THE SHAME OF THE CITIES
BY
LINCOLN STEFFENS
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
MCMIV
_Copyright, 1904, by_
McCLURE, PHILLIPS & CO.
Published, March, 1904
Second Impression
COPYRIGHT, 1902, 1903, BY S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION; AND SOME CONCLUSIONS 3
TWEED DAYS IN ST. LOUIS 29
THE SHAME OF MINNEAPOLIS 63
THE SHAMELESSNESS OF ST. LOUIS 101
PITTSBURG: A CITY ASHAMED 147
PHILADELPHIA: CORRUPT AND CONTENTED 193
CHICAGO: HALF FREE AND FIGHTING ON 233
NEW YORK: GOOD GOVERNMENT TO THE TEST 279
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INTRODUCTION; AND SOME CONCLUSIONS
This is not a book. It is a collection of articles reprinted from
_McClure’s Magazine_. Done as journalism, they are journalism still, and
no further pretensions are set up for them in their new dress. This
classification may seem pretentious enough; certainly it would if I
should confess what claims I make for my profession. But no matter about
that; I insist upon the journalism. And there is my justification for
separating from the bound volumes of the magazine and republishing,
practically without re-editing, my accounts as a reporter of the shame
of American cities. They were written with a purpose, they were
published serially with a purpose, and they are reprinted now together
to further that same purpose, which was and is—to sound for the civic
pride of an apparently shameless citizenship.
There must be such a thing, we reasoned. All our big boasting could not
be empty vanity, nor our pious pretensions hollow sham. American
achievements in science, art, and business mean sound abilities at
bottom, and our hypocrisy a race sense of fundamental ethics. Even in
government we have given proofs of potential greatness, and our
political failures are not complete; they are simply ridiculous. But
they are ours. Not alone the triumphs and the statesmen, the defeats and
the grafters also represent us, and just as truly. Why not see it so and
say it?
Because, I heard, the American people won’t “stand for” it. You may
blame the politicians, or, indeed, any one class, but not all classes,
not the people. Or you may put it on the ignorant foreign immigrant, or
any one nationality, but not on all nationalities, not on the American
people. But no one class is at fault, nor any one breed, nor any
particular interest or group of interests. The misgovernment of the
American people is misgovernment by the American people.
When I set out on my travels, an honest New Yorker told me honestly that
I would find that the Irish, the Catholic Irish, were at the bottom of
it all everywhere. The first city I went to was St. Louis, a German
city. The next was Minneapolis, a Scandinavian city, with a leadership
of New Englanders. Then came Pittsburg, Scotch Presbyterian, and that
was what my New York friend was. “Ah, but they are all foreign
populations,” I heard. The next city was Philadelphia, the purest
American community of all, and the most hopeless. And after that came
Chicago and New York, both mongrel-bred, but the one a triumph of
reform, the other the best example of good government that I had seen.
The “foreign element” excuse is one of the hypocritical lies that save
us from the clear sight of ourselves.
Another such conceit of our egotism is that which deplores our politics
and lauds our business. This is the wail of the typical American
citizen. Now, the typical American citizen is the business man. The
typical business man is a bad citizen; he is busy. If he is a “big
business man” and very busy, he does not neglect, he is busy with
politics, oh, very busy and very businesslike. I found him buying
boodlers in St. Louis, defending grafters in Minneapolis, originating
corruption in Pittsburg, sharing with bosses in Philadelphia, deploring
reform in Chicago, and beating good government with corruption funds in
New York. He is a self-righteous fraud, this business man. He is the
chief source of corruption, and it were a boon if he would neglect
politics. But he is not the business man that neglects politics; that
worthy is the good citizen, the typical business man. He too is busy, he
is the one that has no use and therefore no time for politics. When his
neglect has permitted bad government to go so far that he can be stirred
to action, he is unhappy, and he looks around for a cure that shall be
quick, so that he may hurry back to the shop. Naturally, too, when he
talks politics, he talks shop. His patent remedy is quack; it is
business.
“Give us a business man,” he says (“like me,” he means). “Let him
introduce business methods into politics and government; then I shall be
left alone to attend to my business.”
There is hardly an office from United States Senator down to Alderman in
any part of the country to which the business man has not been elected;
yet politics remains corrupt, government pretty bad, and the selfish
citizen has to hold himself in readiness like the old volunteer firemen
to rush forth at any hour, in any weather, to prevent the fire; and he
goes out sometimes and he puts out the fire (after the damage is done)
and he goes back to the shop sighing for the business man in politics.
The business man has failed in politics as he has in citizenship. Why?
Because politics is business. That’s what’s the matter with it. That’s
what’s the matter with everything,—art, literature, religion,
journalism, law, medicine,—they’re all business, and all—as you see
them. Make politics a sport, as they do in England, or a profession, as
they do in Germany, and we’ll have—well, something else than we have
now,—if we want it, which is another question. But don’t try to reform
politics with the banker, the lawyer, and the dry-goods merchant, for
these are business men and there are two great hindrances to their
achievement of reform: one is that they are different from, but no
better than, the politicians; the other is that politics is not “their
line.” There are exceptions both ways. Many politicians have gone out
into business and done well (Tammany ex-mayors, and nearly all the old
bosses of Philadelphia are prominent financiers in their cities), and
business men have gone into politics and done well (Mark Hanna, for
example). They haven’t reformed their adopted trades, however, though
they have sometimes sharpened them most pointedly. The politician is a
business man with a specialty. When a business man of some other line
learns the business of politics, he is a politician, and there is not
much reform left in him. Consider the United States Senate, and believe
me.
The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of
credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade
and dickering, not principle. “My business is sacred,” says the business
man in his heart. “Whatever prospers my business, is good; it must be.
Whatever hinders it, is wrong; it must be. A bribe is bad, that is, it
is a bad thing to take; but it is not so bad to give one, not if it is
necessary to my business.” “Business is business” is not a political
sentiment, but our politician has caught it. He takes essentially the
same view of the bribe, only he saves his self-respect by piling all his
contempt upon the bribe-giver, and he has the great advantage of candor.
“It is wrong, maybe,” he says, “but if a rich merchant can afford to do
business with me for the sake of a convenience or to increase his
already great wealth, I can afford, for the sake of a living, to meet
him half way. I make no pretensions to virtue, not even on Sunday.” And
as for giving bad government or good, how about the merchant who gives
bad goods or good goods, according to the demand?
But there is hope, not alone despair, in the commercialism of our
politics. If our political leaders are to be always a lot of political
merchants, they will supply any demand we may create. All we have to do
is to establish a steady demand for good government. The boss has us
split up into parties. To him parties are nothing but means to his
corrupt ends. He “bolts” his party, but we must not; the bribe-giver
changes his party, from one election to another, from one county to
another, from one city to another, but the honest voter must not. Why?
Because if the honest voter cared no more for his party than the
politician and the grafter, then the honest vote would govern, and that
would be bad—for graft. It is idiotic, this devotion to a machine that
is used to take our sovereignty from us. If we would leave parties to
the politicians, and would vote not for the party, not even for men, but
for the city, and the State, and the nation, we should rule parties, and
cities, and States, and nation. If we would vote in mass on the more
promising ticket, or, if the two are equally bad, would throw out the
party that is in, and wait till the next election and then throw out the
other party that is in—then, I say, the commercial politician would feel
a demand for good government and he would supply it. That process would
take a generation or more to complete, for the politicians now really do
not know what good government is. But it has taken as long to develop
bad government, and the politicians know what that is. If it would not
“go,” they would offer something else, and, if the demand were steady,
they, being so commercial, would “deliver the goods.”
But do the people want good government? Tammany says they don’t. Are the
people honest? Are the people better than Tammany? Are they better than
the merchant and the politician? Isn’t our corrupt government, after
all, representative?
President Roosevelt has been sneered at for going about the country
preaching, as a cure for our American evils, good conduct in the
individual, simple honesty, courage, and efficiency. “Platitudes!” the
sophisticated say. Platitudes? If my observations have been true, the
literal adoption of Mr. Roosevelt’s reform scheme would result in a
revolution, more radical and terrible to existing institutions, from the
Congress to the Church, from the bank to the ward organization, than
socialism or even than anarchy. Why, that would change all of us—not
alone our neighbors, not alone the grafters, but you and me.
No, the contemned methods of our despised politics are the master
methods of our braggart business, and the corruption that shocks us in
public affairs we practice ourselves in our private concerns. There is
no essential difference between the pull that gets your wife into
society or a favorable review for your book, and that which gets a
heeler into office, a thief out of jail, and a rich man’s son on the
board of directors of a corporation; none between the corruption of a
labor union, a bank, and a political machine; none between a dummy
director of a trust and the caucus-bound member of a legislature; none
between a labor boss like Sam Parks, a boss of banks like John D.
Rockefeller, a boss of railroads like J. P. Morgan, and a political boss
like Matthew S. Quay. The boss is not a political, he is an American
institution, product of a freed people that have not the spirit to be
free.
And it’s all a moral weakness; a weakness right where we think we are
strongest. Oh, we are good—on Sunday, and we are “fearfully patriotic”
on the Fourth of July. But the bribe we pay to the janitor to prefer our
interests to the landlord’s, is the little brother of the bribe passed
to the alderman to sell a city street, and the father of the air-brake
stock assigned to the president of a railroad to have this life-saving
invention adopted on his road. And as for graft, railroad passes, saloon
and bawdy-house blackmail, and watered stock, all these belong to the
same family. We are pathetically proud of our democratic institutions
and our republican form of government, of our grand Constitution and our
just laws. We are a free and sovereign people, we govern ourselves and
the government is ours. But that is the point. We are responsible, not
our leaders, since we follow them. We _let_ them divert our loyalty from
the United States to some “party”; we _let_ them boss the party and turn
our municipal democracies into autocracies and our republican nation
into a plutocracy. We cheat our government and we let our leaders loot
it, and we let them wheedle and bribe our sovereignty from us. True,
they pass for us strict laws, but we are content to let them pass also
bad laws, giving away public property in exchange; and our good, and
often impossible, laws we allow to be used for oppression and blackmail.
And what can we say? We break our own laws and rob our own government,
the lady at the custom-house, the lyncher with his rope, and the captain
of industry with his bribe and his rebate. The spirit of graft and of
lawlessness is the American spirit.
And this shall not be said? Not plainly? William Travers Jerome, the
fearless District Attorney of New York, says, “You can say anything you
think to the American people. If you are honest with yourself you may be
honest with them, and they will forgive not only your candor, but your
mistakes.” This is the opinion, and the experience too, of an honest man
and a hopeful democrat. Who says the other things? Who says “Hush,” and
“What’s the use?” and “ALL’S well,” when all is rotten? It is the
grafter; the coward, too, but the grafter inspires the coward. The
doctrine of “addition, division, and silence” is the doctrine of graft.
“Don’t hurt the party,” “Spare the fair fame of the city,” are boodle
yells. The Fourth of July oration is the “front” of graft. There is no
patriotism in it, but treason. It is part of the game. The grafters call
for cheers for the flag, “prosperity,” and “the party,” just as a
highwayman commands “hands up,” and while we are waving and shouting,
they float the flag from the nation to the party, turn both into graft
factories, and prosperity into a speculative boom to make “weak hands,”
as the Wall Street phrase has it, hold the watered stock while the
strong hands keep the property. “Blame us, blame anybody, but praise the
people,” this, the politician’s advice, is not the counsel of respect
for the people, but of contempt. By just such palavering as courtiers
play upon the degenerate intellects of weak kings, the bosses,
political, financial, and industrial, are befuddling and befooling our
sovereign American citizenship; and—likewise—they are corrupting it.
And it is corruptible, this citizenship. “I know what Parks is doing,”
said a New York union workman, “but what do I care. He has raised my
wages. Let him have his graft!” And the Philadelphia merchant says the
same thing: “The party leaders may be getting more than they should out
of the city, but that doesn’t hurt me. It may raise taxes a little, but
I can stand that. The party keeps up the protective tariff. If that were
cut down, my business would be ruined. So long as the party stands pat
on that, I stand pat on the party.”
The people are not innocent. That is the only “news” in all the
journalism of these articles, and no doubt that was not new to many
observers. It was to me. When I set out to describe the corrupt systems
of certain typical cities, I meant to show simply how the people were
deceived and betrayed. But in the very first study—St. Louis—the
startling truth lay bare that corruption was not merely political; it
was financial, commercial, social; the ramifications of boodle were so
complex, various, and far-reaching, that one mind could hardly grasp
them, and not even Joseph W. Folk, the tireless prosecutor, could follow
them all. This state of things was indicated in the first article which
Claude H. Wetmore and I compiled together, but it was not shown plainly
enough. Mr. Wetmore lived in St. Louis, and he had respect for names
which meant little to me. But when I went next to Minneapolis alone, I
could see more independently, without respect for persons, and there
were traces of the same phenomenon. The first St. Louis article was
called “Tweed Days in St. Louis,” and though the “better citizen”
received attention the Tweeds were the center of interest. In “The Shame
of Minneapolis,” the truth was put into the title; it was the Shame of
Minneapolis; not of the Ames administration, not of the Tweeds, but of
the city and its citizens. And yet Minneapolis was not nearly so bad as
St. Louis; police graft is never so universal as boodle. It is more
shocking, but it is so filthy that it cannot involve so large a part of
society. So I returned to St. Louis, and I went over the whole ground
again, with the people in mind, not alone the caught and convicted
boodlers. And this time the true meaning of “Tweed days in St. Louis”
was made plain. The article was called “The Shamelessness of St. Louis,”
and that was the burden of the story. In Pittsburg also the people was
the subject, and though the civic spirit there was better, the extent of
the corruption throughout the social organization of the community was
indicated. But it was not till I got to Philadelphia that the
possibilities of popular corruption were worked out to the limit of
humiliating confession. That was the place for such a study. There is
nothing like it in the country, except possibly, in Cincinnati.
Philadelphia certainly is not merely corrupt, but corrupted, and this
was made clear. Philadelphia was charged up to—the American citizen.
It was impossible in the space of a magazine article to cover in any one
city all the phases of municipal government, so I chose cities that
typified most strikingly some particular phase or phases. Thus as St.
Louis exemplified boodle; Minneapolis, police graft; Pittsburg, a
political and industrial machine; and Philadelphia, general civic
corruption; so Chicago was an illustration of reform, and New York of
good government. All these things occur in most of these places. There
are, and long have been, reformers in St. Louis, and there is to-day
police graft there. Minneapolis has had boodling and council reform, and
boodling is breaking out there again. Pittsburg has general corruption,
and Philadelphia a very perfect political machine. Chicago has police
graft and a low order of administrative and general corruption which
permeates business, labor, and society generally. As for New York, the
metropolis might exemplify almost anything that occurs anywhere in
American cities, but no city has had for many years such a good
administration as was that of Mayor Seth Low.
That which I have made each city stand for, is that which it had most
highly developed. It would be absurd to seek for organized reform in St.
Louis, for example, with Chicago next door; or for graft in Chicago with
Minneapolis so near. After Minneapolis, a description of administrative
corruption in Chicago would have seemed like a repetition. Perhaps it
was not just to treat only the conspicuous element in each situation.
But why should I be just? I was not judging; I arrogated to myself no
such function. I was not writing about Chicago for Chicago, but for the
other cities, so I picked out what light each had for the instruction of
the others. But, if I was never complete, I never exaggerated. Every one
of those articles was an understatement, especially where the conditions
were bad, and the proof thereof is that while each article seemed to
astonish other cities, it disappointed the city which was its subject.
Thus my friends in Philadelphia, who knew what there was to know, and
those especially who knew what I knew, expressed surprise that I
reported so little. And one St. Louis newspaper said that “the facts
were thrown at me and I fell down over them.” There was truth in these
flings. I cut twenty thousand words out of the Philadelphia article and
yet I had not written half my facts. I know a man who is making a
history of the corrupt construction of the Philadelphia City Hall, in
three volumes, and he grieves because he lacks space. You can’t put all
the known incidents of the corruption of an American city into a book.
This is all very unscientific, but then, I am not a scientist. I am a
journalist. I did not gather with indifference all the facts and arrange
them patiently for permanent preservation and laboratory analysis. I did
not want to preserve, I wanted to destroy the facts. My purpose was no
more scientific than the spirit of my investigation and reports; it was,
as I said above, to see if the shameful facts, spread out in all their
shame, would not burn through our civic shamelessness and set fire to
American pride. That was the journalism of it. I wanted to move and to
convince. That is why I was not interested in all the facts, sought none
that was new, and rejected half those that were old. I often was asked
to expose something suspected. I couldn’t; and why should I? Exposure of
the unknown was not my purpose. The people: what they will put up with,
how they are fooled, how cheaply they are bought, how dearly sold, how
easily intimidated, and how led, for good or for evil—that was the
inquiry, and so the significant facts were those only which everybody in
each city knew, and of these, only those which everybody in every other
town would recognize, from their common knowledge of such things, to be
probable. But these, understated, were charged always to the guilty
persons when individuals were to blame, and finally brought home to the
people themselves, who, having the power, have also the responsibility,
they and those they respect, and those that guide them.
This was against all the warnings and rules of demagogy. What was the
result?
After Joseph W. Folk had explored and exposed, with convictions, the
boodling of St. Louis, the rings carried an election. “Tweed Days in St.
Louis” is said to have formed some public sentiment against the
boodlers, but the local newspapers had more to do with that than
_McClure’s Magazine_. After the Minneapolis grand jury had exposed and
the courts had tried and the common juries had convicted the grafters
there, an election showed that public opinion was formed. But that one
election was regarded as final. When I went there the men who had led
the reform movement were “all through.” After they had read the “Shame
of Minneapolis,” however, they went back to work, and they have
perfected a plan to keep the citizens informed and to continue the fight
for good government. They saw, these unambitious, busy citizens, that it
was “up to them,” and they resumed the unwelcome duties of their
citizenship. Of resentment there was very little. At a meeting of
leading citizens there were honest speeches suggesting that something
should be said to “clear the name of Minneapolis,” but one man rose and
said very pleasantly, but firmly, that the article was true; it was
pretty hard on them, but it was true and they all knew it. That ended
that.
When I returned to St. Louis and rewrote the facts, and, in rewriting,
made them just as insulting as the truth would permit, my friends there
expressed dismay over the manuscript. The article would hurt Mr. Folk;
it would hurt the cause; it would arouse popular wrath.
“That was what I hoped it would do,” I said.
“But the indignation would break upon Folk and reform, not on the
boodlers,” they said.
“Wasn’t it obvious,” I asked, “that this very title, ‘Shamelessness,’
was aimed at pride; that it implied a faith that there was self-respect
to be touched and shame to be moved?”
That was too subtle. So I answered that if they had no faith in the
town, I had, and anyway, if I was wrong and the people should resent,
not the crime, but the exposure of it, then they would punish, not Mr.
Folk, who had nothing to do with the article, but the magazine and me.
Newspaper men warned me that they would not “stand for” the article, but
would attack it. I answered that I would let the St. Louisans decide
between us. It was true, it was just; the people of St. Louis had shown
no shame. Here was a good chance to see whether they had any. I was a
fool, they said. “All right,” I replied. “All kings had fools in the
olden days, and the fools were allowed to tell them the truth. I would
play the fool to the American people.”
The article, published, was attacked by the newspapers; friends of Mr.
Folk repudiated it; Mr. Folk himself spoke up for the people. Leading
citizens raised money for a mass meeting to “set the city right before
the world.” The mayor of the city, a most excellent man, who had helped
me, denounced the article. The boodle party platform appealed for votes
on the strength of the attacks in “Eastern magazines.” The people
themselves contradicted me; after the publication, two hundred thousand
buttons for “Folk and Reform” were worn on the streets of St. Louis.
But those buttons were for “Folk and Reform.” They did go to prove that
the article was wrong, that there was pride in St. Louis, but they
proved also that that pride had been touched. Up to that time nobody
knew exactly how St. Louis felt about it all. There had been one
election, another was pending, and the boodlers, caught or to be caught,
were in control. The citizens had made no move to dislodge them. Mr.
Folk’s splendid labors were a spectacle without a chorus, and, though I
had met men who told me the people were with Folk, I had met also the
grafters, who cursed only Folk and were building all their hopes on the
assumption that “after Folk’s term” all would be well again. Between
these two local views no outsider could choose. How could I read a
strange people’s hearts? I took the outside view, stated the facts both
ways,—the right verdicts of the juries and the confident plans of the
boodlers,—and the result was, indeed, a shameless state of affairs for
which St. Louis, the people of St. Louis, were to blame.
And they saw it so, both in the city and in the State, and they ceased
to be spectators. That article simply got down to the self-respect of
this people. And who was hurt? Not St. Louis. From that moment the city
has been determined and active, and boodle seems to be doomed. Not Mr.
Folk. After that, his nomination for Governor of the State was declared
for by the people, who formed Folk clubs all over the State to force him
upon his party and theirs, and thus insure the pursuit of the boodlers
in St. Louis and in Missouri too. Nor was the magazine hurt, or myself.
The next time I went to St. Louis, the very men who had raised money for
the mass meeting to denounce the article went out of their way to say to
me that I had been right, the article was true, and they asked me to “do
it again.” And there may be a chance to do it again. Mr. Folk lifted the
lid off Missouri for a moment after that, and the State also appeared
ripe for the gathering. Moreover, the boodlers of State and city have
joined to beat the people and keep them down. The decisive election is
not till the fall of 1904, and the boodlers count much on the fickleness
of public opinion. But I believe that Missouri and St. Louis together
will prove then, once for all, that the people can rule—when they are
aroused.
The Pittsburg article had no effect in Pittsburg, nor had that on
Philadelphia any results in Philadelphia. Nor was any expected there.
Pittsburg, as I said in the article, knew itself, and may pull out of
its disgrace, but Philadelphia is contented and seems hopeless. The
accounts of them, however, and indeed, as I have said, all in the
series, were written, not for the cities described, but for all our
cities; and the most immediate responses came not from places described,
but from others where similar evils existed or similar action was
needed. Thus Chicago, intent on its troubles; found useless to it the
study of its reform, which seems to have been suggestive elsewhere, and
Philadelphia, “Corrupt and Contented,” was taken home in other cities
and seems to have made the most lasting impression everywhere.
But of course the tangible results are few. The real triumph of the
year’s work was the complete demonstration it has given, in a thousand
little ways, that our shamelessness is superficial, that beneath it lies
a pride which, being real, may save us yet. And it is real. The grafters
who said you may put the blame anywhere but on the people, where it
belongs, and that Americans can be moved only by flattery,—they lied.
They lied about themselves. They, too, are American citizens; they too,
are of the people; and some of them also were reached by shame. The
great truth I tried to make plain was that which Mr. Folk insists so
constantly upon: that bribery is no ordinary felony, but treason, that
the “corruption which breaks out here and there and now and then” is not
an occasional offense, but a common practice, and that the effect of it
is literally to change the form of our government from one that is
representative of the people to an oligarchy, representative of special
interests. Some politicians have seen that this is so, and it bothers
them. I think I prize more highly than any other of my experiences the
half-dozen times when grafting politicians I had “roasted,” as they put
it, called on me afterwards to say, in the words of one who spoke with a
wonderful solemnity:
“You are right. I never thought of it that way, but it’s right. I don’t
know whether you can do anything, but you’re right, dead right. And I’m
all wrong. We’re all, all wrong. I don’t see how we can stop it now; I
don’t see how I can change. I can’t, I guess. No, I can’t, not now. But,
say, I may be able to help you, and I will if I can. You can have
anything I’ve got.”
So you see, they are not such bad fellows, these practical politicians.
I wish I could tell more about them: how they have helped me; how
candidly and unselfishly they have assisted me to facts and an
understanding of the facts, which, as I warned them, as they knew well,
were to be used against them. If I could—and I will some day—I should
show that one of the surest hopes we have is the politician himself. Ask
him for good politics; punish him when he gives bad, and reward him when
he gives good; make politics pay. Now, he says, you don’t know and you
don’t care, and that you must be flattered and fooled—and there, I say,
he is wrong. I did not flatter anybody; I told the truth as near as I
could get it, and instead of resentment there was encouragement. After
“The Shame of Minneapolis,” and “The Shamelessness of St. Louis,” not
only did citizens of these cities approve, but citizens of other cities,
individuals, groups, and organizations, sent in invitations, hundreds of
them, “to come and show us up; we’re worse than they are.”
We Americans may have failed. We may be mercenary and selfish. Democracy
with us may be impossible and corruption inevitable, but these articles,
if they have proved nothing else, have demonstrated beyond doubt that we
can stand the truth; that there is pride in the character of American
citizenship; and that this pride may be a power in the land. So this
little volume, a record of shame and yet of self-respect, a disgraceful
confession, yet a declaration of honor, is dedicated, in all good faith,
to the accused—to all the citizens of all the cities in the United
States.
NEW YORK, _December, 1903_.
TWEED DAYS IN ST. LOUIS
(_October, 1902_)
St. Louis, the fourth city in size in the United States, is making two
announcements to the world: one that it is the worst-governed city in
the land; the other that it wishes all men to come there (for the
World’s Fair) and see it. It isn’t our worst-governed city; Philadelphia
is that. But St. Louis is worth examining while we have it inside out.
There is a man at work there, one man, working all alone, but he is the
Circuit (district or State) Attorney, and he is “doing his duty.” That
is what thousands of district attorneys and other public officials have
promised to do and boasted of doing. This man has a literal sort of
mind. He is a thin-lipped, firm-mouthed, dark little man, who never
raises his voice, but goes ahead doing, with a smiling eye and a set
jaw, the simple thing he said he would do. The politicians and reputable
citizens who asked him to run urged him when he declined. When he said
that if elected he would have to do his duty, they said, “Of course.” So
he ran, they supported him, and he was elected. Now some of these
politicians are sentenced to the penitentiary, some are in Mexico. The
Circuit Attorney, finding that his “duty” was to catch and convict
criminals, and that the biggest criminals were some of these same
politicians and leading citizens, went after them. It is magnificent,
but the politicians declare it isn’t politics.
The corruption of St. Louis came from the top. The best citizens—the
merchants and big financiers—used to rule the town, and they ruled it
well. They set out to outstrip Chicago. The commercial and industrial
war between these two cities was at one time a picturesque and dramatic
spectacle such as is witnessed only in our country. Business men were
not mere merchants and the politicians were not mere grafters; the two
kinds of citizens got together and wielded the power of banks,
railroads, factories, the prestige of the city, and the spirit of its
citizens to gain business and population. And it was a close race.
Chicago, having the start, always led, but St. Louis had pluck,
intelligence, and tremendous energy. It pressed Chicago hard. It
excelled in a sense of civic beauty and good government; and there are
those who think yet it might have won. But a change occurred. Public
spirit became private spirit, public enterprise became private greed.
Along about 1890, public franchises and privileges were sought, not only
for legitimate profit and common convenience, but for loot. Taking but
slight and always selfish interest in the public councils, the big men
misused politics. The riffraff, catching the smell of corruption, rushed
into the Municipal Assembly, drove out the remaining respectable men,
and sold the city—its streets, its wharves, its markets, and all that it
had—to the now greedy business men and bribers. In other words, when the
leading men began to devour their own city, the herd rushed into the
trough and fed also.
So gradually has this occurred that these same citizens hardly realize
it. Go to St. Louis and you will find the habit of civic pride in them;
they still boast. The visitor is told of the wealth of the residents, of
the financial strength of the banks, and of the growing importance of
the industries, yet he sees poorly paved, refuse-burdened streets, and
dusty or mud-covered alleys; he passes a ramshackle fire-trap crowded
with the sick, and learns that it is the City Hospital; he enters the
“Four Courts,” and his nostrils are greeted by the odor of formaldehyde
used as a disinfectant, and insect powder spread to destroy vermin; he
calls at the new City Hall, and finds half the entrance boarded with
pine planks to cover up the unfinished interior. Finally, he turns a tap
in the hotel, to see liquid mud flow into wash-basin or bath-tub.
The St. Louis charter vests legislative power of great scope in a
Municipal Assembly, which is composed of a council and a House of
Delegates. Here is a description of the latter by one of Mr. Folk’s
grand juries:
“We have had before us many of those who have been, and most of those
who are now, members of the House of Delegates. We found a number of
these utterly illiterate and lacking in ordinary intelligence, unable to
give a better reason for favoring or opposing a measure than a desire to
act with the majority. In some, no trace of mentality or morality could
be found; in others, a low order of training appeared, united with base
cunning, groveling instincts, and sordid desires. Unqualified to respond
to the ordinary requirements of life, they are utterly incapable of
comprehending the significance of an ordinance, and are incapacitated,
both by nature and training, to be the makers of laws. The choosing of
such men to be legislators makes a travesty of justice, sets a premium
on incompetency, and deliberately poisons the very source of the law.”
These creatures were well organized. They had a “combine”—legislative
institution—which the grand jury described as follows:
“Our investigation, covering more or less fully a period of ten years,
shows that, with few exceptions, no ordinance has been passed wherein
valuable privileges or franchises are granted until those interested
have paid the legislators the money demanded for action in the
particular case. Combines in both branches of the Municipal Assembly are
formed by members sufficient in number to control legislation. To one
member of this combine is delegated the authority to act for the
combine, and to receive and to distribute to each member the money
agreed upon as the price of his vote in support of, or opposition to, a
pending measure. So long has this practice existed that such members
have come to regard the receipt of money for action on pending measures
as a legitimate perquisite of a legislator.”
One legislator consulted a lawyer with the intention of suing a firm to
recover an unpaid balance on a fee for the grant of a switch-way. Such
difficulties rarely occurred, however. In order to insure a regular and
indisputable revenue, the combine of each house drew up a schedule of
bribery prices for all possible sorts of grants, just such a list as a
commercial traveler takes out on the road with him. There was a price
for a grain elevator, a price for a short switch; side tracks were
charged for by the linear foot, but at rates which varied according to
the nature of the ground taken; a street improvement cost so much; wharf
space was classified and precisely rated. As there was a scale for
favorable legislation, so there was one for defeating bills. It made a
difference in the price if there was opposition, and it made a
difference whether the privilege asked was legitimate or not. But
nothing was passed free of charge. Many of the legislators were
saloon-keepers—it was in St. Louis that a practical joker nearly emptied
the House of Delegates by tipping a boy to rush into a session and call
out, “Mister, your saloon is on fire,”—but even the saloon-keepers of a
neighborhood had to pay to keep in their inconvenient locality a market
which public interest would have moved.
From the Assembly, bribery spread into other departments. Men empowered
to issue peddlers’ licenses and permits to citizens who wished to erect
awnings or use a portion of the sidewalk for storage purposes charged an
amount in excess of the prices stipulated by law, and pocketed the
difference. The city’s money was loaned at interest, and the interest
was converted into private bank accounts. City carriages were used by
the wives and children of city officials. Supplies for public
institutions found their way to private tables; one itemized account of
food furnished the poorhouse included California jellies, imported
cheeses, and French wines! A member of the Assembly caused the
incorporation of a grocery company, with his sons and daughters the
ostensible stockholders, and succeeded in having his bid for city
supplies accepted although the figures were in excess of his
competitors’. In return for the favor thus shown, he indorsed a measure
to award the contract for city printing to another member, and these two
voted aye on a bill granting to a third the exclusive right to furnish
city dispensaries with drugs.
Men ran into debt to the extent of thousands of dollars for the sake of
election to either branch of the Assembly. One night, on a street car
going to the City Hall, a new member remarked that the nickel he handed
the conductor was his last. The next day he deposited $5,000 in a
savings bank. A member of the House of Delegates admitted to the Grand
Jury that his dividends from the combine netted $25,000 in one year; a
Councilman stated that he was paid $50,000 for his vote on a single
measure.
Bribery was a joke. A newspaper reporter overheard this conversation one
evening in the corridor of the City Hall:
“Ah there, my boodler!” said Mr. Delegate.
“Stay there, my grafter!” replied Mr. Councilman. “Can you lend me a
hundred for a day or two?”
“Not at present. But I can spare it if the Z—— bill goes through
to-night. Meet me at F——‘s later.”
“All right, my jailbird; I’ll be there.”
The blackest years were 1898, 1899, and 1900. Foreign corporations came
into the city to share in its despoliation, and home industries were
driven out by blackmail. Franchises worth millions were granted without
one cent of cash to the city, and with provision for only the smallest
future payment; several companies which refused to pay blackmail had to
leave; citizens were robbed more and more boldly; pay-rolls were padded
with the names of non-existent persons; work on public improvements was
neglected, while money for them went to the boodlers.
Some of the newspapers protested, disinterested citizens were alarmed,
and the shrewder men gave warnings, but none dared make an effective
stand. Behind the corruptionists were men of wealth and social standing,
who, because of special privileges granted them, felt bound to support
and defend the looters. Independent victims of the far-reaching
conspiracy submitted in silence, through fear of injury to their
business. Men whose integrity was never questioned, who held high
positions of trust, who were church members and teachers of Bible
classes, contributed to the support of the dynasty,—became blackmailers,
in fact,—and their excuse was that others did the same, and that if they
proved the exception it would work their ruin. The system became loose
through license and plenty till it was as wild and weak as that of Tweed
in New York.
Then the unexpected happened—an accident. There was no uprising of the
people, but they were restive; and the Democratic party leaders,
thinking to gain some independent votes, decided to raise the cry
“reform” and put up a ticket of candidates different enough from the
usual offerings of political parties to give color to their platform.
These leaders were not in earnest. There was little difference between
the two parties in the city; but the rascals that were in had been
getting the greater share of the spoils, and the “outs” wanted more than
was given to them. “Boodle” was not the issue, no exposures were made or
threatened, and the bosses expected to control their men if elected.
Simply as part of the game, the Democrats raised the slogan, “reform”
and “no more Ziegenheinism.”
Mayor Ziegenhein, called “Uncle Henry,” was a “good fellow,” “one of the
boys,” and though it was during his administration that the city grew
ripe and went to rot, his opponents talked only of incompetence and
neglect, and repeated such stories as that of his famous reply to some
citizens who complained because certain street lights were put out: “You
have the moon yet—ain’t it?”
When somebody mentioned Joseph W. Folk for Circuit Attorney the leaders
were ready to accept him. They didn’t know much about him. He was a
young man from Tennessee; had been President of the Jefferson Club, and
arbitrated the railroad strike of 1898. But Folk did not want the place.
He was a civil lawyer, had had no practice at the criminal bar, cared
little about it, and a lucrative business as counsel for corporations
was interesting him. He rejected the invitation. The committee called
again and again, urging his duty to his party, and the city, etc.
“Very well,” he said, at last, “I will accept the nomination, but if
elected I will do my duty. There must be no attempt to influence my
actions when I am called upon to punish lawbreakers.”
The committeemen took such statements as the conventional platitudes of
candidates. They nominated him, the Democratic ticket was elected, and
Folk became Circuit Attorney for the Eighth Missouri District.
Three weeks after taking the oath of office his campaign pledges were
put to the test. A number of arrests had been made in connection with
the recent election, and charges of illegal registration were preferred
against men of both parties. Mr. Folk took them up like routine cases of
ordinary crime. Political bosses rushed to the rescue. Mr. Folk was
reminded of his duty to his party, and told that he was expected to
construe the law in such a manner that repeaters and other election
criminals who had hoisted Democracy’s flag and helped elect him might be
either discharged or receive the minimum punishment. The nature of the
young lawyer’s reply can best be inferred from the words of that veteran
political leader, Colonel Ed Butler, who, after a visit to Mr. Folk,
wrathfully exclaimed, “D—n Joe! he thinks he’s the whole thing as
Circuit Attorney.”
The election cases were passed through the courts with astonishing
rapidity; no more mercy was shown Democrats than Republicans, and before
winter came a number of ward heelers and old-time party workers were
behind the bars in Jefferson City. He next turned his attention to
grafters and straw bondsmen with whom the courts were infested, and
several of these leeches are in the penitentiary to-day. The business
was broken up because of his activity. But Mr. Folk had made little more
than the beginning.
One afternoon, late in January, 1903, a newspaper reporter, known as
“Red” Galvin, called Mr. Folk’s attention to a ten-line newspaper item
to the effect that a large sum of money had been placed in a bank for
the purpose of bribing certain Assemblymen to secure the passage of a
street railroad ordinance. No names were mentioned, but Mr. Galvin
surmised that the bill referred to was one introduced on behalf of the
Suburban Railway Company. An hour later Mr. Folk sent the names of
nearly one hundred persons to the sheriff, with instructions to subpœna
them before the grand jury at once. The list included Councilmen,
members of the House of Delegates, officers and directors of the
Suburban Railway, bank presidents and cashiers. In three days the
investigation was being pushed with vigor, but St. Louis was laughing at
the “huge joke.” Such things had been attempted before. The men who had
been ordered to appear before the grand jury jested as they chatted in
the anterooms, and newspaper accounts of these preliminary examinations
were written in the spirit of burlesque.
It has developed since that Circuit Attorney Folk knew nothing, and was
not able to learn much more during the first few days; but he says he
saw here and there puffs of smoke and he determined to find the fire. It
was not an easy job. The first break into such a system is always
difficult. Mr. Folk began with nothing but courage and a strong personal
conviction. He caused peremptory summons to be issued, for the immediate
attendance in the grand jury room of Charles H. Turner, president of the
Suburban Railway, and Philip Stock, a representative of brewers’
interests, who, he had reason to believe, was the legislative agent in
this deal.
“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Folk, “I have secured sufficient evidence to
warrant the return of indictments against you for bribery, and I shall
prosecute you to the full extent of the law and send you to the
penitentiary unless you tell to this grand jury the complete history of
the corruptionist methods employed by you to secure the passage of
Ordinance No. 44. I shall give you three days to consider the matter. At
the end of that time, if you have not returned here and given us the
information demanded, warrants will be issued for your arrest.”
They looked at the audacious young prosecutor and left the Four Courts
building without uttering a word. He waited. Two days later,
ex-Lieutenant Governor Charles P. Johnson, the veteran criminal lawyer,
called, and said that his client, Mr. Stock, was in such poor health
that he would be unable to appear before the grand jury.
“I am truly sorry that Mr. Stock is ill,” replied Mr. Folk, “for his
presence here is imperative, and if he fails to appear he will be
arrested before sundown.”