LI

In taking the present occasion to say so much about the work in morals

which a mayor is expected to perform, I have a disquieting sense that

I have fallen into a tone too querulous for the subject, and perhaps

taken a mean advantage of the reader in telling of my troubles. It is

rather a troubled life that a mayor leads in one of these turbulent

American cities, since so much of his time is taken up by reformers who

seem to expect him somehow to do their holy work for them, and yet that

is doubtless the business of reformers in this world, and since it is

their mission to trouble someone, perhaps it is the business of a mayor

to be troubled by them in his vicarious and representative capacity. I

should not deny reformers their rights in this respect, or their uses

in this world, and I should be the last to question their virtues.

John Brown was beyond doubt a strong character and an estimable man,

who did a great and heroic work in the world, even if he did do it in

opposition to the law, and by the law was killed at last for doing it,

but by all accounts he must have been a terrible person to live with,

and I have often been glad that I was not mayor of Ossawattomie when

he was living and reforming there. I would as soon have had Peter the

Hermit for a constituent.

I shall not go quite so far as to admit that our reformers were as

strong in character as either of these great models I have mentioned,

but they were as persistent, or in combination they were as persistent;

when one tired or desisted, another promptly took his place; there

were so many that they could spell each other, and work in relays, and

thus keep the torch ever alive and brandishing. It was not only the

social evil with which they were concerned, but the evil of drink, and

the evil of gambling, and the evil of theaters, and the evil of moving

pictures, and post cards, and of the nude in art, and of lingerie in

show windows, and of boys swimming in the river, and playing in the

streets, and scores of other conditions which seemed to inspire in them

the fear or the thought of evil.

With the advent of spring, the mayor must put a stop to lovers

wandering in the parks; when summer comes he must put an end instantly

to baseball; in the winter he must close the theaters and the dance

halls; in short, as I said before, whenever it was reported from any

quarter that there were people having fun, the police must instantly be

despatched to put a stop to it.

And strangely enough, even when we did succeed in doing away with

some of the evils of the town, when we closed the saloons promptly at

midnight, the hour fixed by ordinance, when we did away with many evil

resorts, when wine rooms were extirpated, and the number of _maisons

de tolerance_ were reduced by eighty-five per cent., when gambling was

stamped out, their complaints did not subside, but went on, unabated,

the same as before. They could not be satisfied because the whole of

their impossible program was not adopted, and more because there was

no public recognition of their infallibility and no admission of their

righteousness. What that type of mind desires is not, after all, any

reasonable treatment of those conditions, or any honest and sincere

endeavor to deal with them. It demands intellectual surrender, the

acknowledgment of its infallibility, and a protesting hypocrite can

more easily meet its views than anyone else.

No wonder then that even such a strong man as Tom Johnson, one evening,

when the day was done, should fling himself back in the motor car, with

the dark shadow of utter weariness and despair on his face, and say:

“I wish I could take a train to the end of the longest railway in the

world, then go as far as wagons could draw me and then walk and crawl

as far as I could, and then in the midst of the farthest forest lie

down and rest.”

We all have such moments, of course, but we should have fewer of them

if we had a national trait of which I have read, in a book by Mr.

Fielding Hall in relation to Burma. He says the Burmese have a vast

unwillingness to interfere in other people’s affairs.

“A foreigner may go and live in a Burman village,” he says, “may

settle down there and live his own life and follow his own customs in

perfect freedom; may dress and eat and drink and pray and die as he

likes. No one will interfere. No one will try to correct him; no one

will be forever insisting to him that he is an outcast, either from

civilization or from religion. The people will accept him for what

he is and leave the matter there. If he likes to change his ways and

conform to Burmese habits and Buddhist forms, so much the better; but

if not, never mind.”

What a hell Burma would be for the Puritan! And what a heaven for

everybody else! Perhaps we would all better go live there.

These things, however, should be no part of a mayor’s business,

and perhaps I may justify my speaking of them by saying that I

spoke of them principally to make that point clear. They and some

other problems that may or may not be foreign to his duties, have

the effect of keeping a mayor from his real work which is or should

be, the administration of the communal affairs of the city, and

not the regulation of the private affairs of the people in it.

It is quite impossible to imagine any work more delightful than

this administration. Hampered in it as one is by politicians, who

regard every question from the viewpoint of the parish pump, it

is nevertheless inspiring to be concerned about great works of

construction regarding the public comfort and convenience, the public

health and the public amenities. It is in such work that one may catch

a glimpse of the vast possibilities of our democracy, of which our

cities are the models and the hope.

I have observed in Germany that the mayors of the cities there are

not burdened by these extraneous issues, and I think that that is

the reason the German cities are the most admirably administered in

the world. Perhaps I should say governed, too, though that is hardly

correct, since the governing there is done by the state through its own

officials. I have not been in Germany often enough or remained long

enough to be able to assert that government, in its effect for good,

is quite as much a superstition as it is everywhere; mere political

government, I mean, which seems to be so implicitly for the selfish

benefit of those who do the governing. But the administration of

public affairs is so entirely another matter, that it is as beautiful,

at least in its possibilities as government is ugly in its actualities,

and it is precisely because there has been so much insistence on

government in our cities that there is as yet so little administration,

and that so inefficient.

In Germany the burgomeister is not chosen for his political views,

or for his theories of any sort, or for his popularity; he is chosen

because of his ability for the work he is to perform, and he is

retained in office as long as he performs that work properly. It is so

with all municipal departments and the result is order and efficient

administration. When a German city wants a mayor, it seeks one by

inquiring among other cities; sometimes it advertises for him. It

would be quite impossible, of course, for our cities to advertise for

mayors, not that there would be any lack of applicants, since everyone

is considered capable of directing the affairs of a city in this

country. Of course everyone is not capable; few of the persons chosen

are capable at the time they are chosen. Many of them become very

capable after they have had experience, but they gain this experience

at the expense of the public, and about the time they have gained it,

their services are dispensed with, and a new incompetent accidentally

succeeds them.

The condition is due partly to the fact that we are of a tradition that

is concerned with governing exclusively, and not administering; our

conception is of an executive, a kind of lieutenant or subaltern of

the sovereign power, and in our proverbial fear and jealousy of kings

we see that he does not have too much power or develop those powers he

has by a long tenure of office.

The officials of a German city are pure administrators, and nothing

else; they are not governors or censors. They are not charged in fact

with police powers at all. And if they were, they would not have

questions of such delicacy to meet, for the police there are for the

purpose of protecting life and property, and they are not expected to

regulate the personal conduct and refine the morals of the community,

or to rear the young. They have not confused their functions with

the _censores mores_ of old Rome, or like us, with the beadles of

New England villages of colonial times. That is, the Puritan spirit

is not known there, at least in the intensified acerbity in which it

exists with us; moral problems, oddly enough, are left to parents,

teachers or pastors. The police over there are generally a part of

the military organizations. It would be better of course, to bear the

ills we have than to transplant any military system to our soil, for

state police in America would become mere Cossacks employed to keep the

laboring population in subjection. But if the state is to undertake

to regulate the moral conduct of the inhabitants of cities, it should

provide all the means of regulation and take all the responsibility,

including the onus of violating the democratic principle. If the state

is to regenerate the land by the machinery of morals police, it should

have its own morals police, tell them just how to proceed to compel

the inhabitants of cities to be moral, and pay them out of the state

treasury.