if they are? Think of a city putting its whole faith in one man, in the
_hope_ that John Weaver, an Englishman by birth, will _give_ them good
government! And why should he do that? Why should he serve the people
and not the ring? The ring can make or break him; the people of
Philadelphia can neither reward nor punish him. For even if he restores
to them their ballots and proves himself a good mayor, he cannot succeed
himself; the good charter forbids more than one term.
CHICAGO: HALF FREE AND FIGHTING ON
(_October, 1903_)
While these articles on municipal corruption were appearing, readers of
them were writing to the magazine asking what they, as citizens, were to
do about it all. As if I knew; as if “we” knew; as if there were any one
way to deal with this problem in all places under any circumstances.
There isn’t, and if I had gone around with a ready-made reform scheme in
the back of my head, it would have served only to keep me from seeing
straight the facts that would not support my theory. The only editorial
scheme we had was to study a few choice examples of bad city government
and tell how the bad was accomplished, then seek out, here and abroad,
some typical good governments and explain how the good was done;—not how
to do it, mind you, but how it had been done. Though the bad government
series was not yet complete, since so many good men apparently want to
go to work right off, it was decided to pause for an instance on the
reform side. I have chosen the best I have found. Political grafters
have been cheerful enough to tell me they have “got lots of pointers”
from the corruption articles. I trust the reformers will pick up some
“pointers” from—Chicago.
Yes, Chicago. First in violence, deepest in dirt; loud, lawless,
unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a village,
the “tough” among cities, a spectacle for the nation;—I give Chicago no
quarter and Chicago asks for none. “Good,” they cheer, when you find
fault; “give us the gaff. We deserve it and it does us good.” They do
deserve it. Lying low beside a great lake of pure, cold water, the city
has neither enough nor good enough water. With the ingenuity and will to
turn their sewer, the Chicago River, and make it run backwards and
upwards out of the Lake, the city cannot solve the smoke nuisance. With
resources for a magnificent system of public parking, it is too poor to
pave and clean the streets. They can balance high buildings on rafts
floating in mud, but they can’t quench the stench of the stockyards. The
enterprise which carried through a World’s Fair to a world’s triumph is
satisfied with two thousand five hundred policemen for two million
inhabitants and one hundred and ninety-six square miles of territory, a
force so insufficient (and inefficient) that it cannot protect itself,
to say nothing of handling mobs, riotous strikers, and the rest of that
lawlessness which disgraces Chicago. Though the city has an extra-legal
system of controlling vice and crime, which is so effective that the
mayor has been able to stop any practices against which he has turned
his face—the “panel game,” the “hat game,” “wine rooms,” “safe
blowing”;—though gambling is limited, regulated, and fair, and
prostitution orderly; though, in short, through the power of certain
political and criminal leaders—the mayor has been able to make Chicago,
criminally speaking, “honest”—burglary and cruel hold-ups are tolerated.
As government, all this is preposterous.
But I do not cite Chicago as an example of good municipal government,
nor yet of good American municipal government; New York has, for the
moment, a much better administration. But neither is Chicago a good
example of bad government. There is grafting there, but after St. Louis
it seems petty and after Philadelphia most unprofessional. Chicago is
interesting for the things it has “fixed.” What is wrong there is
ridiculous. Politically and morally speaking, Chicago should be
celebrated among American cities for reform, real reform, not moral fits
and political uprisings, not reform waves that wash the “best people”
into office to make fools of themselves and subside leaving the machine
stronger than ever,—none of these aristocratic disappointments of
popular government,—but reform that reforms, slow, sure, political,
democratic reform, by the people, for the people. That is what Chicago
has. It has found a way. I don’t know that it is _the_ way. All that I
am sure of is that Chicago has something to teach every city and town in
the country—including Chicago.
For Chicago is reformed only in spots. A political map of the city would
show a central circle of white with a few white dots and dashes on a
background of black, gray, and yellow. But the city once was pretty
solid black. Criminally it was wide open; commercially it was brazen;
socially it was thoughtless and raw; it was a settlement of individuals
and groups and interests with no common city sense and no political
conscience. Everybody was for himself, none was for Chicago. There were
political parties, but the organizations were controlled by rings, which
in turn were parts of State rings, which in turn were backed and used by
leading business interests through which this corrupt and corrupting
system reached with its ramifications far and high and low into the
social organization. The grafting was miscellaneous and very general;
but the most open corruption was that which centered in the City
Council. It never was well organized and orderly. The aldermen had
“combines,” leaders, and prices, but, a lot of good-natured honest
thieves, they were independent of party bosses and “the organizations,”
which were busy at their own graft. They were so unbusinesslike that
business men went into the City Council to reduce the festival of
blackmail to decent and systematic bribery. These men helped matters
some, but the happy-go-lucky spirit persisted until the advent of
Charles T. Yerkes from Philadelphia, who, with his large experience of
Pennsylvania methods, first made boodling a serious business. He had to
go right into politics himself to get anything done. But he did get
things done. The aldermanic combine was fast selling out the city to its
“best citizens,” when some decent men spoke up and called upon the
people to stop it, the people who alone can stop such things.
And the people of Chicago stopped it; they have beaten boodling. That is
about all they have done so far, but that is about all they have tried
deliberately and systematically to do, and the way they have done that
proves that they can do anything they set out to do. They worry about
the rest; half free, they are not half satisfied and not half done. But
boodling, with its backing of “big men” and “big interests,” is the
hardest evil a democracy has to fight, and a people who can beat it can
beat anything.
Every community, city, town, village, State—the United States itself—has
a certain number of men who are willing, if it doesn’t cost anything, to
vote right. They don’t want to “hurt their business”; they “can’t afford
the time to go to the primaries”; they don’t care to think much. But
they will vote. This may not be much, but it is enough. All that this
independent, non-partisan vote wants is leadership, and that is what the
Chicago reformers furnished.
They had no such definite idea when they began. They had no theory at
all—nothing but wrath, experience, common Chicago sense, and newspapers
ready to back reform, not for the news, but for the common good.
Theories they had tried; and exposures, celebrated trials, even some
convictions of boodlers. They had gone in for a civil-service reform
law, and, by the way, they got a good one, probably the best in any city
in the country. But exposés are good only for one election; court trials
may punish individuals, but even convictions do not break up a corrupt
system; and a “reform law” without reform citizenship is like a ship
without a crew. With all their “reforms,” bad government persisted.
There was that bear garden—the City Council; something ought to be done
to that. Men like William Kent, John H. Hamline, W. R. Manierre, A. W.
Maltby, and James R. Mann had gone in there from their “respectable”
wards, and their presence proved that they could get there; their
speeches were public protests, and their votes, “no,” “no,” “no,” were
plain indicators of wrong. But all this was not enough. The Civic
Federation, a respectable but inefficient universal reforming
association, met without plans in 1895. It called together two hundred
representative men, with Lyman J. Gage at their head, to “do something.”
The two hundred appointed a committee of fifteen to “find something to
do.” One of the fifteen drew forth a fully drawn plan for a new
municipal party, the old, old scheme. “That won’t do,” said Edwin
Burritt Smith to Mr. Gage, who sat beside him. “No, that won’t do,” said
Gage. But they didn’t know what to do. To gain time Mr. Smith moved a
sub-committee. The sub-committee reported back to the fifteen, the
fifteen to the two hundred. And so, as Mr. Smith said, they “fumbled.”
But notice what they didn’t do. Fumblers as they were, they didn’t talk
of more exposures. “Heavens, we know enough,” said one. They didn’t go
to the Legislature for a new charter. They needed one, they need one
to-day, and badly, too, but the men who didn’t know what, but did know
what not to do, wouldn’t let them commit the folly of asking one corrupt
legislature to legislate another corrupt legislature out of existence.
And they didn’t wait till the next mayoralty election to elect a
“business mayor” who should give them good government.
They were bound to accept the situation just as it was—the laws, the
conditions, the political circumstances, all exactly as they were—and,
just as a politician would, go into the next fight whatever it was and
fight. All they needed was a fighter. So it was moved to find a man, one
man, and let this man find eight other men, who should organize the
“Municipal Voters’ League.” There were no instructions; the very name
was chosen because it meant nothing and might mean anything.
But the man! That was the problem. There were men, a few, but the one
man is always hard to find. There was William Kent, rich, young, afraid
of nothing and always ready, but he was an alderman, and the wise ones
declared that the Nine must not only be disinterested, but must appear
so. William Kent wouldn’t do. Others were suggested; none that would do.
“How about George E. Cole?”
“Just the man,” said Mr. Gage, and all knew the thought was an
inspiration.
George E. Cole described himself to me as a “second-class business man.”
Standing about five feet high, he knows he is no taller; but he knows
that that is tall enough. Cole is a fighter. Nobody discovered it,
perhaps, till he was past his fiftieth year. Then one Martin B. Madden
found it out. Madden, a prominent citizen, president of the Western
Stone Company, and a man of tremendous political power, was one of the
business men who went into the Council to bring order out of the chaos
of corruption. He was a Yerkes leader. Madden lived in Cole’s ward. His
house was in sight of Cole’s house. “The sight of it made me hot,” said
Cole, “for I knew what it represented.” Cole had set out to defeat
Madden, and he made a campaign which attracted the attention of the
whole town. Madden was re-elected, but Cole had proved himself, and that
was what made Lyman J. Gage say that Cole was “just the man.”
“You come to me as a Hobson’s choice,” said Mr. Cole to the committee,
“as a sort of forlorn hope. All right,” he added, “as a last chance,
I’ll take it.”
Cole went out to make up the Nine. He chose William H. Colvin, a wealthy
business man, retired; Edwin Burritt Smith, publicist and lawyer; M. J.
Carroll, ex-labor leader, ex-typesetter, an editorial writer on a trade
journal; Frank Wells, a well-known real estate man; R. R. Donnelly, the
head of one of the greatest printing establishments in the city; and
Hoyt King, a young lawyer who turned out to be a natural investigator.
These made, with Cole himself, only seven, but he had the help and
counsel of Kent, Allen B. Pond, the architect, Judge Murray F. Tuley,
Francis Lackner, and Graham Taylor. “We were just a few commonplace,
ordinary men,” said one of them to me, “and there is your encouragement
for other commonplace, ordinary men.” These men were selected for what
they could do, however, not for what they “represented.” The One
Hundred, which the Nine were to complete, was to do the representing.
But the One Hundred never was completed, and the ward committee, a
feature of the first campaign, was abandoned later on. “The boss and the
ring” was the model of the Nine, only they did not know it. They were
not thinking of principles and methods. Work was their instinct and the
fighting has always been thick. The next election was to be held in
April, and by the time they were ready February was half over. Since it
was to be an election of aldermen, they went right out after the
aldermen. There were sixty-eight in all—fifty-seven of them “thieves,”
as the League reported promptly and plainly. Of the sixty-eight, the
terms of thirty-four were expiring, and these all were likely to come up
for re-election.
The thing to do was to beat the rascals. But how? Mr. Cole and his
committee were pioneers; they had to blaze the way, and, without plans,
they set about it directly. Seeking votes, and honest votes, with no
organization to depend upon, they had to have publicity. “We had first
to let people know we were there,” said Cole, so he stepped “out into
the lime-light” and, with his short legs apart, his weak eyes blinking,
he talked. The League was out to beat the boodlers up for re-election,
he said, with much picturesque English. Now Chicago is willing to have
anybody try to do anything worth while in Chicago; no matter who you are
or where you come from, Chicago will give you a cheer and a first boost.
When, therefore, George E. Cole stood up and said he and a quiet little
committee were going to beat some politicians at the game of politics,
the good-natured town said: “All right, go ahead and beat ‘em; but how?”
Cole was ready with his answer. “We’re going to publish the records of
the thieves who want to get back at the trough.” Alderman Kent and his
decent colleagues produced the records of their indecent colleagues, and
the League announced that of the thirty-four retiring aldermen,
twenty-six were rogues. Hoyt King and a staff of briefless young lawyers
looked up ward records, and “these also we will publish,” said Cole. And
they did; the Chicago newspapers, long on the right side and ever ready,
printed them, and they were “mighty interesting reading.” Edwin Burritt
Smith stated the facts; Cole added “ginger,” and Kent “pepper and salt
and vinegar.” They soon had publicity. Some of the committee shrank from
the worst of it, but Cole stood out and took it. He became a character
in the town. He was photographed and caricatured; he was “Boss Cole” and
“Old King Cole,” but all was grist to this reform mill. Some of the
retiring aldermen retired at once. Others were retired. If information
turned up by Hoyt King was too private for publication, the committee
was, and is to-day, capable of sending for the candidate and advising
him to get off the ticket. This was called “blackmail,” and I will call
it that, if the word will help anybody to appreciate how hard these
reform politicians played and play the game.
While they were talking, however, they were working, and their work was
done in the wards. Each ward was separately studied, the politics of
each was separately understood, and separately each ward was fought.
Declaring only for “aggressive honesty” at first, not competence, they
did not stick even to that. They wanted to beat the rascals that were
in, and, if necessary, if they couldn’t hope to elect an honest man,
they helped a likely rascal to beat the rascal that was in and known.
They drew up a pledge of loyalty to public interest, but they didn’t
insist on it in some cases. Like the politicians, they were
opportunists. Like the politicians, too, they were non-partisans. They
played off one party against another, or, if the two organizations hung
together, they put up an independent. They broke many a cherished reform
principle, but few rules of practical politics. Thus, while they had
some of their own sort of men nominated, they did not attempt, they did
not think of running “respectable” or “business” candidates as such.
Neither were they afraid to dicker with ward leaders and “corrupt
politicians.” They went down into the ward, urged the minority
organization leader to name a “good man,” on promise of independent
support, then campaigned against the majority nominee with circulars,
house-to-house canvassers, mass-meetings, bands, speakers, and parades.
I should say that the basic unstated principle of this reform movement,
struck out early in the practice of the Nine, was to let the politicians
rule, but through better and better men whom the Nine forced upon them
with public opinion. But again I want to emphasize the fact that they
had no finespun theories and no definite principles beyond that of being
always for the best available man. They were with the Democrats in one
ward, with the Republicans in another, but in none were they respecters
of persons.
Right here appeared that insidious influence which we have seen
defeating or opposing reform in other cities—the interference of
respectable men to save their friends. In the Twenty-second Ward the
Democrats nominated a director (now deceased) of the First National Bank
and a prominent man socially and financially. John Colvin, one of the
“Big Four,” a politician who had gone away rich to Europe and was
returning to go back into politics, also was running. The League
preferred John Maynard Harlan, a son of Justice Harlan, and they elected
him. The bank of which the respectable Democratic candidate was a
director was the bank of which Lyman J. Gage, of the League, was
president. All that the League had against this man was that he was the
proprietor of a house leased for questionable purposes, and his friends,
including Mr. Gage, were highly indignant. Mr. Gage pleaded and
protested. The committee was “sick of pulls” and they made short work of
this most “respectable” pull. They had “turned down” politicians on no
better excuse, and they declared they were not going to overlook in the
friend of their friends what they condemned in some poor devil who had
no friends.
There were many such cases, then and later; this sort of thing has never
ceased and it never will cease; reform must always “go too far,” if it
is to go at all, for it is up there in the “too far” that corruption has
its source. The League, by meeting it early, and “spotting it,” as Mr.
Cole said, not only discouraged such interference, but fixed its own
character and won public confidence. For everything in those days was
open. The League works more quietly now, but then Cole was talking it
all out, plain to the verge of brutality, forcible to the limit of
language, and honest to utter ruthlessness. He blundered and they all
made mistakes, but their blundering only helped them, for while the
errors were plain errors, the fairness of mind that rejected an Edward
M. Stanwood, for example, was plain too. Stanwood, a respectable
business man, had served as alderman, but his re-election was advised
against by the League because he had “voted with the gang.” A high
public official, three judges, and several other prominent men
interceded on the ground that “in every instance where he is charged
with having voted for a so-called boodle ordinance, it was not done
corruptly, but that he might secure votes for some meritorious measure.”
The League answered in this style: “We regard this defense, which is put
forward with confidence by men of your standing, as painful evidence of
the low standard by which the public conduct of city officials has come
to be measured by good citizens. Do you not know that this is one of the
most insidious and common forms of legislative corruption?” Mr. Stanwood
was defeated.
The League “made good.” Of the twenty-six outgoing aldermen with bad
records, sixteen were not renominated. Of the ten who were, four were
beaten at the polls. The League’s recommendations were followed in
twenty-five wards; they were disregarded in five; in some wards no fight
was made.
A victory so extraordinary would have satisfied some reformers. Others
would have been inflated by it and ruined. These men became canny. They
chose this propitious moment to get rid of the committee of One Hundred
respectables. Such a body is all very well to launch a reform, when no
one knows that it is going to do serious work; but, as the Cole
committee had learned, representative men with many interests can be
reached. The little committee incorporated the League, then called
together the big committee, congratulated it, and proposed a
constitution and by-laws which would throw all the work—and all the
power—to the little committee. The little committee was to call on the
big committee only as money or some “really important” help was needed.
The big committee approved, swelled up, adjourned, and that is the last
time it has ever met.
Thus free of “pulls,” gentlemanly pulls, but pulls just the same, the
“nine” became nine by adding two—Allen B. Pond and Francis Lackner—and
prepared for the next campaign. Their aldermen, the “reform crowd,” in
the City Council were too few to do anything alone, but they could
protest, and they did. They adopted the system of William Kent, which
was to find out what was going on and tell it in Council meetings.
“If you go on giving away the people’s franchises like this,” Alderman
Harlan would say, “you may wake up some morning to find street lamps are
useful for other purposes than lighting the streets.” Or, “Some night
the citizens, who are watching you, may come down here from the
galleries with pieces of hemp in their hands.” Then he would picture an
imagined scene of the galleries rising and coming down upon the floor.
He made his descriptions so vivid and creepy that they made some
aldermen fidget. “I don’t like dis business all about street lamps and
hemp—vot dot is?” said a German boodler one night. “We don’t come here
for no such a business.”
“We meant only to make head-lines for the papers,” said one of the
reform aldermen. “If we could keep the attention of the public upon the
Council we could make clear what was going on there, and that would put
meaning into our next campaign. And we certainly did fill the galleries
and the newspapers.”
As a matter of fact, however, they did much more. They developed in that
year the issue which has dominated Chicago local politics ever since—the
proper compensation to the city for public franchises. These valuable
rights should not be given away, they declared, and they repeated it for
good measures as well as bad. Not only must the city be paid, but public
convenience and interest must be safeguarded. The boodlers boodled and
the franchises went off; the protestation hurried the rotten business;
but even that haste helped the cause. For the sight, week after week, of
the boodle raids by rapacious capital fixed public opinion, and if the
cry raised then for municipal ownership ever becomes a fact in Chicago,
capital can go back to those days and blame itself.
Most of the early Chicago street railway franchises were limited,
carelessly, to twenty-five years—the first one in 1858. In 1883, when
the earliest franchises might have been terminated, the Council ventured
to pass only a blanket extension for twenty years—till July 30, 1903.
This was well enough for Chicago financiers, but in 1886–87, when Yerkes
appeared, with Widener and Elkins behind him, and bought up the West and
North Side companies, he applied Pennsylvania methods. He pushed bills
through the Legislature, saw them vetoed by Governor Altgeld, set about
having his own Governor next time, and in 1897 got, not all that he
wanted (for the people of Illinois are not like the people of
Pennsylvania), but the Allen bill, which would do—if the Chicago City
Council of 1897 would give it force.