THE WORST TREASON OF ALL.
It will be remarked, somewhat impatiently I fear, by the reader of this
long and dismal series of stories of the way in which the municipal Thugs
did their deadly work, But where were the citizens? The good honest
citizens, we are told, are always in a majority. They proved that they
were able to elect their own City Government. Why did they not do it? What
is the use of talking about “the land of liberty,” “the Great Republic,”
and the Democratic principle, if the richest, oldest, and most
highly-educated city in the Western Continent is as impotent to use the
ballot-box to protect itself as if it were a city in the dominions of the
Great Mogul?
The answer of the Lexow Committee--not by any means a complete answer--is
as follows:--
The results of the investigation up to this point may ... be properly
summarised in the general statement that it has been conclusively
shown that in a very large number of the election districts of New
York, almost every conceivable crime against the elective franchise
was either committed or permitted by the police, invariably in the
interest of the dominant Democratic organisation of the City of New
York, commonly called Tammany Hall. The crimes thus committed or
permitted by the police may be classified as follows:--
Arrest and brutal treatment of Republican voters, watchers, and
workers; open violations of the election laws; canvassing for Tammany
Hall candidates; invasion of election booths; forcing of Tammany Hall
pasters upon Republican voters; general intimidation of the voters by
the police directly and by Tammany Hall election district captains in
the presence and with the concurrence of the police; colonisation of
voters, illegal registration and repeating, aided and knowingly
permitted by the police; denial to Republican voters and election
district officers of their legal rights and privileges; co-operation
with and acquiescence in the usurpation by Tammany Hall election
district captains and watchers of alleged rights and privileges, in
violation of law.
In fact, it may be stated as characteristic of the conditions shown to
exist by a cloud of witnesses that the police conducted themselves at
the several polling places upon the principle that they were there,
not as guardians of the public peace to enforce law and order, but for
the purpose of acting as agents of Tammany Hall, in securing to the
candidates of that organisation by means fair or foul the largest
possible majorities. They evidently regarded themselves as coadjutors
of that organisation, stationed at the several polls for the purpose
of securing its success whether by lawful or unlawful means, resorting
to device, oppression, fraud, trickery, crime, and intimidation of
almost every conceivable character....--Vol. i., pp. 15, 16.
It is to be regretted that sufficient time was not at the disposal of
your Committee to enable it to subject every district in the city to a
rigorous examination upon the lines of this branch of inquiry, whereby
a more accurate estimate of the effect of police interference might be
reached. Sufficient, however, appears upon the record to show beyond
peradventure that, owing to the practices above referred to during the
years covered by the investigation, honest elections had no
existence, in fact, in the City of New York, and that, upon the
contrary, a huge conspiracy against the purity of the elective
franchise was connived at and participated in by the municipal police,
whereby the rights and privileges of the individual were trampled
ruthlessly under foot, and crime against the ballot held high
carnival.--Vol. i., p. 17.
The date of this Report, be it remembered, was January 15th, 1895. It may
be supplemented by a very significant admission made by Mr. Goff, himself
a Republican and now Recorder of New York. Speaking of the election frauds
which he did so much to detect and punish in November, 1893:--
It would not be just to lay the blame exclusively upon the Tammany
inspectors, though, of course, being in the majority and in full
control, they were chargeable with all that took place. Republican
inspectors either openly co-operated with or quietly acquiesced in the
perpetration of the fraud.--_North American Review_, February, 1894,
p. 210.
The fraud on the ballot, to which both parties were privy, was all the
more abominable because the provisions of the law against such abuses were
very strict. But it is a favourite method in other countries than the
United States to salve an uneasy conscience by passing a rigorous law
without taking any precautions to see that it is carried into operation.
This mode of relieving the feelings had been indulged in by New Yorkers in
1890, when the Ballot Reform Act passed into law. But, writing in 1894,
Mr. Goff, who was Counsel to the Committee for the Prosecution of Election
Frauds, said:--
Since the enactment of the reform-ballot law in 1890 no organised
effort has been made to watch its operation or to detect any illegal
practices. The public was satisfied with the popular catch-name of the
Act, and it slept peacefully upon the assurance that fraud was no
longer possible; but the evidence obtained by the volunteer watchers,
and the finding of over sixty indictments by the Grand Jury, mainly
against election officials, demonstrate that false registration, false
voting, and bribery are as easily and as safely practised as they ever
were, and that perjury has enormously increased, owing to the number
of safeguards which must be sworn away by the fraudulent voter and the
collusive inspector.--_Ib._, p. 204.
There were 1,157 polling stations in New York in 1893, and it was not
possible to obtain competent watchers for all of them. But the evidence
obtained was sufficient to show on how colossal a scale the frauds were
practised, with the co-operation or connivance of both parties.
Ballot-stuffing seems to have been common. Mr. Goff says:--
Almost without exception there were more ballots found in the
ballot-box than the ballot clerk’s number showed to have been
delivered or the poll-list showed to have been voted, and in a great
number of districts more than the registration. How they came there is
to some extent a mystery: but in some places ballots were folded in
duplicate, and in others the pile of ballots on the table was added to
by a sleight-of-hand performance.--_Ib._, p. 209.
In the Thirty-sixth Election District of the Second Assembly District it
was estimated that 5,000 out of the 12,770 votes counted were fraudulent.
In the Seventh of the Third 567 ballots were found in the box for a
district which had only 508 names on the register. Repeating and
personation were almost universal. The lodging-houses played a leading
part in the squalid and sordid drama. The tramps who use these dossing
kens are all registered. But as they seldom pass three nights in the same
place, they rarely vote where they are registered. That, however, is a
mere detail. Mr. Goff says:--
The same men who registered did not, as a rule, vote upon the names
given. To have them do so would require their maintenance at the
lodging-house, and that would be too expensive. A more economic plan
was adopted. A few days previous to election the proprietors of the
lodging-houses were furnished, by the election-district captains, with
lists of the names registered from their houses. Separate slips for
each name were then supplied, and on election day the tramps, as they
come along, were handed the slips, and they voted on the names thus
given as frequently as they could get the slips. The election workers
were never hard pushed to bring out the registered vote. They simply
sent for the men when they wanted them, and were always supplied with
the required number. Sometimes the floater forgot the name given to
him or could not read the slip; sometimes a man who could not speak
English wrestled with an American name, or an English-speaking man
struggled with a Polish name. In all of these cases the obliging
inspectors helped them out either by looking at the slip or by giving
some sort of pronunciation to the unpronounceable name. In some
election districts there was a rivalry as to who could vote on the
most names, and the man who won the honours was an ex-convict, who
voted eighteen times in two election districts of the Third Assembly
District.--_Ib._, p. 205.
The evidence taken before the Lexow Committee abounds with vivid little
vignettes of how elections were conducted in New York City only four years
since.
Here, for instance, is what Mr. Louis Meyer, a Republican inspector in the
Third Assembly District, heard given as official directions by Police
Captain Devery to a platoon of policemen on the morning of the November
poll, 1893. The Union League and the City Club had decided to send
watchers to the polls to detect any illegal practices. So by way of
preparing for their reception, Captain Devery told the police in Mr.
Meyer’s hearing:--
There is a lot of silk-stocking people coming from up town to bulldose
you people, and if they open their mouths, stand them on their
heads.--Vol. i., p. 203, Lexow Report.
With such instructions it is not surprising that the police refused to
interfere when their attention was called to the most flagrant breach of
the law. Here is the story of Israel Ellis, Republican poll clerk at the
Fifth Election District of the Third Assembly:--
When several voters came and they were handed sets of ballots, I
wanted to get their names down, but the chairman and the officer told
me it would be sufficient for me to take down the name and the vote.
I told them it was not sufficient, because if I did not do this, there
would be a great deal of repeating done; and they said, “Never mind,
it is none of your business; you do as we tell you; it has been
carried on for a great length of time,” and I still kept on
protesting. And once the chairman of inspectors and another inspector
said if I didn’t shut up they would remove me from the board, and then
the officer said if I would not stop he would take a hand in that too.
Q. The policeman said that to you?
A. Yes, sir; and then several times the repeaters came in openly,
without any fear whatever, and they tried to vote, and each time I
protested and challenged their votes; and one time a repeater came in
and he passed the ballot clerk, he passed the chairman, but I
recognised him as a repeater, and I challenged the man, and I said,
“What is your name?” but the man had forgotten his name, because he
was voting for the second--third--time, and so I caught hold of that
man by the collar and ejected him, and the officer did not say one
word; a second time a man came in to vote which I myself recognised as
voting the second time in that election district; and another witness
told me, whose name I do not know, that he was voting for the third
time, and I waited until the man had voted, and I challenged his vote,
and the man voted, and after he voted I caught hold of that man, and
said, “Officer, I want you to arrest that man;” and the officer looked
at the ceiling, not at me; he did not say a thing, and he did not
arrest the man.
Q. Did you tell the officer what you wanted him to arrest him for?
A. I told him, the officer, that he voted for the second time to my
own knowledge, and the third time to the knowledge of a witness, and
wanted him to arrest him.
Q. And he looked at the ceiling?
A. He looked at the ceiling.--_Ib._, vol. i., pp. 216-17.
One voter was allowed to vote on the Christian name John. He could not
remember the other name. At the close seventy-two more votes were found in
the ballot-box than there had been voters in the booth.
A similar scene was described as occurring at the Third Election District
by Jacob Subin, a Republican watcher, who deposed that he had seen Mr.
Rosalsky, the captain of the Socialistic Labour Party, protest against a
young man who actually attempted to vote in Mr. Rosalsky’s name under his
very nose. Mr. Rosalsky grabbed hold of him and demanded that he should be
locked up as a repeater caught in the act. Three Tammany heelers thereupon
punched Mr. Rosalsky’s face for him. He called upon the policeman to
protect him. That worthy stretched himself leisurely and replied, “Well, I
guess I am pretty busy just now. I will see you after four o’clock, and
will have more time to spend.” The heelers then were for mauling Rosalsky
more severely; but the Tammany captain interfered, and, as an act of
grace, secured his release on condition that he went right away. Rosalsky
bolted for his life. After this Jacob Subin deemed it wiser to content
himself with a simple protest when he saw such repeating as this:--
I have seen the Tammany Hall heelers bring in five or six men, drill
them into line, and from the appearance of some of them they looked
like Irishmen, and some like recent importations from Chatham Square
or any of those dives, and most of those voted on Hebrew names; but
the fun of it was that they could not pronounce the name under any
circumstances that they were voting, and of course, as a rule, the
chairman of the board of inspectors used to correct them, and in some
instances they forgot their names entirely, and in such cases they
went out of the line, and then the heelers would approach them and
bestow such vile language upon them, and curse them and swear at them
for being so stupid as not to recollect the name of the person they
were voting under; and then they would drill them into line again, and
I protested against them. I attempted to challenge them, and I was
told unless I stopped monkeying with the regular way of doing business
that I would be thrown through the window.--Vol. i., p. 303.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE MONSTER HOTELS OF NEW YORK: HOTEL MAJESTIC.]
The appearance of the Tammany captain as master of the revels thus
reported by Jacob Subin is significant. Frank Nichols, in the
Twenty-ninth Election District of the Third Assembly, where they had
eighty-four more votes than they had names on the register, took two
voters to the poll. As he was on the wrong side his men were not allowed
to vote:--
I said, “Why can’t they vote?” and they said, “No, they could not
vote,” and I said, “What was the matter of these people they could not
vote?” and they said, “You go home; go home; you people can’t vote any
more,” and then I was put out in the middle of the street, and the
captain of the election district said, “Take this fellow away from
here,” and a fellow hit me in the eye with a brass knuckle.
Q. Did the police do anything at all?
A. No, sir; he would not arrest a cat that day as long as it belonged
to Tammany Hall; he would not arrest a cat.--Vol. i., p. 301.
Canute A. Deas, who was Inspector of Election at the First Election
District of the Third Assembly, protested fifty times in a single day
against barefaced repeating. The policeman whispered in his ear that he
meant to be fair, but he had his directions to take his orders from the
Chairman of the Board. Captain Devery drove up and stood laughing and
talking with the Tammany captain while the legal voters were in vain
clamouring to be allowed to vote. The Republican watcher was thrown out by
force under the eyes of the policeman:--
Q. Who threw him out?
A. The crowd--the Tammany Hall captain of the district, who was in
there; he was authority for everything.--_Ib._, vol. i., p. 279.
Examined by Chairman Lexow: When you said that the Tammany Hall
captain was authority for everything, what did you mean?
A. I meant that, whenever he desired to go into the polling place, he
did so, that whatever he wanted was done; it seemed that they all
worshipped him, bowed down to him.--_Ib._, vol. i., p. 287.
Another witness, Ralph Nathan, described how a Republican captain was
hustled out because he swore that a voter had already voted in four
election districts, for he had followed him round and had seen him do it.
Mr. Nathan said:--
The Tammany henchmen around the Third Assembly district have a
peculiar method of putting a man out; you cannot make a particular
charge of assault against them, hardly, but they push them out and
hustle them out; they have probably ten heelers at every election
district, and the polling place is generally narrow and small, and
they can fill up a place and push you out.--Vol. i., p. 290.
Here also is a description of the method in which repeaters were brought
up when wanted. Mr. C. H. P. Collis, a prominent citizen who acted as
watcher for the Twenty-second Election District of the Second Assembly
District, deposed that he saw repeating going on openly:--
Q. Men voted under names that were not theirs?
A. I cannot go so far as that.
Q. Describe what you did see?
A. I saw a man who sat at my side ticking off the list, and those
names that were not ticked he would take three or four of them, men
who had not voted, and hand them to an active worker, I supposed for
the purpose of having those people hunted up and brought to the
polls, which would be legitimate; but I saw this man take them out in
the street and hand them to the people there.
Q. Hand those names to the people?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Then what occurred?
A. Then after awhile a man would come in and walk up to the polls.
Q. And would he call off one of those names?
A. Yes, sir. In fact one man had forgotten his name and turned to the
man who brought him in, and said, “What is that?”--and he told him,
“John Kelly,” or whatever the name was.--Vol. i., p. 130-1.
As a pendant to this scene take the following description of what happened
at a previous election, where Mr. Thomas F. Harrington, Republican
watcher, who had been challenging repeaters, was set upon by one Whitty,
an ex-convict, as he was returning to the polling place to attend to his
duties. Whitty was carrying a club and a revolver. Harrington argued with
him, fearing that “they meant to inflict punishment upon me,” and
remonstrated against causing blood to be spilled on election day. Whitty,
however, held on to his man, whereupon, said Harrington:--
I grabbed him by the throat with my left hand and went to strike him
with my right, when the two officers (who had been standing watching
Whitty’s attack) rushed. One officer grabbed me by the coat and raised
his club to strike me, and I told him if he struck me I would kill him
where he stood, and a friend of mine came forward to help me, and the
other officer rushed out and grabbed him, and up with his stick to
strike him; they did not take hold of this Whitty at all; it was me
and my friend they took hold of.
Q. And these policemen made no move to protect you in any wise in this
assault, until you began to defend yourself?
A. No, sir.
Q. And then they laid hold of you and of your friend?
A. Yes, sir.--Vol. i., p. 135.
“We are in the business of carrying elections,” said Boss Tweed, and a
very successful business Tammany has made of it.
But what becomes of popular sovereignty, of the majesty of the ballot, of
the sacred privileges of citizenship?
[Illustration: MR. VAN WYCK. First Mayor of Greater New York.]
[Illustration: From the _Journal_, New York.]
PART III.
HAMSTRUNG CÆSARISM AS A REMEDY.
CHAPTER I.
DESPAIRING DEMOCRACY.
Despair is a strong word, nor can the citizens be rightly said to despair
of the Republic while they are still engaged in making energetic efforts
for its salvation. In the strict sense of the word, therefore, it is
absurd to speak of a despairing democracy, which is still struggling to
avert its threatened doom. But for democracy in the English sense of the
word there is no longer any struggle in the City of New York. The ablest
and the most hopeful Americans have given it up as a bad job, so far at
least as city government is concerned. Hence, it is no misnomer to speak
of Despairing Democracy as the natural and, perhaps, inevitable
consequence of the display of “Satan’s Invisible World,” a few hints and
glimpses of which have been afforded in the preceding chapters.
It seems but the other day that Mr. Andrew Carnegie flaunted before the
eyes of his former countrymen the magnificent achievements of the
principle which in city government is already abandoned in despair. Who
could have imagined when reading the exultant pæan chanted by this
American Scot over the achievements of “Triumphant Democracy” in the
Western Republic, that within a very few years we should be called upon to
chant a dirge over its grave in the first city in the United States.
Such an assertion will, no doubt, startle many readers both in the Old
World and the New. It will be vehemently contested, chiefly by those who
are too deeply immersed in the roaring eddies of the fight to be able to
appreciate the significance of the drift of the current which is sweeping
them free from their ancient moorings. But outsiders proverbially see most
of the game. It is in no spirit of exultation, but rather with a feeling
of profound regret, that I note the course which the law of evolution
seems to be taking in the great cities of the Western World. That regret
is chastened and subdued by two considerations. The first is based upon
the belief in the providential government of the universe. The second,
which is more personal to myself, is the fact that for nearly twenty years
I have been engaged in an attempt to compel hidebound devotees of
parliamentary government to admit the virtue that is latent in the Russian
autocracy. I am no bigot of Constitutionalism, neither am I guilty of the
arrogant folly of pronouncing judgment upon expedients the adoption of
which the ablest and wisest men in other lands deem to be indispensable.
But the most sympathetic observer, after he has made all allowances,
cannot ignore the salient fact of the situation, which is that by
universal consent of the ablest and most practical citizens in the
foremost city of America, democracy, in the ordinary sense of the term,
has hopelessly and irretrievably broken down.
Be it carefully observed that I limit the collapse of democracy to that
application of the principle which has hitherto been regarded as natural
and almost invariable. Democratic government, as defined by Abraham
Lincoln, “government of the people, for the people, and by the people,”
has in English-speaking lands, and nowhere more so than in New England,
been regarded as the government of the community by an elective
assembly--that is to say, representatives chosen by the different
localities meet together in a common council which is entrusted with
authority to manage the affairs of the community. The House of Commons is
the most familiar type of such a democratic assembly, but every town
council in the land is based on the same principle. Nor is it only in
Britain that this principle has been applied. It has hitherto prevailed
wherever democracy has been adopted as the system of government; whether
in the French Republic, in the German Municipalities, or in any and all of
our Colonies, the same principle invariably reappears. The centre of
authority is the elective assembly, composed of representatives of the
wards or districts or constituencies into which the city or community or
nation has been divided.
[Illustration: A VIEW IN BROADWAY.]
Of course, I shall be told, and justly told, that this system of what may
be called parliamentary or municipal democracy is by no means the only
form through which democracy can give effect to its will. This, of course,
is perfectly true, and that was why I was so careful to limit and define
what I meant by democracy. There is no danger of my forgetting that
democracy can exist without the usual parliamentary or municipal
apparatus. Russia, although governed autocratically, is nevertheless one
of the purest democracies in the world. Neither can any Englishman who
lived through the Second Empire in France forget that the Third Napoleon
always maintained that the Empire was the true and natural outcome of
modern democracy. Nevertheless, although the Tsar of Russia rules over a
democratic nation, and the Third Napoleon regarded himself as the armed
guardian of French democracy, the conventional conception of a democracy
in English-speaking lands has never been that of a community governed by
an autocrat, but always of a community in which the centre of power lay in
the elective assembly. It is this conventional theory of democracy which
has been thrown overboard in New York. Hence, from the point of view of
the parliamentarian or the conventional believer in government by an
assembly of elected persons, the Charter of Greater New York, under which
the first election has just taken place, is a more melancholy spectacle
than even “Satan’s Invisible World Displayed,” with all its saturnalia of
debauchery, violence and corruption. The Charter of Greater New York is
the direct outcome, the natural fruit of the bitter experience of Tammany
rule. Once more, to quote the familiar saying, “Sin when it hath conceived
bringeth forth death,” and the sin revealed by the Lexow Committee has
brought forth a deadly harvest in the Charter of Greater New York. Deadly,
that is, inasmuch as it is fatal to the principle of vesting the
government of the people in the elected representatives of the people in
public council assembled. For the central principle of the Charter of
Greater New York is the substitution of the authority of a Tsar-Mayor for
what has hitherto been regarded as the natural authority of an elected
council.
This is not a sudden and unexpected change. The evolution of an elective
autocracy has been in progress for some years, but it has never before
been brought into such conspicuous prominence as by the Charter of Greater
New York, for that Charter is the formal embodiment in black and white of
the central principle of the Second Empire, with certain modifications
which accentuate rather than diminish the expression of democratic
despair, of which it is the embodiment. It is this evolution of
Bonapartism, of an elective dictatorship, based on universal suffrage,
which is the most startling phenomenon of modern politics in the United
States. The Third Napoleon never claimed to reign by divine right. His
authority was based upon a mass-vote of the electors of France. His
throne, although propped by bayonets, was seated on universal suffrage,
and in theory he asserted, and in practice in the last years of his reign
adopted, the principle that this autocracy, which originally sprang from a
mass-vote of the people, needed to be renewed and confirmed from time to
time by a _plébiscite_ of the whole nation.
The government of Greater New York, as it has been established by the
Charter under which the recent election took place, is simply the Second
Empire of France re-established in the first city of the American
Republic, with the limitation that the reign of the despot shall be
rigidly limited to four years, after which he shall not be eligible for
re-election until the expiry of another term of an equal duration. That
this in no sense is an exaggeration, but a simple literal statement of
facts perfectly well known in the United States, I shall shortly proceed
to show; but before doing so it is well to note some of the circumstances
which led up to this extraordinary evolution of autocracy on Republican
soil.
[Illustration: CANDIDATE VAN WYCK IS SAID TO HAVE POLLED THE SOLID VOTE OF
THE CYCLISTS OF GREATER NEW YORK.]
[Illustration: MR. SETH LOW. First Tsar-Mayor of Brooklyn.]
CHAPTER II.
THE TSAR-MAYOR.
The parallel which instinctively occurs to the mind of the observer is one
of somewhat evil omen for the future of the American Commonwealth. The
Roman Republic evolved the Empire very much in the same way that the Tsar
Mayoralty of Greater New York has been evolved from the institutions which
preceded it. The Roman Empire was not based upon a _plébiscite_ of the
citizens, but equally with the New York Mayoralty it ignored the principle
of hereditary right. Occasionally the Imperial purple passed from father
to son, but for the most part the throne was filled by the only kind of
election possible in those days. The Emperor was the choice of men who
wielded, not ballots, but swords.
A study of the corruption and despair which produced the Roman Empire will
supply many curious parallels to the existing state of things in America.
In ancient Italy, as in modern New York, elective institutions had been
abused until the best citizens despaired of the Republic. The Third
Napoleon, in his history of Julius Cæsar, writes concerning the way in
which elections were managed in ancient Rome in terms which curiously
resemble those employed by the Lexow Committee in explaining how elections
were worked in modern New York:--
The sale of consciences had so planted itself in public morals, that
the several instruments of electoral corruption had functions and
titles almost recognised. Those who bought votes were called
_divisores_; the go-betweens were _interpretes_; and those with whom
was deposited the purchase-money were _sequestres_. Numerous secret
societies were formed for making a trade of the right of suffrage;
they were divided into decuries, the several heads of which obeyed a
supreme head, who treated with the candidates and sold the votes of
the associates, either for money, or on the stipulation of certain
advantages for himself or his friends. These societies carried most of
the elections, and Cicero himself, who so often boasted of the
unanimity with which he had been chosen Consul, owed to them a great
part of the suffrages he obtained....
This all was struck with decadence. Brute force bestowed power, and
corruption the magistracies. Numerous elements of dissolution
afflicted society; the venality of the judges, the traffic in
elections, the absolutism of the Senate, the tyranny of wealth, which
oppressed the poor by usury, and braved the law with
impunity.--“Julius Cæsar,” by Napoleon III., vol. i., p. 3.
As a way of escape from the disasters which afflicted the Republic, there
emerged in natural process of evolution, first, the dictatorship of Sylla,
then the triumph of Marius, afterwards the ascendency of Cæsar, which led
directly to the foundation of the Empire by Augustus. We are not within
sight of the Augustan Empire in the United States, but the same causes
which in the natural course of time ripened the Empire of the Cæsars are
to be seen in full operation on the banks of the Hudson. The United States
is happily at present without the legionaries whose supremacy enabled a
succession of military commanders to establish the Roman Empire upon the
grave of the Roman Republic. That element of danger may not be wanting in
time to come. The growth of imperial ambitions at Washington is one of the
most plainly marked signs of the times. A spirit which to-day annexes
Hawaii, threatens Spain, and defies Europe with the Monroe Doctrine, will
certainly be driven to increase its armaments or to abate its ambitions.
These things, however, belong to the next century. Sufficient unto the day
is the evil thereof.
The system of the Tsar-Mayor first came into operation at Brooklyn in
1882. It sprang, as did the Second Empire, from the timidity of the
citizens. Mr. Seth Low, the first Tsar-Mayor, writing in the last edition
of Bryce’s “American Commonwealth,” points out this very clearly. He
said:--
The aim of the Americans for many years deliberately was to make a
city government where no officer by himself could have power enough to
do much harm. The natural result of this was to create a situation
where no officer had power to do good.
The idea of allowing citizens in their wards to elect representatives, who
should wield all the powers vested in English, French or German town
councils, was regarded by Americans as savouring of suicidal recklessness.
To trust the elected representatives of the people in an American city, as
we trust the town councils of Birmingham and Glasgow, seems rash and
reckless to the American statesman. A very thoughtful writer in the
_Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science_ four
years ago, singled out the English municipal system as one which no sane
American would dream of applying to a great American city. He said:--
It may be safely said that this whole organisation of the Birmingham
government is an exaggeration of the features which have had the worst
effects in the United States. It must make the mouth of a Tammany
chief water to think of such a simplification of his labours and
increase of the opportunities for plunder.
Notwithstanding this, American observers have followed Mr. Chamberlain in
declaring that Birmingham is the best governed city of the world. That,
however, in no way reassures the American pessimist, who has put on record
his conviction that “the vicious principles evolved in English municipal
government will overcome any safeguard, and that it is only a question of
time when English cities have a taste of what New York has been through.”
The result of this deep-rooted conviction in the American mind, that the
elect of the people is certain to steal if he gets a chance, was that
city governments came into existence dominated by the one desire to
paralyse in advance the city council, to limit its opportunities of
stealing, and place it more or less at the mercy of the State
Legislatures. The result of this system born of cowardice and lack of
faith was to transfer almost all power in New York from the city
authorities to Tammany Hall. Tammany, in theory at least, was broad based
upon the people’s will, nor was there any limitation to the authority of
the Boss.
After a time the absurdity of this system, and the ruinous results which
followed, forced upon the minds of the more intelligent citizens the fact
that something must be done, and that at any cost. Some centre of local
authority must be created which could be trusted not to steal. Mr. Seth
Low explains and defends the establishment of the Tsar-Mayor on the theory
that cities in their organic capacity are more accurately described as
large corporations than as small states. He says:--
The better results flowing from this theory are easily made clear.
Americans are sufficiently adept in the administration of large
business enterprises to understand that, in any such undertaking, some
one man must be given the power of direction and the choice of his
chief assistants; they understand that power and responsibility must
go together from the top to the bottom of every successful business
organisation. Consequently, when it began to be realised that a city
was a business corporation rather than an integral part of the State,
the unwillingness to organise the city upon the line of concentrated
power in connection with concentrated responsibility began to
disappear. The charter of the city of Brooklyn is probably as advanced
a type as can be found of the results of this mode of thinking. In
Brooklyn the executive side of the city government is represented by
the mayor and the various heads of departments. The legislative side
consists of a common council of nineteen members, twelve of whom are
elected from three districts, each having four aldermen, the remaining
seven being elected, as aldermen at large by the whole city. The
people elect three city officers, besides the board of aldermen--the
mayor, who is the real as well as the nominal head of the city, the
comptroller, who is practically the book-keeper of the city, and the
auditor, whose audit is necessary for the payment of every bill
against the city, whether large or small. The mayor appoints
absolutely, without confirmation by the common council, all the
executive heads of departments. He appoints, for example, the police
commissioner, the commissioner of city works, the corporation counsel
or counsellor at law, the city treasurer, the tax collector, and, in
general, all the officials who are charged with executive duties.
These officials, in turn, appoint their own subordinates, so that the
principle of defined responsibility permeates the city government from
top to bottom. The mayor also appoints the board of assessors, the
board of education, and the board of elections. The executive officers
appointed by the mayor are appointed for a term of two years--that is
to say, for a term similar to his own.--Bryce’s “American
Commonwealth,” vol. i.
This Charter first came into effect in January, 1882, and Brooklyn has
been governed by Tsar-Mayors ever since. Mr. Seth Low, who was the first
Tsar-Mayor in America, and who subsequently served a second time, claims
for it the virtues and vices of all despotisms. When you have a good Tsar,
nothing can be better. When you have a bad Tsar, nothing can be worse. As
he says, the Brooklyn system “made clear to the simplest citizen that the
entire character of the city government depends upon the man chosen for
the office of Mayor.” It is, of course, playing double or quits. If you
get a good man, his immense power enables him to be potent for good, but
if you get a bad one, Heaven help the city!
The Brooklyn system was adopted with modification in several towns,
notably in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, and to a certain extent in
Philadelphia. The same system was carried out to its ultimate extreme in
the Charter of the City of Quincy, in Massachusetts. Mr. Gamaliel
Bradford, of Boston, in the May number of the _Annals of the American
Academy of Political and Social Science_ for 1893, thus explained the
evolution of the Tsar-Mayor as it could be seen in the Quincy Charter:--
It was provided that the mayor should be the only executive official
elected at all, and he by general vote of the city, so that he might
be the embodiment of the whole administration and responsible for it.
That he might be this, he was given the full power of appointment and
removal of all subordinates except the school committee, as to whom
even the radical framers of the charter shrank from encountering the
popular prejudice. It was held that the separate election of
officials, whether by popular vote or that of the council, is
destructive of all subordination, of all firm or efficient
administration, and of all personal responsibility. But the Quincy
charter ran counter to another prejudice much more deeply rooted: the
requirement of confirmation of the mayor’s appointments by the council
or aldermen.
The New York charter of 1884 gave to the mayor the full power of
appointment, though that of removal, which seems to be necessary to
make the other effective, was still jealously withheld. The Quincy
charter gives both powers in full measure. Another object aimed at,
though with some compromises, was to get rid of boards or commissions,
as overriding the mayor and destroying that personal responsibility
which was regarded as so important to public opinion. One man in every
place, that man directly responsible to the mayor alone, and the mayor
himself to the people, at short intervals; this was the guiding
theory. To obviate the almost morbid dread of one man power, it was
provided that the mayor might be removed from office by a
three-fourths vote of the council, and a new election ordered. The
theory was developed by another provision wholly new in the practice
of the country: that the heads of departments, as well as the mayor,
should be required to be present at the sessions of the council, to
explain the wants of administration, and to give a public account of
their stewardship in response to the questions of individual members.
It was expected that in this way the strength or weakness of the mayor
would be made clear to the popular apprehension, and that a better and
improving class of men would be chosen with a corresponding effect
upon city affairs.
Unfortunately, Mr. Bradford was compelled to admit, what Mr. Charles
Francis Adams had previously pointed out, that the experiment of the
Tsar-Mayor was, in Quincy, by no means justified by its results. Mr.
Bradford says:--
It must be admitted, upon the evidence of leading citizens of Quincy,
that the charter has thus far failed to accomplish its purpose; that
extravagance of expenditure, local jobbing and caucus politics are as
rampant as in other cities in the State.
Nevertheless and notwithstanding the disappointment in Quincy, when the
Charter of Greater New York came to be discussed, the advocates of what
may be called the English or normal system of vesting the government of
the town in the hands of an elective council were in a hopeless minority,
and the Charter of New York was drawn up upon the Tsar-Mayor basis. The
advocates of the Tsar-Mayor used all the familiar arguments which are
employed by apologists for autocracy all over the world. Their great
keynote was the need for the concentration of responsibility.
“It is necessary,” said Mr. Godkin, “to reduce to its lowest possible
point the number of executive officers whom the community has to watch.”
Mr. De Witt, Chairman of the Committee, who drafted the Charter for
Greater New York, put the matter succinctly when he wrote:--“I am for a
Tsar-Mayor, with a short term, and a free right to go again to the
people”; and then he added, recurring to the curious vein of fatalism
which in Napoleon found expression in a belief in his destiny, “I believe
that the Supreme Ruler of the universe moves through the mind of the
multitude, and in this age of free schools and ubiquitous journalism, no
mayor with plenary power and full responsibility would dare to permit
corruption or inefficiency to exist in any department. If he did, the
people would have only one head to hit, and one party to demolish.”
This change, to which we may take it American reformers are now definitely
committed, may be, as Mr. E. M. Shephard declared, “the most important
gain in municipal reform in our time,” or it may be the first step down
the inclined plane which leads to despotism. My duty is not to dogmatise,
but merely to describe. All that I would venture to observe by way of
comment is that the new reform seems to be at variance, not only with the
universally accepted English idea, which may, of course, be ignored, but
equally with the Jeffersonian theory of the fundamental principle of Local
Government. It may be necessary to fight fire with fire, and to cast out
the Boss by the Tsar-Mayor, but old-fashioned Liberals may be pardoned if
they feel that it is a very dangerous game to cast out the Devil by the
aid of Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils.
[Illustration: DR. ALBERT SHAW. Editor of the _Review of Reviews_, New
York.]
CHAPTER III.
THE CHARTER OF GREATER NEW YORK.
The Charter of Greater New York is the last, or rather the latest, of a
long series of Charters granted by the State Legislature of New York for
the government of the city. There were eleven distinct Charters granted
between 1846 and 1890, so that the average life of a Charter is only four
years. The Charter preceding this was regarded by Mr. Godkin as the best
because it reduced the elective element almost to vanishing point:--
No community as heterogeneous as ours can manage its affairs
successfully through democratic forms without reducing to its lowest
possible point the number of executive officers whom it has to watch,
and call to account when things go wrong. As soon as responsibility is
widely diffused in such a community, “deals” or bargains between
politicians for the division of the offices at once begin.
In no community, homogeneous or heterogeneous, can public affairs be
managed successfully when the supreme Legislature always stands ready to
remodel the Charter whenever the minority in the City can command the
support of the majority in the State. It is bad enough in London when the
minority in the County Council can appeal to the majority in the House of
Commons. But the House of Commons only interferes by way of obstructing
legislation desired by the Progressive majority. It never attempts to
revolutionise the constitution of the Council, because the majority at
Westminster does not agree with the majority at Spring Gardens.
It would not be a very great exaggeration to say that in the past the only
effective government of the City of New York has consisted of Tammany Hall
Executive as a Lower House, and the Legislature at Albany as an Upper
Chamber. These two bodies were not shadows. They were both governing
realities. When Tammany did not control the State Legislature, Albany was
the only hope of the despairing Republicans. How constant was the
interference of the State Legislature may be inferred from the fact,
vouched for by a return presented to a State Commission on the Government
of Cities, that in the ten years between 1880-9 no fewer than 399
different amending laws were passed at Albany affecting the Charter of New
York City. A State Legislature which passes nearly forty laws every year
changing or amending the City Charter is a factor to be reckoned with.
The demand for Home Rule for the city, often repeated, does not seem to be
supported in earnest by either party. Both admit the need for it. But
neither seem willing to risk anything to obtain it. The Charter of the
Greater New York sprang from the Commission appointed in 1896 to consider
and report upon the proposed consolidation and unification of the
government of the great urban area now known as Greater New York. The
subject had long been under discussion, but when the Charter came to be
drafted many drew back. Mr. Croker asserted that if the citizens had been
permitted to vote yea or nay upon the adoption it would never have come
into force. The Referendum was not permitted, and the Charter came into
force this year without the preliminary of a popular mass vote.
General Tracy, the Republican candidate at the recent election, was
President of the Charter Commission, with Mr. De Witt as Chairman of the
Committee. Among the other members were Mr. Strong, the Mayor of New York;
Mr. Seth Low, the first Tsar-Mayor of Brooklyn; Mr. Gilroy, Tammany
comptroller of the City of New York, and several other influential men.
They unanimously agreed to recommend the Charter as it stands at present,
although Mr. Seth Low and Mayor Strong dissented from one or two of its
provisions.
The Commissioners set to work in the belief that they were framing a
constitution for a city which in the lifetime of those now living would
have 6,000,000 citizens. Mr. De Witt, the Chairman of the Committee, who
tells us that “his embattled energies laboured at the Charter for eight
long consecrated months,” contemplated with pride the result of his
handiwork. Speaking of the Charter, he declares:--
It is adequate to all the emergencies of the vast future. It is
constructed not merely for the present, but for many centuries to
come. It has in it all the virtues of existing charters and the vices
of none. It will adapt itself to any extent of domain, and to any
multiple of population. As well with a population of ten millions as
with a population of three millions, it will give to each
neighbourhood the utmost care and attention, and to the imperial
metropolis, as a whole, the utmost dignity and power. The form of
government for Greater New York, it will be the model upon which
Greater London will be constructed.
Without making quite such a lofty claim for the Charter as this, there is
no doubt that it is an important document, and one which will well repay a
careful study. It is somewhat voluminous, filling with its annexes no less
than one thousand pages.
It has, however, been made the subject of a very painstaking and lucid
analysis by Dr. Albert Shaw, whose “Studies of Municipal Administration in
the Old World and the New” entitle him to speak with some authority on the
matters dealt with by the Charter. His analysis of the Charter was
published in the _Atlantic Monthly_ for June, 1897, under the title of
“The Municipal Programme of Greater New York.” Mr. De Witt published his
clear and concise idea of the Greater New York in _Munsey’s Magazine_,
under the title of “Moulding the Metropolis.” The Charter itself, with its
1,620 sections, has been published in popular form at 10 cents by the
Brooklyn _Daily Eagle_. The text of the Charter, with the aid of Dr.
Shaw’s and Mr. De Witt’s analyses, enables any one to form a tolerably
clear idea as to what the Charter does and what the Charter means.
Mr. Croker repeatedly assured me, before the recent Mayoral contest began,
that the Charter was a monstrosity and an absurdity, that the system of
government which it established must inevitably break down, and that not
even an archangel could make it work satisfactorily. Mr. Croker can hardly
be said to be an impartial judge, but his verdict is sufficiently in
accord with that of Dr. Shaw to justify very grave misgivings as to the
prospect before the second city of the world.
During my stay in New York I was simply besieged by interviewers, begging
me to tell them what I thought of the Charter. I turned a deaf ear to
their solicitations, preferring to make a more careful study of the
Charter itself with the advantage of the analysis of Dr. Shaw. Even now I
rather shrink from expressing an opinion, lest it should be misconstrued
as implying any claim on my part to sit in judgment on those who are
saddled with the responsibility of governing New York. But when doctors
differ, the people decide, and when local experts are at hopeless variance
as to the merits or demerits of the Charter, it may perhaps be permitted
to a British onlooker, even at a distance of 3,000 miles, to put on record
the way in which the Charter strikes him. If this should not be denied me,
I may say at once that the Charter seems to have written on its face
thoroughgoing distrust of the people. The aspect of the Charter is black
with despair. It is far worse as an expression of democratic despair than
the Brooklyn Charter, for the Brooklyn Charter at least trusted the
Tsar-Mayor, whereas the New York Charter shrinks even from doing that.
In explaining the provisions of the Charter, I prefer to quote from Dr.
Shaw’s analysis. He says:--
First comes the mayor, who is entitled the chief executive. He is to
be elected for four years and is not eligible for an immediate
re-election, and his salary is to be 15,000 dols. a year. The business
of city administration is divided into eighteen executive departments.
These are the departments of finance, of law, of police, of water
supply, of highways, of street-cleaning, of sewers, of public
buildings, lighting and supplies, of bridges, of parks, of building,
of public charities, of correction, of fire, of docks and ferries, of
taxes and assessments, of education, and of health.
The members of all these boards, with one exception, are appointed by the
Mayor, not elected by the people. The one exception is the City
Comptroller, who is at the head of the Finance Department. He is elected
at the same time as the Mayor. The Mayor also appoints all the members of
the five school boards, which look after education in the five boroughs of
Greater New York:--
The system provided for in the new charter puts the executive
government wholly into the hands of the eighteen departments, which
are practically supreme in their respective eighteen spheres, except
as they are limited by two important groups, or boards--namely, the
board of estimate and apportionment and the board of public
improvements. One discovers with some surprise that the
ordinance-making power, which would nominally belong exclusively to
the municipal assembly, is, in the Greater New York charter, conferred
upon all the executive departments.
Where then, it will be asked, does the Municipal Assembly come in, for
there is a Municipal Assembly which is divided into two chambers? To which
the answer is that the Municipal Assembly is practically reduced to the
function of a debating society; for, says Dr. Shaw:--
The eighteen executive departments take away from the municipal
assembly the larger part of the ordinance-making power; the board of
public improvements in practice controls municipal plans and policies
as regards the construction of works, and the board of estimate and
apportionment intervenes to prepare the budget, both on the side of
income and on that of disbursement.
It is true that the budget must be voted by the Municipal Assembly, which
on that occasion sits as one body. But its control is practically nil. The
real financial control is vested in the Board of Estimate and
Apportionment. Mr. F. V. Green, writing in _Scribner_ for October, 1896,
points out that the framers of this board carefully avoided the principle
of direct election. He says:--
Probably in no other part of the globe, however autocratic its
government, is such power of taxation and appropriation committed to
so unrepresentative a body as in this foremost city of the land of
liberty, whose Government originated in a protest against taxation
without representation. And it is a still more curious anomaly that
this system, which was established as one of the results of the
overthrow of the Tweed _régime_, and has been in operation for
twenty-three years, is the most successful feature of the present form
of city government--the only one of which criticism is seldom heard.
After this non-elective board has approved of the estimates, they are then
sent down to the Municipal Assembly to be voted. But, says Dr. Shaw, the
Municipal Assembly
must complete its action within a certain number of days. It may not
add a penny to the estimates at any point whatsoever. It is permitted
to throw out items or to make reductions, but it must not offset these
by voting increased sums for any object. When it has completed its
consideration, the budget goes to the mayor for his final action. The
mayor has authority to veto any amendments that the municipal assembly
may have made. That is to say, he may restore any amounts that have
been subtracted.
But, it will be said, the Mayor’s veto may be overridden. It may, but only
if there is a majority of five-sixths of the Municipal Assembly against
him. Such unanimity is practically unattainable.
It would, indeed, seem as if the chief purpose of the Municipal Assembly
was to give its members practical lessons in the working of simple sums of
vulgar fractions. Again, to quote Dr. Shaw:--
No man will ever become intimate enough with the provisions of this
charter--no matter how many years he may sit in the municipal
assembly--to know for a certainty, without careful reference to the
document, by what kind of a majority a particular piece of business
must be carried to have validity. Some actions in the municipal
assembly may be taken by a majority of those present and voting,
provided there is a quorum. Other things may be done by a simple
majority of all those elected; still others require a two-thirds
majority of all those elected, others a three-fourths majority, others
a four-fifths majority, others a five-sixths majority, and others
absolute unanimity. I suspect that there may be still other
percentages or proportions requisite for certain actions; but the
seven that I have mentioned have caught my attention, as I have
endeavoured to run through the document.
In the report of the Commission presenting the Charter, the Commissioners
point out that the Charter introduces, “in accordance with established
American polity, a variety of checks and safeguards against the abuse of
the powers conferred upon the Municipal Assembly.” There is no doubt on
that head. The distrust of the popular elected assembly appears at every
turn. The popular assembly is emasculated from the very first moment of
its existence. It is carefully deprived of the right of initiative in
matters of the first moment, and elaborate provisions are made for
depriving it of the exercise of the authority which in England we should
regard as absolutely indispensable. To begin with, the Municipal Assembly
is forbidden to grant any franchise or right to use the public streets
except upon the approval of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, and
then only for limited periods, with due provision for periodical
re-valuations. The Municipal Assembly is not allowed to sanction any work
involving the expenditure of any large sum of money, or to create any
debt, to dispose of any franchise, or to levy any tax, without the
concurrence of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Even then its
decision is subject to the veto of the Mayor. In cases of public
improvements of great magnitude and cost, the Municipal Assembly cannot
vote by a simple majority. Unless it can muster a majority of
three-quarters of its whole membership it can do nothing. It is possible,
therefore, for one quarter of the Assembly, plus one, to paralyse that
body at will. In fact, it is impossible adequately to explain the
impotence of the Assembly which, according to ordinary English ideas,
ought to be the source, seat and centre of all powers. No doubt clauses
exist conferring upon the Assembly certain powers, but at the end of the
clauses you will always find that they have not to be exercised excepting
on the initiative of some Department which is not elective, or with the
concurrence of some Board which is equally free from the taint of a
popular elective origin.
All that, however, is consistent enough with the Napoleonic conception of
the true method of democratic government. Napoleon, with his ministers of
state, never claimed to exercise such control over the _Corps Législatif_
as the Mayor of Greater New York will exercise over his elective assembly.
He is allowed a free hand to appoint his own executive, and he can pass
his own budget, so long as he can find one-sixth, plus one, of the
Assembly to support him. The creation of the Tsar-Mayor, however
interesting as indicative of the rooted distrust of elective assemblies
which is supreme at present in the American mind, is not the feature of
the Charter which reveals most deeply how far the distrust of popular
government has gone in the United States. For, after giving the Mayor
supreme responsibility, and electing him for a term of four years, these
astonishing charter-makers carefully provide that he shall only have a
right to remove the commissioners, whom he has been allowed to appoint,
during the first six months of his term of office. It is this limitation
which shows how thoroughly the modern American distrusts his governing
men. Faith in an elective council has perished utterly; but faith in a
Tsar-Mayor might have shown the survival of some faith in the elective
principle. But the stipulation carefully made in the Charter that the
Mayor’s right to remove the heads of departments whom he has nominated
shall cease six months after his election, is the most astounding
illustration yet afforded of the deep-rooted distrust which the American
of to-day has in all elected men.
Ex-Mayor Grace, writing after much experience of the working of city
governments, declared:--
The absolute power of removal as well as of appointment of all
commissioners and heads of departments should be vested in the mayor,
the power of removal to be subject to no check beyond that of filing
the reasons for such removals--expressed in writing.
Mr. Seth Low, the first Tsar-Mayor of Brooklyn, and Mr. Strong, the Mayor
of the Reform Administration in New York, both declared, in a
supplementary report, their conviction that the authority given to the
Mayor to make appointments without confirmation ought to carry with it, as
a matter of course, the authority to make removals in the public interest
without charges at any time. Their protests, however, were overruled. The
majority dare not trust the Mayor with such powers. The result is that
“for three years and six months the government of the City of New York
will be carried on by eighteen separate departments, not one of which is
directly responsible or accountable to anybody. They do not derive
authority directly from the people, and they certainly owe nothing to the
Municipal Assembly. On the other hand, there is no power in the Mayor to
hold them accountable.” Says Dr. Shaw:--
It is bureaucracy pure and simple. I am not ready to assert it
positively, but I am of the impression, from some knowledge of the
subject, that the very shadowy municipal assemblies provided some
years ago for St. Petersburg and Moscow had a greater legislative and
financial authority than the new municipal assembly of the Greater
New York; and I am inclined to believe that neither in the
administration of those Russian cities nor in the administration of
the Russian provincial governments will one find a bureaucratic system
so complete and so indirect in its responsibilities to the public as
the bureaucracy which the Greater New York charter creates.
There is no necessity to go further. I have quoted enough to justify the
title of “Despairing Democracy”; for here we have a democracy in such
depths of despair that it first emasculates its elective assembly, and
then hamstrings its Cæsar.
[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE LIMITS OF GREATER NEW YORK, AS DEFINED BY
THE MUNICIPAL CONSOLIDATION INQUIRY COMMISSION.]
[Illustration: MR. W. R. HEARST. Editor and Proprietor of the _New York
Journal_.]
CHAPTER IV.
GOVERNMENT BY NEWSPAPER.
Twelve years ago I employed part of the leisure I enjoyed in the safe
retreat of Holloway Gaol in writing an essay on “Government by
Journalism.” In that essay, which was published after my release in the
_Contemporary Review_, and subsequently republished under the title “A
Journalist on Journalism,” I expounded a theory as to the natural and
inevitable emergence of the journalist as the ultimate depository of power
in modern democracy. One passage I may be permitted to quote, as it bears
directly upon the subject of the present chapter:--
The future of journalism depends almost entirely upon the journalist,
and at present the outlook is not very hopeful. The very conception of
journalism as an instrument of government is foreign to the mind of
most journalists. Yet, if they could but think of it, the editorial
pen is a sceptre of power, compared with which the sceptre of many a
monarch is but a gilded lath. In a democratic age, in the midst of a
population which is able to read, no position is comparable for
permanent influence and far-reaching power to that of an editor who
understands his vocation. In him are vested almost all the attributes
of real sovereignty. He has almost exclusive rights of initiative; he
retains a permanent right of direction; and, above all, he better than
any man is able to generate that steam, known as public opinion, which
is the greatest force of politics.
To rule--the very idea begets derision from those whose one idea of
their high office is to grind out so much copy, to be only paid for
according to quantity, like sausages or rope-yarn. Bunyan’s man with
the muck-rake has many a prototype on the press. To dress contemporary
controversy day by day in the jacket of party, to serve up with fresh
sauce of current events the hackneyed commonplaces of politics--that
in their eyes is journalism; but to rule! Yet an editor is the
uncrowned king of an educated democracy. The range of his power is
limited only by the extent of his knowledge, the quality rather than
the quantity of his circulation, and the faculty and force which he
can bring to the work of government.
An extraordinary idea seems to prevail with the eunuchs of the craft
that leadership, guidance, governance, are alien to the calling of a
journalist. Those conceptions of what is a journalist’s duty, if
indeed they recognise that imperious word as having any bearing upon
their profession, is hid in mystery. If it may be inferred from their
practice, their ideal is to grind out a column of more or less
well-balanced sentences, capable of grammatical construction,
conflicting with no social conventionality or party prejudice, which
fills so much space in the paper, and then utterly, swiftly, and for
ever vanishes from mortal mind. How can they help to make up other
people’s minds when they have never made up their own?
Even as it now is, with all its disabilities and all its limitations,
the press is almost the most effective instrument for discharging many
of the functions of government now left us. It has been, as Mr.
Gladstone remarked, and still is, the most potent engine for the
reform of abuses that we possess, and it has succeeded to many of the
functions formerly monopolised by the House of Commons. But all that
it has been is but a shadow going before of the substance which it may
yet possess, when all our people have learned to read, and the press
is directed by men with the instinct and capacity of government.
Now it so happened by a curious coincidence that just about the time I was
penning these sentences in happy Holloway, a youth fresh from Harvard, the
heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the United States, was deciding to
devote his life to the journalistic profession. Mr. W. R. Hearst was the
son of Senator Hearst, one of the lucky handful of men who came out from
the development of the silver mines of the Far West with many solid
millions of sterling gold in his possession. As heir to the Hearst
millions, nothing would have been more in accordance with the ways of the
millionaire class than for the young graduate to have given himself up to
a life of self-indulgent ease. Young Hearst, however, had no inclination
for sloth. Journalism attracted him, and he set himself to learn the
business of the craft. Money, of course, was available to secure him ample
opportunity to indulge his whim, and before long he began to try his
prentice hand as editor and proprietor of the _San Francisco Examiner_. He
soon proved that he possessed the editorial instinct as well as the
capitalist’s purse, and the _Examiner_ began to be heard of far beyond the
Pacific Coast as one of the smartest specimens of American journalism.
But the Pacific Coast is a long way off. To reign in San Francisco is less
than to serve in New York, and Mr. Hearst soon began to turn a longing eye
to the Eastern capital. The same loadstone that drew Mr. Pulitzer from St.
Louis to make the _New York World_ the latest and greatest of American
newspapers, compelled Mr. Hearst to come to the same city to found a
newspaper which would be even later and greater than the _World_. It was
with Mr. Hearst as it was with Themistocles when the laurels of Miltiades
would not allow him to sleep. The laurels of Mr. Pulitzer were equally
productive of insomnia in the _Examiner_ office. At last, when Senator
Hearst died, and the young editor of thirty found himself in undisputed
control of a million or two--pounds, not dollars--with a reversionary
right, on the death of his mother, to several millions more, he was in a
position to realise his ambition. Crossing the continent, he purchased the
_New York Morning Journal_ from Mr. Pulitzer’s brother Albert, and began
the siege of New York. The _World_ was then in the height of its
prosperity. In ten years it had built up a circulation without a rival in
the Western hemisphere. The Paris _Petit Journal_ alone distanced the
_World_ in Europe. The great gilded dome of the _World_ office, which
every night, radiant with electric light, sits as a crown of flame upon
the city’s brow, did not rise more conspicuously above the other buildings
in its vicinity than the _World_ towered aloft above its contemporaries.
When Mr. Hearst sat down in New York he had one ambition, and--so far as
he allowed any one to see his secret thoughts--one ambition only. He would
publish a newspaper which would beat the _World_.
[Illustration: MR. JOSEPH PULITZER. Editor and Proprietor of the _New York
World_.]
He began operations by annexing the pick of the staff of the _World_.
Journalists in the United States sit by no means so tightly in their
chairs as they do in this country. The Americans are a restless race.
Whether it is that the nomad Redskin left a migratory contagion in the
air, or whether the force of gravitation has been suspended on their
behalf, or whatever else the cause may be, the fact is indisputable.
Whether in politics, in the press, or elsewhere, they shift about with a
readiness that seems strangely unnatural to the more stolid Englishman,
who is apt to root himself like his native oak. Hence it was possible for
Mr. Hearst to begin his campaign in New York by taking away from Mr.
Pulitzer several of the brightest and brainiest members of his staff. They
left the _World_ to form the staff of the _Journal_, with regrets no
doubt, but without hesitation. For the terms of Mr. Hearst were better
than those of Mr. Pulitzer, and they went. Mr. Pulitzer, alarmed by the
secession, induced some of them to return by the offer of still better
terms than Mr. Hearst, but the young man with the inherited millions
outbid the older journalist who had made his own pile, and the _Journal_
started with the cream of the _World’s_ staff. If there be something of
Dugald Dalgetty about this sudden transfer of allegiance in English eyes,
it was entirely in accordance with the habits and customs of American
journalism. A change in proprietors or in editors will be followed by a
filing out of all the staff, the members of which no more lament over
their fate than gipsies deplore the fall of their tent-poles.
To the men recruited from the _Journal_, Mr. Hearst added some of the best
of his Californian staff, and as he paid the highest salaries going, he
had the pick of the pressmen of the continent. He picked as a rule wisely
and well. But his first choice and the most valuable member of his staff
was himself. No one did more to give the newspaper character and success
than the young millionaire, who was to be seen in his shirt-sleeves
through the hottest nights in the sultry summer toiling away at proofs and
formes until the early hours when he saw his paper to press. Members of
his staff who were worked like niggers could not complain when they saw
their chief working harder than any of his salaried employees. “A
millionaire,” they said, “in his shirt-sleeves! He could not work harder
if he were working on space for his daily bread!”
After having formed his staff, Mr. Hearst launched his paper, publishing
it at a cent. The _New York Herald_ is published at three cents. The
_World_ was published at two cents. Mr. Hearst published morning after
morning an eight and a twelve page paper at a price below the cost of
production. Mr. Pulitzer, recognising that at last he had found a real
rival, reduced the price of the _World_ to a cent. From that day to this
the two rivals have wrestled together without ceasing. They both publish
morning and afternoon and Sunday editions. They both are profusely
illustrated. They both cater directly and avowedly for the million, and
the million responds. The weaker of the old-fashioned papers went down
beneath the feet of the contending giants as the forests went down under
the trampling of St. Tammany and the Devil. But the circulation of the
_Journal_ went up steadily, until in two years Mr. Hearst had a Sunday
circulation of 400,000 at five cents, while the average daily sales of the
morning and evening journals reached 350,000. The circulation of the
_World_ was not seriously impaired. The _Journal_ grew not at the expense
of its rival so much as at the expense of the other papers which were less
up-to-date.
Of course this result was not achieved without prodigious expenditure.
Never before were such salaries paid on any newspaper. The secrets of the
counting-house are not revealed to the outside world, but Mr. Hearst is
said to have half-a-dozen editors and artists, each of whom draws the
salary of a Cabinet Minister. Money flowed like water. Nothing was too
much to pay for a first-class, exclusive piece of intelligence.
Journalists of the old school stood aghast at the _Journal’s_ prices. And,
what made the expenditure appear still more outrageous, for a long time
there were practically no receipts. Advertisers, even in the United
States, are a conservative race. A newspaper appealed in vain for their
support. They would come in, but only at low prices. Mr. Hearst said they
might stay out; they must come in at his prices or not at all. They took
him at his word and stayed out--for a time. But now they are coming in
shoals, and the advertisement columns day by day attest the capitulation
of the advertiser to the newspaper. The direct cash loss on the first
year’s editing of the _Journal_ could hardly be less than £200,000, if,
indeed, it did not largely exceed that sum.
People began to wonder what Mr. Hearst was after. He could not be after
the dollars--he had more dollars than he could count. He was not known to
have any distinctive political aspirations. He was spoken of sometimes as
the Socialist millionaire, but he never professed any belief in Socialism
as a dogma of his creed. Was it only to beat the _World_? Who could say.
The _Journal_ plunged heavily and got hit badly by its advocacy of
Bryanism and Free Silver, but Mr. Hearst was no fanatic of silver. He was
not a fanatic at all. He was a man as modest in private life as his paper
was blatant in print. His editorials were searched in vain to discover any
consistent or inconsistent creed. The _Journal_ was like Broadway in
print. Broadway at high noon, with cars swinging backwards and forwards
along the tracks, and the myriad, multitudes streaming this way and
that--life everywhere, but one common governing purpose or direction
nowhere.
But after a time there was gradually evolved from this feverish chaos of
sensationalism some trace of a great conception. Mr. Croker, who, although
not glib of tongue, is shrewd of wit and keen of eye, discerned its drift,
and set himself to ridicule and belittle what he called “government by
newspaper.” Then the _Journal_ itself, taking heart of grace from a series
of successes, boldly printed at the head of its editorial columns:--
THE “JOURNAL’S” MOTTO:
“WHILE OTHERS TALK, THE ‘JOURNAL’ ACTS.”
This appeared immediately after the announcement of the release of the
fair heroine Evangelina Cisneros from her Cuban gaol by the enterprise of
a _Journal_ reporter. It was followed by an editorial entitled “The
Journalism that Does Things.” This article expresses so succinctly the
aims and objects of a paper which has played so conspicuous a part in the
recent history of New York that I have no hesitation in quoting it here:--
The instant recognition accorded throughout the world, outside of
Weyler’s palace and offices of most New York newspapers, to the work
of the heroes who, in the service of the _Journal_ and of humanity,
rescued Evangelina Cisneros from the prison of the Recojidas is
broader and deeper than a mere compliment to a single newspaper. It is
epochal. It signifies that by a supreme achievement the journalism of
action, which is called by its detractors the “new journalism,” and
proudly accepts the title, has broken down the barriers of prejudice
and vindicated its animating principle.
Action--that is the distinguishing mark of the new journalism. It
represents the final stage in the evolution of the modern newspaper of
a century ago--the “new journals” of their day--told the news, and
some of them made great efforts to get it first. The new journal of
to-day prints the news too, but it does more. It does not wait for
things to turn up. It turns them up.
It has taken some time for the understanding and appreciation of these
novel methods to become general, but from the very first the _Journal_
has found an immense constituency eager to welcome them. It has
provided for this sympathetic body of readers a continuous succession
of notable deeds. We may recall a few examples.
The _Journal_ has always been an energetic ally of the Cuban patriots.
It has rendered them a variety of important services, of which the
rescue of Miss Cisneros is merely the latest. Another of a similar,
through less dramatic sort, was its action in forcing the Spanish
authorities to issue passports to the widow and children of Dr.
Ricardo Ruiz, the American dentist who was murdered by his gaolers in
Havana.
When the _Casper Whitney_ put to sea with water oozing in through
every joint, the _Journal_ secured an investigation which resulted in
the removal of Captain Fairchild, of the inspection service.
The _Journal_ proved by experiments with chartered vessels off Sandy
Hook that the ordinary flags of the international signal code could be
easily read at night from a great distance under flashlight
illumination. This discovery, whose value in saving life and property
at sea is incalculable, it dedicated freely to the maritime world.
From the beginning the _Journal_ has taken a practical as well as a
theoretical interest in the relief of suffering and the elevation of
the classes that have lacked a fair chance in life. Last winter it
undertook to mitigate the awful distress that prevailed so widely at
that time by opening a depôt in Grand Street, at which hot food was
distributed daily to those in need. Thousands of starving people were
relieved by this enterprise. On another occasion, when a fire in
East Thirty-fifth Street rendered many families homeless, the
_Journal_ invited them all to a Christmas dinner, and then, with the
co-operation of its readers, established them in newly-furnished
homes. But the greatest work of the _Journal_ in the direction of the
improvement of social conditions has been the establishment and
maintenance of the _Journal_ Junior Republic, which has saved about
two hundred boys from the slums, and turned them into good citizens,
and which contains the promise of unlimited future development and
expansion.
Last winter, when the aldermen had undertaken to grant a perpetual
franchise for the use of the streets to a light, fuel and power
company, the _Journal_ served injunctions upon the board and prevented
the outrage. At the same time it fought at Albany for dollar gas with
such success that even Mr. Platt’s Legislature was compelled to yield
to public opinion to the extent of passing a bill providing for a
general reduction. The practice of invoking the law against unfaithful
public servants has been repeated recently with signal success in the
case of Commissioner of Public Works Collis and his pet contractors,
who have been compelled to raise the siege of Fifth Avenue.
When the East River murder seemed an insoluble mystery to the police,
the _Journal_ organised a detective force of its own, and in two or
three days identified the victim, Guldensuppe, and his assassins. And
when the Long Island Railroad attempted to excuse its wholesale
manslaughter at Valley Stream by alleging that an engine could be seen
for a distance of one thousand five hundred feet, the _Journal_ took a
counterpart of the wrecked tally-ho outfit to the scene, and proved by
actual measurement that the driver could not have seen the approaching
train until his leaders were on the track, with the engine eighty-four
feet away.
These are a few of the public services by which the _Journal_ has
illustrated its theory that a newspaper’s duty is not confined to
exhortation, but that when things are going wrong it should itself set
them right if possible. The brilliant exemplication of this theory in
the rescue of Miss Cisneros has finally commended it to the approval
of almost the entire reading world.
[Illustration: RIVERSIDE DRIVE AND GRANT’S TOMB.]
These things, all of them, or almost all, are good. Some of them are very
good. But all of them together do not prove that in Mr. Hearst we have the
man of whom Mr. Lowell spoke when he said:--
Methinks the editor who should understand his calling and be equal
thereto, would truly deserve that title of ποιμὴν λαῶν, which Homer
bestows upon princes, he would be the Moses of our nineteenth century
... the Captain of our Exodus into the Canaan of a truer social order.
Nevertheless, Mr. Hearst is far and away the most promising journalist
whom I have yet come across. He has education, youth, energy, aptitude,
wealth, and that instinctive journalistic sense which is akin to genius.
If in addition to these great qualifications he were to realise the
possibilities of his vocation, and to become inspired by a supreme
enthusiasm--say to redeem New York, and make the second city in the world
in size the first city of the world as a place of human habitation--there
is no knowing what incalculable good might lie within his grasp. Certainly
no man in all New York has such a chance of combining all the elements
that make for righteousness and progress in the city as the young
Californian millionaire-editor who founded the _Journal_.
There is, however, no greater delusion than to imagine that a newspaper in
America has any influence merely because it is a newspaper. The habit of
running newspapers as if they were mere commercial dividend-earning
undertakings has so largely discounted the influence of the press as to
lead many shrewd observers to declare that they would just as soon have
the newspapers against them as in their favour. Carter Harrison had every
newspaper in Chicago against him--but his own--and he was elected to the
mayoralty by an overwhelming majority. Mr. Croker declared over and over
again that if he had stood for the mayoralty of New York he would wish for
nothing better than that every newspaper in the city should be against
him, in which case he regarded his success as a certainty. Tammany at one
time corrupted the newspapers. At another time it bullied them. Now it
disregards them. “Mere newspaper talk”--nothing can be more contemptuous
than that.
If New York is to be raised to the position of being the ideal city of the
New World it will not have to be by mere newspaper talk, but by the man
behind the newspaper who can make his newspaper the organising, vivifying,
rallying centre for all the best forces and influences of the city. If Mr.
Hearst has soul enough and heart enough he may do it. I do not know any
one else who has got his chance.
[Illustration: TAMMANY HALL OF TO-DAY.]
[Illustration: THOMAS C. PLATT. Chief of the Republican Party in New
York.]
CHAPTER V.
WHY NOT TRY THE INQUISITION?
“Never prescribe until you are called in,” is an excellent maxim, which
like that other more pithy saying, “Mind your own business,” has one
somewhat serious drawback. If they were construed literally and obeyed in
spirit as well as in letter, what would become of the journalist’s
business? For the chief business of the journalist is to look after other
people’s business. To chronicle it in the first place; to comment upon it
in the second. It is the privilege of the profession.
There is no cause for resenting the innocent liberty of criticism and
suggestion which is exercised by the press. It can only too easily be
ignored; nor has the journalist any means beyond the opportunity of
representation and of persuasion for giving effect to his proposals. He
has no authority except that which belongs to every man who sees things as
they are, and the authority pertains to his ability to make others see
them with his eyes rather than to his personal position. Hence those who
object to the “damned impudence of the newspaper man” have only to shut
their eyes and close their ears, to remove themselves effectively from the
area of his jurisdiction.
The journalist who in the course of his public duty ventures to pry into
“the secrets of the prison-house” is always met by its keepers with an
outcry of indignation and resentment. “Why are you poking your nose in our
affairs?” they cry in aggrieved chorus; “you stay at home and attend to
your own business!” How often have we not heard that plausible demand put
forward by the thieves and scoundrels and oppressors of the world, when
first the adventurous newspaper man ventures to expose their misdeeds and
suggest ways and means for curtailing their evil power. Tammany Bosses
have often angrily denounced the meddling of the newspapers in their
pickings and stealings. Nor is it only journalists who are met by this
protest. We have seen how Police Commissioner McClave was distressed at
the wickedness of the hayseed Senators up at Albany who sent the Lexow
Committee to trouble the “honest men” of the Police Department. The
evildoer who is waxing fat upon his misdeeds, always objects to any one
interfering with his plunder. And as the accusation of officious meddling
in “what is no concern of yours” is the first brick that lies handy for
hurling at the head of the intruder, it is thrown accordingly.
The difficulty is immeasurably increased when the journalist is commenting
on the affairs of another city or country than his own. For then the
crooks can invoke the sentiment of offended patriotism, and shelter their
picking and stealing behind the sacred folds of the national flag. When I
was in Chicago five years ago I was seriously told by a distinguished
American author that it was insufferable impertinence on my part to
publish any opinion on current American affairs until I foreswore
allegiance to the Queen and naturalised myself as an American citizen! I
venture humbly and with all deference to suggest that if a cat may look at
a king, it may be permitted to an English-speaking journalist to describe
what he sees and to say what he thinks even concerning the affairs of
those other English-speaking communities which prefer the Stars and
Stripes to the Union Jack. This curious recrudescence of perverted
nationalism which would deny the right of comment on American affairs to
everyone not born or naturalised in the American Republic, is after all
nothing more than a partial reversion to the savage’s jealousy of the
stranger who was not a member of the tribe. Let us be thankful that the
reversion is not complete, otherwise I should have cause for thankfulness
that I escaped with my life.
We may, however, brush on one side these absurdities born of the morbid
sensitiveness of the Half-grown, who are always suspecting that every word
of criticism conceals an assumption of superiority, and a denial of the
rights which the Full-grown regard as too self-evident to be questioned.
Rational adults do not in these days require a certificate of origin
before listening to the ideas of those who are interested in their
affairs. The stranger, no doubt, will often make mistakes, which any tyro
to the manner born would have avoided. He is like a Frenchman attempting
to make a speech in English. But, despite his blunders in details, he
looks at things from a different standpoint, he brings to their
consideration the experience gained in other communities, and although he
may make himself a fool now and then--which Lowell reminded us is one of
the inalienable rights of man--he will often strike out new ideas which
perhaps by their very absurdity may bear good fruit by rousing attention
and provoking discussion.
At the close of this cursory survey of one of the gravest problems which
can occupy the attention of mankind, the reader may fairly expect me to
say whether I see any way out. Must we despair of democracy, then, after
all, and abandon all hope of governing great cities by the time-honoured
machinery of elective assemblies? Is the Dictator indispensable for the
salvation of the Republic? And if we cannot get along without his
authority, dare we not trust him to remove his ministers after the first
eighth of his term of office?
If to these questions I venture to suggest any replies, I hope that I may
not be accused of attempting arrogantly to dogmatise upon the solution of
local problems the conditions of which it has been obviously impossible
for me to master at first hand. I make no pretence to be free from bias or
partiality. If my critics complain that my suggestions are based upon my
inherited ingrained prejudices, strengthened by a professional instinct,
rather than upon a scientific and judicial examination of all the facts, I
make no demur. For in dealing with all these complex questions it is
extremely difficult to eliminate the habit of mind that dates back to the
cradle and beyond the cradle.
Hence, for instance, if I scout the notion that there is any reason for
despairing of democracy even in New York City, this adoption of the
watchword of “Never despair!” is due primarily to two antecedent
convictions, neither of which has anything to do with the local
circumstances of New York. One is a fundamental faith in the Providential
government of the universe, the other a belief that in the evolution of
human society, Democracy has arrived, and has come to stay. “Time brings
not back the mastodon”; and, despite the present reversion to the tyrant
of the old Greek city, in the shape of the Tsar-Mayor, I cannot believe
that the great stream of progress is about to change its channel. I cannot
believe that the American democracy is permanently forsaking what
Jefferson regarded as the fundamental principle of democratic
institutions. Jefferson’s familiar and weighty words--“As Cato concluded
every speech with the words, _Delenda est Carthago_, so do I every opinion
with the injunction, ‘Divide the counties into wards’”--embody advice that
is in accord with all the traditions of the English-speaking race. I may
be pardoned for believing that it expresses the sound principle of local
self-government, rather than the new-fangled innovation of the vesting of
all power in a Dictator elected by a mass vote of so huge a unit as a city
of three millions.
If this be so, then it follows that it would be well to endeavour, as
speedily as it could be done with safety, to regain the ancient ways, and
return to fundamental principles by dividing the city into wards, and
making the elected representatives of these wards the governing authority
of New York. Until the Common Council--composed of representatives each
directly elected by ward or district, and held personally responsible by
the citizens in that ward for the efficient and honest discharge of his
municipal duties--is restored to its natural position as the source and
seat and centre of civic authority, it seems to me that we shall continue
wandering in the wilderness. The elective assembly is the mainspring of
the machine, and although you may turn the pointers round with the
watchkey of a Tsar-Mayor, the watch will never keep right time till the
mainspring is restored to its right place.
This, however, may only be an English prejudice. However frankly I may
express my fear that the Tsar-Mayor will not prove a permanent source of
security to the law-abiding, honest citizens, I shall be delighted if my
forebodings are falsified by the event. For good or for ill the great
experiment is to be tried, and the whole human race is interested in its
success.
I come to safer ground when I say that, whether the centre of authority be
the Tsar-Mayor or the Common Council, there is no security for the good
government of the city except the public spirit and loyal co-operation of
all good citizens. I know nothing more admirable than many of the recent
efforts made by the Citizens’ Union and the Patriotic League of New York
to arouse an intelligent interest in the community at large in the
government of the city. The campaign of Education which has been going on
for these last three years is a much more solid security for good
government than any tinkering of the civic administrative machine. What
seems to be most needed is, that the admirable work done in certain
districts should be universalised and made equally effective in all
quarters of Greater New York. The need for making general or universal the
best work done in certain localities, points to the need of some central
body, like the Civic Federation or Citizens’ Union, or Civic Centre, which
would cover the same area as the civic administration, and within which it
would seek to secure for all voluntary effort the same system and
regularity and universality that is attained in the municipal service.
Such a Civic Centre or nucleus for the co-operation of all societies and
agencies, social, moral, intellectual and religious, would stand to the
civic authorities much as the spiritual power stands to the State. A
federation so constituted would be the Civic Church of the city; and the
State without the Church, is the body without the soul.
These are broad general propositions, which seem to me to lie at the root
of the whole matter. But I would not like to close this chapter without
making one suggestion which, although it will be scouted at first and
treated with ridicule and contempt, may nevertheless contain within it the
germ of an institution which may remedy some of the more flagrant evils
which afflict the body politic. The creation of the Tsar-Mayor shows that
the American citizen is not hidebound by prejudice. In presence of the
hideous abuses glanced at in the former chapters he has sacrificed his
ancient prejudices against Despotism and the One Man power, in order to
re-establish the Greek Tyrant as the autocrat of the American City. What I
wish, with all deference, to suggest, is that having enthroned the
Tyrannus, they should hasten to establish the Inquisition.
The proposition is made in all seriousness. As a palliative and corrective
for the existing evils I see no suggested solution that holds out more
promise.
I need not, I hope, explain that I do not suggest the resurrection of the
old dread ecclesiastical tribunal, with its familiars and its _auto da
fe_. Neither do I suggest that heretics should be burned alive in Madison
Square. What I am after is much more serious business. The suggestion is
the offspring of two facts, both unmistakably conspicuous in the
contemporary history of New York. One is the emergence of a great
journalistic ambition, not merely to chronicle, but to do. The other is
the record of the Lexow Committee. The success of the latter in its work
of investigation, together with the existence of the new ideal of
journalistic duty, seem to suggest that the best immediate remedy for the
malady of the body politic would be the establishment on a permanent
footing of a Tribunal of Investigation and Inquisition, armed with all
necessary powers, to administer oaths, to compel the attendance of
witnesses, to commit for contempt, and to punish summarily for perjury.
And I would further venture to suggest that in the Journalism that Acts
there is here a field even more legitimate for the enterprise of the new
journalists than breaking into a Spanish prison or dredging the river for
the head of a murdered man.
To put it briefly, I would respectfully ask those who are in despair over
the corruption that eats like a canker into the hearts of American cities,
why not give statutory authority to American journalism to create,
maintain and carry on a Lexow Committee _en permanence_, with extended
powers for the purpose of discovering and handing over for punishment all
those who are preying upon the public?
There is no remedy like the light of day. These evils exist in the midst
of our communities because they can be done in secret. The crook in office
relies upon the cloak of darkness. Tear away that cloak, proclaim the
things done in secret upon the housetop, and the crook will walk in the
straight path. The enterprise of the American newspaper is great. But
although it can discover Livingstone and rescue Miss Cisneros, it cannot
locate the boodler and prove who paid him the boodle. It may suspect. It
may know, and it may accuse. But without its Lexow Committee it can
neither prove nor convict.
It may be objected that to institute such a tribunal would be to create a
frightful engine of tyranny, and that the remedy might be worse than the
disease. The experience of the Star Chamber is not exactly reassuring.
But to this there are several answers. In the first place, beyond arming
the proposed Inquisition with adequate powers to enforce attendance by
subpœna, to punish contempt of court, and to impose summary penalties for
perjury, it would not be vested with any power of inflicting punishment.
Having ascertained the facts, it would hand over the guilty person to the
ordinary civil and criminal tribunals, binding over all witnesses to
appear when the case came on for trial. Its functions would be those of
investigation, for the purpose of providing a case for the ordinary
tribunals, so that there would be no interference with the safeguards
provided by the law and the constitution for the liberty of the subject
and the impartial administration of justice.
Secondly, the proceedings of the Inquisition would be from the first
conducted under the full glare of publicity. Even if it were within its
powers to hold a secret session, no action could be taken at such session
until it had been confirmed in the light of day. Both at the inception and
at the close of a case the Inquisition would be a public tribunal, liable
to public criticism and amenable to public opinion. Its chief duty would
be the obtaining of material in the shape of authentic information capable
of being proved in court, for the protection of the public. It would,
therefore, be unreasonable to fear that such a Court, whose _raison
d’être_ is to bring evil out of the darkness into light, could be capable
of the abuse which sprang up in the Star Chamber or the Inquisition, where
secrecy made power irresponsible.
If it be admitted that such a tribunal might with advantage be created,
the question would then arise how it should be constituted. The paralysis
of faith in the integrity of the elected man which prevails in American
citizens would seem to preclude any hope of securing a competent and
inflexible Inquisitor-General by an appeal to the principle of popular
election--direct or indirect. If, however, the Journalism that Acts is to
be allowed to follow the natural path of evolution, it might perhaps be
recognised as a power in the State, to whose initiative might be left by
statute the task of appointing the Inquisitor and of bringing cases before
the Inquisition. If the choice of Inquisitor-General were left to the
journalists, each of whom is an inquisitor himself in his own way, you
would at least have a small expert constituency, each member of which
would have a direct interest in making a good selection. And if the duty
of bringing cases before the Court were limited in the first instance to
the journalists, the door would be closed against the irresponsible
calumnies of miscellaneous scandal-mongers, for the only persons who could
then set the tribunal in motion would be the newspaper, which would lose
in prestige and in authority should it bring forward a case which on
investigation proved to be baseless.
I am well aware that the suggestion will be ridiculed, and by no one so
much as the journalist in whom the consciousness of his responsibility has
not yet been evolved. But if the Journalism that Acts is to do its share
in the cleansing of the Augean stable of municipal corruption, it could
hardly find a more legitimate field for development than in providing a
simple but effective tribunal for the purpose of dragging out of the
darkness and secrecy in which they flourish those evils which can never be
dealt with until they are accurately located, and brought within the range
of public opinion by the searchlight of the Inquisition.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE ELEVATED RAILWAYS IN GREATER NEW YORK.]
[Illustration: GENERAL TRACY.]
CHAPTER VI.
THE PLÉBISCITE FOR A CÆSAR.
The contest for the mayoralty of Greater New York, which was fought out at
the polls on the 2nd of November, has been one of the most famous
elections ever fought. To begin with, never before have half a million
electors voted in the same day for the election of a chief magistrate.
Greater New York contains more that 3,000,000 inhabitants, and 567,000
registered electors. The constituency is not more vast than the powers of
the mayor are unlimited. As no chief magistrate before received the
suffrages of so many electors, so no chief magistrate was ever invested
with such absolute authority. Mr. Van Wyck, the new Mayor of Greater New
York, for six months at least is almost as much master of New York as
Napoleon III. was master of France after the _plébiscite_ which installed
him at the Tuileries. The two-chambered elective council of the city has
even less control over his municipal appointments than the senate and
_Corps Législatif_ of the Second Empire. For so great a stake it was
natural that all parties should enter their best men, and that the contest
should be fought with as much energy as a Presidential Election.