WHERE LIES THE RESPONSIBILITY?
It took years for the evils of political machines to make life unbearable
in New York. Not until the tremendous evils it imposed on child-life were
given emphasis did the public sentiment of the city find intelligent
expression--voice the moral conscience of the whole people. That dishonest
administration of the city government imposed burdens on the home of the
poor man no intelligent person disputed; but few knew how heavy the burdens
or how far-reaching the effects on character. The people who suffered most
were, in the very nature of things, the ones who could not see these
influences, or estimate truly the degrading effect on character. The people
who resented the conditions that made life harder in the tenements; who
resented the environment which made the bringing up of children in
innocence, integrity, and decency often impossible, were those who were in
the minority. Hopelessness of overcoming the evils made some voters the
forgers of their own chains.
Newspapers gave columns to the exposure of the evils of the political
methods which made individuals rich at the cost of the homes of the city,
especially the homes of the poor. But the phase of this influence that was
most degrading could only be learned by living in the regions, one of the
people, suffering with them the burdens dishonesty imposed.
When college-trained men and women established their homes in the regions
of the tenements, making friends with the people, associating freely with
them, especially with the young people and the children, they discovered
that the worst evil with which the people were contending was the constant
lowering of the moral standards due to the influence of the political
organization that seemed to regulate even the right of the people to earn a
living. It was but a step from fear to favor; but a little time before the
man out-weighed the principle; Justice became the hand-maid of "pull," and
the people living wholly under the environment corrupt political power
created, knew no government but that of the "leader" and the man who
represented him. To trade votes was no disgrace, for it meant a share in
the perquisites that political power held. These men and women of trained
intelligence saw that the corrupting of the moral standards of the people
was a far greater evil--an evil that was of far greater moment to the
whole people than the maladministrations that affected their physical
being, though it led to death.
It was the revelations the Settlement workers were able to make to a
half-informed community of wealth and trained intelligence that led to the
redeeming of the city. It made the active combination of wealth and poverty
that brought into the political arena the dormant consciences that created
in 1901 the Apotheosis, New York redeemed, that is the justification of
democracy to the world.
The iniquity, ignorance and indifference that create and maintain a system
of municipal administration based on the theory that politics is a
profession, and each promoter the architect of his own fortune, to be built
at the expense of the citizens, is the reflection of the character of the
citizens. The system is never the product of one man's brains, nor does its
growth ever begin at the top. It begins always in the smallest political
unit, where the man who wishes the office in the gift of that unit stands
closest to the people. The bargaining for votes begins there. The number of
exchanges of votes for favors and places successfully accomplished makes
the "boss," the man who represents law and order; who is judge, and jury,
and keeper of the jail to those who do his bidding. As the political units
develop their bosses--"leaders," in voters' parlance--the system grows
until the chain is complete, and each political henchman, in the order of
his importance, takes his share of the people's money. The perquisites
reach millions before the thousands are distributed that enables the leader
to pose as the all-pervading friend to the district in time of need.
The political units where this system of government in the interest of the
"boss" have their strongest hold are the best evidences of the moral
degeneracy that follows. Here the liquor saloons flourish, the headquarters
of the "leader" and his cohorts, used in the order of rank in the system,
from the gayly lighted, silver-bedecked, mirror-lined bar-room to the
smoky, dirty, vilely kept den where those gather who have no use in life
but to vote according to orders and work for the political leader's
entrenchment. These saloons represent the primary school and the university
of the voters of the district. They represent all the educational and
recreative opportunity of most of the adults. They establish the habits of
thinking for the majority of the people, for they are the lyceum where all
questions are discussed that interest the people. The most interesting is
how to get wages, as it is the most important. The common struggle creates
common bonds of sympathy. All principles go down before the concrete,
understandable fact that if the "boss" is beaten, work will cease for
neighbor, friend, and friend's friend. Each man learns through every course
in this training school of citizens that the paramount duty of each voter
is to keep the "boss" in power. It means wages, or the hope of wages, under
the least strenuous of employers, the city. Men work hard for the system,
not because the moral nature of many of them is not in revolt against the
system, but because the keeping of a home for wife and children is at
stake. Often the voter's necessities, his ignorance often, his rebellion
against wealth often, his unrest, undermine his moral nature, blind his
intelligence, and he forges the chains that bind him in slavery to a system
that will cast him aside, and refuse him a reason when there is no use for
him. The voter may work during an election campaign half knowing that to
secure another worker in the interests of the political system the place he
holds has been promised to another after election. This fear and this hope
enters the homes; women and children are educated under the moral
degradation that enslaves husbands, sons, brothers, friends, lovers. The
standards of morals are established even in childhood by the working of the
systems of political machines. There is one measure of morals, _success_.
What succeeds is right.
[Illustration: TAKING THEIR TURN IN THE YARD AT THE SETTLEMENT.]
A small house was hired, through the generosity of several women, for the
purpose of providing a place for recreation and social opportunity for a
number of Christians--that is, people not Hebrews--left in a thickly
settled Hebrew district. These Christians, a mere remnant, resented the
opportunities offered the Hebrews, and while they might have availed
themselves of them, they would not, so strong was the race prejudice.
Shortly after the house was opened a delegation of boys appeared asking for
the use of the large room for a boys' club. The privilege was given on the
conditions that one of the workers interested in the house should have the
privilege of visiting the room freely when the club was in session; that
the club should pay twenty cents per month for the use of the room; that it
should be limited to twenty members for three months. Before the first
month had passed, it was decided that unless the club would accept a
director, it was a waste of the space and light to let these boys use the
room. They called themselves a debating and literary club. They knew
nothing of literature naturally and less of debating. They were told that
they must accept a director, a man who would instruct them in parliamentary
law, guide them in debate and suggest subjects for study, or they must
give up the room. They were very angry, but finally decided to accept the
director. Their constitution provided for an election every month, a
provision which kept them in a turmoil all the time. When the majority were
convinced of this, and voted that officers should be elected every three
months, the dissenting minority withdrew to form a new club, to meet
somewhere else. Two weeks later, on club night, the bell rang. The leader
of the minority, who had been elected president of the new club, asked if
they might come back. They did not like the place where they met. After a
conference with the original club, it was decided that, if they chose to
come back as members of the club and pay their dues--three cents per
week--they might come back. The conditions were accepted, and the seceding
minority were to be reinstated as members of the original club on the next
meeting night. As the petitioner was leaving, he turned innocently to the
director and said: "Say, we've elected a couple of new fellows. They can
come in, can't they?" The club consented conditionally on the "new fellows"
being peaceable. The next meeting night came. The bell rang. In order to do
full honor to the returning prodigals, the president went to the door.
There was a rush and a scramble; the eight boys who withdrew, followed by
twenty-two others, crowded into the room and demanded an election at once.
They declared they were in the majority now, and had a right to the
presidency for one of their own number. It was impossible to eject them,
had it been wise. The question was postponed for one week and an arbitrator
selected.
When the next meeting night came, some of the new recruits had dropped out
and their places had been taken by older boys. The original members, who
had maintained the club, were told to sit together and keep absolutely
quiet. The constitution declared that no boy was a member of the club who
did not pay an initiation fee of five cents; this included the first
month's dues. The first strange boy was asked: "Have you paid your
initiation fee?" The leader, a boy not fourteen, sprang forward and pressed
a five-cent piece in the boy's hand, saying: "Pay it now. Joe's the
treasurer." The cue had been given him, and he proceeded to give out
nickels to the new boys, urging them to "pay Joe quick." During this scene
another of the receding minority took his position in front of the door to
prevent any boy leaving the room with the money. The performance was
stopped; the opulent small boy, who it was evident was buying votes for the
presidency, was told to gather up his nickels. The recruits were told,
after an explanation, why they must leave, and to their credit be it
recorded some of them resented the position in which they had been placed
and promised the misleading leader an unhappy next day before they left. It
was then decided that the twelve members who had constituted the majority
should ballot individually for the eight who had seceded, as though they
had never belonged to the club. It is unnecessary to say that the boy who
made the trouble was rejected. Not one of those boys was fifteen years old,
yet they had learned and understood the method of the political
organizations of the region. Their elders, those they loved, used these
methods, and succeeded by them in getting place and power. The man who
succeeded in sharp practice in politics was the "boss." The man who was
beaten was not smart. The measure of morals was success, not methods used
to attain that success.
A woman's club, organized several years before, used this house. The
husbands of several of them organized a men's club, and met in the house
one evening in the week. Several of those men were affiliated with the
political organizations of the district; some held positions under the city
government through these affiliations.
When the Citizens' Union campaign began in 1897, the women who established
the house offered it and the yard for one evening a week to the Citizens'
Union Campaign Committee. Illustrated lectures were given to the people of
the neighborhood, the friends of the clubs using the house, and the parents
of children in the children's clubs. This declared the sentiments of the
women who established the house, which were emphasized when a picture of
the Citizens' Union candidate for Mayor was put in the window. It became
evident at once that there was trouble in the women's club; some of the
members of the men's club never entered the house after the picture was
placed. The Citizens' Union was defeated. At once the friction in the
women's club developed, till it seemed wise to disband it. It was announced
that the house had been given up, and that all the work done there must be
placed elsewhere. The younger clubs were housed in the Clark Memorial. The
women's club, in spite of the friction, voted to keep together, and, with
the City History Club, asked to be received at the College Settlement,
which generously, and at great inconvenience, arranged to receive them. The
members of the women's club, numbering forty-five, voted unanimously to
become identified with the College Settlement work, and pledged themselves
to that work. The one woman who had resisted this decision in secret stood
with the rest pledged to the Settlement. At once she incited trouble at the
Settlement. She was voted out of the club. When the decision was announced,
she, with the treasurer of the club and three others, walked out of the
house, the treasurer taking the club treasurer's book and the money, over
seventeen dollars. Sunday's papers announced the incorporation of a club
under the old name. The incorporators were the five women who had left the
club at the Settlement. The business of incorporating was attended to by a
political leader in the State Assembly. One of these women had held a
position in a city department, secured for her by a leader of one of the
political parties; one was the wife of a man holding a city position
through active affiliation with the other political party; another was the
wife of a man who was striving for prominence in political affairs in the
district, irrespective of party; the other was shrewd, ambitious,
vindictive. The club before this break had done charitable work; had helped
families who needed help, through the generosity of friends of wealth. It
had a limited membership, and election was the assurance of certain
qualities in the woman who was received as a member. All this had commanded
attention and could furnish political capital. To hold this for one or the
other of the political parties was the intention of the women who
incorporated under the club name and persuaded six of the club members to
join them.
The treasurer was so evidently the cat's-paw of those who were managing the
affair that, while steps were being taken to punish her for taking the
money, the club at the Settlement voted not to prosecute her, because it
would be a stigma on her as long as she lived, because she would have to
stand with women arrested for drunkenness and disorderly characters in the
dock. The original club remained at the Settlement. The minority who
withdrew, a total of eleven, began active and aggressive work. They hired
the use of a working-girls' club-room. They began to work according to the
most approved methods of political leaders. They attended the outings of a
political association; tried to do what they called charitable work, but
which this very group proved they could not do justly while in the little
house.
The Fusion campaign of 1901 brought unexpected complications to the club
woman. The Tammany influence was stronger than the Republican, and the
women who had led in the incorporating of the club withdrew. Unfortunately,
the opportunity to give this whole group a strong lesson in morals was
lost, and they have been accepted where, had the genesis of their club been
understood, it is but reasonable to suppose they would have had no moral
support, and for that reason would have gained a moral lesson.
The training most needed by the people of narrow experience and limited
intelligence is that of clear distinctions between right and wrong by those
they class above themselves. That shrewdness is not a moral virtue; that
revenge is mean and not the function of mortals, is the one lesson
intelligence and moral standards can teach convincingly.
Recently it was the privilege of the writer to visit a Parents' Society
connected with a school in the outskirts of Brooklyn. The spirit of good
fellowship that existed, not only among the teachers of the school, but
between the teachers and the parents, was a revelation. That there was a
unifying cause was certain. What was it? One of the mothers, during a walk
to the station, revealed it. In response to a comment on the good feeling
so evident, the mother replied: "Yes, I feel it. Mr. ----," naming a member
of the Board of Education, "at prayer meeting the other night spoke of the
school and what a power it was in this part of the city. We owe it all to
him. He's done everything he could do for the school, and he has made all
the ministers and the priests friends of the school." She was quiet a
minute, and then added: "Years ago, when he first began fighting for the
school, people used to call him a 'boss.' I think that kind of a boss would
be good in every school. I tell my husband we ought to be glad that we
bought that lot out here and built when we did, for we helped to make Mr.
---- successful. If leading men to do your will means being a 'boss,' Mr.
---- is one. But the city needs hundreds of such 'bosses.'" The man is a
simple American citizen, bearing a foreign name, who saw clearly there were
more ways of serving and saving his country than by carrying a rifle.
In the last analysis the "boss" as he is in New York to-day is the product
of many roots. The one that goes deepest in the soil, the course of his
deepest hold, can be traced to the doors of our churches. The men who have
failed to see that they owed an allegiance to the city that does not differ
in degree from what they owed the Church; the men who failed to see that
the Church was a positive factor in civic life; that its effectiveness in
the community was dependent on the standards it demanded and helped to
maintain in the city; that on it rested the responsibility for civic
character-building--on these men rest the heaviest responsibility for the
evolution of the political "boss" and the evils of which he is the
personification.
Men and women give money to maintain church services in sections where
political corruption and civic neglect have resulted in creating an
environment that makes decent living impossible; an environment that has so
degenerating an influence that the people become a factor in the problem it
presents, for they have sunk to its level.
In those sections the tools of the "boss," his active political agents, use
the most despicable methods. The tool of the principal is valuable as he is
conscienceless. His crumbs are the minor offices in the gift of the people;
the lesser tools get "jobs," which the very limitations of their minds make
them believe they must use to secure the largest return of money and power
to themselves--a conception largely due to the indifference of the men who
willingly delegate their civic responsibilities. Every man and woman who
pays the slightest attention to the conditions under which the poor are
forced to live, know that these conditions are responsible for the
existence of nine-tenths of the eleemosynary institutions, private and
public. They know that many of these institutions, could they stand before
the community in their true character, would be recognized as disgraceful
blots upon our civilization. They exist because so many good people in the
community have found greater pleasure in establishing and maintaining them
than in working actively to prevent the growth of the conditions that
peoples them.
Again and again one sees the names of men and women working actively on
these boards of management who would not give a moment's thought to a
meeting called in the interests of better civilization in sections of the
city where their own homes are located; who know nothing of the conditions
of the schools, the streets, the tenement houses, the factories, or the
administration of the law in regard to them. There are men who would resent
the charge of ignorance who do not know the names of the officers they
either actively or passively elected to office in the political unit in
which are their homes. They do not attend the primaries, defending their
absence on the ground that they could accomplish nothing by their
presence--a defense that is in itself a self-accusation. If their divine
right of citizenship has been forfeited, it is by their own civic sin of
omission. The longer one studies the evils that have grown up in the
administration of the business of the great municipality of New York, the
clearer one sees that the sins of omission are responsible for their
growth--far more responsible than the sins of commission against which
intelligent voters rail, when they do not use them as salve for their
political consciences. It is a profound truth that in a republic the
character of the people is shown in the character of the men the people
elect to office. This is as true of the ward as of the nation.
The political units of government in New York are, in the main, inhabited
by the rich and poor, the intelligent and the ignorant; those who can
reason from effect to cause, and those who cannot reason at all. Yet in
these sections the worst possible home conditions will exist--unsanitary
schools, dirty streets, badly paved. Saloons will abound and political
corruption will go unheeded. Why? Because no men of intelligence and
responsibility will accept the minor offices that mean the administration
of the affairs of this unit in the interest and for the protection of the
whole people.
When men of position in the professional and business world signify their
willingness to accept the least office in the gift of the people, the daily
papers announce the fact in large headlines, and the men become marked as
capable of great self-sacrifice, they become preeminent for the time. The
men who have controlled the nominations, those who have no other visible
means of support than these minor offices and political patronage, resent
the suggestion of men of professional and financial fortunes accepting
these offices; they consider the appearance of a man holding business or
professional positions of power or influence as a candidate for a minor
office as an invasion, an intrusion of their personal rights; it is an
attempt to defraud them. They do not hesitate to publicly claim the right
to nomination and election as the reward for their activity in politics.
And they do this when they cannot point to one thing done officially to
justify their claims to the suffrages of the people. They dare to do it in
the face of the knowledge, held by the people, that they use their offices
often for personal ends, defrauding the people.
The scores of voters who have places within the patronage of a minor
official see the danger to them of an official who would place merit in
advance of votes. The man of position may be far from wealthy; may consent
to serve the city at a financial loss; but the active voters live so remote
from the voters at the top that the election is almost certain to be
decided on class lines; and the defeat of the non-professional politician
is accepted by every man, woman and child in the poorer portion of the
district as a personal triumph; the evidence that the poor man has friends
to back him in his fight for place and power; that the poor must work
together politically.
Whose fault is it? The good, intelligent, responsible citizens who
delegated the government of their city to the men who use it for their
personal gain. The good men in active politics, who openly concede the
right to the minor offices in the city government to men whom they know are
ignorant, and not infrequently know equally well are dishonest, and who
will sacrifice the interest of the people to strengthen the system that
means personal gains.
The political conditions of the city several years ago gave birth to one of
the periodic moral upheavals that resulted in the election of a strong,
earnest, loyal, church-supporting citizen as Mayor. This Mayor was anxious
to raise the character of the city government. He determined to accomplish
this by the character of his appointments. He had more than a superficial
knowledge of the public schools, which at that time were the theater for
the exercise of political "pulls." It was known for years that the Board of
Education had been used to a greater or less extent to pay political debts,
to create political capital for future use by some of its most active
members. The new Mayor had it in his power to change the character of the
Board, and he carefully considered his appointments.
In one of the sections of the city where, numerically as to families,
wealth and poverty were fairly balanced, a section having in it churches of
every denomination, many of them maintaining missions in the same political
unit--there was at least this expression of neighborly interest--the
schools were among the first built in the city. The last school building
erected at the time of this Mayor's election had been built twenty years
before; one had been built when the foundation for the pillars of the
elevated road had been set in front of the site before it was purchased by
the Board of Education, and was now in the heart of a crowded foreign
settlement, had no out-door playground; the third building in the school
district was so old, so badly planned, that for years effort had been made
to secure a new building, but were defeated by the indifference, and at
times the opposition, of the best citizens of the district, according to
their own estimate.
The new Mayor determined to put the best men in the district on the Board.
Twenty-eight men in that district, men of power, men of standards, some of
them philanthropists actively interested in work for the poor, declined.
The men appointed, the best he could get to serve, were unfit for the
position--mentally unfit, for they were uneducated; or morally unfit,
because any position paid or unpaid under the city government was conceived
by them as just so great an opportunity to create political capital or
realize perquisites put within their control by their appointments. The
Mayor had begun at the top to make his appointments. The declinations of
the honor were because of lack of time, a lack of knowledge. When the
appointments were announced, there was a storm of criticism, and none more
violent than the majority of the men who declined to serve on the Board.
At this time there was a great deal of activity among many leading women in
the State to have a bill passed by the Legislature that would compel the
Mayor of cities of the first class to appoint women in the proportion of
one-third of the whole number appointed to the Boards of Education of those
cities. The greatest activity for this measure was exercised in Brooklyn.
One of the leaders, when asked a question about one of the schools in her
own district, did not know where the school was. She had been a tax-payer
in the district twenty-two years, and was considered a progressive woman.
Her chief reason for working for this bill, for spending money freely in
the interest of its success, was man's indifference to school matters.
Perhaps if the command, "Feed my lambs" had been given to Dorcas instead of
Peter, she might have developed enough sense of responsibility about the
mental food given to know where the school buildings of her own school
district were located.
In this school district, October, 1901, there were 574 children on half-day
classes. There was no manual training, though the pupils in the schools
were, for the most part, the children of day laborers, mechanics, and
clerks on small salaries. There was no free library, nor prospect of any,
because public sentiment did not demand it. There was one small park,
difficult of access. To reach it from the outer sections of the district,
the tracks used by nine lines of trolley cars must be crossed. There were
no public baths, except one in summer, near the mouth of a large sewer. One
of the schools had no out-door playground; two had the closets in the
in-door playgrounds. There was no room where the teachers could retire if
ill, or where they could take their luncheons; no rooms where pupils could
be privately interviewed or taken if ill. Yet it is in this very district,
where the oldest and wealthiest families of the city live; where
nine-tenths of the philanthropic enterprises of the city have been born,
and where the moral upheavals for the regeneration of the city will always
find their quota of leaders, that there is developing some of the worst
evils of a cosmopolitan city. Within its borders is a fair-sized Italian
city, with scores of sweat-shops. Across the thoroughfare is a large Irish
village lying at the foot of the hill, the streets dirty, unpaved, the
houses in an unsanitary condition. Some of them are overrun with rats of
enormous size. The streets at the top of the hill are beginning to yield to
the pressure of the crowds at the foot. Specific houses seem to have in
them the very germs of immorality and degeneracy. Women who have made a
struggle when, by misfortune, forced to move into these houses cease to
struggle, and yield to the influences about them. The tenement-house laws
are violated openly.
There are not less than six missions, with twice that number of churches,
in this one section; but so far as the environment of the poor is
concerned, they might as well not exist. The majority of the tax-payers,
those who command public respect and confidence, will not serve
authoritatively in the political unit in which are their homes, in which
their children must grow up. They will not take offices that would put it
in their power to change the environment of the homes of the poor by
securing the rights, enforcing the laws, that would protect all of the
homes from the evils of vice, ignorance and unsanitary conditions. But
these men when wealthy will support liberally institutions made necessary
by their civic indifference.
No man in a pulpit in the section has ever made a study of it to arouse the
conscience and energies of the members of his church to their political
duties. Unfortunately the women, for the most part, are as ignorant of the
condition, and as indifferent. Because of the unsanitary conditions of the
houses occupied by the poor, the dirty streets, the restrictions of child
life, the lack of opportunity for moral development, the total dearth of
recreative opportunity for the boys and girls, the young men and women who
are wage-earners, the lack of educational facilities for the children who
must be educated, if at all, at the expense of the State, the section is a
prolific source of supply to the institutions the intelligent, sympathetic,
wealthy women of the section are so active in creating and sustaining.
The indifference of the wealthy and responsible to the conditions
prevailing in parts of this section is so well known that officers at the
heads of the city department ignore complaints, or treat them as incidents
to be tolerated as part of the experiences of their official life.
The penalty is being paid in the steady decline of real estate values, the
gradual spread of the undesirable part of the community, the exodus of the
wealthiest to the sections more remote from the tenements.
The environment that has a degenerating influence on the people of limited
means in that section is not due primarily to the political corruption of
those using their positions to secure their own ends, but to the criminal
attitude of the men in the churches and intelligent men not in them, who
refuse to assume the political responsibilities that are their birthrights;
the criminal indifference of those who fail to know the necessities of
which the homes of the poor whom God gave into their charge stand in need.
This section of the city is typical, not peculiar. Every section of New
York gives evidence of the divorce between the churches and the political
control that makes the environment of the home and the churches.
The city is what the good, active people of the city want it to be--no
better, no worse. The condition of the most uncared-for section gives the
church's answer to the question, "Am I my brother's keeper?" The mark of
Cain may not be visible, but every child who goes out of life because its
right to light, air, sunshine has not been protected is a charge against
the Church. Every boy and girl whose life record is shadowed, blackened
because their right to education, to training, to freedom to develop
physically, mentally, morally, spiritually was denied them through
political indifference, are the evidences of the failure of the churches to
live up to the light which Christ left to their keeping. His followers do
not march through the cities of the poor, an army.
When Christ said, "The second is like unto it, love thy neighbor as
thyself," He did not not mean the ethical conception for which the Church
has stood, but the broad, Christ-like conception of brotherhood which would
protect "thy neighbor" from the evils of his own ignorance and weakness;
that would use one's best strength in his interest seven days in the week.