ROBERT A. WOODS
HEAD OF SOUTH END HOUSE, BOSTON
The capacity for being seen with the eye in the large, which New
York in her sky scrapers has purchased at so great a price, is the
birthright of Pittsburgh. Where from so many different points one sees
the involved panorama of the rivers, the various long ascents and steep
bluffs, the visible signs everywhere of movement, of immense forces at
work,--the pillars of smoke by day, and at night the pillars of fire
against the background of hillsides strewn with jets of light,--one
comes to have the convincing sense of a city which in its _ensemble_ is
quite as real a thing as are the separate forces which go to make it up.
The Allegheny River, providing a broad, open space up and down and
across which much of this drama of modern world industry may be viewed,
has at last come to mean not separation but identity of the population
on either side of it. If the banks of the river were improved, it
might easily be sentimentally as well as economically one of the most
important common possessions of the old and the new sections of Greater
Pittsburgh.
This tendency of cities to reach out and include their present
suburbs, and even the territory where their future suburbs are to
be,--a tendency which a few years ago was mocked at,--is in these
days seen to be normal and wise. The proper planning of the city's
layout, the proper adjustment of civic stress upon the different
types of people in a great urban community, demand the inclusion of
the suburbs. Greater Pittsburgh is less satisfactory than Greater New
York and Greater Chicago, only because it is less inclusive than they.
Some important suburbs of old Pittsburgh are not included, and the
suburbs of Allegheny are nearly all outside. The latter omission is
particularly unfortunate as it is doubtful whether Allegheny by itself
will raise the average civic and moral standard of the greater city.
It is regrettable too that Allegheny continues to show reluctance in
making common cause with her larger neighbor. The toll bridges and the
many obstacles against making them free, seem to typify the difficulty
of intercommunication. The two towns, however, so clearly belong
together that this feeling of clan cannot long survive. From nearly
every commercial point of view that is worth considering Allegheny is
dependent upon Pittsburgh. In the few exceptional instances, as in the
case of two or three large stores, Pittsburgh recognizes a measure of
dependence upon Allegheny. It is interesting that those of the old
families connected with Pittsburgh industries who still insist on
having town houses, reside on the Allegheny parks or commons.
A strong sense of corporate individuality comes to any community that
is arrested by the challenge of great tasks. One of the influences
leading to the creation of the greater city was the widening of the
territory administered industrially from Pittsburgh. The best oil wells
are now south rather than north of Pittsburgh, and the center of the
coal regions is fast passing from the southeast to southwest and on
into West Virginia. The necessity of easy transfer of iron ore from
the Superior region is bringing up insistently the proposal of a canal
to Lake Erie, so as to match some of Cleveland's special advantages.
The nine-foot channel for the whole length of the Ohio will enable
Pittsburgh's long arm to reach out and touch that of Cincinnati.
That the expansion of Pittsburgh was preceded and to some extent
directed by a reform administration, has tended greatly to re-enforce
the belief that Pittsburgh is moving organically toward the better
day in her public affairs. This is the first successful movement for
municipal reform in a generation. As I pointed out in my first article,
it got its immediate stimulus out of the impudent interference of the
state machine in unseating a mayor who had been elected by an opposing
local faction, and setting up a "recorder" in his place. Carried out
under the forms of legislation, this act stung Pittsburgh people into
a new feeling of municipal self-respect and led to their electing on
a Democratic ticket George W. Guthrie, who had been for many years
actively interested in the cause of municipal reform. Mr. Guthrie's
family, like the Quincys of Boston, has been represented for three
generations in the office of mayor.
Mayor Guthrie has made thorough application of the principles of civil
service reform. He has introduced business methods in the awarding
of all contracts, including the banking of the city's funds. In a
city where only a few years ago perpetual franchises were given to a
street railway covering every section, Mayor Guthrie has, so far as
the situation allowed, put in force the strictest new conception of
the public interest in relation to public service corporations. He
compelled the Pennsylvania Railroad to cease moving its trains through
the middle of what is potentially the best downtown street in the city.
The street railway company was required for the first time to clean and
repair the streets, to meet the cost of changes required by the work of
city departments, and to pay bridge tolls. Loose and costly business
methods in the city departments were radically checked, and accounts
with long arrearages involving heavy interest losses to the city, were
brought up to date. The cost of electric lighting to the city has been
reduced from ninety-six to seventy-two dollars a lamp. Economies have
been effected through having the city do some of its own asphalt paving
and water-pipe laying.
Along with economical departmental service have gone the intelligent
and effective efforts, which will be explained in other survey reports,
for improving the water supply, abating the smoke nuisance, combating
typhoid fever and tuberculosis by wholesale inroads upon almost
unbelievable sanitary evils, and for restraining and punishing the
exploiters of prostitution.
Not all American reform administrations can report a decline of two
mills in the rate of taxation. Had Pittsburgh not been compelled to
shoulder a special burden in including Allegheny's large municipal
costs accompanied with low property valuation, Mayor Guthrie would have
held the rate at this low point.
Under the new charter the mayor cannot succeed himself; so that the
question whether Mayor Guthrie could be successful with the enlarged
electorate is a theoretical one. Even if the machine should be
successful, a standard has been set which the citizens will remember
and return to.
Under the determined leadership of A. Leo Weihl, a Voters' League has
employed such methods for keeping proper standards before the voters
as have been successful in Chicago, Boston and other cities. Within
a few weeks, after a year or more of clever and determined pursuit,
seven members of councils and two bank officials have been arrested on
a charge of bribery. The officers of the league state that this step
is but the beginning. It is not claimed that this means anything more
than the highly public-spirited activity of a few citizens, and it may
be, as is currently reported, that such activity became possible in
that certain great financial interests decided to change their policy
as to dealing with city officials. However it became possible it meant
exposure and disgrace to a system which was rooted in traditions in
Pittsburgh. Just as this tradition was broken once in the election of
Mayor Guthrie as a result of a bitter sting to the self-respect of the
city; so now there is a cheering prospect that this poisoned goad will
rouse and mobilize an instinct for carrying moral reforms to the limit
which is very powerful in Pittsburgh when a situation forces the issue.
The present phase of political chicanery touches the banks, and the
reaction against it will be re-enforced by the growing concern of the
community in the face of bank defalcations amounting altogether to not
less than five million dollars within the past four years, some if not
all of which involved mysterious political complications.
[Illustration: GEORGE W. GUTHRIE.