for years, corrupted high and low, Pittsburg did rise; it shook off the
superstition of partisanship in municipal politics; beaten, it rose
again; and now, when it might have boasted of a triumph, it saw
straight: a defeat. The old fighters, undeceived and undeceiving,
humiliated but undaunted, said simply: “All we have got to do is to
begin all over again.” Meanwhile, however, Pittsburg has developed some
young men, and with an inheritance of this same spirit, they are going
to try out in their own way. The older men undertook to save the city
with a majority party and they lost the party. The younger men have
formed a Voters’ Civic League, which proposes to swing from one party to
another that minority of disinterested citizens which is always willing
to be led, and thus raise the standard of candidates and improve the
character of regular party government. Tom Bigelow intended to capture
the old Flinn organization, combine it with his Citizens’ party, and
rule as Magee did with one party, a union of all parties. If he should
do this, the young reformers would have no two parties to choose
between; but there stand the old fighters ready to rebuild a Citizens’
party under that or any other name. Whatever course is taken, however,
something will be done in Pittsburg, or tried, at least, for good
government, and after the cowardice and corruption shamelessly displayed
in other cities, the effort of Pittsburg, pitiful as it is, is a
spectacle good for American self-respect, and its sturdiness is a
promise for poor old Pennsylvania.
PHILADELPHIA: CORRUPT AND CONTENTED
(_July, 1903_)
Other American cities, no matter how bad their own condition may be, all
point with scorn to Philadelphia as worse—“the worst-governed city in
the country.” St. Louis, Minneapolis, Pittsburg submit with some
patience to the jibes of any other community; the most friendly
suggestion from Philadelphia is rejected with contempt. The
Philadelphians are “supine,” “asleep”; hopelessly ring-ruled, they are
“complacent.” “Politically benighted,” Philadelphia is supposed to have
no light to throw upon a state of things that is almost universal.
This is not fair. Philadelphia is, indeed, corrupt; but it is not
without significance. Every city and town in the country can learn
something from the typical political experience of this great
representative city. New York is excused for many of its ills because it
is the metropolis, Chicago because of its forced development;
Philadelphia is our “third largest” city and its growth has been gradual
and natural. Immigration has been blamed for our municipal conditions;
Philadelphia, with 47 per cent. of its population native-born of
native-born parents, is the most American of our greater cities. It is
“good,” too, and intelligent. I don’t know just how to measure the
intelligence of a community, but a Pennsylvania college professor who
declared to me his belief in education for the masses as a way out of
political corruption, himself justified the “rake-off” of preferred
contractors on public works on the ground of a “fair business profit.”
Another plea we have made is that we are too busy to attend to public
business, and we have promised, when we come to wealth and leisure, to
do better. Philadelphia has long enjoyed great and widely distributed
prosperity; it is the city of homes; there is a dwelling house for every
five persons,—men, women, and children,—of the population; and the
people give one a sense of more leisure and repose than any community I
ever dwelt in. Some Philadelphians account for their political state on
the ground of their ease and comfort. There is another class of
optimists whose hope is in an “aristocracy” that is to come by and by;
Philadelphia is surer that it has a “real aristocracy” than any other
place in the world, but its aristocrats, with few exceptions, are in the
ring, with it, or of no political use. Then we hear that we are a young
people and that when we are older and “have traditions,” like some of
the old countries, we also will be honest. Philadelphia is one of the
oldest of our cities and treasures for us scenes and relics of some of
the noblest traditions of “our fair land.” Yet I was told how once, “for
a joke,” a party of boodlers counted out the “divvy” of their graft in
unison with the ancient chime of Independence Hall.
Philadelphia is representative. This very “joke,” told, as it was, with
a laugh, is typical. All our municipal governments are more or less bad,
and all our people are optimists. Philadelphia is simply the most
corrupt and the most contented. Minneapolis has cleaned up, Pittsburg
has tried to, New York fights every other election, Chicago fights all
the time. Even St. Louis has begun to stir (since the elections are
over), and at the worst was only shameless. Philadelphia is proud; good
people there defend corruption and boast of their machine. My college
professor, with his philosophic view of “rake-offs,” is one Philadelphia
type. Another is the man, who, driven to bay with his local pride, says:
“At least you must admit that our machine is the best you have ever
seen.”
Disgraceful? Other cities say so. But I say that if Philadelphia is a
disgrace, it is a disgrace not to itself alone, nor to Pennsylvania, but
to the United States and to American character. For this great city, so
highly representative in other respects, is not behind in political
experience, but ahead, with New York. Philadelphia is a city that has
had its reforms. Having passed through all the typical stages of
corruption, Philadelphia reached the period of miscellaneous loot with a
boss for chief thief, under James McManes and the Gas Ring ‘way back in
the late sixties and seventies. This is the Tweed stage of corruption
from which St. Louis, for example, is just emerging. Philadelphia, in
two inspiring popular revolts, attacked the Gas Ring, broke it, and in
1885 achieved that dream of American cities—a good charter. The present
condition of Philadelphia, therefore, is not that which precedes, but
that which follows reform, and in this distinction lies its startling
general significance. What has happened since the Bullitt Law or charter
went into effect in Philadelphia may happen in any American city “after
reform is over.”
For reform with us is usually revolt, not government, and is soon over.
Our people do not seek, they avoid self-rule, and “reforms” are
spasmodic efforts to punish bad rulers and get somebody that will give
us good government or something that will make it. A self-acting form of
government is an ancient superstition. We are an inventive people, and
we all think that we shall devise some day a legal machine that will
turn out good government automatically. The Philadelphians have
treasured this belief longer than the rest of us and have tried it more
often. Throughout their history they have sought this wonderful charter
and they thought they had it when they got the Bullitt Law, which
concentrates in the mayor ample power, executive and political, and
complete responsibility. Moreover, it calls for very little thought and
action on the part of the people. All they expected to have to do when
the Bullitt Law went into effect was to elect as mayor a good business
man, who, with his probity and common sense, would give them that good
business administration which is the ideal of many reformers.
The Bullitt Law went into effect in 1887. A committee of twelve—four men
from the Union League, four from business organizations, and four from
the bosses—picked out the first man to run under it on the Republican
ticket, Edwin H. Fitler, an able, upright business man, and he was
elected. Strange to say, his administration was satisfactory to the
citizens, who speak well of it to this day, and to the politicians also;
Boss McManes (the ring was broken, not the boss) took to the next
national convention from Philadelphia a delegation solid for Fitler for
President of the United States. It was a farce, but it pleased Mr.
Fitler, so Matthew S. Quay, the State boss, let him have a complimentary
vote on the first ballot. The politicians “fooled” Mr. Fitler, and they
“fooled” also the next business mayor, Edwin S. Stuart, likewise a most
estimable gentleman. Under these two administrations the foundation was
laid for the present government of Philadelphia, the corruption to which
Philadelphians seem so reconciled, and the machine which is “at least
the best you have ever seen.”
The Philadelphia machine isn’t the best. It isn’t sound, and I doubt if
it would stand in New York or Chicago. The enduring strength of the
typical American political machine is that it is a natural growth—a
sucker, but deep-rooted in the people. The New Yorkers vote for Tammany
Hall. The Philadelphians do not vote; they are disfranchised, and their
disfranchisement is one anchor of the foundation of the Philadelphia
organization.
This is no figure of speech. The honest citizens of Philadelphia have no
more rights at the polls than the negroes down South. Nor do they fight
very hard for this basic privilege. You can arouse their Republican ire
by talking about the black Republican votes lost in the Southern States
by white Democratic intimidation, but if you remind the average
Philadelphian that he is in the same position, he will look startled,
then say, “That’s so, that’s literally true, only I never thought of it
in just that way.” And it is literally true.
The machine controls the whole process of voting, and practices fraud at
every stage. The assessor’s list is the voting list, and the assessor is
the machine’s man. “The assessor of a division kept a disorderly house;
he padded his lists with fraudulent names registered from his house; two
of these names were used by election officers.... The constable of the
division kept a disreputable house; a policeman was assessed as living
there.... The election was held in the disorderly house maintained by
the assessor.... The man named as judge had a criminal charge for a life
offense pending against him.... Two hundred and fifty-two votes were
returned in a division that had less than one hundred legal votes within
its boundaries.” These extracts from a report of the Municipal League
suggest the election methods. The assessor pads the list with the names
of dead dogs, children, and non-existent persons. One newspaper printed
the picture of a dog, another that of a little four-year-old negro boy,
down on such a list. A ring orator in a speech resenting sneers at his
ward as “low down” reminded his hearers that that was the ward of
Independence Hall, and, naming over signers of the Declaration of
Independence, he closed his highest flight of eloquence with the
statement that “these men, the fathers of American liberty, voted down
here once. And,” he added, with a catching grin, “they vote here yet.”
Rudolph Blankenburg, a persistent fighter for the right and the use of
the right to vote (and, by the way, an immigrant), sent out just before
one election a registered letter to each voter on the rolls of a certain
selected division. Sixty-three per cent. were returned marked “not at,”
“removed,” “deceased,” etc. From one four-story house where forty-four
voters were addressed, eighteen letters came back undelivered; from
another of forty-eight voters, came back forty-one letters; from another
sixty-one out of sixty-two; from another, forty-four out of forty-seven.
Six houses in one division were assessed at one hundred and seventy-two
voters, more than the votes cast in the previous election in any one of
two hundred entire divisions.
The repeating is done boldly, for the machine controls the election
officers, often choosing them from among the fraudulent names; and when
no one appears to serve, assigning the heeler ready for the expected
vacancy. The police are forbidden by law to stand within thirty feet of
the polls, but they are at the box and they are there to see that the
machine’s orders are obeyed and that repeaters whom they help to furnish
are permitted to vote without “intimidation” on the names they, the
police, have supplied. The editor of an anti-machine paper who was
looking about for himself once told me that a ward leader who knew him
well asked him into a polling place. “I’ll show you how it’s done,” he
said, and he had the repeaters go round and round voting again and again
on the names handed them on slips. “But,” as the editor said, “that
isn’t the way it’s done.” The repeaters go from one polling place to
another, voting on slips, and on their return rounds change coats, hats,
etc. The business proceeds with very few hitches; there is more jesting
than fighting. Violence in the past has had its effect; and is not often
necessary nowadays, but if it is needed the police are there to apply
it. Several citizens told me that they had seen the police help to beat
citizens or election officers who were trying to do their duty, then
arrest the victim; and Mr. Clinton Rogers Woodruff, the executive
counsel of the Municipal League, has published a booklet of such cases.
But an official statement of the case is at hand in an announcement by
John Weaver, the new machine mayor of Philadelphia, that he is going to
keep the police out of politics and away from the polls. “I shall see,”
he added, “that every voter enjoys the full right of suffrage and that
ballots may be placed in the ballot box without fear of intimidation.”
But many Philadelphians do not try to vote. They leave everything to the
machine, and the machine casts their ballots for them. It is estimated
that 150,000 voters did not go to the polls at the last election. Yet
the machine rolled up a majority of 130,000 for Weaver, with a
fraudulent vote estimated all the way from forty to eighty thousand, and
this in a campaign so machine-made that it was called “no contest.”
Francis Fisher Kane, the Democrat, got 32,000 votes out of some 204,000.
“What is the use of voting?” these stay-at-homes ask. A friend of mine
told me he was on the lists in the three wards in which he had
successively dwelt. He votes personally in none, but the leader of his
present ward tells him how he has been voted. Mr. J. C. Reynolds, the
proprietor of the St. James Hotel, went to the polls at eleven o’clock
last election day, only to be told that he had been voted. He asked how
many others from his house had voted. An election officer took up a
list, checked off twelve names, two down twice, and handed it to him.
When Mr. Reynolds got home he learned that one of these had voted, the
others had been voted. Another man said he rarely attempted to vote, but
when he did, the officers let him, even though his name had already been
voted on; and then the negro repeaters would ask if his “brother was
coming ‘round to-day.” They were going to vote him, as they vote all
good-natured citizens who stay away. “When this kind of man turns out,”
said a leader to me, “we simply have two repeaters extra—one to balance
him and one more to the good.” If necessary, after all this, the machine
counts the vote “right,” and there is little use appealing to the
courts, since they have held, except in one case, that the ballot box is
secret and cannot be opened. The only legal remedy lies in the purging
of the assessor’s lists, and when the Municipal League had this done in
1899, they reported that there was “wholesale voting on the very names
stricken off.”
Deprived of self-government, the Philadelphians haven’t even
self-governing machine government. They have their own boss, but he and
his machine are subject to the State ring, and take their orders from
the State boss, Matthew S. Quay, who is the proprietor of Pennsylvania
and the real ruler of Philadelphia, just as William Penn, the Great
Proprietor, was. Philadelphians, especially the local bosses, dislike
this description of their government, and they point for refutation to
their charter. But this very Bullitt Law was passed by Quay, and he put
it through the Legislature, not for reform reasons, but at the instance
of David H. Lane, his Philadelphia lieutenant, as a check upon the power
of Boss McManes. Later, when McManes proved hopelessly insubordinate,
Quay decided to have done with him forever. He chose David Martin for
boss, and from his seat in the United States Senate, Penn’s successor
raised up his man and set him over the people. Croker, who rose by his
own strength to the head of Tammany Hall, has tried twice to appoint a
successor; no one else could, and he failed. The boss of Tammany Hall is
a growth. So Croker has attempted to appoint district leaders and
failed; a Tammany district leader is a growth. Boss Martin, picked up
and set down from above, was accepted by Philadelphia and the
Philadelphia machine, and he removed old ward leaders and appointed new
ones. Some leaders in Philadelphia own their wards, of course, but
Martin and, after him, Durham have sent men into a ward to lead it, and
they have led it.
The Philadelphia organization is upside down. It has its root in the
air, or, rather, like the banyan tree, it sends its roots from the
center out both up and down and all around, and there lies its peculiar
strength. For when I said it was dependent and not sound, I did not mean
that it was weak. It is dependent as a municipal machine, but the
organization that rules Philadelphia is, as we have seen, not a mere
municipal machine, but a city, State, and national organization. The
people of Philadelphia are Republicans in a Republican city in a
Republican State in a Republican nation, and they are bound ring on ring
on ring. The President of the United States and his patronage; the
National Cabinet and their patronage; the Congress and the patronage of
the Senators and the Congressmen from Pennsylvania; the Governor of the
State and the State legislature with their powers and patronage; and all
that the mayor and city councils have of power and patronage—all these
bear down upon Philadelphia to keep it in the control of Quay’s boss and
his little ring. This is the ideal of party organization, and, possibly,
is the end toward which our democratic republic is tending. If it is,
the end is absolutism. Nothing but a revolution could overthrow this
oligarchy, and there is its danger. With no outlet at the polls for
public feeling, the machine cannot be taught anything it does not know
except at the cost of annihilation.
But the Philadelphia machine-leaders know their business. As I said in
“Tweed Days in St. Louis,” the politicians will learn, if the people
won’t, from exposure and reform. The Pennsylvania bosses learned the
“uses of reform”; we have seen Quay applying it to discipline McManes,
and he since has turned reformer himself, to punish local bosses. The
bosses have learned also the danger of combination between citizens and
the Democrats. To prevent this, Quay and his friends have spread
sedulously the doctrine of “reform within the party,” and, from the
Committee of One Hundred on, the reformers have stuck pretty faithfully
to this principle. But lest the citizens should commit such a sin
against their party, Martin formed a permanent combination of the
Democratic with the Republican organization, using to that end a goodly
share of the Federal and county patronage. Thus the people of
Philadelphia were “fixed” so that they couldn’t vote if they wanted to,
and if they should want to, they couldn’t vote for a Democrat, except of
Republican or independent choosing. In other words, having taken away
their ballot, the bosses took away also the choice of parties.
But the greatest lesson learned and applied was that of conciliation and
“good government.” The people must not want to vote or rebel against the
ring. This ring, like any other, was formed for the exploitation of the
city for private profit, and the cementing force is the “cohesive power
of public plunder.” But McManes and Tweed had proved that miscellaneous
larceny was dangerous, and why should a lot of cheap politicians get so
much and the people nothing at all? The people had been taught to expect
but little from their rulers: good water, good light, clean streets well
paved, fair transportation, the decent repression of vice, public order
and public safety, and no scandalous or open corruption, would more than
satisfy them. It would be good business and good politics to give them
these things. Like Chris Magee, who studied out the problem with him,
Martin took away from the rank and file of the party and from the ward
leaders and office holders the privilege of theft, and he formed
companies and groups to handle the legitimate public business of the
city. It was all graft, but it was to be all lawful, and, in the main,
it was. Public franchises, public works, and public contracts were the
principal branches of the business, and Martin adopted the dual boss
idea, which we have seen worked out by Magee and Flinn in Pittsburg. In
Philadelphia it was Martin and Porter, and just as Flinn had a firm,
Booth & Flinn, Ltd., so Porter was Filbert and Porter.
Filbert and Porter got all the public contracts they could handle, and
the rest went to other contractors friendly to them and to the ring.
Sometimes the preferred contractor was the lowest bidder, but he did not
have to be. The law allowed awards to be the “lowest and best,” and the
courts held that this gave the officials discretion. But since public
criticism was to be considered, the ring, to keep up appearances,
resorted to many tricks. One was to have fake bids made above the
favorite. Another was to have the favorite bid high, but set an
impossible time limit; the department of the city councils could extend
the time afterwards. Still another was to arrange for specifications
which would make outsiders bid high, then either openly alter the plans
or let the ring firm perform work not up to requirements.
Many of Martin’s deals and jobs were scandals, but they were safe; they
were in the direction of public service; and the great mass of the
business was done quietly. Moreover, the public was getting something
for its money,—not full value, but a good percentage. In other words,
there was a limit to the “rake-off,” and some insiders have told me that
it had been laid down as a principle with the ring that the people
should have in value (that is, in work or benefit, including a fair
profit) ninety-five cents out of every dollar. In some of the deals I
have investigated, the “rake-off” over and above profit was as high as
twenty-five per cent. Still, even at this, there was “a limit,” and the
public was getting, as one of the leaders told me, “a run for its
money.” Cynical as it all sounds, this view is taken by many
Philadelphians almost if not quite as intelligent as my college
professor.