I have spoken of the Independents as though they were an authentic
political party, when it was one of their basic principles to be
no party at all. They were Republicans and Democrats who, in the
revelation of Jones’s death, had come to see that it was the partizan
that was responsible for the evil political machines in American
cities; they saw that by dividing themselves arbitrarily into parties,
along national lines, by voting, almost automatically, their party
tickets, ratifying nominations made for them they knew not how, they
were but delivering over their city to the spoiler. As Republicans,
proud of the traditions of that party, they had voted under the
impression that they were voting for Lincoln; as Democrats they thought
they were voting for Jefferson, or at least for Jackson, but they had
discovered that they had been voting principally for the street railway
company and the privileges allied with it in interest.
And more than all, they saw that in the amazing superstition of party
regularity by which the partizan mind in that day was obsessed, they
were voting for these interests no matter which ticket they supported,
for the machine was not only partizan, it was bipartizan, and the
great conflict they waged at the polls was the most absurd sham battle
that ever was fought. It seems almost incredible now that men’s minds
were ever so clouded, strange that they did not earlier discover
how absurd was a system which, in order to enable them the more
readily to subjugate themselves, actually printed little wood-cuts of
birds--roosters and eagles--at the heads of the tickets, so that they
might the more easily and readily recognize their masters and deliver
their suffrages over to them. It is an absurdity that is pretty well
recognized in this country to-day, and the principle of separating
municipal politics from national politics is all but established in
law. Mr. James Bryce had pointed it out long before, but Jones seemed
to be almost the first among us to recognize it, and he probably
had not read from Mr. Bryce; he deduced the principle from his own
experience, and from his own consciousness, if not his own conscience,
perhaps he had some intimation of it from the Genius of These States,
whose scornful laugh at that and other absurdities his great exemplar
Walt Whitman could hear, echoed as from some mountain peak afar in the
west. But it was no laughing matter in Toledo in those days. Men were
accused of treason and sedition for deserting their parties; it made
little difference which party a man belonged to; the insistence was on
his belonging to a party; any party would suffice.
I have no intention, however, of discussing that principle now, but it
was the point from which we had to start in our first campaign, the
point from which all cities will have to start if they wish to be free.
The task we faced was relatively greater than that which Jones had
faced; we had a full ticket in the field, a candidate for every city
office and a man running for the council in every ward in town. Jones
had run alone, and though he succeeded there was always a council and
a coterie of municipal officials who represented the other interest in
the community. Of course he had made our work possible by the labor
he had done, great pioneer that he was. He had been his own platform,
as any candidate after all must be, but with our large movement it
was necessary to reduce our principles to some form and we tried to
do this as simply as we could. We put forth our belief that local
affairs should be separate from, and independent of, party politics,
and that public officers should be selected on account of their honesty
and efficiency, regardless of political affiliations; that the people
should be more active in selecting their officials, and should not
allow an office-seeker to bring about his own nomination; that the
prices charged by public service corporations should be regulated by
the council at stated intervals; and that all franchises for public
utilities should first be submitted to a vote of the people, that the
city should possess the legal right to acquire and maintain any public
utility, when authorized so to do by direct vote of its people, that
every franchise granted to public service corporations should contain
an agreement that the city might purchase and take over its property
at a fair price, whenever so voted by the people, and that no street
railway franchise should be extended or granted, permitting more than
three-cent fares, and unless it includes provision for universal
transfers, satisfactory service, and reasonable compensation for the
use of bridges, and we demanded from the legislature home rule, the
initiative and referendum and the recall.
Perhaps it was not such a little platform after all, but big indeed,
I think, when one comes to consider its potentialities, and if anyone
thinks it was easy to put its principles into practice, let him try it
and see! It was drawn by that Johnson Thurston of whom I spoke, and
by Oren Dunham and by Elisha B. Southard and others, citizens devoted
to their town, and already with a prescience of the city spirit. They
succeeded in compressing into those few lines all we know or need to
know about municipal government, and ages hence our cities will still
be falling short of the ideal they expressed on that little card. There
were many who went with us in that first campaign who did not see all
the implications of that statement of principles; none of us saw all
of them of course. The movement had not only the strength but the
weaknesses of all so-called reform movements in their initial stages.
Those who were disappointed or disaffected or dissatisfied for personal
reasons with the old party machines, no doubt found an opportunity for
expression of their not too lofty sentiments, although later on when
they saw that it was merely a tendency toward democracy they fell away,
not because the movement had deserted its original ideals but because
they at last understood them.
As I now look back on that first campaign, on the experience I had so
much dreaded, the perspective has worked its magic, and the hardships
and difficulties have faded away, even, I hope, as its enmities have
faded away, though remembering Jones’s admonition to “draw the sting”
I tried to keep enmities out of it. Since I could not bring myself
to discuss myself, I resolved not to discuss my opponents, and I
went through the campaign without once mentioning the name of one of
them--there were four candidates for mayor against me--without making
one personal reference to them. And never in any political campaign
since have I attacked an opponent. It was enough to discuss the
principles of our little platform; and the first task was to get the
electors to see the absurdity of their partizanship and to make clear
the necessity of having a city government that represented the people
or, since that phrase is perhaps indefinite, one that did not represent
the privileged interests of the city.
The campaign was like the old Jones campaigns, though not altogether
like them.
The legislature, which is always interfering as much as possible with
the cities, had changed the time of holding the municipal elections
from the spring to the autumn, one change wrought by a legislature in
cities that the people approved, since instead of those raw spring
winds we now have the glorious weather the autumn usually brings us
in the lake regions, with a sparkling air and a warm sun, and a long
procession of golden days, on which one really should be playing golf,
if one could play golf in the midst of a political campaign, which one
could not, since art and politics, or at least the practice of them,
are wholly incompatible.
There was no old gray Molly to jog about from one meeting to another,
and if there had been, she could not have jogged fast enough for the
necessities of that hour; and we established new precedents when Percy
Jones, the son of the Golden Rule Mayor, drove me about at furious
speed in his big touring car, the “Grey Ghost” the reporters called
it, and it streaked through the night, with its siren singing, from
place to place until I had spoken at half a dozen meetings. Every day
at noon it wheeled up to the entrance of the factories and shops as the
men were coming out for their noon hour. And such meetings I believe
were never held anywhere; there was an inspiration as the men crowded
about the car to hear the speeches; they were not politicians, they
were seeking nothing, they were interested in their city; and in their
faces, what is far above any of these considerations, there was an
eager interest in life, perhaps a certain hunger of life which in so
many of them, such were the conditions of their toil, was not satisfied.