MANHOOD SUFFRAGE AS APPLIED TO THE GOVERNMENT OF AMERICAN CITIES
HAS NOT ONLY BEEN A FAILURE BUT A DISASTER AND A SCANDAL
The worst ravages of pestilence do not appear in thinly settled
countries, but in the dense populations of cities. In like manner the
worst records of our manhood suffrage misgovernment are to be found in
American cities rather than in country districts. In the United States
all elective municipal officers are chosen by manhood suffrage. In
Europe this is not the case. In England, France and Germany it has not
been considered safe to trust the populace with the power to squander
away the city taxes; the municipal purse is by one device or another
kept within the control of the local property owners and business men.
The result is that the city governments in all these three countries are
far superior to ours. A prominent American writer says:
“There can be no reason or justice in permitting people who do not
pay taxes to vote away the property of those who do. In the
European cities, however wide the suffrage may be in national
matters, probably not one-half the men vote for city offices. In
Great Britain, the Low Countries, Germany, Austria-Hungary and
Italy such an absurdity as universal suffrage for city officers is
unknown (except in the very rare cases where a non-taxpayer’s
educational qualifications prevent his voting being absurd); and it
is in these countries that cities are best and most fully
developed, and do most for the health and happiness of the very
people who are not permitted to vote.” (Holt, _Civic Relations_,
1907.)
Limit of space forbids going into the details of the municipal
governments of the foreign countries just referred to; for that the
reader is recommended to Munro’s _Government of European Cities_ and
Albert Shaw’s two works, _Municipal Government in Great Britain_ and
_Municipal Government in Continental Europe_. The important thing in
city politics is to get the right men in office, and the inferiority of
American public officials as a class as compared with European office
holders is well known. In the New York _Times_ of October 19, 1919, this
inferiority is stated as a cause for a certain contempt of foreigners
for American institutions for which you can scarcely blame them. We
quote:
“The very poor types of public officials in our large cities,
particularly in New York, make a decided impression on our foreign
element. In their native countries public officials are held in great
respect, nearly all of them being men of standing in their communities
and generally men of education and culture. Socialist agitators take
great delight in holding up to ridicule the grade of men appointed and
elected to public office in this country. Most of these agitators being
foreign born realize that the high ideals of the foreign born have been
shattered after they have learned that ignorant and uncouth men can
reach high public position.”
The complete failure of municipal government in the United States has
caused great disappointment not only to our city taxpayers, but to the
friends of democracy throughout the world. Those who can not or will not
see the fatal defects in manhood suffrage are quite at a loss to explain
the situation. One of these is Lord Bryce, who says:
“The phenomena of municipal democracy in the United States are the
most remarkable and least laudable which the modern world has
witnessed; and they present some evils which no political
philosopher, however unfriendly to popular government, appears to
have foreseen, evils which have scarcely showed themselves in the
cities of Europe, and unlike those which were thought
characteristic of the rule of the masses in ancient times.”
(_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 377.)
It would be impossible in this volume to give even a summary account of
the effects of manhood suffrage upon municipal government in this
country. In New York City the ill results of the extension were plainly
discernible shortly after its institution in 1826 and increasingly
thereafter. (See Myers’ _History of Tammany Hall_; the _Evarts Report_;
and Moss’s _American Metropolis_ hereinafter referred to.) The local
affairs of the other smaller and newer cities were not of course
prominent till later years. There is not space here to treat the subject
in detail, and only a few illustrative instances can be given. But this
must be said at the outset, that the record of city government in the
United States since 1830 has been infamous; that on the whole it is a
history of ignorance, incapacity, venality, waste, extravagance,
corruption and robbery, carried to such an extent as to demonstrate the
utter incapacity of the populace for self-government; and that nothing
but the circumstance that in one way or another means have been found to
check the power of the people and their municipal representatives put in
power by the controllable vote has saved many of these cities from
bankruptcy and ruin. Looking into the record of the conditions of our
own time in our great cities, we find them thus described by Bryce:
“A vast population of ignorant immigrants; the leading men all intensely
occupied with business; communities so large that people know little of
one another, and that the interest of each individual in good government
is comparatively small.” There are, he says, large numbers of ignorant
and incompetent immigrants controlled by party managers; a large
shifting population, and the political machinery so heavy and
complicated as to discourage the individual, who feels himself a drop in
the ocean. “The offices are well paid, the patronage is large, the
opportunities for jobs, commissions on contracts, pickings, and even
stealings, are enormous. Hence, it is well worth the while of
unscrupulous men to gain control of the machinery by which these prizes
may be won.”
He further says:
“The best proof of dissatisfaction is to be found in the frequent
changes of system and method. What Dante said of his own city may
be said of the cities of America: they are like the sick man who
finds no rest upon his bed, but seeks to ease his pain by turning
from side to side. Every now and then the patient finds some relief
in a drastic remedy, such as the enactment of a new charter and the
expulsion at an election of a gang of knaves. Presently, however,
the weak points of the charter are discovered, the State
legislature again begins to interfere by special acts; civic zeal
grows cold and allows bad men to creep back into the chief posts.”
(_American Commonwealth_, Vol. I, p. 649; Vol. II, 99-100.)
Bryce condemns the giving the suffrage to the immigrants. “Such a
sacrifice of common sense to abstract principles has seldom been made by
any country.” But it is manifestly absurd to charge all our municipal
corruption upon the immigrants. Our native crop of controllable voters
far exceeds the imported one. Bryce is compelled to recognize the
situation in Philadelphia, where the Gas Ring ruled politics for a
generation by controlling the native American vote under American
managers. He says that “most of the corrupt leaders in Philadelphia are
not Irishmen, but Americans born and bred, and that in none of the
larger cities is the percentage of recent immigrants so small.”
(_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 421.) Though nothing will induce
Bryce, or any other British or American politician, to see the
deformities of manhood suffrage, yet he is willing to testify to the
facts. He says:
“There is no denying that the government of cities is the one
conspicuous failure of the United States.... In New York
extravagance, corruption and mismanagement have revealed themselves
on the largest scale.... But there is not a city with a population
exceeding 200,000 where the poison germs have not sprung into a
vigorous life; and in some of the smaller ones down to 70,000 it
needs no microscope to note the results of their growth. Even in
cities of the third rank similar phenomena may occasionally be
discerned.” (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. I, p. 608--quoted
approvingly by Rhodes, Vol. III, p. 62.)
It is impossible to give here even an outline of the mass of evidence in
the case or to make an approach to a picture of the enormous pillage
that has been in progress in our municipal affairs. Steffens in _The
Shame of Cities_ gives a summary of part of the facts relating to six
American cities, namely: New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago,
Minneapolis and Pittsburgh; and it makes a book of 300 pages. In each of
the governments of those cities Steffens discovered organized graft,
bribery and corruption. In St. Louis he reports a number of the members
of the municipal assembly as “utterly illiterate and lacking in ordinary
intelligence ... in some no trace of mentality or morality could be
found; in others a low order of training appeared, united with base
cunning, groveling instincts and sordid desires. Unqualified to respond
to the ordinary requirements of life they are truly incapable of
comprehending the significance of an ordinance and are incapacitated,
both by nature and training, to be the makers of laws.” Franchises,
etc., worth $50,000,000 had been granted in the past ten years and
scarcely one without bribery. As much as $50,000 was paid for a vote in
the municipal assembly. Companies were driven out by blackmail. Boodling
was the real business of the city officials. In Minneapolis in 1901 and
thereafter the city authorities were in a regular partnership with the
underworld and a large and steady revenue was collected for the ring by
corrupt methods. In Pittsburgh Steffens found a boss in control and the
usual systematic corruption. He noticed that the Pittsburgh method was
to put into all places of power dependents of the boss, men without
visible means of support; in fact the manhood suffrage idea was carried
out to its logical results. There was an agreement in writing between
the city boss and the state boss (Quay) for the control of politics.
Space will not permit the insertion here even of Steffens’ summary of
Pittsburgh graft and corruption; it dealt with franchises, public
contracts, profits of vice, public funds and miscellaneous sources of
revenue. Philadelphia is described as the most corrupt city in the land.
Good citizens there ask “What is the use of voting?” The city machine is
a mere dependent of the state machine. The system there is to apply to
the public service by way of compromise with the public a handsome
percentage of the collected taxes. Steffens recognized in Philadelphia
the complete and permanent overthrow of popular and honest government.
In Chicago he found a persistent struggle going on against the ever
active and ever powerful poison of corruption. He claims that some
headway has been made in the direction of reform by the efforts of a
powerful Chicago organization known as “The Municipal Voter’s League,” a
watchdog affair, reaching after control, and whose existence is a proof
and a confession of the absolute breakdown of manhood suffrage. Steffens
was compelled to say that he saw no remedy for the sad state of affairs
which he described as existing in these six different cities.
The testimony from all sources and periods since 1840 goes to establish
the prevalence of municipal corruption and misgovernment. Here is
Ostrogorski, referring to the year 1872 and succeeding years:
“Almost all the cities whose population exceeded one hundred
thousand, or even a lesser figure, had their Rings. In the course
of these last years, many great cities, such as St. Louis,
Minneapolis, San Francisco, added new pages of disgrace to the
history of municipal corruption carried on under the flag of
political parties.” (_Democracy and Political Parties in the United
States_, pp. 84, 85.)
Another writer (J. B. Miller) states that the debts of the cities of the
Union rose in the twenty years from 1860 to 1880 from about $100,000,000
to $682,000,000; from 1860 to 1875 the increase of debt in our eighteen
largest cities was 270 per cent; the increase of taxation was 362 per
cent; whereas the increase in taxable valuation was but 157 per cent and
in population but 70 per cent. In 1883 the late Andrew D. White wrote as
follows:
“I wish to deliberately state a fact easy of verification--the fact
that whereas, as a rule, in other civilized countries municipal
Governments have been steadily improving until they have been made
generally honest and serviceable, our own, as a rule, are the
worst in the world, and they are steadily growing worse every
day.” (_Message of Nineteenth Century to Twentieth._)
In a work published in 1899 by Dorman B. Eaton on the _Government of
Municipalities_, he summarizes in Chapter II the well known and
undeniable evils connected with our municipal affairs. He condemns our
municipal governments generally as needlessly expensive and inefficient
institutions, wherein bribery, blackmail and corruption are
characteristic features. He calls “the management of municipal politics
and elections a degrading business by which a class of useless and
vicious politicians prosper,” and speaks of the system as discreditable
and scandalous. “It is not,” he says (p. 22), “the gifted, the noble or
the honored men who generally hold the highest municipal offices, but
scheming politicians, selfish, adroit party managers, or men of very
moderate capacity and even of not very enviable reputation, who would
not be desired at the head of a large private business.” In December,
1890, in an article in the _Forum_ Mr. White wrote that he had sojourned
in every one of the great European municipalities; and that in every
respect for which a city exists they were all superior to our own except
Constantinople, where Turkish despotism produced the same haphazard,
careless, dirty, corrupt system which we in America know so well as the
result of mob despotism. We quote: “Without the slightest exaggeration
we may assert that, with very few exceptions, the city governments of
the United States are the worst in Christendom--the most expensive, the
most inefficient, and the most corrupt.” Bryce, writing in 1894, found
political rings in existence in New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis,
Cincinnati, San Francisco, Baltimore and New Orleans. He might easily
have found similar, though smaller and less conspicuous contrivances in
a thousand other cities, towns and villages in the United States.
Writing about 1898, Professor Hyslop recites a statement of some of the
various well known forms of municipal robbery prevalent in our city
administrations:
“Sales of monopolies in the use of public thoroughfares; systematic
jobbing of contracts; enormous abuses of patronage; enormous
overcharges for necessary public works. Cities have been compelled
to buy land for parks and places because the owners wished to sell
them; to grade, pave and sewer streets without inhabitants in order
to award corrupt contracts for the works; to purchase worthless
properties at extravagant prices; to abolish one office and create
another with the same duties, or to vary the functions of offices
for the sole purpose of redistributing official emoluments; to make
or keep the salary of an office unduly high in order that its
tenant may pay largely to the party funds; to lengthen the term of
office in order to secure the tenure of corrupt or incompetent men.
When increasing taxation begins to arouse resistance, loans are
launched under false pretences and often with the assistance of
falsified accounts. In all the chief towns municipal debts have
risen to colossal dimensions and increased with portentous
rapidity.” (Hyslop, _Democracy_, pp. 14, 15.)
This from another writer:
“No candid man can wonder at it. It is the plain, inevitable
consequence of the application of the method of extreme democracy
to municipal government. The elections are by manhood suffrage.
Only a small proportion of the electors have any appreciable
interest in moderate taxation and economical administration, and a
proportion of votes, which is usually quite sufficient to hold the
balance of power, is in the hands of recent and most ignorant
immigrants. Is it possible to conceive of conditions more fitted to
subserve the purposes of cunning and dishonest men, whose object is
personal gain, whose method is the organization of the vicious and
ignorant elements of the community into combinations that can turn
elections, levy taxes, and appoint administrators? The rings are so
skillfully constructed that they can nearly always exclude from
office a citizen who is known to be hostile; though a ‘good, easy
man, who will not fight, and will make a reputable figurehead, may
be an excellent investment.’ Sometimes, no doubt, the bosses
quarrel among themselves, and the cause of honest government may
gain something by the dispute. But in general, as long as
government is not absolutely intolerable, the more industrious and
respectable classes keep aloof from the nauseous atmosphere of
municipal politics, and decline the long, difficult, doubtful task
of entering into conflict with the dominant rings.”
* * * * *
“The problem,” says Mr. Sterne, “is becoming a very serious one,
how, with the growth of a pauper element, property rights in cities
can be protected from confiscation at the hands of the
non-producing classes. That the suffrage is a spear as well as a
shield is a fact which many writers on suffrage leave out of sight;
that it not only protects the holder of the vote from aggression,
but also enables him to aggress upon the rights of others by means
of the taxing power, is a fact to which more and more weight must
be given as population increases and the suffrage is extended.”
(Lecky, _Democracy and Liberty_, Vol. I, pp. 99-101.)
This from a high and recent authority:
“The standard of integrity in City Councils is far lower even than
in State Legislatures. The calibre of membership has so far
deteriorated that in a large proportion of the cities of the
country these bodies are held in public contempt.” (Appleton’s
_Cyclopedia of American Government_, 1914; Corruption,
Legislative.)
In the same work it is stated, in the article on “Bribery,” that “The
crime of accepting bribes has at one time or another been proved against
members of city councils in a large proportion of American cities.” This
from Ida Tarbell, the well-known writer:
“It is not too much to say that the revelations of corruption in
our American cities, the use of town councils, state legislatures,
and even of the Federal Government in the interests of private
business, have discredited the democratic system throughout the
world.” (_The Business of Being a Woman_, p. 79.)
In a report of a commissioner on the Boston city charter, November 6,
1884, it is stated that “the lack of harmony between the different
departments, the frequent and notorious charges of inefficiency and
corruption made by members of the government against each other, and the
alarming increase in the burden of taxation are matters within the
knowledge of all who have taxes to pay or who read the proceedings of
the City Council.” That report showed that during the previous thirty
years the population had increased 190 per cent; property valuations 200
per cent; expenditures 450 per cent. The appropriations were equal to
$27.30 per inhabitant, those of New York $16.76 per inhabitant. The
Boston politicians seem to have worked more stealthily and more
successfully than the Tweed Ring.
The corruption in Philadelphia city politics has been notorious for a
long time. The operations of the infamous Gas Ring caused the debt of
the city, which stood at $20,000,000 in 1860, to reach $70,000,000 in
1881. “Taxation rose in proportion, till in 1881 it amounted to between
one-fourth and one-third of the net income from the property on which it
was assessed, although that property was rated at nearly its full value.
Yet withal, the city was badly paved, badly cleansed, badly supplied
with gas (for which a high price was charged) and with water.”
(_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 410.) In a memorandum presented to
the Pennsylvania legislature in 1883 by a number of the leading citizens
of Philadelphia, they stated that the city’s affairs were in a most
deplorable condition. It is there stated to be the worst paved and worst
cleaned city in the civilized world; sewage so bad as to endanger
health; public buildings badly constructed and then allowed to decay;
slovenly management and high taxation. The Gas Ring system was that
already described. The political boss originally gained a following of
the floating and controllable voters, by which means he got in addition
political control of the city’s gas workmen, and through them of the
primaries, and thus complete power over city affairs. Elections were
controlled by repeating, personations, violence, ballot box tampering
and other frauds. It was not until 1887 that the final defeat of this
ring was obtained, after tremendous efforts. In that year the loose city
charter of 1854 was replaced by the tight-string Bullitt charter, and
the old gas ring was succeeded by a new combination of rascals. Under
this régime the city has been governed by oligarchies of city
contractors. One of the sources of corruption and scandal has been the
garbage and street cleaning contracts. There have been scandalous
dealings with street franchises. The elections have been fraudulently
conducted. Citizens have regarded it as hopeless to vote; out of 416,860
qualified citizens in the spring of 1919 only 241,090 registered as
voters. Probably only one-half of the voters actually went to the polls,
and those who voted were presumably the most unfit. Why should an
intelligent man trouble himself to go through such an empty form as that
of voting a mere protest against an overpowering gang of organized
freebooters? In 1918 the levying of political assessments on city
employees was still in force in Philadelphia, and collections were made
from ninety-four per cent of the city employees; the total being
$250,000 to $500,000 per year to the Republican party alone. A new city
charter has now (1919) been enacted and great reforms are promised, but
charter tinkering will never cure the evils created by a politically
rotten constituency. Judging the future by the past, there will soon be
a new Philadelphia plunder machine which will function till about 1950
when there will be a new revolution and a new ring, and so on.
Bryce states that similar complaints to those made by the Philadelphians
were constantly made by the citizens of the other principal cities of
the United States.
He gives a table of the increase of population, valuation, taxation and
debt in fifteen of the largest cities of the United States from 1860 to
1875, as follows:
Increase in population 70.5 per cent.
Increase in taxable valuation 156.9 “ “
Increase in debt 270.9 “ “
Increase in taxation 363.2 “ “
Bryce described city government in California in 1877 as very bad and
continuing bad up to his present writing (1894). He says: “The municipal
government of San Francisco was far from pure. The officials enriched
themselves, while the paving, the draining, the lighting, were
scandalously neglected; corruption and political jobbery had found their
way even into school management, and liquor was sold everywhere, the
publicans being leagued with the heads of the police to prevent the
enforcement of the laws.”
And again:
“San Francisco in particular continues to be deplorably
misgoverned, and passed from the tyranny of one Ring to that of
another, with no change save in the persons of those who prey upon
her.” (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 446.)
It is well known that the great loss of life and property in San
Francisco following the earthquake shock of 1906 was chargeable to civic
misgovernment. The damage done by the earthquake itself was
comparatively light, but the city aqueduct had been so badly built that
it was shaken down and the city was left without water, so that it was
impossible to put out the numerous fires resulting from the earthquake
shock, which, small in their beginnings, were allowed to ravage the
city.
The evidence as to smaller cities is similar. “In Minneapolis, for
instance,” says Steffens, “the people who were left to govern the city
hated above all things strict laws. They were the saloon keepers,
gamblers, criminals and the shiftless poor of all nationalities.”
(_Shame of Cities_, p. 65.)
The failure of manhood suffrage is also well illustrated by the history
of the City of New York, where there is a large class of unpropertied
voters and of which J. B. Miller, writing in 1887, said that the
interests of the City were represented almost exclusively by liquor
dealers both in the municipal and the state legislatures. In 1840 the
New York City debt was $10,000,000, about $33 per capita. In 1870 it was
$73,000,000, about $90 per capita. In 1918 (for the new and larger city)
it was $1,335,000,000, about $242 per capita. In 1816 the New York tax
levy was $344,802, being less than half of one per cent of the taxable
property. In 1918 the tax levy was $198,232,811, being 2.30 per cent of
the taxable property. In 1898 the New York City budget was $70,000,000;
by 1909 it amounted to $156,000,000. The increase in population was only
39.4 per cent in that time, while the city’s expenses increased 123 per
cent.
Further evidence may be found in the report of a Commission appointed by
Governor Tilden of New York in 1875, to consider the evils of the
municipal government of New York City and the necessity of adopting a
new and permanent plan for city government. Tilden was a man of
recognized ability. He appointed a commission of ten New Yorkers,
including judges, lawyers and publicists, men past middle age and of the
highest integrity, business experience and reputation. The chairman was
William M. Evarts, a distinguished statesman, leader of the New York
Bar, who at times held the offices of Attorney General and Secretary of
State of the United States. Their report, which was carefully prepared
and unanimous, described the steady deterioration in the government of
the city of New York which had then been progressing for a generation
past, and which they had seen in progress with their own eyes for that
period of time. The following extracts from the report are pertinent:
“In 1850, we reach a period when, as the annals of the metropolis
at that time and the recollections of those yet living, who were
then familiar with its affairs will attest, a marked decline had
occurred, through a great deterioration in the standing and
character of the city officers, bringing with it waste,
extravagance and corruption.”
The report refers to the period from 1850 to 1860. It says:
“Observers of the local government and politics of the metropolis
during this period will remember that it was the time when the
local managers first organized on a large scale their schemes to
control, through compact political arrangements, the management and
distribution of the revenues of the city, which then amounted to so
large a sum, and it may be said that from that time to the present,
with the exception of one short but memorable period, the
disposition of these revenues has remained substantially in the
hands of the chiefs of trained political organizations, which are
mainly supported, in some form or other, from this fund.”
Again:
“In truth, the public debt of the city of New York, or the larger
part of it, represents a vast aggregate of moneys wasted, embezzled
or misapplied.”
This waste and theft of public money the report refers to had its direct
cause in the incapacity and rascality of public officials all or most of
whom as we know were chosen either directly or indirectly by manhood
suffrage. The report further says on this point:
“We place at the head of the list of evils under which our
municipal administration labors, the fact that so large a number of
important offices have come to be filled by men possessing little,
if any, fitness for the important duties they are called upon to
discharge.... There is a general failure, especially in the larger
cities, to secure the election or appointment of fit and competent
officials.... Animated by the expectation of unlawful emoluments
they expend large sums to secure their places and make promises
beforehand to supporters and retainers to furnish patronage or
place.”
Also:
“It would be clearly within bounds to say that more than one-half
of all the present city debts are the direct results of the species
of intentional and corrupt misrule above described.”
Further:
“We do not believe that, had the cities of this State during the
last twenty-five years had the benefit of the presence in the
various departments of local administration of the services of
competent and faithful officers, the aggregate of municipal debts
would have amounted to one-third of the present sum, nor the annual
taxation one-half of its present amount; while the condition of
those cities in respect to existing provisions for the public
needs would have been far superior to what is now exhibited.”
The New York City tax levy for 1877, the year of the report, was
$28,400,000, one-half of which was caused by official robbery.
Therefore, according to the report of these able and experienced
citizens made after an examination of the city’s finances, the city had
been robbed of a sum which represented fourteen millions a year, and
which capitalized at five per cent amounts to $280,000,000, a fair
estimate of the amount of politicians’ loot up to that time. In other
words, every family in New York had on an average, been plundered to the
tune of $1400 by state and city politicians. If this $280,000,000 was
not loot what was it? And if not chargeable to manhood suffrage to what
is it chargeable?
The committee showed its opinion of the cause by its choice of the
remedy. It recommended the creation of a Board of Finance to control
municipal expenditures, and to be elected by tax and rent payers only.
This expedient, so objectionable to greedy and grafting politicians, was
never adopted or even offered to the people for adoption. The report
fell flat in a legislature elected by the controllable vote, and of
course thoroughly corrupt and unpatriotic.
Looking back still further and for the benefit of those who would like
additional evidence upon the political degeneracy of New York City, a
few facts will be given taken from Myers’ _History of Tammany Hall_ and
by him taken mostly from public documents, commencing about 1826 shortly
after “the great advance” which the twaddling sentimentalist writers
tell us was made by the introduction of manhood suffrage.
In the November election of 1827 was the greatest exhibition of fraud
and violence ever seen in the city. “Now,” (says Myers) “were observable
the effects brought forth by the suffrage changes of 1822 and 1826.”
Repeating flourished and honest voters were beaten and arrested for
trying to vote. Next year, in 1828, hundreds, if not thousands, of
illegal votes were counted, including those of boys of nineteen and
twenty years of age. This practice was continued in the ensuing decade.
It was then just one year after the complete triumph of manhood suffrage
in New York State that money was first used to influence voting in New
York City elections. The city was carried in 1828 by Tammany Hall for
Andrew Jackson. Four years later in 1832, and subsequent years, the
price of votes in New York City was stated at $5.00 each. Paupers from
the almshouse and convicts were voted at the polls. In 1838 Swartwout, a
Jackson collector of the port, and an unsavory politician, became a
defaulter for $1,200,000, an enormous sum for that time, and Price, the
United States district attorney, defaulted for $75,000. Civic frauds
were frequent and increasing. An aldermanic committee in 1842 reported
that dishonest office holders had recently robbed the city of near
$100,000, equivalent to a theft of $2,000,000 from New York City in our
time. The wholesale naturalization mill was put in operation, turning
out several thousand new voters a year. From 1841 to 1844 the total vote
of the city was thus increased about twenty-five per cent in newly
naturalized foreigners alone; most of them probably without interest in
the country or real understanding of its institutions and history. At
the election of 1844 it was estimated that twenty per cent of the votes
were fraudulent. The primaries were organized by violence and reeked
with fraud. The character of many of the noted city politicians was
notoriously bad, including professional gamblers, pugilists and even
thieves. About this time the city political gangs began to appear. The
ward heelers with a following of repeaters were a new power in politics.
In one period of ten months, 1839-1840, there were nineteen riots and
twenty murders in a city of only 300,000 population. Mike Walsh’s was
the principal gang. The gangs increased in number till in 1856 the
Bowery Boys and Dead Rabbits had a pitched street battle in Jackson
Street, where ten were killed and eighty wounded.
The sale of nominations to office first became notorious in 1846. Prices
ranged from $1,000 to $20,000. This circumstance alone is almost
convincing proof of universal corruption in public affairs since no one
buys an office unless with the knowledge that money is to be made
corruptly in its administration; and this is usually impossible or too
dangerous to be undertaken unless the general administration is so
corrupt as to be tolerant of fraud, bribery and extortion. The common
council was notoriously for sale; it was believed that every city
department was corrupt. In 1851 the Williamsburg Ferry scandal broke out
and it was shown that $20,000 in bribes had been paid to New York City
aldermen. The “Forty Thieves” was the name given to the New York City
aldermen of 1852, to whom one Jacob Sharp first applied for a franchise
to build a street railway on Broadway, New York. An injunction was
obtained; but they passed the franchise in defiance of the injunction.
Of the aldermen who thus voted, one was imprisoned for a fortnight and
the others fined. A similar affair was the sale of the New York Third
Avenue Street Railroad Franchise by the same board of aldermen; over
$30,000 was said to have been paid in bribes for this franchise, a great
sum for those days.
Occasionally when a quarrel broke out over the distribution of the
spoils the most appalling disclosures were made; such as those on an
investigation by the Grand Jury in 1853, when it appeared that the
aldermen demanded a share in every city contract. On February 26th,
1853, the grand jury of New York County handed down a presentment with
testimony to the effect that enormous sums of money had been expended
for the procurement of street railroad franchises in New York City. It
was ascertained that $50,000 had been paid in 1851 for the Eighth and
Ninth Avenue Railroad franchises; that in 1852 $30,000 was paid in
bribes for the Third Avenue Railroad franchise; that money was paid for
aldermanic votes on franchises of the Catharine Street, Greenpoint,
Williamsburg, Grand Street and Wall Street ferries. Numerous other
instances were given of bribery of members of the common council in
connection with sale of city property and other contracts. Evidence as
to police corruption was plentiful. The chief of police had received one
hundred and sixty-three conveyances of property in one year. (_Board of
Aldermen Documents_, Vol. XXI, part 2, No. 55, pp. 1333-35 and p. 1573;
Myers’ _History of Tammany Hall_, 167.)
Out of sixty thousand votes polled in 1854, ten thousand were for sale.
“In the city at this time were about ten thousand shiftless,
unprincipled persons who lived by their wits and the labor of others.
The trade of a part of these was turning primary elections, packing
nominating conventions, repeating and breaking up meetings.” In 1856
Josiah Quincy saw $25.00 paid for a single vote for a member of
Congress. The day “was enlivened with assaults, riots and stabbings.”
The frauds and scandals in city affairs continued and grew from 1854 to
1860; it was impossible to learn from the city’s books how much was
being plundered. In three years the taxes nearly doubled. From 1850 to
1860 the expenses of the city government increased from $3,200,000 to
$9,758,000.
Politics in the old Sixth Ward of New York is briefly sketched by Frank
Moss, at one time Police Commissioner, in his interesting work, _The
American Metropolis_. No doubt civilization existed in that district
from 1845 to 1865, the period referred to by Moss; there were churches
and schools, family and business life as elsewhere. It was originally a
fairly respectable neighborhood, but thanks to manhood suffrage, the
political life of the community was thoroughly savage and its
representatives savages, and it and they did much to degrade the whole
ward. First we find “that hard-faced, heavy-handed old rapscallion
Isaiah Rynders was the controlling spirit. There was nothing that
Rynders could not or would not do, and there are many dark stories of
his conduct during the draft riots of 1863.” He was the Boss of the
district, his assistants were ruffians, his leaders and backers were
office-holding politicians with the “Hon.” prefix to their notorious
names. He was succeeded by Con Donoho, the head of the street cleaning
department, whose gang finally trounced the Rynders gang into
submission and who became thereafter “on close terms with the strongest
political men of the city.” Moss finds thirty years later a similar
alliance between crime and politics in the Eighth Ward of New York,
among whose political rulers are, he says “pimps, gamblers, thugs,
fighters and dive keepers.”
In 1860 the mayor was accused of selling appointments to offices. The
Grand Jury in a presentment charged him with robbing the tax payers of
$420,000. The _New York Tribune_ in June 1860 publicly charged the
municipal authorities with theft of public funds. Other newspaper
criticism was silenced by orders for public advertising. The money voted
for street cleaning was squandered, and the streets were so filthy that
the death rate in 1863 was thirty-three per thousand. In a court
proceeding in 1867 it incidentally transpired that $50,000 had been paid
the common council for one gas franchise.
In 1857 the notorious William M. Tweed came into prominence and acquired
political power which he retained for fourteen years, during which time
he and his followers were steadily at work looting the city and
squandering and amassing fortunes. The history of the Tweed régime of
plunder in New York City is well known. In 1867 he was at the height of
his power. Prior to that date all public contractors in New York City
had been required to add ten per cent to their bills and pay over that
percentage to certain politicians. In 1867 this percentage was increased
to thirty-five per cent of which twenty-five per cent went to Tweed. The
County Clerk’s and Register’s office brought in $40,000 to $80,000 a
year each; the Sheriff’s office $150,000 a year. A part of this income
was of course available for election purposes. Tweed and all his
associates became rich notwithstanding that they lavished millions in
the purchase of voters and public officials. Out of his stolen millions
Tweed in the winter of 1871 gave $50,000 to the poor of his own ward and
perhaps as much more throughout the city. This made him popular with the
thriftless or pauper classes. Many of his transactions were in the
nature of purchases of the state legislature at Albany. He influenced
the press by means of advertising contracts, presents to reporters, etc.
One newspaper got a profit of nearly $200,000 on a printing contract;
another got $80,000 a year for advertising; presents to newspaper men
ranged from $200 to $2500 a year. In 1871 the _New York Sun_ proposed to
erect a statue to the great man. At his daughter’s wedding the gifts
were worth $100,000. From $36,000,000 in 1868 the city debt rose to
$136,000,000 in 1871. The new county court house cost the city
$12,000,000, of which $9,000,000 was undoubtedly stolen; repairs on
armories the value of which was $250,000 were charged at $3,000,000 and
so on. The total thefts of the Tweed ring amounted to somewhere between
$100,000,000 and $200,000,000; the precise figure has never been
ascertained. Had Tweed been less greedy, had his gang taken $25,000,000
instead of six times that sum they might have escaped. They went too far
and the Tweed ring was overthrown in 1871 by a powerful citizens’
movement.
The reader may wonder what the decent people of New York were thinking,
saying and doing all these years while these operations of the managers
of the controllable vote were in progress. Just exactly what they are
now thinking, saying and doing all over the country;--complaining and
deploring that it can not be helped. Sometimes on the heels of some
unusually scandalous disclosure a reform movement would be started,
aided perhaps by young men intensely patriotic, fresh from school and
college where they had read about our fine political structure in books
that fail to refer to the rotten foundation. They learned by sad
experience as others before them that the stream will rise no higher
than its source; that with a controllable electorate kindly provided by
the manhood suffrage constitution and an organization of scallawags,
loafers and criminals to control it the politicians had the best of the
situation. Bryce, who was in New York in 1870 and saw the Tweed Ring in
its glory, gives us a fine picture of the effect of manhood suffrage in
prostrating public conscience and energy. He says that the respectable
democratic leaders winked at the Ring’s misdeeds for the sake of the
vote; that the press had been purchased or subsidized; that the bench
was controlled; that three-quarters of the citizens “paid little or
nothing in the way of direct taxes, and did not realize that the
increase of civic burdens would fall upon them as well as upon the
rich.” Here you have the case as plain as day; the electorate, whose
business and function it was to secure good government and prevent these
evils, failed in its duty; it was itself corrupt and inefficient; and
why? Because three-quarters of it paid little or no direct taxes. In
other words, they were not property holders. Just as the human soul is
undiscoverable except as revealed by the human body, so civilization
exhibits itself in property; and the rabble who are unfamiliar with
property and are devoid of sympathy with its rights, feel no interest in
good government or in any other incident of civilization.
Bryce further says:
“Moreover, the Ring had cunningly placed on the pay rolls of the
city a large number of persons rendering comparatively little
service, who had become a body of janizaries, bound to defend the
government which paid them, working hard for it at elections, and
adding, together with the regular employees, no contemptible quota
to the total Tammany vote. As for the Boss, those very qualities in
him which repelled men of refinement made him popular with the
crowd.” (_American Commonwealth_, Vol. II, p. 391.)
Notwithstanding the Tweed disclosures there was no serious attempt to
apply the only practical remedy by reforming the electorate. Here and
there a voice was heard crying in the wilderness, but no one regarded
it. In October 1876, a writer in the _North American Review_ was
clear-eyed enough to read the lesson of the Tweed Ring. He wrote:
“A very few unscrupulous men, realizing thoroughly the changed
condition of affairs, had organized the proletariat of the City;
and through the form of suffrage had taken possession of its
government. They saw clearly the facts of the case, which the
doctrinaires, theorists and patriots studiously ignored or
vehemently denied.”
And as a remedy he proposed “A recurrence to the ancient ways; a strong
executive, a non-political judiciary,” and that “property must be
entitled to representation as well as persons.”
Of course, the article had no perceptible effect.
Once more the impossible task of creating a good government by means of
the votes of a purchasable constituency was attempted. Such of the
ablest men of the city as were willing to dip into the mire of manhood
suffrage politics devoted themselves to the task but in vain. The
hopelessness of the undertaking ought to have been apparent from such
facts as this, that Tweed’s own district re-elected him senator by a
large majority in November 1871 after he had been thoroughly exposed and
while he was being prosecuted for his crimes. The so-called reformers
who supplanted the Tweed clique in public office were only political
adventurers of a different type; more scrupulous, refined or timid than
their predecessors, but politicians after all, since none other could be
induced to enter the political arena. The coarse robberies of Tweed’s
time were discontinued, but the government of New York City by a
political clique organized on the basis of the use of the city spoils to
secure the controllable vote was continued. It was only for a few months
that the tempest cleared the air. The good citizens soon forgot their
sudden zeal, or became discouraged at the odds against them in a manhood
suffrage community. Neglecting the primaries where they had obtained but
slim results they allowed nominations to fall back into the hands of
spoilsmen, and the most important city offices to be fought for by
factions differing only in their name and party badges, because all were
clearly bent upon selfish gain. Roosevelt, writing in 1886, tells
something of the political conditions of this reformed “after-Tweed”
period:
“In the lower wards (of New York City), where there is a large
vicious population, the condition of politics is often fairly
appalling, and the (local) boss is generally a man of grossly
immoral public and private character. In these wards many of the
social organizations with which the leaders are obliged to keep on
good terms are composed of criminals or of the relatives and
associates of criminals.... The president of a powerful
semi-political association was by profession a burglar; the man who
received the goods he stole was an alderman. Another alderman was
elected while his hair was still short from a term in the State
prison. A school trustee had been convicted of embezzlement and was
the associate of criminals.” (_Century Magazine_ for November,
1866.)
Ostrogorski thus describes the period following Tweed’s overthrow:
“The principal instrument of this plunder was the police; they
levied a regular toll prescribed by a fixed tariff on all the
saloons, houses of ill fame, and gambling hells; extorted money on
false pretenses or on no pretenses at all from small traders whom
they had the power of molesting. Other perfectly lawful businesses
were subjected to a tribute; steamboat companies, insurance
societies, banks, etc., paid blackmail in return for the protection
accorded to them. The police captains and even the policemen had to
buy their places. The government of the city in fact became a huge
market in which the officers might as well have sat at little
tables and sold their wares openly.” (P. 81.)
In other words, the much vaunted reform uprising which overthrew Tweed
was without radical or permanent results, because it left the city still
at the mercy of the controllable vote.
A few later incidents may be added to Mr. Myers’ interesting collection.
In 1874 one McKenna was shot dead in an election fight in New York and
Richard Croker was accused of the crime and tried; the jury disagreed.
Croker afterwards became Tweed’s successor and political boss of New
York, retiring about 1899 to his native Ireland, with millions made out
of politics. About this time the Harlem court house was built. The
amount possible to steal was small, but the politicians displayed a
spirit worthy of past days; for $66,000 worth of construction they
collected from the city $268,000, or at the rate of four to one. In 1884
twenty-one members out of twenty-three of the Board of Aldermen of New
York voted to give the franchise for a surface railway on Broadway to
the Broadway Surface Railroad Company. The rival road, the Broadway
Railroad Company, tried to bribe the Aldermen with $750,000, half cash
and half bonds. The Aldermen feared the bonds might be traced, and
considered it wiser to accept the $500,000 cash offered by the Surface
Company. Each alderman was to receive $22,000. Three aldermen were
convicted, six fled to Canada and three turned State’s evidence. Ten
others were indicted but never brought to trial. After 1884 more
scientific methods replaced the rough old ways, and New York City
settled down to a steady stream of boss and machine rule, supported by
small graft, blackmail, voluntary contributions and assessments on
office holders. During the Croker régime, which commenced about this
time, it was understood that men of means, or corporations who wanted
“protection” in their property rights or in their various transactions,
lawful or otherwise, were expected to send their checks for proportional
sums to Croker without word or comment. For these contributions he could
not be required to account as he held no public office. It was believed
that Croker was fair to his contributors and that if trouble came they
would be looked after. This surely was better than paying blackmail to
all sorts of government officials. The machine therefore ran smoother
than in Tweed’s time; and probably the same kindness towards political
bosses is still practised by business men and corporations. There can be
no legal objection to such methods, they are safe in every way. In 1889
the Fassett investigating committee appointed by the state senate took
about 3500 pages of testimony in regard to city affairs showing that
blackmail was systematically levied on gambling houses, liquor saloons,
and other places. In 1892 there arose the “Huckleberry” street railway
franchise scandal connected with the grant of a valuable franchise in
the Bronx, New York City. In 1894 the Lexow Committee made a new state
senate investigation into New York City politics, disclosing fraudulent
voting under police protection; sale of police appointments at prices
from $300 to $15,000; blackmail levied systematically on liquor sellers,
gamblers, swindlers, and loose women. The revenue from these sources was
estimated at $7,000,000 annually. This did not include contributions
from corporations. In 1900 the so-called Mazet Senate Committee
conducted a third investigation which brought out evidence tending to
show that the mayor (Van Wyck) had been a party to a conspiracy to
create a monopoly of ice in the City of New York. The essential meanness
of a scheme to fatten on the needs of the poor during the sultry months
was apparent even to the most stupid voter; the mayor became unpopular
and at the end of his term retired to Paris with great wealth as it was
said. The Mazet committee unearthed the fact that the city contracts
went to politicians, not to business men.
Particulars of other scandals, such as the Ramapo Water Scheme; the
system of judicial assessments for office, the silent partnerships of
political leaders in city contracts, and police corruption must be
omitted here for want of space. About 1900 the New York, Westchester and
Boston Railroad Company, an adjunct of the New York, New Haven and
Hartford Railroad Company, was seeking a franchise to enter New York
City; it obtained it in 1904 from the New York municipal authorities.
Ten years afterwards in 1914 it was ascertained in an investigation by
the Interstate Commerce Commission that in order to get the franchise
the Railroad Company had been required to distribute $1,500,000 in cash
to politicians and to give a $6,000,000 contract to a business
corporation controlled by politicians. This same corporation obtained
other contracts from other quarters, about $15,000,000 in all, through
political influence.
The foregoing instances of New York municipal scandals are more than
sufficient for the purposes of this chapter. For an extended account of
some of the evils and problems of American municipalities the reader is
referred to _Eaton on Government of Municipalities_, published in 1899,
and to other works herein referred to. But you cannot (says Steffens)
put all the known incidents of the corruption of an American city into a
book; and it is probable that a mere sketch of all the actual discovered
and known American municipal frauds and malpractices committed or
culpably permitted in the past eighty years would fill many large
volumes. The statements of the writers hereinbefore quoted in proof of
the deplorable failure of American municipal government, though
necessarily general in terms are sufficient and convincing; and the
specific instances herein mentioned were given not so much to sustain
this undisputed general testimony as to illustrate it; and as a local
map or sketch may aid a traveller to call to mind the ground traversed
in past years, so here to assist the memory of the reader as to the
details and quality of frauds and rascalities notorious in their time,
and with the story of which he is or has been more or less familiar.
Nor will the limits of this volume permit an attempt to set forth an
account however slight of the various futile efforts made from time to
time to reduce the stream of municipal corruption. They have all failed
because they did not reach the source of the flow. In some American
cities an attempt at a qualified dictatorship has been made; instead of
the election of all civic functionaries, as required by the logical
application of the manhood suffrage doctrine, the plan has been adopted
of electing only a mayor, for four years, and giving him the unqualified
power of appointment of all other city officials. Instead of the annual
election of say ten heads of bureaus, or departments, a year, making
forty appeals to popular wisdom, we have thus in four years only one
such call for the _vox populi_. This is on its face a complete admission
of the failure of manhood suffrage; and in reality, this one-man system
has always been adopted after some disgusting exposure of rottenness in
city government had demonstrated that failure. Bryce furnishes a
chapter, written by Mayor Low, a reform mayor of Brooklyn, advocating
this sort of dictatorship, which was in use during his incumbency. Low
says that the local city legislative bodies have almost everywhere
abused their powers. This fact is notorious. Local self-government of
cities by boards of aldermen, or city councils, elected by the people
under the manhood suffrage system, has been productive of so many
grotesque blunders, shameful wastes and robberies, beside neglect and
mismanagement of city affairs, that it has been frequently thrown into
the discard, and replaced by boards, commissions, superintendents and
other appointive officials, as proposed by Low. But according to the
manhood suffrage theory this is all wrong and the municipal legislatures
chosen by the people, boards of aldermen, common councils (it used to be
a joke among the young men to call them “common scoundrels”) or what not
should have power to lay, collect and expend all city taxes. But every
one knows that if that were done, a perfect riot of extravagance and
plunder would forthwith ensue followed by insolvency, disorder, and
finally anarchy. Take the City of New York for instance, where the Board
of Aldermen, which is the municipal legislature, is elected by manhood
suffrage, and give that body the power of governing the city which
logically belongs to it upon the manhood suffrage theory, and in one
month’s time, demoralization would be apparent; the police and fire
departments unreliable, fire insurance rates doubled, expenses mounting
upward, the air filled with political scandals, and the city’s credit
stunned and languishing. Such is no doubt the opinion of probably
nineteen New York business men out of twenty, based upon history,
traditions, experience and observation. If manhood suffrage be right in
principle, the government of cities by representatives chosen at ward or
district elections would be the most successful feature of the American
democracy; for all the adjuncts of a working democracy, public schools,
newspapers, conferences and discussion of political questions abound in
the city more than in the country; but the contrary is the case. All
these advantages are offset and more by the simple fact that the
controllable vote is greater in the city than in the country. As to city
government by officials appointed under legislative authority, that too
has always failed for the reason that it has always been corrupted by
the legislative taint. Most of Tweed’s plundering was done with
legislative sanction.
There is nothing in the American atmosphere nor in the American blood to
prevent a pure civic administration. This appears by the actual
experience of the City of Washington. In 1867 Congress established
municipal government by manhood suffrage in the District of Columbia.
“Under these “conditions unrestricted suffrage produced extravagance,
corruption “and other incidents of bad government.” (Lalor’s
_Cyclopedia_, Suffrage.) Result, that in 1878 Congress had to abolish
elections in the District and to go back to the system which had been
adopted in 1798 of a government by an appointed board of three
commissioners. “Nevertheless” (says Eaton) “the City of Washington,
under this new system, has “had the most economical, efficient, and
respectable government “of any city in the United States.” (_Government
of Municipalities_, p. 156.) Here the appointing power is absolutely
free from the influence of the controllable vote or of any vote of the
people of Washington. This instance shows clearly that the mischief in
our popular system lies in the electorate itself. Meantime the people of
Washington are to be congratulated that they are free from the brutality
and roguery of a universal suffrage popular government.