New York City is not unique in its experience with political bossdom.
Nearly every American city, in a greater or less degree, for longer or
shorter periods, has been dominated by oligarchies.
Around Philadelphia, American sentiment has woven the memories of great
events. It still remains, of all our large cities, the most "American."
It has fewer aliens than any other, a larger percentage of home owners,
a larger number of small tradespeople and skilled artisans--the sort of
population which democracy exalts, and who in turn are presumed to be
the bulwark of democracy. These good citizens, busied with the anxieties
and excitements of their private concerns, discovered, in the decade
following the Civil War, that their city had slipped unawares into
the control of a compact oligarchy, the notorious Gas Ring. The city
government at this time was composed of thirty-two independent boards
and departments, responsible to the council, but responsible to the
council in name only and through the medium of a council committee. The
coordinating force, the political gravitation which impelled all these
diverse boards and council committees to act in unison, was the Gas
Department. This department was controlled by a few designing and
capable individuals under the captaincy of James McManes. They had
reduced to political servitude all the employees of the department,
numbering about two thousand. Then they had extended their sway over
other city departments, especially the police department. Through the
connivance of the police and control over the registration of voters,
they soon dominated the primaries and the nominating conventions.
They carried the banner of the Republican party, the dominant party in
Philadelphia and in the State, under which they more easily controlled
elections, for the people voted "regular." Then every one of the city's
servants was made to pay to the Gas Ring money as well as obeisance.
Tradespeople who sold supplies to the city, contractors who did its
work, saloon-keepers and dive-owners who wanted protection--all paid.
The city's debt increased at the rate of $3,000,000 a year, without
visible evidence of the application of money to the city's growing
needs.
In 1883 the citizens finally aroused themselves and petitioned the
legislature for a new charter. They confessed: "Philadelphia is now
recognized as the worst paved and worst cleaned city in the civilized
world. The water supply is so bad that during many weeks of the last
winter it was not only distasteful and unwholesome for drinking, but
offensive for bathing purposes. The effort to clean the streets was
abandoned for months and no attempt was made to that end until some
public-spirited citizens, at their own expense, cleaned a number of the
principal thoroughfares.... The physical condition of the sewers"
is "dangerous to the health and most offensive to the comfort of our
people. Public work has been done so badly that structures have to be
renewed almost as soon as finished. Others have been in part constructed
at enormous expense and then permitted to fall to decay without
completion." This is a graphic and faithful description of the result
which follows government of the Ring, for the Ring, with the people's
money. The legislature in 1885 granted Philadelphia a new charter,
called the Bullitt Law, which went into effect in 1887, and which
greatly simplified the structure of the government and centered
responsibility in the mayor. It was then necessary for the Ring to
control primaries and win elections in order to keep the city within
its clutches. So began in Philadelphia the practice of fraudulent
registering and voting on a scale that has probably never been equaled
elsewhere in America. Names taken from tombstones in the cemeteries and
from the register of births found their way to the polling registers.
Dogs, cats, horses, anything living or dead, with a name, served the
purpose.
The exposure of these frauds was undertaken in 1900 by the Municipal
League. In two wards, where the population had decreased one per cent
in ten years (1890-1900), it was found that the registered voters had
increased one hundred per cent. From one house sixty-two voters were
registered, of sundry occupations as follows: "Professors, bricklayers,
gentlemen, moulders, cashiers, barbers, ministers, bakers, doctors,
drivers, bartenders, plumbers, clerks, cooks, merchants, stevedores,
bookkeepers, waiters, florists, boilermakers, salesmen, soldiers,
electricians, printers, book agents, and restaurant keepers." One
hundred and twenty-two voters, according to the register, lived at
another house, including nine agents, nine machinists, nine gentlemen,
nine waiters, nine salesmen, four barbers, four bakers, fourteen clerks,
three laborers, two bartenders, a milkman, an optician, a piano-mover, a
window-cleaner, a nurse, and so on.
On the day before the election the Municipal League sent registered
letters to all the registered voters of certain precincts. Sixty-three
per cent were returned, marked by the postman, "not at," "deceased,"
"removed," "not known." Of forty-four letters addressed to names
registered from one four-story house, eighteen were returned. From
another house, supposed to be sheltering forty-eight voters, forty-one
were returned; from another, to which sixty-two were sent, sixty-one
came back. The league reported that "two hundred and fifty-two votes
were returned in a division that had less than one hundred legal voters
within its boundaries." Repeating and ballot-box stuffing were common.
Election officers would place fifty or more ballots in the box
before the polls opened or would hand out a handful of ballots to the
recognized repeaters. The high-water mark of boss rule was reached under
Mayor Ashbridge, "Stars-and-Stripes Sam," who had been elected in 1899.
The moderation of Martin, who had succeeded McManes as boss, was cast
aside; the mayor was himself a member of the Ring. When Ashbridge
retired, the Municipal League reported: "The four years of the Ashbridge
administration have passed into history leaving behind them a scar on
the fame and reputation of our city which will be a long time healing.
Never before, and let us hope never again, will there be such brazen
defiance of public opinion, such flagrant disregard of public interest,
such abuse of power and responsibility for private ends."
Since that time the fortunes of the Philadelphia Ring have fluctuated.
Its hold upon the city, however, is not broken, but is still strong
enough to justify Owen Wister's observation: "Not a Dickens, only a
Zola, would have the face (and the stomach) to tell the whole truth
about Philadelphia."
St. Louis was one of the first cities of America to possess the
much-coveted home rule. The Missouri State Constitution of 1875 granted
the city the power to frame its own charter, under certain limitations.
The new charter provided for a mayor elected for four years with the
power of appointing certain heads of departments; others, however,
were to be elected directly by the people. It provided for a Municipal
Assembly composed of two houses: the Council, with thirteen members,
elected at large for four years, and the House of Delegates, with
twenty-eight members, one from each ward, elected for two years. These
two houses were given coordinate powers; one was presumed to be a check
on the other. The Assembly fixed the tax rate, granted franchises, and
passed upon all public improvements. The Police Department was, however,
under the control of the mayor and four commissioners, the latter
appointed by the Governor. The city was usually Republican by about 8000
majority; the State was safely Democratic. The city, until a few years
ago, had few tenements and a small floating population.
Outwardly, all seemed well with the city until 1901, when the inside
workings of its government were revealed to the public gaze through
the vengeance of a disappointed franchise-seeker. The Suburban Railway
Company sought an extension of its franchises. It had approached the
man known as the dispenser of such favors, but, thinking his price
($145,000) too high, had sought to deal directly with the Municipal
Assembly. The price agreed upon for the House of Delegates was $75,000;
for the Council, $60,000. These sums were placed in safety vaults
controlled by a dual lock. The representative of the Company held one of
the keys; the representative of the Assembly, the other; so that neither
party could take the money without the presence of both. The Assembly
duly granted the franchises; but property owners along the line of the
proposed extension secured an injunction, which delayed the proceedings
until the term of the venal House of Delegates had expired. The
Assemblymen, having delivered the goods, demanded their pay. The
Company, held up by the courts, refused. Mutterings of the disappointed
conspirators reached the ear of an enterprising newspaper reporter.
Thereby the Circuit Attorney, Joseph W. Folk, struck the trail of the
gang. Both the president of the railway company and the "agent" of the
rogues of the Assembly turned state's evidence; the safe-deposit
boxes were opened, disclosing the packages containing one hundred and
thirty-five $1000 bills.
This exposure led to others--the "Central Traction Conspiracy," the
"Lighting Deal," the "Garbage Deal." In the cleaning-up process,
thirty-nine persons were indicted, twenty-four for bribery and fifteen
for perjury.
The evidence which Folk presented in the prosecution of these scoundrels
merely confirmed what had long been an unsavory rumor: that franchises
and contracts were bought and sold like merchandise; that the buyers
were men of eminence in the city's business affairs; and that the
sellers were the people's representatives in the Assembly. The Grand
Jury reported: "Our investigation, covering more or less fully a period
of ten years shows that, with few exceptions, no ordinance has been
passed wherein valuable privileges or franchises are granted until those
interested have paid the legislators the money demanded for action in
the particular case.... So long has this practice existed that such
members have come to regard the receipt of money for action on pending
measures as a legitimate perquisite of a legislator."
These legislators, it appeared from the testimony, had formed a
water-tight ring or "combine" in 1899, for the purpose of systematizing
this traffic. A regular scale of prices was adopted: so much for an
excavation, so much per foot for a railway switch, so much for a street
pavement, so much for a grain elevator. Edward R. Butler was the master
under whose commands for many years this trafficking was reduced to
systematic perfection. He had come to St. Louis when a young man, had
opened a blacksmith shop, had built up a good trade in horseshoeing, and
also a pliant political following in his ward. His attempt to defeat the
home rule charter in 1876 had given him wider prominence, and he soon
became the boss of the Democratic machine. His energy, shrewdness,
liberality, and capacity for friendship gave him sway over both
Republican and Democratic votes in certain portions of the city. A
prominent St. Louis attorney says that for over twenty years "he named
candidates on both tickets, fixed, collected, and disbursed campaign
assessments, determined the results in elections, and in fine,
practically controlled the public affairs of St. Louis." He was the
agent usually sought by franchise-seekers, and he said that had the
Suburban Company dealt with him instead of with the members of the
Assembly, they might have avoided exposure. He was indicted four times
in the upheaval, twice for attempting to bribe the Board of Health
in the garbage deal--he was a stockholder in the company seeking the
contract--and twice for bribery in the lighting contract.
Cincinnati inherited from the Civil War the domestic excitements and
political antagonisms of a border city. Its large German population gave
it a conservative political demeanor, slow to accept changes, loyal
to the Republican party as it was to the Union. This reduced partizan
opposition to a docile minority, willing to dicker for public spoils
with the intrenched majority.
George B. Cox was for thirty years the boss of this city. Events had
prepared the way for him. Following closely upon the war, Tom Campbell,
a crafty criminal lawyer, was the local leader of the Republicans, and
John R. McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer, a very rich man, of
the Democrats. These two men were cronies: they bartered the votes
of their followers. For some years crime ran its repulsive course:
brawlers, thieves, cutthroats escaped conviction through the defensive
influence of the lawyer-boss. In 1880, Cox, who had served an
apprenticeship in his brother-in-law's gambling house, was elected
to the city council. Thence he was promoted to the decennial board of
equalization which appraised all real estate every ten years. There
followed a great decrease in the valuation of some of the choicest
holdings in the city. In 1884 there were riots in Cincinnati. After the
acquittal of two brutes who had murdered a man for a trifling sum of
money, exasperated citizens burned the criminal court house. The barter
in justice stopped, but the barter in offices and in votes continued.
The Blaine campaign then in progress was in great danger. Cox, already
a master of the political game, promised the Republican leaders that
if they would give him a campaign fund he would turn in a Republican
majority from Cincinnati. He did; and for many years thereafter the
returns from Hamilton County, in which Cincinnati is situated, brought
cheer to Republican State headquarters on election night.
Cox was an unostentatious, silent man, giving one the impression
of sullenness, and almost entirely lacking in those qualities of
comradeship which one usually seeks in the "Boss" type. From a barren
little room over the "Mecca" saloon, with the help of a telephone,
he managed his machine. He never obtruded himself upon the public.
He always remained in the background. Nor did he ever take vast sums.
Moderation was the rule of his loot.
By 1905 a movement set in to rid the city of machine rule. Cox saw this
movement growing in strength. So he imported boatloads of floaters from
Kentucky. These floaters registered "from dives, and doggeries, from
coal bins and water closets; no space was too small to harbor a man."
For once he threw prudence to the winds. Exposure followed; over 2800
illegal voters were found. The newspapers, so long docile, now provided
the necessary publicity. A little paper, the Citizen's Bulletin, which
had started as a handbill of reform, when all the dailies seemed closed
to the facts, now grew into a sturdy weekly. And, to add the capstone
to Cox's undoing, William H. Taft, the most distinguished son of
Cincinnati, then Secretary of War in President Roosevelt's cabinet, in
a campaign speech in Akron, Ohio, advised the Republicans to repudiate
him. This confounded the "regulars," and Cox was partially beaten. The
reformers elected their candidate for mayor, but the boss retained his
hold on the county and the city council. And, in spite of all that was
done, Cox remained an influence in politics until his death, May 20,
1916.
San Francisco has had a varied and impressive political experience. The
first legislature of California incorporated the mining town into the
city of San Francisco, April 15, 1850. Its government from the outset
was corrupt and inefficient. Lawlessness culminated in the murder of
the editor of the Bulletin, J. King of William, on May 14, 1856, and a
vigilance committee was organized to clean up the city, and watch the
ballot-box on election day.
Soon the legislature was petitioned to change the charter. The petition
recites: "Without a change in the city government which shall diminish
the weight of taxation, the city will neither be able to discharge
the interest on debts already contracted, nor to meet the demands for
current disbursements.... The present condition of the streets and
public improvements of the city abundantly attest the total inefficiency
of the present system."
The legislature passed the "Consolidation Act," and from 1856 to 1900
county and city were governed as a political unit. At first the hopes
for more frugal government seemed to be fulfilled. But all encouraging
symptoms soon vanished. Partizan rule followed, encouraged by the
tinkering of the legislature, which imposed on the charter layer upon
layer of amendments, dictated by partizan craft, not by local needs.
The administrative departments were managed by Boards of Commissioners,
under the dictation of "Blind Boss Buckley," who governed his kingdom
for many years with the despotic benevolence characteristic of his kind.
The citizens saw their money squandered and their public improvements
lagging. It took twenty-five years to complete the City Hall, at a cost
of $5,500,000. An official of the Citizens' Non-partizan party, in 1895,
said: "There is no city in the Union with a quarter of a million people,
which would not be the better for a little judicious hanging."
The repeated attempts made by citizens of San Francisco to get a new
charter finally succeeded, and in 1900 the city hopefully entered a new
epoch under a charter of its own making which contained several radical
changes. Executive responsibility was centered in the mayor, fortified
by a comprehensive civil service. The foundations were laid for
municipal ownership of public utilities, and the initiative and
referendum were adopted for all public franchises. The legislative power
was vested in a board of eighteen supervisors elected at large.
No other American city so dramatically represents the futility of
basing political optimism on a mere plan. It was only a step from the
mediocrity enthroned by the first election under the new charter to the
gross inefficiency and corruption of a new ring, under a new boss. A
Grand Jury (called the "Andrews Jury") made a report indicating that
the administration was trafficking in favors sold to gamblers,
prize-fighters, criminals, and the whole gamut of the underworld; that
illegal profits were being reaped from illegal contracts, and that every
branch of the executive department was honeycombed with corruption. The
Grand Jury believed and said all this, but it lacked the legal proof
upon which Mayor Schmitz and his accomplices could be indicted. In spite
of this report, Schmitz was reelected in 1905 as the candidate of the
Labor-Union party.
Now graft in San Francisco became simply universal. George Kennan,
summarizing the practices of the looters, says they "took toll
everywhere from everybody and in almost every imaginable way: they went
into partnership with dishonest contractors; sold privileges and permits
to business men; extorted money from restaurants and saloons; levied
assessments on municipal employees; shared the profits of houses of
prostitution; forced beer, whiskey, champagne, and cigars on restaurants
and saloons on commission; blackmailed gamblers, pool-sellers, and
promoters of prize-fights; sold franchises to wealthy corporations;
created such municipal bureaus as the commissary department and the
city commercial company in order to make robbery of the city more easy;
leased rooms and buildings for municipal offices at exorbitant
rates, and compelled the lessees to share profits; held up milkmen,
kite-advertisers, junk-dealers, and even street-sweepers; and took
bribes from everybody who wanted an illegal privilege and was willing
to pay for it. The motto of the administration seemed to be 'Encourage
dishonesty, and then let no dishonest dollar escape.'"
The machinery through which this was effected was simple: the mayor had
vast appointing powers and by this means directly controlled all the
city departments. But the mayor was only an automaton. Back of him was
Abe Ruef, the Boss, an unscrupulous lawyer who had wormed his way into
the labor party, and manipulated the "leaders" like puppets. Ruef's game
also was elementary. He sold his omnipotence for cash, either under
the respectable cloak of "retainer" or under the more common device of
commissions and dividends, so that thugs retained him for their
freedom, contractors for the favors they expected, and public service
corporations for their franchises.
Finally, through the persistence of a few private citizens, a Grand Jury
was summoned. Under the foremanship of B. P. Oliver it made a thorough
investigation. Francis J. Heney was employed as special prosecutor and
William J. Burns as detective. Heney and Burns formed an aggressive
team. The Ring proved as vulnerable as it was rotten. Over three hundred
indictments were returned, involving persons in every walk of life. Ruef
was sentenced to fourteen years in the penitentiary. Schmitz was freed
on a technicality, after being found guilty and sentenced to five years.
Most of the other indictments were not tried, the prosecutor's attention
having been diverted to the trail of the franchise-seekers, who have
thus far eluded conviction.
Minneapolis, a city blending New England traditions with Scandinavian
thrift, illustrates, in its experiences with "Doc" Ames, the maneuvers
of the peripatetic boss. Ames was four times mayor of the city, but
never his own successor. Each succeeding experience with him grew more
lurid of indecency, until his third term was crystallized in Minneapolis
tradition as "the notorious Ames administration." Domestic scandal
made him a social outcast, political corruption a byword, and Ames
disappeared from public view for ten years.
In 1900 a new primary law provided the opportunity to return him to
power for the fourth time. Ames, who had been a Democrat, now found it
convenient to become a Republican. The new law, like most of the early
primary laws, permitted members of one party to vote in the primaries
of the other party. So Ames's following, estimated at about fifteen
hundred, voted in the Republican primaries, and he became a regular
candidate of that party in a presidential year, when citizens felt the
special urge to vote for the party.
Ames was the type of boss with whom discipline is secondary to personal
aggrandizement. He had a passion for popularity; was imposing of
presence; possessed considerable professional skill; and played
constantly for the support of the poor. The attacks upon him he turned
into political capital by saying that he was made a victim by the rich
because he championed the poor. Susceptible to flattery and fond of
display, he lacked the power to command. He had followers, not henchmen.
His following was composed of the lowly, who were duped by his phrases,
and of criminals, who knew his bent; and they followed him into any
party whither he found it convenient to go, Republican, Democratic, or
Populist.
The charter of Minneapolis gave the mayor considerable appointing power.
He was virtually the dictator of the Police Department. This was the
great opportunity of Ames and his floating vote. His own brother, a weak
individual with a dubious record, was made Chief of Police. Within a few
weeks about one-half of the police force was discharged, and the
places filled with men who could be trusted by the gang. The number
of detectives was increased and an ex-gambler placed at their head. A
medical student from Ames's office was commissioned a special policeman
to gather loot from the women of the street.
Through a telepathy of their own, the criminal classes all over the
country soon learned of the favorable conditions in Minneapolis, under
which every form of gambling and low vice flourished; and burglars,
pickpockets, safe-blowers, and harlots made their way thither. Mr. W.
A. Frisbie, the editor of a leading Minneapolis paper, described the
situation in the following words: "It is no exaggeration to say that in
this period fully 99% of the police department's efficiency was devoted
to the devising and enforcing of blackmail. Ordinary patrolmen on beats
feared to arrest known criminals for fear the prisoners would prove to
be 'protected'....The horde of detective favorites hung lazily about
police headquarters, waiting for some citizen to make complaint of
property stolen, only that they might enforce additional blackmail
against the thief, or possibly secure the booty for themselves. One
detective is now (1903) serving time in the state prison for retaining a
stolen diamond pin."
The mayor thought he had a machine for grinding blackmail from every
criminal operation in his city, but he had only a gang, without
discipline or coordinating power, and weakened by jealousy and
suspicion. The wonder is that it lasted fifteen months. Then came
the "April Grand Jury," under the foremanship of a courageous and
resourceful business man. The regime of criminals crumbled; forty-nine
indictments, involving twelve persons, were returned.
The Grand Jury, however, at first stood alone in its investigations. The
crowd of politicians and vultures were against it, and no appropriations
were granted for getting evidence. So its members paid expenses out of
their own pockets, and its foreman himself interviewed prisoners and
discovered the trail that led to the Ring's undoing. Ames's brother was
convicted on second trial and sentenced to six and a half years in the
penitentiary, while two of his accomplices received shorter terms. Mayor
Ames, under indictment and heavy bonds, fled to Indiana.
The President of the City Council, a business man of education, tact,
and sincerity, became mayor, for an interim of four months; enough time,
as it proved, for him to return the city to its normal political life.
These examples are sufficient to illustrate the organization and working
of the municipal machine. It must not be imagined by the reader that
these cities alone, and a few others made notorious by the magazine
muck-rakers, are the only American cities that have developed
oligarchies. In truth, not a single American city, great or small, has
entirely escaped, for a greater or lesser period, the sway of a coterie
of politicians. It has not always been a corrupt sway; but it has
rarely, if ever, given efficient administration.
Happily there are not wanting signs that the general conditions which
have fostered the Ring are disappearing. The period of reform set in
about 1890, when people began to be interested in the study of municipal
government. It was not long afterwards that the first authoritative
books on the subject appeared. Then colleges began to give courses in
municipal government; editors began to realize the public's concern in
local questions and to discuss neighborhood politics as well as national
politics. By 1900 a new era broke--the era of the Grand Jury. Nothing so
hopeful in local politics had occurred in our history as the disclosures
which followed. They provoked the residuum of conscience in the
citizenry and the determination that honesty should rule in public
business and politics as well as in private transactions. The Grand Jury
inquisitions, however, demonstrated clearly that the criminal law was no
remedy for municipal misrule. The great majority of floaters and illegal
voters who were indicted never faced a trial jury. The results of the
prosecutions for bribery and grosser political crimes were scarcely more
encouraging. It is true that one Abe Ruef in a California penitentiary
is worth untold sermons, editorials, and platform admonitions, and
serves as a potent warning to all public malefactors. Yet the example is
soon forgotten; and the people return to their former political habits.
But out of this decade of gang-hunting and its impressive experiences
with the shortcomings of our criminal laws came the new municipal era
which we have now fully entered, the era of enlightened administration.
This new era calls for a reconstruction of the city government. Its
principal feature is the rapid spread of the Galveston or Commission
form of government and of its modification, the City Manager plan, the
aim of which is to centralize governmental authority and to entice able
men into municipal office. And there are many other manifestations of
the new civic spirit. The mesmeric influence of national party names in
civic politics is waning; the rise of home rule for the city is severing
the unholy alliance between the legislature and the local Ring; the
power to grant franchises is being taken away from legislative bodies
and placed directly with the people; nominations are passing out of
the hands of cliques and are being made the gift of the voters through
petitions and primaries; efficient reforms in the taxing and budgetary
machinery have been instituted, and the development of the merit system
in the civil service is creating a class of municipal experts beyond the
reach of political gangsters.
There have sprung up all sorts of collateral organizations to help
the officials: societies for municipal research, municipal reference
libraries, citizens' unions, municipal leagues, and municipal parties.
These are further supplemented by organizations which indirectly add to
the momentum of practical, enlightened municipal sentiment: boards
of commerce, associations of business and professional men of every
variety, women's clubs, men's clubs, children's clubs, recreation clubs,
social clubs, every one with its own peculiar vigilance upon some corner
of the city's affairs. So every important city is guarded by a network
of voluntary organizations.
All these changes in city government, in municipal laws and political
mechanisms, and in the people's attitude toward their cities, have
tended to dignify municipal service. The city job has been lifted to a
higher plane. Lord Rosebery, the brilliant chairman of the first London
County Council, the governing body of the world's largest city, said
many years ago: "I wish that my voice could extend to every municipality
in the kingdom, and impress upon every man, however high his position,
however great his wealth, however consummate his talents may be, the
importance and nobility of municipal work." It is such a spirit as
this that has made the government of Glasgow a model of democratic
efficiency; and it is the beginnings of this spirit that the municipal
historian finds developing in the last twenty years of American life. It
is indeed difficult to see how our cities can slip back again into the
clutches of bosses and rings and repeat the shameful history of the last
decades of the nineteenth century.