This is all by way of introduction to the story of an article
that was not written. About the time the Pittsburg flare-up began
to show itself in the papers, it occurred to us that some
exposition of the situation there would be of value and interest
to our readers. Before going about it, we debated it very
carefully. Some of us in the office (and this magazine is edited
by all of us) were fairly familiar with the subject, and we
believed it would subserve no useful purpose to tackle it along
the "Shame of the Cities" lines. We agreed that the way to
approach Pittsburg was to consider what had happened there, not
as a sporadic outburst, but as an economic symptom. Whom could we
get that was far enough from the controversies involved to treat
the subject objectively and with a big perspective? Brand
Whitlock. The Mayor of Toledo knows more about cities and their
governments, and the evils that arise within them, than any other
man, and he can write--with knowledge, with sympathy, with
clarity. Also he knew Pittsburg. So we telegraphed to find if he
was free to write an article, and, when he replied in the
affirmative, the following letter was sent him:
April 1, 1910. DEAR MR. WHITLOCK:
The article we want is on Pittsburg. It is neither our purpose
nor our desire merely to "muckrake" Pittsburg or any other city.
The eruption there is typical of similar conditions in other
great civic centers throughout the country, and it seems to us it
might be made the text of a diagnosis of the whole municipal
problem in America.
Here are a few thoughts that occur to me which might be
represented:
We have come to realize that the real trouble in our country is
Privilege. Big business, in its ruthless pursuit of results, has
the ultimate responsibility for the ills that confront us in
political, social, and commercial life. The graft scandals, the
bank defalcations, etc., are simply symptoms of internal
disorders. They are the eruptions of the disease.
Pittsburg might be called the typical get-rich-quick community.
Its great wealth is based on the abundant coal and iron with
which the Creator loaded its environment. Down on those deposits
fasten thousands of Americans seized with the mania of
money-making. They coin the coal and iron into millions. They
work feverishly; they work their men furiously. It's a mad,
frenzied scramble for success and sensation. To get rich quicker,
they exact excessive protection from Congress--first to prop up
infant industries, then to consolidate abnormal profits. If the
government undertakes to deny their demands, they bluster first,
then intrigue, then intimidate. Mills are closed down; the
"prosperity" of the country is threatened, lobbies are organized,
corruption funds subscribed, until Congress succumbs and new
"jokers" are written into steel tariffs.
In the meantime a huge city is upreared. But this city is run for
the benefit of its industries, not for the comfort of its
inhabitants. Street railway, gas, electric corporations are
organized, ostensibly to serve the community, actually enabling a
greedy group to make more money. Again, what cannot be gained by
request is won by force and guile.
Over and over again the various processes are repeated, until you
have built up a sort of City Monstrous, dedicated to machinery,
in which all the men and many of the women are just machines, and
there is no ideal save that of feverish industrial adventure and
accomplishment. Power--blind, ruthless, marvel-working, bending
backs and bodies to its will--is Pittsburg's god, and Success its
divine attribute Success that spells Gold, the instrument of
exploitation and sensation. What wonder that weaker men,
confronted by the colossal rewards of industrial conquest, are
frenzied with the gold fever? In the absence of communal
patriotism, graft becomes an incident. Graft and greed are the
minor watchwords of success. Get money, anyway--but get it. Is it
surprising that cashiers graft, that aldermen graft, that city
officials graft, that there's a very pandemonium of graft? Isn't
it the way the other fellows get rich?
All of a sudden the poison clogs the pores, and the infection
blotches the surface--and every one is horrified. The great
manufacturers, the great merchants, the great lawyers--high
priests of the Power God--throw up their hands. Can such things
be? Dreadful, horrible!--blindly oblivious of their own
responsibility for the epidemic.
More startling still to the conquerors were the pitiless
revelations of the Survey, exhibiting in mathematical terms the
cost to the human factor of this monstrous material success.
Hordes of anaemic, emaciated men and women, exhausted by long
hours of toil, piled thick in wretched hovels, underfed,
half-clothed, dragging out a miserable existence unrelieved by
leisure or rest or recreation--the Juggernaut toll of
efficiency--of the passion for results at any price. Against this
horror, what avails Pittsburg's panorama of splendid churches, of
lordly palaces, of noble art museums, of great orchestras, richly
endowed educational institutions--the patriotic tribute of the
conquerors to civilization? What is this boasted civilization of
ours worth--not Pittsburg's only, for Pittsburg is an
incident--if it be reared on the wrecked and depleted bodies of
men at its base?
There would then be the opportunity in the article to suggest the
regenerated Pittsburg--all this furious energy hitherto devoted
to material success turned to social betterment and decent
government. The turn of the worker comes. The conquerors, having
learned that they cannot take greedily what belongs to a
community, and find happiness, turn magnificently to the rescue
of their own downtrodden. The old question--what does it profit a
man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?--has been
burned into Pittsburg humanity once again.
For several years the newspapers have carried stories about these
successive scandals in Pittsburg, until people have in a measure
become confused as to how they connect, whether all are really
parts of the same story. I doubt if the average man who reads the
article in the morning paper has a clear grasp of what has been
going on, and he can't discover it without hunting back through
the files. Once we published an article by Owen Wister about the
Capitol frauds in Pennsylvania, after the newspapers had been
printing countless columns on the subject for months, and it was
one of the most successful articles we have used, because of the
way it crystallized and interpreted the whole occurrence.
A similar service is here suggested. Write the story of Pittsburg
dramatically; crystallize the big exposures of the last few years
through which bankers and politicians have been going to prison,
culminating with the present crisis in the City Council; bring
out the economic significance of these occurrences to Pittsburg,
to the United States. Such an article will help all of us to see
where we are "at," will help develop civic consciousness in New
York, Chicago, San Francisco. It is immensely well worth doing.
I'm not dictating your article. What is written here is purely
suggestive. You must tell what you see and find in your own way.
You will, anyway. You know most of the facts. You are in touch
with the balance. We'll help to get material. If you will, you
can put up an article that the country will read. We'd like copy
as soon as possible.
Sincerely,
J. O'H. COSGRAVE,
Editor.
Mr. Whitlock, replied, expressing willingness to handle the
subject along the lines indicated, and asked for whatever
assistance we could render him. William Hard, a member of our
editorial force, had spent some time in Pittsburg, acquiring
material for his "Woman's Invasion," and he recommended J. J.
Nordman, a reporter of that city, as the best man to equip Mr.
Whitlock with the historical details of the exposure. He would
thus have immediately a succinct, up-to-date statement of the
case for his use as a skeleton.
Mr. Nordman was willing to help, and soon after got into
communication with Mr. Whitlock. Here is an account of his
service, which was accompanied by a letter from District Attorney
Blakeley, certifying to his reliability and knowledge of the
facts.
May 10, 1910.
HON. BRAND WHITLOCK, Toledo, Ohio.
Dear Sir:
Mr. Cosgrave has asked me to forward you matter bearing on the
Pittsburg graft expose and such clippings as I may have.
I shall weave the facts together with no effort towards literary
form, but rather in letter form, and present it to you not later
than Monday next.
Enclosed please find what I have termed a "Retrospect," being a
review of the political conditions leading to and making possible
the present expose.
Such clippings as I have will be forwarded with matter. I enclose
letter from Mr. Blakeley.
Very respectfully,
J. JEROME NORDMAN.
After that we waited, rather impatiently, it must be confessed,
for Whitlock's manuscript. After the passage of other admonitory
letters and telegrams, we received the following letter. We print
it "instead of an article." In our opinion, it is an
extraordinarily valuable summary of the whole subject of
municipal misrule. It goes far and beyond Pittsburg, and deep
into economic, social, and national conditions of which that city
is but an instance and an illustration. And, moreover, it sets
forth just how such an article, could we find the right man to do
it, should be written. Here it is:
Executive Offices
THE CITY OF TOLEDO 3 June, 1910.
JOHN O'HARA COSGRAVE, Esquire,Editor
EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE.
DEAR MR. COSGRAVE:
The Pittsburg story is big, too big and too important and too
significant to do at second hand. I have had a valuable
correspondence with Mr. Nordman, and he has most kindly put his
information, and in clear form, at my disposal. He has sent me
his scrapbook of newspaper clippings, and he has written me at
length and in detail of the various exposures and prosecutions. I
have made inquiries, too, from friends, and I have been thinking
over the story that you propose. But it won't go, and I have
concluded that it ought not to go in that form; and that is the
only form in which it is possible for me now to tell it.
I find just what I expected to find, or I find the familiar
symptoms of what I expected to find. The intelligent answers to
the several questions I put to Mr. Nordman after our first few
letters are exactly what I expected them to be. One city is all
cities; and all exhibit the same effects, proceeding from the
same causes. Look about you, anywhere, and if you see graft, and
bribery, and corruption, you'll find a bi-partisan machine
controlling nominations and elections to municipal offices, and
representing the few who consider themselves privileged to
exploit the people by means of franchises in public utilities,
etc. It's as easy as it is for a physician to tell what ails a
sallow and emaciated Southern "cracker" who shivers with chills
one day, and burns up with fever the next.
And so, in Pittsburg, I found the usual Republican machine with
its big boss, the usual Democratic machine and its little boss,
and the two, as usual, working together, the Democratic boss and
his tools rewarded by a few small offices on "bi-partisan"
boards, and the like; then the street railway system and other
public utility corporations which these bosses represent, and for
which they procure franchises. And after this, the "better
element," the "eminently respectable" citizens, supporting this
combination, enjoying the fruits of its labor, and influencing
the business interests of the city in the way that gives such
perfect exemplification of the evils of class government in our
cities--the same, old, sordid story.
The revelations, as they are called--though by this time they
should have ceased to be revelations, and have become
"recognitions" in this country--made by the newspaper clippings
before me are the expected indications of the deeper, underlying
causes. The superficial observer sees in them merely a corrupt
council; and, from the fact that councilmen have taken bribes, he
makes the daring deduction that some one gave them the bribes; he
sees that councilmen have been grafting, and then is naively
astonished by the revelation that some business men higher up,
although not very much higher up, have been caught and publicly
disgraced. He sees, too, a brave and fearless prosecutor who is
sending these men to prison; and there are the usual predictions
that out of all this there is to come to Pittsburg "good"
government--that is, government by honest men, to be aided,
perhaps, by the adoption of the commission plan. That is to say,
we have here the subject only in its personal aspect, and not in
its institutional, sociological, economic aspect.