I BECOME A CITIZEN
As I said, there were still many opportunities which I didn't have
time to improve. The three of us seemed to have breathed in down here
some spirit which left us almost feverish in our desire to learn.
Whether it was the opportunity which bred the desire or the desire as
expressed by all these newcomers, fresh from the shackles of their old
lives, which created the opportunity, I leave to the students of such
matters. All I know is that we were offered the best in practical
information, such as the trade schools and the night high schools; the
best in art, the best in music, the best in the drama. I am speaking
always of the newcomer--the emigrant. Sprinkled in with these was the
cheaper element of the native-born, whether of foreign or of American
descent, who spent their evenings on the street or at the cheap
theatres or in the barrooms. This class despised the whole business.
Incidentally these were the men who haunted the bread line, the
Salvation Army barracks, and were the first to join in any public
demonstration against the rich. The women, not always so much by their
own fault, were the type which keeps the charitable associations busy.
I'm not saying that among these there were not often cases of sheer
hard luck. Now and then sickness played the devil with a family and
more often the cussedness of some one member dragged down a half dozen
innocent ones with him, but I do say that when misfortune did come to
this particular class they didn't buck up to it as Helen Bonnington
did or use such means as were at their disposal to pull out of it.
They just caved in. Even in their daily lives, when things were going
well with them, they lost in the glitter and glare of the city that
spark which my middle-class friends lost by stagnation.
Because there was no poetic romance left in their own lives, they
despised it in the lives of others and laughed at it in art. Whatever
went back into the past, they looked upon scornfully as "ancient."
They lived each day as it came with a pride in being up-to-date. As a
result, they preferred musical comedy of the horse play kind to real
music; they preferred cheap melodrama to Shakespere. They lived and
breathed the spirit of the yellow journals.
I don't know what sort of an education it is the Italians come over
here with, but they were a constant surprise to me in their
appreciation of the best in art. And it was genuine--it was simple.
I've heard a good many jokes about the foolishness of giving them a
diet of Shakespere and Beethoven, of Mæterlinck and Mascagni, but that
sort of talk comes either from the outsiders or from the Great White
Way crowd. When you've seen Italians not only crowd in to the free
productions down here but have seen them put up good money to attend
the best theatres; when you've heard them whistle grand opera at their
work and save hard earned dollars to spend on it down town; when
you've seen them crowd the art museums on free days and spend a half
dollar to look at some private exhibition of a fellow countryman's,
you begin to think, if you're honest, that the laugh is on you. They
made me feel ashamed not only because I was ignorant but because after
I became more familiar with the works of the masters I was slower
than they to appreciate them. In many cases I couldn't. I didn't
flatter myself either that this was because of my superior frankness
or up-to-dateness. I knew well enough that it was because of a lack in
me and my ancestors.
Scarcely a week passed when there wasn't something worth seeing or
hearing presented to these people. It came either through a settlement
house or through the generosity of some interested private patron.
However it came, it was always through the medium of a class which
until now had been only a name to me. This was the independently
well-to-do American class--the Americans who had partly made and
partly inherited their fortunes and had not yet come to misuse them.
It is a class still active in American life, running however more to
the professions than to business. Many of their family names have been
familiar in history to succeeding generations since the early
settlement of New England. They were intellectual leaders then and
they are intellectual leaders now. If I could with propriety I'd like
to give here a list of half a dozen of these men and women who came,
in time, to revive for me my belief that after all there still is
left in this country the backbone of a worthy old stock. But they
don't need any such trivial tribute as I might give them. The thing
that struck me at once about them was that they were still finding an
outlet for their pioneer instinct not only in their professions and
their business, but in the interest they took in the new pioneer.
Shoulder to shoulder with the modern Pilgrims they were pushing
forward their investigations in medicine, in science, in economics.
They were adapting old laws to new conditions; they were developing
the new West; they were the new thinkers and the new politicians.
I don't suppose that if I had lived for fifty years under the old
conditions I would have met one of them. There was no meeting ground
for us, for we had nothing in common. I couldn't possibly interest
them and I'm sure I was too busy with my own troubles to take any
interest in them even if I had known of their existence.
Even down here I resented at first their presence as an intrusion.
Whenever I met them I was inclined to play the cad and there's no
bigger cad on the face of the earth than a workingman who is beginning
to feel his oats. But as I watched them and saw how earnest they were
and how really valuable their efforts were I was able to distinguish
them from still another crowd who flaunted their silly charities in
the newspapers. But these other quiet men and women were of different
calibre; they were the ones who established pure milk stations, who
encouraged the young men of real talent like Giuseppe, and who headed
all the real work for good done down here.
They came into my life when I needed them; when perhaps I was swinging
too far in my belief that the emigrant was the only force for progress
in our nation. I know they checked me in some wild thinking in which I
was beginning to indulge.
I find I have been wandering a little. But what we thought, counted
for as much towards the goal as what we did and even if the thinking
is only that of one man--and an ordinary man at that--why, so for that
matter was the whole venture. I want to say again that all I'm trying
to do is to put down as well as I can remember and as well as I am
able, my own acts and thoughts and nothing but my own. Of course that
means Ruth's and Dick's too as far as I understood them, for they
were a part of my own. I don't want what I write to be taken as the
report of an investigation but just as the diary of one man's
experience.
If I had had the time I could have seen at least two of Shakespere's
plays--presented by amateurs, to be sure, but amateurs with talent and
enthusiasm and guided by professionals. I could have heard at least a
half dozen good readers read from the more modern classics. I could
have listened to as many concerts by musicians of good standing. I
could have heard lectures on a dozen subjects of vital interest. Then
there were entertainments designed confessedly to entertain. In
addition to these there were many more lectures in the city itself
open free to the public and which I now for the first time learned
about. There was one series in particular which was addressed once a
week by men of international renown. It was a liberal education in
itself. Many of my neighbors attended.
But as for Dick he was too busy with his studies and Ruth was too glad
to sit at home and watch him, to go out at night.
What spare time I myself had I began to devote to a new interest.
Rafferty had first roused me to my duty as a citizen in the matter of
local politics and through the winter called often enough to keep my
interest whetted. But even without him I couldn't have escaped the
question. Politics was a live issue down here every day in the year.
One campaign was no sooner ended than another was begun. Sweeney was
no sooner elected than he began to lay wires for his fellows in the
coming city election who in their turn would sustain him in whatever
further political ambitions he might have. If the hold the boss had on
a ward or a city was a mystery to me at first, it didn't long remain
so. The secret of his power lay in the fact that he never let go. He
was at work every day in the year and he had an organization with
which he could keep in touch through his lieutenants whether he was in
Washington or at home. Sweeney's personality was always right there in
his ward wherever his body might be.
The Sweeney Club rooms were always open. Night after night you could
find his trusted men there. Here the man out of a job came and from
here was recommended to one contractor or another or to the "city";
here the man with the sick wife came to have her sent to some
hospital which perhaps for some reason would not ordinarily receive
her; here the men in court sent their friends for bail; here came
those with bigger plans afoot in the matter of special contracts. If
Sweeney couldn't get them what they wanted, he at least sent them away
with a feeling of deep obligation to him. Naturally then when election
time came around these people obeyed Sweeney's order. It wasn't
reasonable to suppose that a campaign speech or two could affect their
loyalty.
Of course the rival party followed much the same methods but the man
in power had a tremendous advantage. The only danger he needed to fear
was a split in his own faction as some young man loomed up with
ambitions that moved faster than Sweeney's own for him. Such a man I
began to suspect--though it was looking a long way into the
future--was Rafferty. That winter he took out his naturalization
papers and soon afterwards he began an active campaign for the Common
Council. It was partly my interest in him and partly a new sense of
duty I felt towards the whole game that made me resolve to have a hand
in this. I owed that much to the ward in which I lived and which was
doing so much for me.
In talking with some of the active settlement workers down here, I
found them as strongly prejudiced against the party in power as I had
been and when I spoke to them of Rafferty I found him damned in their
eyes as soon as I mentioned his party.
"The whole system is corrupt from top to bottom," said the head of one
settlement house to me.
"Are you doing anything to remedy it?" I asked.
"What _can_ you do?" he said. "We are doing the only thing
possible--we're trying to get hold of the youngsters and give them a
higher sense of civic virtue."
"That's good," I said, "but you don't get hold of one in ten of the
coming voters. And you don't get hold of one in a hundred of the
coming politicians. Why don't you take hold of a man like Dan who is
bound to get power some day and talk a little civic virtue into him."
"You said he was a Democrat and a machine man," said he, as though
that settled it.
"I don't see any harm in either fact," I said, "if you get at the good
in him. A good Democrat is a good citizen and a good machine is a
good power," I said.
The man smiled.
"You don't know," he said.
"Do _you_ know?" I asked. "Have you been to the rallies and met the
men and studied their methods?"
"All you have to do is to read the papers," he answered.
"I don't think so," I said. "To beat an enemy you ought to study him
at first hand. You ought to find out the good as well as the bad in
him. You ought to find out where he gets his power."
"Graft and patronage," he answered.
"What about the other party?" I said.
"Just as bad."
"Then what are you going to do about it?" I asked.
"Our only hope is education," he said.
"Then," I said, "why not educate the young politicians? Get to know
Rafferty--he's young and simple and honest now. Help him to advance
honestly and keep him that way."
He shook his head doubtfully but he agreed to have a talk with Dan. In
the meanwhile I had a talk with Dan myself. I told him what my scheme
was.
"Dan," I said, "you must decide right at the beginning of your career
whether you're going to be just a tool of Sweeney's or whether you're
going to stand on your own feet."
"Phot's the mather with Sweeney, now?" he asked.
"In some ways he's all right," I said. "And in other ways he isn't.
But anyhow he's your boss and you have to do what he tells you to do
just as though he was your landlord back in Ireland and you nothing
but a tenant."
"Eh?" he said looking up quick.
I thought I'd strike a sore spot there and I made the most of it. I
talked along like this for a half hour and I saw his lips come
together.
"He'd knife me," he said finally. "He's sore now 'cause I'm afther
wantin' to run for the council this year."
I had heard the rumor.
"Then," I said, "why don't you pull free and make a little machine of
your own. Some of the boys will stand by you, won't they?"
"Will they?" he grinned.
With that I took him around to the settlement house. Dan listened good
naturedly to a lot of talk he didn't understand but he listened with
more interest to a lot of talk about the needs of the district which
it was now getting cheated out of, which he did understand. And
incidentally the man who at first did all the talking in the end
listened to Dan. After the latter had gone, he turned to me and said:
"I like that fellow Rafferty."
That seemed to me the really important thing and right there and then
we sat down and worked out the basis of the "Young American Political
Club." Our object was to reach the young voter first of all and
through him to reach the older ones. To this end we had a "Committee
on Boys" and a "Committee on Naturalization." I insisted from the
beginning that we must have an organization as perfect as that of any
political machine. Until we felt our strength a little however, I
suggested it was best to limit our efforts to the districts alone. We
took a map of the city and we cut up the districts into blocks with a
young man at the head of each block. He was to make a list of all the
young voters and keep as closely in touch as possible with the
political gossip of both parties. Over him there was to be a street
captain and over him a district captain and finally a president.
All this was the result of slow and careful study. All the workers
down here fell in with the plan eagerly and one of them agreed to pay
the expenses of a hall any time we wished to use one for campaign
purposes. At first our efforts passed unnoticed by either political
party. It was thought to be just another fanciful civic dream. We were
glad of it. It gave us time to perfect our organization without
interference.
This business took up all the time I could spare during the winter.
But instead of finding it a drag I found it an inspiration. They
insisted upon making me president of the Club and though I would
rather have had a younger man at its head I accepted the honor with a
feeling of some pride. It was the first public office I had ever held
and it gave me a new sense of responsibility and a better sense of
citizenship.
In the meanwhile Dan made no open break with Sweeney but it soon
became clear that he was not in such good favor as before. Although we
had not yet openly endorsed his candidacy we were doing a good deal
of talking for him. I received several visits from Sweeney's
lieutenants who tried to find out just what we were about. My answer
invariably was "No partisanship but clean politics."
When it came time to register I was forced to register with one of the
two parties in order to take any part in the primaries. I registered
as a Democrat for the first time in my life. I also attended a primary
for the first time in my life. I also felt a new power back of me for
the first time in my life. Little by little Dan had come to be an
issue. Sweeney did not openly declare himself but it was soon evident
that he had come to the primaries prepared to knife Rafferty if it
were possible. Back of Dan stood his large personal following; back of
me stood the balance of power. Sweeney saw it, gave the nod, and Dan
was nominated.
Six weeks later he was elected, too. You'd have thought he had been
elected mayor by the noise the small boys made. Rafferty came to me
with his big paw outstretched,
"Carleton," he said, "the only thing I've got agin ye is thot ye ain't
an Irishmon. Faith, ye'd make a domd foine Irishmon."
"It's up to you now," I said, "to make a damned fine American."
It wasn't more than two months later that Dan came to me to ask my
opinion on a request of Sweeney's. It looked a bit off color and I
said so.
"You can't do it, Dan," I said.
"It manes throuble," he said.
"Let it come. We're back of you with both feet."
Dan followed my advice and the trouble came. He was fired from his job
as foreman under Sweeney.
But you can't keep down as good a foreman as Dan was and he had
another job within a week.
A few months later I had another job myself. I was made foreman with
my own firm at a wage of two dollars and a half a day. When I went
back and announced this to Ruth, she cried a little. Truly our cup
seemed full and running over.