1896, with the publication of the records of the retiring aldermen, the
second half of the old body, and, though this was before the Allen bill
was passed, Yerkes was active, and his men were particularized. As the
campaign progressed the legislation at Springfield gave it point and
local developments gave it breadth. It was a mayoralty year, and
Alderman John Maynard Harlan had himself nominated on an independent,
non-partisan ticket. “Bobbie” Burke, the Democratic boss, brought
forward Carter H. Harrison, and the Republicans nominated Judge
Nathaniel C. Sears. Harrison at that time was known only as the son of
his father. Sears was a fine man; but neither of these had seized the
street railway issue. Mr. Harlan stood on that, and he made a campaign
which is talked about to this day in Chicago. It was brilliant. He had
had the ear of the town through the newspaper reports of his tirades in
the Council, and the people went to hear him now as night after night he
arraigned, not the bribed legislators, but the rich bribers. Once he
called the roll of street railway directors and asked each what he was
doing while his business was being boodled through the State
Legislature. Earnest, eloquent, honest, he was witty too. Yerkes called
him an ass. “If Yerkes will consult his Bible,” said Harlan, “he will
learn that great things have been done with the jaw-bone of an ass.”
This young man had no organization (the League confined itself to the
aldermen); it was a speaking campaign; but he caught the spirit of
Chicago, and in the last week men say you could feel the drift of
sentiment to him. Though he was defeated, he got 70,000 votes, 10,000
more than the regular Republican candidate, and elected Harrison. And
his campaign not only phrased the traction issue in men’s minds; it is
said to have taught young Mayor Harrison the use of it. At any rate,
Harrison and Chicago have been safe on the city’s side of it ever since.
The League also won on it. They gave bad records to twenty-seven of the
thirty-four outgoing aldermen. Fifteen were not renominated. Of the
twelve who ran again, nine were beaten. This victory gave them a solid
third of the Council. The reform crowd combined with Mayor Harrison, the
President of the Council, and his followers, and defeated ordinances
introduced to give effect to Yerkes’s odious Allen law.
Here again the League might have retired in glory, but these
“commonplace, ordinary men” proposed instead that they go ahead and get
a majority, organize the Council on a non-partisan basis, and pass from
a negative, anti-boodling policy to one of positive, constructive
legislation. This meant also to advance from “beating bad men” to the
“election of good men,” and as for the good men, the standard was to be
raised from mere honesty to honesty and efficiency too. With such high
purposes in view, the Nine went into their third campaign. They had to
condemn men they had recommended in their first year, but “we are always
ready to eat dirt,” they say. They pointed to the franchise issue,
called for men capable of coping with the railways, and with bands
playing, orators shouting, and Cole roaring like a sea-captain, they
made the campaign of 1898 the hottest in their history. It nearly killed
some of them, but they “won out”; the League had a nominal majority of
the City Council.
Then came their first bitter disappointment. They failed to organize the
aldermen. They tried, and were on the verge of success, when defeat
came, a most significant defeat. The League had brought into political
life some new men, shop-keepers and small business men, all with perfect
records, or none. They were men who meant well, but business is no
training for politics; the shop-keepers who knew how to resist the
temptations of trade were untried in those of politics, and the boodle
gang “bowled them over like little tin soldiers.” They were persuaded
that it was no more than right to “let the dominant party make up
committees and run the Council”; that was “usage,” and, what with
bribery, sophistry, and flattery, the League was beaten by its weak
friends. The real crisis in the League had come.
Mr. Cole resigned. He took the view that the League work was done; it
could do no more; his health was suffering and his business was going to
the dogs. The big corporations, the railroads, great business houses and
their friends, had taken their business away from him. But this boycott
had begun in the first campaign and Cole had met it with the declaration
that he didn’t “care a d—n.” “I have a wife and a boy,” he said. “I want
their respect. The rest can all go to h—l.” Cole has organized since a
league to reform the legislature, but after the 1898 campaign the Nine
were tired, disappointed, and Cole was temporarily used up.
The Nine had to let Cole and Hoyt King go. But they wouldn’t let the
League go. They had no successor for Cole. None on the committee would
take his place; they all declined it in turn. They looked outside for a
man, finding nobody. The prospect was dark. Then William Kent spoke up.
Kent had time and money, but he wouldn’t do anything anyone else could
be persuaded to do. He was not strong physically, and his physicians had
warned him that to live he must work little and play much. At that
moment he was under orders to go West and shoot. But when he saw what
was happening, he said:
“I’m not the man for this job; I’m no organizer. I can smash more things
in a minute than I can build up in a hundred years. But the League has
got to go on, so I’ll take Cole’s place if you’ll give me a
hard-working, able man for secretary, an organizer and a master of
detail.”
Such a secretary was hard to find, but Allen B. Pond, the architect, a
man made for fine work, took this rough-and-tumble task. And these two
with the committee strengthened and active, not only held their own,
they not only met the receding wave of reactionary sentiment against
reform, but they made progress. In 1899 they won a clear majority of the
Council, pledged their men before election to a non-partisan
organization of the Council, and were in shape for constructive
legislation. In 1900 they increased their majority, but they did not
think it necessary to bind candidates before the election to the
non-partisan-committees plan, and the Republicans organized the house.
This party maintained the standard of the committees; there was no
falling off there, but that was not the point. Parties were recognized
in the Council, and the League had hoped for only one line of
demarcation: special interests versus the interests of the city. During
the time of Kent and Pond, however, the power for good of the League was
established, the question of its permanency settled, and the use of
able, conscientious aldermen recognized. The public opinion it developed
and pointed held the Council so steady that, with Mayor Harrison and his
personal following among the Democrats on that side, the aldermen
refused to do anything for the street railway companies until the Allen
bill was repealed. And, all ready to pass anything at Springfield,
Yerkes had to permit the repeal, and he soon after closed up his
business in Chicago and went away to London, where he is said to be
happy and prosperous.
The first time I went to Chicago, to see what form of corruption they
had, I found there was something the matter with the political
machinery. There was the normal plan of government for a city, rings
with bosses, and grafting business interests behind. Philadelphia,
Pittsburg, St. Louis, are all governed on such a plan. But in Chicago it
didn’t work. “Business” was at a standstill and business was suffering.
What was the matter? I beleaguered the political leaders with questions:
“Why didn’t the politicians control? What was wrong with the machines?”
The “boss” defended the organizations, blaming the people. “But the
people could be fooled by any capable politician,” I demurred. The boss
blamed the reformers. “Reformers!” I exclaimed. “I’ve seen some of your
reformers. They aren’t different from reformers elsewhere, are they?”
“No,” he said, well pleased. But when I concluded that it must then be
the weakness of the Chicago bosses, his pride cried out. “Say,” he said,
“have you seen that blankety-blank Fisher?”
I hadn’t, I said. “Well, you want to,” he said, and I went straightway
and saw Fisher—Mr. Walter L. Fisher, secretary of the Municipal Voters’
League. Then it was that I began to understand the Chicago political
situation. Fisher was a reformer: an able young lawyer of independent
means, a mind ripe with high purposes and ideals, self-confident,
high-minded, conclusive. He showed me an orderly bureau of indexed
information, such as I had seen before. He outlined the scheme of the
Municipal Voters’ League, all in a bored, polite, familiar way. There
was no light in him nor anything new or vital in his reform as he
described it. It was all incomprehensible till I asked him how he
carried the Seventeenth Ward, a mixed and normally Democratic ward, in
one year for a Republican by some 1300 plurality, the next year for a
Democrat by some 1800, the third for a Republican again. His face
lighted up, a keen, shrewd look came into his eyes, and he said: “I did
not carry that ward; its own people did it, but I’ll tell you how it was
managed.” And he told me a story that was politics. I asked about
another ward, and he told me the story of that. It was entirely
different, but it, too, was politics. Fisher is a politician—with the
education, associations, and the idealism of the reformers who fail,
this man has cunning, courage, tact, and, rarer still, faith in the
people. In short, reform in Chicago has such a leader as corruption
alone usually has; a first-class executive mind and a natural manager of
men.
When, after the aldermanic campaign of 1900, Messrs. Kent and Pond
resigned as president and secretary of the League’s executive committee,
Charles R. Crane and Mr. Fisher succeeded in their places. Mr. Crane is
a man with an international business, which takes him often to Russia,
but he comes back for the Chicago aldermanic campaigns. He leaves the
game to Mr. Fisher, and says Fisher is the man, but Crane is a backer of
great force and of persistent though quiet activity. These two, with a
picked committee of experienced and sensible men—Pond, Kent, Smith,
Frank H. Scott, Graham Taylor, Sigmund Zeisler, and Lessing
Rosenthal—took the League as an established institution, perfected its
system, opened a headquarters for work the year around; and this force,
Mr. Fisher, with his political genius, has made a factor of the first
rank in practical politics. Fisher made fights in the “hopeless” wards,
and won them. He has raised the reform majority in the City Council to
two-thirds; he has lifted the standard of aldermen from honesty to a
gradually rising scale of ability, and in his first year the Council was
organized on a non-partisan basis. This feature of municipal reform is
established now, by the satisfaction of the aldermen themselves with the
way it works. And a most important feature it is, too. “We have four
shots at every man headed for the Council,” said one of the League—“one
with his record when his term expires; another when he is up for the
nomination; a third when he is running as a candidate; the fourth when
the committees are formed. If he is bad he is put on a minority in a
strong committee; if he is doubtful, with a weak or doubtful majority on
an important committee with a strong minority—a minority so strong that
they can let him show his hand, then beat him with a minority report.”
Careful not to interfere in legislation, the League keeps a watch on
every move in the Council. Cole started this. He used to sit in the
gallery every meeting night, but under Crane and Fisher, an assistant
secretary—first Henry B. Chamberlain, now George C. Sikes—has followed
the daily routine of committee work as well as the final meetings.
Fisher has carried the early practice of meeting politicians on their
own ground to a very practical extreme. When tact and good humor failed,
he applied force. Thus, when he set about preparing a year ahead for his
fights in unpromising wards, he sent to the ward leaders on both sides
for their lists of captains, lieutenants, and heelers. They refused,
with expressions of astonishment at his “gall.” Mr. Chamberlain directed
a most searching investigation of the wards, precinct by precinct, block
by block, and not only gathered a rich fund of information, but so
frightened the politicians who heard of the inquiries that many of them
came around and gave up their lists. Whether these helped or not,
however, the wards were studied, and it was by such information and
undermining political work, combined with skill and a fearless appeal to
the people of the ward, that Fisher beat out with Hubert W. Butler the
notorious Henry Wulff, an ex-State Treasurer, in the ward convention of
Wulff’s own party, and then defeated Wulff, who ran as an independent,
at the polls.
Such experience won the respect of the politicians, as well as their
fear, and in 1902 and 1903 the worst of them, or the best, came
personally to Fisher to see what they could do. He was their equal in
“the game of talk,” they found, and their superior in tactics, for when
he could not persuade them to put up good men and “play fair,” he
measured himself with them in strategy. Thus one day “Billy” Loeffler,
the Democratic leader in the Democratic Ninth Ward, asked Mr. Fisher if
the League did not want to name the Democratic candidate for alderman in
his ward. Loeffler’s business partner, “Hot Stove” Brenner, was running
on the Republican ticket and Fisher knew that the Democratic
organization would pull for Brenner. But Fisher accepted what was a
challenge to political play and suggested Michael J. Preib. Loeffler was
dazed at the name; it was new to him, but he accepted the man and
nominated him. The Ninth is a strong Hebrew ward. To draw off the
Republican and Jewish vote from Brenner, Fisher procured the nomination
as an independent of Jacob Diamond, a popular young Hebrew, and he
backed him too, intending, as he told both Preib and Diamond, to prefer
in the end the one that should develop the greater strength. Meanwhile
the League watched Loeffler. He was quietly throwing his support from
Preib to Brenner. Five days before election it was clear that, though
Diamond had developed unexpected strength, Preib was stronger. Fisher
went to Loeffler and accused him of not doing all he could for Preib.
Loeffler declared he was. Fisher proposed a letter from Loeffler to his
personal friends asking them to vote for Preib. Loeffler hesitated, but
he signed one that Fisher dictated. Loeffler advised the publication of
the statement in the Jewish papers, and, though he consented to have it
mailed to voters, he thought it “an unnecessary expense.” When Fisher
got back to the League headquarters, he rushed off copies of the letter
through the mails to all the voters in the ward. By the time Loeffler
heard of this it was too late to do anything; he tried, but he never
caught up with those letters. His partner, Brenner, was defeated.
A politician? A boss. Chicago has in Walter L. Fisher a reform boss, and
in the Nine of the Municipal Voters’ League, with their associated
editors and able finance and advisory committees, a reform ring. They
have no machine, no patronage, no power that they can abuse. They
haven’t even a list of their voters. All they have is the confidence of
the anonymous honest men of Chicago who care more for Chicago than for
anything else. This they have won by a long record of good judgments,
honest, obvious devotion to the public good, and a disinterestedness
which has avoided even individual credit; not a hundred men in the city
could name the Committee of Nine.
Working wide open at first, when it was necessary, they have withdrawn
more and more ever since, and their policy now is one of dignified
silence except when a plain statement of facts is required; then they
speak as the League, simply, directly, but with human feeling, and leave
their following of voters to act with or against them as they please. I
have laid great stress on the technical, political skill of Fisher and
the Nine, not because that is their chief reliance; it isn’t: the study
and the enlightenment of public opinion is their great function and
force. But other reform organizations have tried this way. These
reformers have, with the newspapers and the aldermen, not only done it
thoroughly and persistently; they have not only developed an educated
citizenship; they have made it an effective force, effective in
legislation and in practical politics. In short: political reform,
politically conducted, has produced reform politicians working for the
reform of the city with the methods of politics. They do everything that
a politician does, except buy votes and sell them. They play politics in
the interest of the city.
And what has the city got out of it? Many things, but at least one great
spectacle to show the world, the political spectacle of the year, and it
is still going on. The properly accredited representatives of two
American city railway companies are meeting in the open with a regular
committee of an American board of aldermen, and they are negotiating for
the continuance of certain street railway franchises on terms fair both
to the city and to the corporations, without a whisper of bribery, with
composure, reasonableness, knowledge (on the aldermen’s part,
long-studied information and almost expert knowledge); with an eye to
the future, to the just profit of the railways, and the convenience of
the people of the city. This in an American city—in Chicago!
Those franchises which Yerkes tried to “fix” expired on July 30. There
was a dispute about that, and the railways were prepared to fight. One
is a Chicago corporation held by Chicago capital, and the men in it knew
the conditions. The other belongs to New York and Philadelphia
capitalists, whom Yerkes got to hold it when he gave up and went away;
they couldn’t understand. This “foreign” capital sent picked men out to
Chicago to “fight.” One of the items said to have been put in their bill
of appropriation was “For use in Chicago—$1,000,000.” Their local
officers and directors and friends warned them to “go slow.”
“Do you mean to tell us,” said the Easterners, “that we can’t do in
Chicago what we have done in Philadelphia, New York, and——”
“That’s exactly what we mean,” was the answer.
Incredulous, they did do some such “work.” They had the broken rings
with them, and the “busted bosses,” and they had the city on the hip in
one particular. Though the franchises expired, the city had no authority
in law to take over the railways and had to get it from Springfield. The
Republican ring, with some Democratic following, had organized the
Legislature on an explicit arrangement that “no traction legislation
should pass in 1903.” The railways knew they couldn’t get any; all they
asked was that the city shouldn’t have any either. It was a political
game, but Chicago was sure that two could play at it. Harrison was up
for re-election; he was right on traction. The Republicans nominated a
business man, Graeme Stewart, who also pledged himself. Then they all
went to Springfield, and, with the whole city and State looking on, the
city’s reform politicians beat the regulars. The city’s bill was buried
in committee, but to make a showing for Stewart the Republican ring had
to pass some sort of a bill. They offered a poor substitute. With the
city against it, the Speaker “gaveled it through” amid a scene of the
wildest excitement. He passed the bill, but he was driven from his
chair, and the scandal compelled him and the ring to reconsider that
bill and pass the city’s own enabling act.
Both the traction companies had been interested in this Springfield
fiasco; they had been working together, but the local capitalists did
not like the business. They soon offered to settle separately, and went
into session with the city’s lawyers, Edwin Burritt Smith, of the
League, and John C. Mathis. The Easterners’ representatives, headed by a
“brilliant” New York lawyer, had to negotiate too. Their brilliant
lawyer undertook to “talk sense” into the aldermanic committee. This
committee had been out visiting all the large Eastern cities, studying
the traction situations everywhere; on their own account they had had
drawn for them one of the most complete reports ever made for a city by
an expert. Moreover, they knew the law and the finances of the traction
companies, better far than the New York lawyers. When, therefore, the
brilliant legal light had made one of his smooth, elaborate speeches,
some hard-headed alderman would get up and say that he “gathered and
gleaned” thus and so from the last speaker; he wasn’t quite sure, but if
thus and so was what the gentleman from New York had said, then it
looked to him like tommy rot. Then the lawyer would spin another web,
only to have some other commonplace-looking alderman tear it to pieces.
Those lawyers were dumfounded. They were advised to see Fisher. They saw
Fisher.
“You are welcome, if you wish,” he is said to have said, “to talk
foolishness, but I advise you to stop it. I do not speak for the
Council, but I think I know what it will say when it speaks for itself.
Those aldermen know their business. They know sense and they know
nonsense. They can’t be fooled. If you go at them with reason they will
go a long way toward helping you. However, you shall do as you please
about this. But let me burn this one thing in upon your consciousness:
Don’t try money on them or anybody else. They will listen to your
nonsense with patience, but if we hear of you trying to bribe anybody—an
alderman or a politician or a newspaper or a reporter—all negotiations
will cease instantly. And nobody will attempt to blackmail you, no one.”
This seems to me to be the highest peak of reform. Here is a gentleman,
speaking with the authority of absolute faith and knowledge, assuring
the representatives of a corporation that it can have all that is due it
from a body of aldermen by the expenditure of nothing more than reason.
I have heard many a business man say such a condition of things would be
hailed by his kind with rejoicing. How do they like it in Chicago? They
don’t like it at all. I spent one whole forenoon calling on the
presidents of banks, great business men, and financiers interested in
public utility companies. With all the evidence I had had in other
places that these men are the chief sources of corruption, I was
unprepared for the sensation of that day. Those financial leaders of
Chicago were “mad.” All but one of them became so enraged as they talked
that they could not behave decently. They rose up, purple in the face,
and cursed reform. They said it had hurt business; it had hurt the town.
“Anarchy,” they called it; “socialism.” They named corporations that had
left the city; they named others that had planned to come there and had
gone elsewhere. They offered me facts and figures to prove that the city
was damaged.
“But isn’t the reform council honest?” I asked.
“Honest! Yes, but—oh, h—l!”
“And do you realize that all you say means that you regret the passing
of boodle and would prefer to have back the old corrupt Council?”
That brought a curse, or a shrewd smile, or a cynical laugh, but that
they regretted the passing of the boodle régime is the fact, bitter,
astonishing,—but natural enough. We have seen those interests at their
bribery in Philadelphia and St. Louis; we have seen them opposing
reforms in every city. Here in Chicago we have them cursing reform
triumphant, for, though reform may have been a benefit to the city as a
community of freemen, it is really bad; it has hurt their business!