Col. Robert Ingersoll once said of the city of St. Louis that, as
to Missouri, it was "a diamond pin in a dirty shirt." I will not
maintain the immaculateness of the shirt; but the diamond has
flaws, and is, in some respects, as a gem not far removed from
the "phony."
They call St. Louis "the solid city." It is solid. Also stolid.
It's a little Chinese. It regards the stranger as the enemy. In
St. Louis they don't gather in the stranger and skin him, as they
do in Chicago; but if he happens to have four dollars to invest
he is regarded as having designs upon the coagulated capital of a
select assortment of "stiffs," known as leading citizens. If he
have brains, they dicker with him and let him in on their deals
for a share in his. St. Louis is a close corporation. Less than
twenty men run it. Jim Campbell, Dave Francis, Geo. A. Madill,
Sam Kennard, Ed. Butler, Charlie Maffit, John Sculin, Edwards
Wittaker, Thomas H. West, Julius S. Walsh, George E. Leighton and
a few more own the town. They dare do anything. They control the
banks, the trust companies, the street railroads, the gas works,
the telephone franchises and the newspapers. Almost all the
ability in the town is engaged in their service. They gather it
in as it develops, and the multitude is made vassal to them. They
own everything in St. Louis worth owning. They are the local
nobility. They can crush anyone who ventures to oppose their
desires. When they war among themselves they manage that no
interloper shall come in for a share of the spoils. They unite
against the newcomer and crucify him. They control municipal
legislation. They buy aldermen like cattle. The city is at their
mercy. They are all religious and moral men; their crookedness is
purely commercial and political. Their different monopolies
oppress the town, and the press is their tool. Most newspaper
warfares upon them are mere "blinds" to draw off public attention
to one quarter, while they gobble up something valuable in
another.
St. Louis has had a reputation for a long time, for public
spirit. It's there all right, but it is public spirit for private
gain. Take the exposition. A job. Public money built the
structure. The city gave the ground, right in the heart of the
business-district-to-be. All the subscribers are frozen out but a
few shrewd ones own the whole business. They have a piece of
property worth at least eight million dollars. It is untaxed.
They rake in the coin accruing from the exposition. They work the
public up into supporting the venture, and three or four men in
large retail stores get all the benefit. They advertise their
private business by their public spirit, in capturing an
enterprise that in its inception was somewhat communal in
character.
St. Louis boasts of her fine Planters Hotel. Well, eight or ten
men have confidenced the public out of that property, and its
stupendous increment. Once there was subscribed $600,000 for what
are known as the Fall Festivities. There were illuminations for a
few years, and the Veiled Prophet pageant still survives; but
there has been no accounting for the $600,000 that anyone has
been able to understand. It is a legend in St. Louis that a large
wad of the $600,000 was invested in the Planters Hotel, in the
names of the individuals who made up the Fall Festivities
Association. They are drawing from the splendid institution the
earning upon money raised by miscellaneous public subscription.
No paper dare take up these matters and discuss them. If one were
to do so, it would not have five advertisements of the leading
retail dealers in anything in the whole city. Col. Charles H.
Jones, when editor of the Post-Dispatch, once criticized Mr. Sam
Kennard for something, and forthwith Barr, Nugent, Crawford,
Scruggs, Vandervoort and Barney, and the other big dealers
withdrew their patronage in order to prevent his making the sum
of money each year prescribed in his contract with Joseph
Pulitzer as the sine qua non to his retention of his place. They
drove him out of journalism finally. You've got to stand in with
all this gang, or go to the wall. The only person who gets
anything from them is the person who will do their work.
You go to the city hall in St. Louis, the old one, which looks
like a rickety tobacco warehouse, or the new one, which is a
realization in material of a bad dream consequent upon too much
rarebit, and you might as well be in Berlin. You are lost without
an interpreter. You must talk German or a Joe Emmet dialect, to
make yourself understood. Money only doesn't have to talk German
at the city hall. That is transferred without being translated.
The mayor of the town talks, in his public addresses, a lingo
that would make the fortune of a vaudeville comedian of the Dutch
Daly stripe; and his son, who is his secretary, has the
physiognomical symptoms of intellectuality that you might expect
in a dude who eats with his knife, or any Brummel of "the bad
lands." The lower branch of the municipal legislature is a
bedlam. Its sessions are eruptions of obscenity. Talk is indulged
in that would cause the ejectment of the talker from a bawdy-
house parlor. The august body never rouses into activity save
over some measure with "stuff" in it. The combine will take as
low as twenty-five dollars to beat or pass a bill. They introduce
bills to induce the franchise holding syndicates to put up money
to kill them, and business is at its best when two or three
street railroad bosses can be led into bidding against each other
for the passage or defeat of some measure. The St. Louis house of
delegates is as fine a gang of rapacious ruffians as ever invited
mob law in an American city.
Politics in St. Louis is practiced by the pimps and pothouse
habitues, just as in other cities. Two of the best known office
holders in the city have been accused publicly of stealing $1,200
that was given them to support a measure for capitol removal at
the last general election. They got the money to divide among the
members of the city committee, and no member of that body ever
saw a copper of it. The check was cashed, however. The governor
appointed to their present offices the men who got the money.
It costs more to conduct the city government of St. Louis than it
costs proportionately to govern New York. The town is overrun
with an army of men drawing salaries, and few sober breaths, but
doing nothing else. The present head of government when he left
the office of city collector, lost or destroyed his books, that
they might tell no tale of the monstrous malfeasance of his
administration. Corporations were held up for sums that never
appeared on the books. Instead of paying licenses and taxes,
merchants, manufacturers, saloon keepers, brewers and others paid
tribute to the then subordinates of the present mayor. Corruption
is rampant all through the city government. Every one knows it;
but no one feels like expressing it for the reason that such
exposures are "chestnuts" to the St. Louisan. There have been
reform waves in every large city in the Union, now and then. In
St. Louis, never. The syndicate of snappers that holds the
franchises won't have it. Reform doesn't go. They want the old
gang they have been dealing with, in power. No matter which gang
dominates, Democrat or Republican, the syndicate owns them. It
doesn't like the prospect of dealing with strangers. It likes to
buy over and over again the same old crowd to enact or defeat
certain bills. When the gang in power is Democratic, Ed Butler
does the buying. When the gang is Republican, Chauncey I. Filley
takes the money and dictates what his creatures shall do. Butler
disgorges something; Filley nothing. Butler deals with Filley
when Filley has fooled the people into electing his men, and vice
versa. It is Croker and Platt over again on a smaller scale.
These two men have all the corporations by their throats. They
are both men of genius in their line, commanding an insane
devotion among the slums and a certain amount of admiration and
awe, from among the wealthy, if not the respectable, of that
city.
The St. Louis police force is demoralized by politics. Robberies
and burglaries multiply. Purse-snatching from women by white and
black ruffians is sunk to a mere commonplace in the daily
newspaper reports. Thieves flourish, and are protected by petty
politicians. Real estate dealers work the police department about
once a year to chase the prostitutes out of one section of town
into another. It's all a job. The prostitutes pay big rents, $60
per month for a house that would rent to decent people for $25.
One crowd of agents gets the upper hand and starts an agitation
to get the "girls" out of the district they occupy into another,
in which the agents interested have a great many empty houses.
After a time another real estate combination is made, and the
poor bawds have to move again. Result of this? Many of the women
open assignation houses in the West End, or go "living decent"
under some man's care in that quarter, make the acquaintance of
good women, and innocent girls, and collect a "maiden tribute"
from among the latter for numerous old rakes who prefer the
sexually initiative to the referendum in the case of women in the
territory known as "tamale town." Kept women, the mistresses of
men driven from downtown, have been known to ingratiate
themselves, in the West End, with women moving in the very best
society. And all this to enable a few real estate men to rent at
exorbitant figures a few ramshackle houses to the women who must
stay "on the town."
St. Louis society is not so bad and vulgar as society in some
other cities. The city is so much like a village that no
opportunity is afforded for intrigue or depravity among the swell
set. Every one in St. Louis knows the business of every one else.
A woman cannot "go wrong" without being discovered. Most of the
details that you hear about the corruption of St. Louis society
are imagination wholly. There is a great deal of excessive
drinking at functions among women, but it is said that this is
notable rather because of the amount the girls can stand without
showing it than because of its prompting them to ribald
Terpsichorean evolutions. The world outside the swell set hears
occasionally of some girl who patronizes the punch bowl until she
falls into hysterics, but as a rule the up-to-date St. Louis girl
can "carry a load" with much dignity and grace.
St. Louis society is cheap and garish in spots. Some of the newly
rich are unbearably snobbish. The Granite Mountain set carries
its nose in the air most heinously and its chief female
representative is celebrated for her absurd malapropisms. There
is but one "fast" set in the town and that "fast" set is looked
down upon quite generally and quite sincerely. It is composed of
gay young married women who affect the Bohemian by drinking
cocktails in public and cutting up at the Jockey Club. One of the
members of this last set is the daughter-in-law of a Missouri
senator and a very pretty woman. Another of this set is the woman
who was voted the best dressed woman at the horse show in a
newspaper scheme. Her father is a millionaire doctor and her
husband is a thoroughbred. It cannot be said even of this set,
however, that it is fast in the immoral sense in which that word
usually is employed. It is gay and the women are only unfortunate
in having nothing to do and in dispelling weariness by silly and
flashy pranks in a social way.
There are some awfully funny society people in St. Louis. For
instance, I am told that one of the women who has recently
blossomed into the society columns is the wife of a millionaire
lumber man who lives in a swell place and whose stinginess is
peculiar in that it applies to everything but the feeing of the
reporters who write up his wife and daughter. There is another
woman whose burst into society has occasioned a great deal of
comment of late. She is the wife of a cattleman and certainly not
well trained in the graces, but she has her name in the papers
continually by virtue of presents of such things as bolts of silk
to society editresses. The wife of one of the police
commissioners, who used to be the widow of a former mayor, is a
fearful and wonderful matron in her methods of attaining
distinction. She dresses gorgeously at all public occasions and
has more color than a spectacular show at the theater. St. Louis
society is dull and unintellectual. As a rule, however, it does
not mask any corruption. There are not enough men in society to
give opportunity for corruption. Nowhere in the country are there
so many pretty girls without admirers. They have to go to the
theaters with their own fathers and brothers. The few men in
society are a lot of "cheap skates" who can not repay their
social obligations in the fashion supposed to prevail among them.
The St. Louis society belle has no good time of it. She doesn't
get rushed to any great extent at any time, and this is the more
remarkable because the wealthy girls are as much neglected as the
poor but pretty ones. St. Louis is the finest field in the world
for a man with nothing who wants to marry money. St. Louis
society doesn't patronize the theaters extensively. It is not
appreciative of music. It doesn't care for art. It is hopelessly
unaesthetical as a whole. The picture dealers, music dealers and
book sellers declare that their patrons come mostly from the
people who are not in the swell set. A peculiarity of St. Louis
society is that its members are as a rule procreative. There is
no suppression of increase and multiplication such as prevail in
the swell mob in other cities. A woman in St. Louis is not
disgraced by having three or four babies. As a rule also St.
Louis society women are not disposed to set up a rigid standard
of exclusiveness. They have taken up recently the wife of a young
man who was a singer with the Bostonians and it is the fad at
present to rave over her. The whole world knows, of course, that
a St. Louis girl insulted the Prince of Wales by refusing to meet
him, when he never had asked to have her presented. That,
however, was the most glaring effort ever made by a St. Louis
girl to get a lot of newspaper notoriety and at a cheap rate. To
the credit of the local high society it must be said that it does
not cultivate the newspaper habit of exploitation. It tolerates
the journalistic abuses of papers and write-ups. To be perfectly
just to society in St. Louis, about all that can be said of it is
that it is dull, principally, because it is decent. A man who is
an authority upon such matters tells me that there is not in real
society in St. Louis one woman of whom there has ever been any
scandal. The very highest society in St. Louis--the old families
are all Catholics, and very strict Catholics at that, and so
there is not the taint of animalism about it that you find else
where in the realm of the high flyers.
St. Louis cannot be said to be a moral city. It is as immoral as
any in the country. I am told that the professional Social Evil
in St. Louis is an unprofitable occupation "because of amateur
competition." I am quoting a gentleman who is interested in
sociological questions very largely. From what he said I deduce
the conclusion that the daughters of the poor are preyed upon by
the men so successfully as to account for the prevalence of
virtue in the wealthier circles. Fearful stories are current of
the immorality of the working girls, but these, I suppose, may be
discounted to a certain extent. I hesitate to tell you some
things I have heard about the tribute exacted of the girls in
some of the big dry goods emporiums. Suffice it to say that these
stories are told of three of the great merchant princes. One of
them is said to make it a rule that no girl shall be employed who
fails to understand that she is liable to his advances. Another
merchant prince, portly and domineering, who gained unenviable
notoriety because of his attempt at political coercion of his
employes, had a bad reputation in this same line. Still another
merchant prince who runs a strictly cash store, had one of his
girls arrested for stealing goods and refused to prosecute her
when she threatened to tell all she knew about how girls held
their places in his establishment. As I say, these stories should
be discounted, in all probability, but where there is smoke there
is fire and most of the stories come from the girls in the big
stores.
The city of St. Louis is hopelessly monotonous. It is a big
place. A great business is carried on there, but it seems to be
done by people somnambulistically. The soporific atmosphere that
the readers feel when perusing the "Globe-Democrat" or "Republic"
is characteristic of the town. The great majority of the people
seem unable to arouse themselves to any action, even of
viciousness. The crowd just lives as if it were soaked and sodden
in the city's vast beer output. It is content to let a few men
and a few big concerns monopolize all the business. It scarcely
has energy enough to try to amuse itself. It goes to bed at half
past nine, and never thoroughly wakes up. The town is sleepy,
notwithstanding its size and its boasted progress. It grows
because it can't help itself. The people appear to be good
because they've not energy enough to be otherwise. St. Louis,
Mo., November 10.
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THE STAGE AND STAGE DEGENERATES.