buildings; he obtained the monopoly of a certain kind of asphalt, and
that kind was specified. Nor was this all. If the official contractor
had done his work well and at reasonable prices the city would not have
suffered directly; but his methods were so oppressive upon property
holders that they caused a scandal. No action was taken, however, till
Oliver McClintock, a merchant, in rare civic wrath, contested the
contracts and fought them through the courts. This single citizen’s
long, brave fight is one of the finest stories in the history of
municipal government. The frowns and warnings of cowardly
fellow-citizens did not move him, nor the boycott of other business men,
the threats of the ring, and the ridicule of ring organs. George W.
Guthrie joined him later, and though they fought on undaunted, they were
beaten again and again. The Director of Public Works controlled the
initiative in court proceedings; he chose the judge who appointed the
Viewers, with the result, Mr. McClintock reported, that the Department
prepared the Viewers’ reports. Knowing no defeat, Mr. McClintock
photographed Flinn’s pavements at places where they were torn up to show
that “large stones, as they were excavated from sewer trenches, brick
bats, and the débris of old coal-tar sidewalks were promiscuously dumped
in to make foundations, with the result of an uneven settling of the
foundation, and the sunken and worn places so conspicuous everywhere in
the pavements of the East End.” One outside asphalt company tried to
break the monopoly, but was easily beaten in 1889, withdrew, and after
that one of its officers said, “We all gave Pittsburg a wide berth,
recognizing the uselessness of offering competition so long as the door
of the Department of Public Works is locked against us, and Booth &
Flinn are permitted to carry the key.” The monopoly caused not only high
prices on short guarantee, but carried with it all the contingent work.
Curbing and grading might have been let separately, but they were not.
In one contract Mr. McClintock cites, Booth & Flinn bid 50 cents for
44,000 yards of grading. E. H. Bochman offered a bid of 15 cents for the
grading as a separate contract, and his bid was rejected. A
property-owner on Shady Lane, who was assessed for curbing at 80 cents a
foot, contracted privately at the same time for 800 feet of the same
standard curbing, from the same quarry, and set in place in the same
manner, at 40 cents a foot!
“During the nine years succeeding the adoption of the charter of 1887,”
says Mr. Oliver McClintock in a report to the National Municipal League,
“one firm [Flinn’s] received practically all the asphalt-paving
contracts at prices ranging from $1 to $1.80 per square yard higher than
the average price paid in neighboring cities. Out of the entire amount
of asphalt pavements laid during these nine years, represented by 193
contracts, and costing $3,551,131, only nine street blocks paved in
1896, and costing $33,400, were not laid by this firm.”
The building of bridges in this city of bridges, the repairing of
pavements, park-making, and real estate deals in anticipation of city
improvements were all causes of scandal to some citizens, sources of
profit to others who were “let in on the ground floor.” There is no
space for these here. Another exposure came in 1897 over the contracts
for a new Public Safety Building. J. O. Brown was Director of Public
Safety. A newspaper, the _Leader_, called attention to a deal for this
work, and George W. Guthrie and William B. Rogers, leading members of
the Pittsburg bar, who followed up the subject, discovered as queer a
set of specifications for the building itself as any city has on record.
Favored contractors were named or their wares described all through, and
a letter to the architect from J. O. Brown contained specifications for
such favoritism, as, for example: “Specify the Westinghouse
electric-light plant and engines straight.” “Describe the Van Horn Iron
Co.’s cells as close as possible.” The stone clause was Flinn’s, and
that is the one that raised the rumpus. Flinn’s quarry produced Ligonier
block, and Ligonier block was specified. There was a letter from Booth &
Flinn, Ltd., telling the architect that the price was to be specified at
$31,500. A local contractor offered to provide Tennessee granite set up,
a more expensive material, on which the freight is higher, at $19,880;
but that did not matter. When another local contracting firm, however,
offered to furnish Ligonier block set up at $18,000, a change was
necessary, and J. O. Brown directed the architect to “specify that the
Ligonier block shall be of a bluish tint rather than a gray variety.”
Flinn’s quarry had the bluish tint, the other people’s “the gray
variety.” It was shown also that Flinn wrote to the architect on June
24, 1895, saying: “I have seen Director Brown and Comptroller Gourley
to-day, and they have agreed to let us start on the working plans and
get some stone out for the new building. Please arrange that we may get
the tracings by Wednesday....” The tracings were furnished him, and thus
before the advertisements for bids were out he began preparing the
bluish tint stone. The charges were heard by a packed committee of
councils, and nothing came of them; and, besides, they were directed
against the Director of Public Works, not William Flinn.
The boss was not an official, and not responsible. The only time Flinn
was in danger was on a suit that grew out of the conviction of the City
Attorney, W. C. Moreland, and L. H. House, his assistant, for the
embezzlement of public funds. These officials were found to be short
about $300,000. One of them pleaded guilty, and both went to prison
without telling where the money went, and that information did not
develop till later. J. B. Connelly, of the _Leader_, discovered in the
City Attorney’s office stubs of checks indicating that some $118,000 of
it had gone to Flinn or to Booth & Flinn, Ltd. When Flinn was first
asked about it by a reporter he said that the items were correct, that
he got them, but that he had explained it all to the Comptroller and had
satisfied him. This answer indicated a belief that the money belonged to
the city. When he was sued by the city he said that he did not know it
was city money. He thought it was personal loans from House. Now House
was not a well-to-do man, and his city salary was but $2,500 a year.
Moreover, the checks, two of which are reproduced here, are signed by
the City Attorney, W. C. Moreland, and are for amounts ranging from five
to fifteen thousand dollars. But where was the money? Flinn testified
that he had paid it back to House. Then where were the receipts? Flinn
said they had been burned in a fire that had occurred in Booth & Flinn’s
office. The judge found for Flinn, holding that it had not been proven
that Flinn knew the checks were for public money, nor that he had not
repaid the amount.
[Illustration:
FACSIMILES OF CHECKS SHOWING THAT PUBLIC MONEY, EMBEZZLED BY PUBLIC
OFFICIALS, WENT TO BOSS FLINN, WHO EXPLAINED THAT HE DID NOT KNOW
THE CHECKS WERE FOR CITY MONEY.
]
As I have said before, however, unlawful acts were exceptional and
unnecessary in Pittsburg. Magee did not steal franchises and sell them.
His councils gave them to him. He and the busy Flinn took them, built
railways, which Magee sold and bought and financed and conducted, like
any other man whose successful career is held up as an example for young
men. His railways, combined into the Consolidated Traction Company, were
capitalized at $30,000,000. The public debt of Pittsburg is about
$18,000,000, and the profit on the railway building of Chris Magee would
have wiped out the debt. “But you must remember,” they say in the
Pittsburg banks, “that Magee took risks, and his profits are the just
reward of enterprise.” This is business. But politically speaking it was
an abuse of the powers of a popular ruler for Boss Magee to give to
Promoter Magee all the streets he wanted in Pittsburg at his own terms:
forever, and nothing to pay. There was scandal in Chicago over the
granting of charters for twenty-eight and fifty years. Magee’s read:
“for 950 years,” “for 999 years,” “said Charter is to exist a thousand
years,” “said Charter is to exist perpetually,” and the councils gave
franchises for the “life of the Charter.” There is a legend that Fred
Magee, a waggish brother of Chris, put these phrases into these grants
for fun, and no doubt the genial Chris saw the fun of it. I asked if the
same joker put in the car tax, which is the only compensation the city
gets for the use forever of its streets; but it was explained that that
was an oversight. The car tax was put upon the old horse-cars, and came
down upon the trolley because, having been left unpaid, it was
forgotten. This car tax on $30,000,000 of property amounts to less than
$15,000 a year, and the companies have until lately been slow about
paying it. During the twelve years succeeding 1885 all the traction
companies together paid the city $60,000. While the horse vehicles in
1897 paid $47,000, and bicycles $7,000, the Consolidated Traction
Company[5] (C. L. Magee, President) paid $9,600. The speed of bicycles
and horse vehicles is limited by law, that of the trolley is
unregulated. The only requirement of the law upon them is that the
traction company shall keep in repair the pavement between and a foot
outside of the tracks. This they don’t do, and they make the city
furnish twenty policemen as guards for crossings of their lines at a
cost of $20,000 a year in wages.
Footnote 5:
All the street railways terminating in the city of Pittsburg were in
1901 consolidated into the Pittsburg Railways Company, operating 404
miles of track, under an approximate capitalization of $84,000,000. In
their statement, issued July 1, 1902, they report gross earnings for
1901 as $7,081,452.82. Out of this they paid a car tax for 1902 to the
city of Pittsburg of $20,099.94. At the ordinary rate of 5 per cent.
on gross earnings the tax would have been $354,072.60.
Not content with the gift of the streets, the ring made the city work
for the railways. The building of bridges is one function of the
municipality as a servant of the traction company. Pittsburg is a city
of many bridges, and many of them were built for ordinary traffic. When
the Magee railways went over them some of them had to be rebuilt. The
company asked the city to do it, and despite the protests of citizens
and newspapers, the city rebuilt iron bridges in good condition and of
recent construction to accommodate the tracks. Once some citizens
applied for a franchise to build a connecting line along what is now
part of the Bloomfield route, and by way of compensation offered to
build a bridge across the Pennsylvania tracks for free city use, they
only to have the right to run their cars on it. They did not get their
franchise. Not long after Chris Magee (and Flinn) got it, and they got
it for nothing; and the city built this bridge, rebuilt three other
bridges over the Pennsylvania tracks, and one over the Junction
Railroad—five bridges in all, at a cost of $160,000!
Canny Scots as they were, the Pittsburgers submitted to all this for a
quarter of a century, and some $34,000 has been subscribed toward the
monument to Chris Magee. This sounds like any other well-broken American
city; but to the credit of Pittsburg be it said that there never was a
time when some few individuals were not fighting the ring. David D.
Bruce was standing for good government way back in the ‘fifties. Oliver
McClintock and George W. Guthrie we have had glimpses of, struggling,
like John Hampden, against their tyrants; but always for mere justice
and in the courts, and all in vain, till in 1895 their exposures began
to bring forth signs of public feeling, and they ventured to appeal to
the voters, the sources of the bosses’ power. They enlisted the
venerable Mr. Bruce and a few other brave men, and together called a
mass-meeting. A crowd gathered. There were not many prominent men there,
but evidently the people were with them, and they then and there formed
the Municipal League, and launched it upon a campaign to beat the ring
at the February election, 1896.
A committee of five was put in charge—Bruce, McClintock, George K.
Stevenson, Dr. Pollock, and Otto Heeren—who combined with Mr. Guthrie’s
sterling remnant of the Democratic party on an independent ticket, with
Mr. Guthrie at the head for mayor. It was a daring thing to do, and they
discovered then what we have discovered in St. Louis and Minneapolis.
Mr. Bruce told me that, after their mass-meeting, men who should have
come out openly for the movement approached him by stealth and whispered
that he could count on them for money if he would keep secret their
names. “Outside of those at the meeting,” he said, “but one man of all
those that subscribed would let his name appear. And men who gave me
information to use against the ring spoke themselves for the ring on the
platform.” Mr. McClintock in a paper read before a committee of the
National Municipal League says: “By far the most disheartening
discovery, however, was that of the apathetic indifference of many
representative citizens—men who from every other point of view are
deservedly looked upon as model members of society. We found that
prominent merchants and contractors who were ‘on the inside,’
manufacturers enjoying special municipal privileges, wealthy
capitalists, brokers, and others who were holders of the securities of
traction and other corporations, had their mouths stopped, their
convictions of duty strangled, and their influence before and votes on
election day preempted against us. In still another direction we found
that the financial and political support of the great steam railroads
and largest manufacturing corporations, controlling as far as they were
able the suffrages of their thousands of employees, were thrown against
us, for the simple reason, as was frankly explained by one of them, that
it was much easier to deal with a boss in promoting their corporate
interests than to deal directly with the people’s representatives in the
municipal legislature. We even found the directors of many banks in an
attitude of cold neutrality, if not of active hostility, toward any
movement for municipal reform. As one of them put it, ‘if you want to be
anybody, or make money in Pittsburg, it is necessary to be in the
political swim and on the side of the city ring.’”
This is corruption, but it is called “good business,” and it is worse
than politics.
It was a quarrel among the grafters of Minneapolis that gave the grand
jury a chance there. It was a low row among the grafters of St. Louis
that gave Joseph W. Folk his opening. And so in Pittsburg it was in a
fight between Quay and Magee that the Municipal League saw its
opportunity.
To Quay it was the other way around. The rising of the people of
Pittsburg was an opportunity for him. He and Magee had never got along
well together, and they were falling out and having their differences
adjusted by Flinn and others every few years. The “mutual business
advantage” agreement was to have closed one of these rows. The fight of
1895–96 was an especially bitter one, and it did not close with the
“harmony” that was patched up. Magee and Flinn and Boss Martin of
Philadelphia set out to kill Quay politically, and he, driven thus into
one of those “fights for his life” which make his career so interesting,
hearing the grumbling in Philadelphia and seeing the revolt of the
citizens of Pittsburg, stepped boldly forth upon a platform for reform,
especially to stop the “use of money for the corruption of our cities.”
From Quay this was comical, but the Pittsburgers were too serious to
laugh. They were fighting for their life, too, so to speak, and the
sight of a boss on their side must have encouraged those business men
who “found it easier to deal with a boss than with the people’s
representatives.” However that may be, a majority of the ballots cast in
the municipal election of Pittsburg in February, 1896, were against the
ring.
This isn’t history. According to the records the reform ticket was
defeated by about 1000 votes. The returns up to one o’clock on the
morning after election showed George W. Guthrie far ahead for mayor;
then all returns ceased suddenly, and when the count came in officially,
a few days later, the ring had won. But besides the _prima facie_
evidence of fraud, the ringsters afterward told in confidence not only
that Mr. Guthrie was counted out, but how it was done. Mr. Guthrie’s
appeal to the courts, however, for a recount was denied. The courts held
that the secret ballot law forbade the opening of the ballot boxes.
Thus the ring held Pittsburg—but not the Pittsburgers. They saw Quay in
control of the Legislature, Quay the reformer, who would help them. So
they drew a charter for Pittsburg which would restore the city to the
people. Quay saw the instrument, and he approved it; he promised to have
it passed. The League, the Chamber of Commerce, and other representative
bodies, all encouraged by the outlook for victory, sent to Harrisburg
committees to urge their charter, and their orators poured forth upon
the Magee-Flinn ring a flood of, not invective, but facts,
specifications of outrage, and the abuse of absolute power. Their
charter went booming along through its first and second readings, Quay
and the Magee-Flinn crowd fighting inch by inch. All looked well, when
suddenly there was silence. Quay was dealing with his enemies, and the
charter was his club. He wanted to go back to the Senate, and he went.
The Pittsburgers saw him elected, saw him go, but their charter they saw
no more. And such is the State of Pennsylvania that this man who did
this thing to Pittsburg, and has done the like again and again to all
cities and all interests—even politicians—he is the boss of Pennsylvania
to-day!
The good men of Pittsburg gave up, and for four years the essential
story of the government of the city is a mere thread in the personal
history of the quarrels of the bosses in State politics. Magee wanted to
go to the United States Senate, and he had with him Boss Martin and John
Wanamaker of Philadelphia, as well as his own Flinn. Quay turned on the
city bosses, and, undermining their power, soon had Martin beaten in
Philadelphia. To overthrow Magee was a harder task, and Quay might never
have accomplished it had not Magee’s health failed, causing him to be
much away. Pittsburg was left to Flinn, and his masterfulness,
unmitigated by Magee, made trouble. The crisis came out of a row Flinn
had with his Director of Public Works, E. M. Bigelow, a man as
dictatorial as Flinn himself. Bigelow threw open to competition certain
contracts. Flinn, in exasperation, had the councils throw out the
director and put in his place a man who restored the old specifications.
This enraged Thomas Steele Bigelow, E. M. Bigelow’s brother, and another
nephew of old Squire Steele. Tom had an old grudge against Magee, dating
from the early days of traction deals. He was rich, he knew something of
politics, and he believed in the power of money in the game. Going
straight to Harrisburg, he took charge of Quay’s fight for Senator,
spent his own money and won; and he beat Magee, which was his first
purpose.
But he was not satisfied yet. The Pittsburgers, aroused to fresh hope by
the new fight of the bosses, were encouraged also by the news that the
census of 1900 put a second city, Scranton, into “cities of the second
class.” New laws had to be drawn for both. Pittsburg saw a chance for a
good charter. Tom Bigelow saw a chance to finish the Magee-Flinn ring,
and he had William B. Rogers, a man whom the city trusted, draw the
famous “Ripper Bill”! This was originally a good charter, concentrating
power in the mayor, but changes were introduced into it to enable the
Governor to remove and appoint mayors, or recorders, as they were to be
called, at will until April, 1903, when the first elected recorder was
to take office. This was Bigelow’s device to rid Pittsburg of the ring
office holders. But Magee was not dead yet. He and Flinn saw Governor
Stone, and when the Governor ripped out the ring mayor, he appointed as
recorder Major A. M. Brown, a lawyer well thought of in Pittsburg.
Major Brown, however, kept all but one of the ring heads of the
departments. This disappointed the people; it was a defeat for Bigelow;
for the ring it was a triumph. Without Magee, however, Flinn could not
hold his fellows in their joy, and they went to excesses which
exasperated Major Brown and gave Bigelow an excuse for urging him to
action. Major Brown suddenly removed the heads of the ring and began a
thorough reorganization of the government. This reversed emotions, but
not for long. The ring leaders saw Governor Stone again, and he ripped
out Bigelow’s Brown and appointed in his place a ring Brown. Thus the
ring was restored to full control under a charter which increased their
power.
But the outrageous abuse of the Governor’s unusual power over the city
incensed the people of Pittsburg. A postscript which Governor Stone
added to his announcement of the appointment of the new recorder did not
help matters; it was a denial that he had been bribed. The Pittsburgers
had not heard of any bribery, but the postscript gave currency to a
definite report that the ring—its banks, its corporations, and its
bosses—had raised an enormous fund to pay the Governor for his
interference in the city, and this pointed the intense feelings of the
citizens. They prepared to beat the ring at an election to be held in
February, 1902, for Comptroller and half of the councils. A Citizens’
party was organized. The campaign was an excited one; both sides did
their best, and the vote polled was the largest ever known in Pittsburg.
Even the ring made a record. The citizens won, however, and by a
majority of 8,000.
This showed the people what they could do when they tried, and they were
so elated that they went into the next election and carried the
county—the stronghold of the ring. But they now had a party to look out
for, and they did not look out for it. They neglected it just as they
had the city. Tom Bigelow knew the value of a majority party; he had
appreciated the Citizens’ from the start. Indeed he may have started it.
All the reformers know is that the committee which called the Citizens’
Party into existence was made up of twenty-five men—five old Municipal
Leaguers, the rest a “miscellaneous lot.” They did not bother then about
that. They knew Tom Bigelow, but he did not show himself, and the new
party went on confidently with its passionate work.
When the time came for the great election, that for recorder this year
(1903), the citizens woke up one day and found Tom Bigelow the boss of
their party. How he came there they did not exactly know; but there he
was in full possession, and there with him was the “miscellaneous lot”
on the committee. Moreover, Bigelow was applying with vigor regular
machine methods. It was all very astonishing, but very significant.
Magee was dead; Flinn’s end was in sight; but there was the Boss, the
everlasting American Boss, as large as life. The good citizens were
shocked; their dilemma was ridiculous, but it was serious too. Helpless,
they watched. Bigelow nominated for recorder a man they never would have
chosen. Flinn put up a better man, hoping to catch the citizens, and
when these said they could see Flinn behind his candidate, he said, “No;
I am out of politics. When Magee died I died politically, too.” Nobody
would believe him. The decent Democrats hoped to retrieve their party
and offer a way out, but Bigelow went into their convention with his
money and the wretched old organization sold out. The smell of money on
the Citizens’ side attracted to it the grafters, the rats from Flinn’s
sinking ship; many of the corporations went over, and pretty soon it was
understood that the railroads had come to a settlement among themselves
and with the new boss, on the basis of an agreement said to contain five
specifications of grants from the city. The temptation to vote for
Flinn’s man was strong, but the old reformers seemed to feel that the
only thing to do was to finish Flinn now and take care of Tom Bigelow
later. This view prevailed and Tom Bigelow won. This is the way the best
men in Pittsburg put it: “We have smashed a ring and we have wound
another around us. Now we have got to smash that.”