened with its withdrawal. The subsequent proceedings are as in the first case, with the sole difference that the aim of the agent is now to obtain votes against instead of votes for. On the furtherance of that aim he seeks legislators who are susceptible to temptation. Many men resist his wiles. But many other men yield to them.

What Dr. Wilson seeks to establish is that, in this business of resisting temptation, a bachelor has large advantages over a married man. A bachelor may be avaricious, he may yearn for money with a great yearning—but after all, that yearning is a merely subjective thing, with no external pressure upon it. If the bachelor would resist it, he has only his own weakness to fight. No thought of others corrupts and softens his judgment and his virtue. Battling with avarice, he sees it in its true colors; supposing him to have common sanity, be cannot be deceived into regarding it as generosity or self-sacrifice.

Not so the married man. The money that he earns, honestly or dishonestly, he seldom enjoys himself. Of every $10 of his income, nine go for the use and benefit of his wife and children. The result of this is that, after a while, he begins to think of money, not as a means of satisfying his own wants, but as a means of satisfying the wants of these dependents. When, by any accident, he loses $100, he feels, not merely stupid, but also downright rascally, for his loss has deprived his wife and children of things that they want, and even, perhaps, of things that they actually need, or think they need.

Thus a married man, confronted by temptation of a bribe in money, is infinitely less well-armored than a bachelor. On the one hand the natural instinct of honesty prompts him to spurn it, but on the other hand the natural instinct of avarice, prompting him to take it, is supported by the enormously powerful natural instinct of generosity, prompting him to take it and then give it to his wife. The battle, it must be plain, is unfairly fought. Two instincts war upon one—and the second of the two is a Jack Johnson.

In the soul of the bachelor the combat is more equal. The instinct of honesty has but a single antagonist to overcome, and that antagonist, in the case of the average man, is not fearsome. Avarice is not a common masculine failing. Few men, with only their own welfare to think of, show a very ardent yearning for money. The typical bachelor is a contented fellow. He settles down, by the time he is 30, into a rut of living, and in that rut he is happy. He knows very well that, by extra exertion, he might make more money, but he is firmly convinced that the money would not be worth the exertion.

But a man with a family on his hands snores beneath no such shady palm. Few married women, it is probable, find it impossible to imagine a more agreeable condition of life than that in which they are placed. Discontent, in truth, is the hallmark of the sex. Nine women out of 10 are constantly harassed and made unhappy by the superior social or sartorial splendors of other women. This unhappiness translates itself into the idea that some definite state of superiority would be agreeable. In other words, every woman cherishes the belief that it would be a nice thing if her husband made more money.

Naturally enough, the married man is brought under the sway of that belief. Beginning, perhaps, by protesting against it, he ends by accepting it. And in his acceptance of it, not only the negative desire to escape criticism and upbraiding, but also the positive desire to be generous plays a part. That is to say, a married man’s eagerness to get more money for his wife is, in part at least, a very worthy thing. Loving and revering her, he wants to surround her with comforts and luxuries. His dreams of wealth are indistinguishable, indeed, from dreams of arraying her in costly raiment and of giving her the opportunity to break the hearts of other less fortunate women.

These considerations are at the bottom of Dr. Wilson’s new jehad. He distrusts the married man; he trusts the bachelor. Both, perhaps, are equally honest at heart, but the temptations of the first are infinitely more powerful than the temptations of the other. A bachelor who permits himself to be bribed is frankly a scoundrel, but a married man who permits himself to be bribed may be moved by a generous and entirely worthy impulse to give his beloved wife an automobile or an opera cloak, his son a college education, his daughter a trip to Europe, or his mother-in-law a new set of artificial teeth.

Such impulses, whatever their surface virtue, corrupt and corrode the morals. They give temptation the force of a zymotic disease. The only man, indeed, who can afford to be absolutely and chemically pure is that man who has no one dependent on him and doesn’t care a hoot what happens to him—in brief, the honest bachelor.

H. L. Mencken