well realize that if they succeed, their city will pay, too, at first.
Capital will boycott it and capital will give it a bad name. The bankers
who offered me proof of their losses were offering me material to write
down the city. And has Chicago had conspicuous credit for reform? No, it
is in ill-repute, “anarchistic,” “socialistic” (a commercial term for
municipal ownership); it is “unfriendly to capital.” But Chicago knows
what it is after and it knows the cost. There are business men there who
are willing to pay; they told me so. There are business men on the
executive and finance committees of the League and others helping
outside who are among the leaders of Chicago’s business and its bar.
Moreover, there are promoters who expect to like an honest Council. One
such told me that he meant to apply for franchises shortly, and he
believed that, though it would take longer than bribery to negotiate
fair terms with aldermen who were keen to safeguard the city’s
interests, yet business could be done on that basis. “Those reform
aldermen are slow, but they are fair,” he said.
The aldermen are fair. Exasperated as they have been by the trifling,
the trickery, and past boodling of the street railways, inconvenienced
by bad service, beset by corporation temptations, they are fairer to-day
than the corporations. They have the street railways now in a corner.
The negotiations are on, and they could squeeze them with a vengeance.
What is the spirit of those aldermen? “Well,” said one to me, “I’ll tell
you how we feel. We’ve got to get the city’s interests well protected.
That’s first. But we’ve got more to do than that. They’re shy of us;
these capitalists don’t know how to handle us. They are not up to the
new, reform, on-the-level way of doing business. We’ve got to show
capital that we will give them all that is coming to them, and just a
little more—a little more, just to get them used to being honest.” This
was said without a bit of humor, with some anxiety but no bitterness,
and not a word about socialism or “confiscating municipal ownership”;
that’s a “capitalistic” bugaboo. Again, one Saturday night a personal
friend of mine who had lost a half-holiday at a conference with some of
the leading aldermen, complained of their “preciseness.” “First,” he
said, “they had to have every trivial interest of the city protected,
then, when we seemed to be done, they turned around and argued like
corporation lawyers for the protection of the corporation.”
Those Chicago aldermen are an honor to the country! Men like Jackson and
Mavor, Herrmann and Werno, would be a credit to any legislative body in
the land, but there is no such body in the land where they could do more
good or win more honor. I believe capital will some day prefer to do
business with them than with blackmailers and boodlers anywhere.
When that day comes the aldermen will share the credit with the
Municipal Voters’ League, but all the character and all the ability of
both Council and League will not explain the reform of Chicago. The
citizens of that city will take most of the glory. They will have done
it, as they have done it so far.
Some of my critics have declared they could not believe there was so
much difference in the character of communities as I have described. How
can they account, then, for Chicago? The people there have political
parties, they are partisans. But they know how to vote. Before the
League was started, the records show them shifting their vote to the
confusion of well-laid political plans. So they have always had bosses,
and they have them now, but these bosses admit that they “can’t boss
Chicago.” I think this is partly their fault. William Lorimer, the
dominant Republican boss, with whom I talked for an hour one day,
certainly does not make the impression, either as a man or as a
politician, that Croker makes, or Durham of Philadelphia. But an
outsider may easily go wrong on a point like this, and we may leave the
credit where they lay it, with the people of Chicago. Fisher is a more
forceful man than any of the regulars, and, as a politician, compares
with well-known leaders in any city; but Fisher’s power is the people’s.
His leadership may have done much, but there is something else deeper
and bigger behind him. At the last aldermanic election, when he
discovered on the Saturday before election that the League was
recommending, against a bad Democrat, a worse Republican, he advised the
people of that ward to vote for the Socialist; and the people did vote
for the Socialist, and they elected him. Again, there is the press, the
best in any of our large cities. There are several newspapers in Chicago
which have served always the public interest, and their advice is taken
by their readers. These editors wield, as they wielded before the League
came, that old-fashioned power of the press which is supposed to have
passed away. Indeed, one of the finest exhibitions of disinterestedness
in this whole reform story was that of these newspapers giving up the
individual power and credit which their influence on public opinion gave
them, to the League, behind which they stepped to get together and gain
for the city what they lost themselves. But this paid them. They did not
do it with that motive; they did it for the city, but the city has
recognized the service, as another fact shows: There are bad papers in
Chicago—papers that serve special interests—and these don’t pay.
The agents of reform have been many and efficient, but back of them all
was an intelligent, determined people, and they have decided. The city
of Chicago is ruled by the citizens of Chicago. Then why are the
citizens of Chicago satisfied with half-reform? Why have they reformed
the Council and left the administrative side of government so far
behind? “One thing at a time,” they will tell you out there, and it is
wonderful to see them patient after seven years of steadfast, fighting
reform.
But that is not the reason. The administration has been improved. It is
absurdly backward and uneven; the fire department is excellent, the
police is a disgrace, the law department is expert, the health bureau is
corrupt, and the street cleaning is hardly worth mention. All this is
Carter H. Harrison. He is an honest man personally, but indolent; a
shrewd politician, and a character with reserve power, but he has no
initial energy. Without ideals, he does only what is demanded of him. He
does not seem to know wrong is wrong, till he is taught; nor to care,
till criticism arouses his political sense of popular requirement. That
sense is keen, but think of it: Every time Chicago wants to go ahead a
foot, it has first to push its mayor up inch by inch. In brief, Chicago
is a city that wants to be led, and Carter Harrison, with all his
political ambition, honest willingness, and obstinate independence,
simply follows it. The League leads, and its leaders understand their
people. Then why does the League submit to Harrison? Why doesn’t the
League recommend mayors as well as aldermen? It may some day; but,
setting out by accident to clean the Council, stop the boodling, and
settle the city railway troubles, they have been content with Mayor
Harrison because he had learned his lesson on that. And, I think, as
they say the mayor thinks, that when the people of Chicago get the city
railways running with enough cars and power; when they have put a stop
to boodling forever; they will take up the administrative side of the
government. A people who can support for seven years one movement toward
reform, should be able to go on forever. With the big boodle beaten,
petty political grafting can easily be stopped. All that will be needed
then will be a mayor who understands and represents the city; he will be
able to make Chicago as rare an example of good government as it is now
of reform; which will be an advertisement; good business; it will _pay_.
* * * * *
_Post Scriptum_, December, 1903.—Chicago has taken up since
administrative graft. The Council is conducting an investigation which
is showing the city government to have been a second Minneapolis. Mayor
Harrison is helping, and the citizens are interested. There is little
doubt that Chicago will be cleaned up.
NEW YORK: GOOD GOVERNMENT TO THE TEST
(_November, 1903_)
Just about the time this article will appear, Greater New York will be
holding a local election on what has come to be a national question—good
government. No doubt there will be other “issues.” At this writing
(September 15) the candidates were not named nor the platforms written,
but the regular politicians hate the main issue, and they have a pretty
trick of confusing the honest mind and splitting the honest vote by
raising “local issues” which would settle themselves under prolonged
honest government. So, too, there will probably be some talk about the
effect this election might have upon the next Presidential election;
another clever fraud which seldom fails to work to the advantage of
rings and grafters, and to the humiliation and despair of good
citizenship. We have nothing to do with these deceptions. They may count
in New York, they may determine the result, but let them. They are
common moves in the corruptionist’s game, and, therefore, fair tests of
citizenship, for honesty is not the sole qualification for an honest
voter; intelligence has to play a part, too, and a little intelligence
would defeat all such tricks. Anyhow, they cannot disturb us. I am
writing too far ahead, and my readers, for the most part, will be
reading too far away to know or care anything about them. We can grasp
firmly the essential issues involved and then watch with equanimity the
returns for the answer, plain yes or no, which New York will give to the
only questions that concern us all:[6]
Footnote 6:
Tammany tried to introduce national issues, but failed, and “good
government” was practically the only question raised.
Do we Americans really want good government? Do we know it when we see
it? Are we capable of that sustained good citizenship which alone can
make democracy a success? Or, to save our pride, one other: Is the New
York way the right road to permanent reform?
For New York has good government, or, to be more precise, it has a good
administration. It is not a question there of turning the rascals out
and putting the honest men into their places. The honest men are in, and
this election is to decide whether they are to be kept in, which is a
very different matter. Any people is capable of rising in wrath to
overthrow bad rulers. Philadelphia has done that in its day. New York
has done it several times. With fresh and present outrages to avenge,
particular villains to punish, and the mob sense of common anger to
excite, it is an emotional gratification to go out with the crowd and
“smash something.” This is nothing but revolt, and even monarchies have
uprisings to the credit of their subjects. But revolt is not reform, and
one revolutionary administration is not good government. That we free
Americans are capable of such assertions of our sovereign power, we have
proven; our lynchers are demonstrating it every day. That we can go
forth singly also, and, without passion, with nothing but mild approval
and dull duty to impel us, vote intelligently to sustain a fairly good
municipal government, remains to be shown. And that is what New York has
the chance to show; New York, the leading exponent of the great American
anti-bad government movement for good government.
According to this, the standard course of municipal reform, the
politicians are permitted to organize a party on national lines, take
over the government, corrupt and deceive the people, and run things for
the private profit of the boss and his ring, till the corruption becomes
rampant and a scandal. Then the reformers combine the opposition: the
corrupt and unsatisfied minority, the disgruntled groups of the
majority, the reform organizations; they nominate a mixed ticket, headed
by a “good business man” for mayor, make a “hot campaign” against the
government with “Stop, thief!” for the cry, and make a “clean sweep.”
Usually, this effects only the disciplining of the reckless grafters and
the improvement of the graft system of corrupt government. The good
mayor turns out to be weak or foolish or “not so good.” The politicians
“come it over him,” as they did over the business mayors who followed
the “Gas Ring” revolt in Philadelphia, or the people become disgusted as
they did with Mayor Strong, who was carried into office by the
anti-Tammany rebellion in New York after the Lexow exposures.
Philadelphia gave up after its disappointment, and that is what most
cities do. The repeated failures of revolutionary reform to accomplish
more than the strengthening of the machine have so discredited this
method that wide-awake reformers in several cities—Pittsburg,
Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Minneapolis, and others—are following
the lead of Chicago.
The Chicago plan does not depend for success upon any one man or any one
year’s work, nor upon excitement or any sort of bad government. The
reformers there have no ward organizations, no machine at all; their
appeal is solely to the intelligence of the voter and their power rests
upon that. This is democratic and political, not bourgeois and business
reform, and it is interesting to note that whereas reformers elsewhere
are forever seeking to concentrate all the powers in the mayor, those of
Chicago talk of stripping the mayor to a figurehead and giving his
powers to the aldermen who directly represent the people, and who change
year by year.
The Chicago way is but one way, however, and a new one, and it must be
remembered that this plan has not yet produced a good administration.
New York has that. Chicago, after seven years’ steady work, has a body
of aldermen honest enough and competent to defend the city’s interests
against boodle capital, but that is about all; it has a wretched
administration. New York has stuck to the old way. Provincial and
self-centered, it hardly knows there is any other. Chicago laughs and
other cities wonder, but never mind, New York, by persistence, has at
last achieved a good administration. Will the New Yorkers continue it?
That is the question. What Chicago has, it has secure. Its independent
citizenship is trained to vote every time and to vote for uninteresting,
good aldermen. New York has an independent vote of 100,000, a decisive
minority, but the voters have been taught to vote only once in a long
while, only when excited by picturesque leadership and sensational
exposures, only _against_. New York has been so far an anti-bad
government, anti-Tammany, not a good-government town. Can it vote,
without Tammany in to incite it, for a good mayor? I think this
election, which will answer this question, should decide other cities
how to go about reform.
The administration of Mayor Seth Low may not have been perfect, not in
the best European sense: not expert, not co-ordinated, certainly not
wise. Nevertheless, for an American city, it has been not only honest,
but able, undeniably one of the best in the whole country. Some of the
departments have been dishonest; others have been so inefficient that
they made the whole administration ridiculous. But what of that?
Corruption also is clumsy and makes absurd mistakes when it is new and
untrained. The “oaths” and ceremonies and much of the boodling of the
St. Louis ring seemed laughable to my corrupt friends in Philadelphia
and Tammany Hall, and New York’s own Tweed régime was “no joke,” only
because it was so general, and so expensive—to New York. It took time to
perfect the “Philadelphia plan” of misgovernment, and it took time to
educate Croker and develop his Tammany Hall. It will take time to evolve
masters of the (in America) unstudied art of municipal government—time
and demand. So far there has been no market for municipal experts in
this country. All we are clamoring for to-day in our meek, weak-hearted
way, is that mean, rudimentary virtue miscalled “common honesty.” Do we
really want it? Certainly Mayor Low is pecuniarily honest. He is more;
he is conscientious and experienced and personally efficient. Bred to
business, he rose above it, adding to the training he acquired in the
conduct of an international commercial house, two terms as mayor of
Brooklyn, and to that again a very effective administration, as
president, of the business of Columbia University. He began his
mayoralty with a study of the affairs of New York; he has said himself
that he devoted eight months to its finances: and he mastered this
department and is admitted to be the master in detail of every
department which has engaged his attention. In other words, Mr. Low has
learned the business of New York; he is just about competent now to
become the mayor of a great city. Is there a demand for Mr. Low?
No. When I made my inquiries—before the lying had begun—the Fusion
leaders of the anti-Tammany forces, who nominated Mr. Low, said they
might renominate him. “Who else was there?” they asked. And they thought
he “might” be re-elected. The alternative was Richard Croker or Charles
F. Murphy, his man, for no matter who Tammany’s candidate for mayor was,
if Tammany won, Tammany’s boss would rule. The personal issue was plain
enough. Yet was there no assurance for Mr. Low.
Why? There are many forms of the answer given, but they nearly all
reduce themselves to one—the man’s personality. It is not very engaging.
Mr. Low has many respectable qualities, but these never are amiable.
“Did you ever see his smile?” said a politician who was trying to
account for his instinctive dislike for the mayor. I had; there is no
laughter back of it, no humor, and no sense thereof. The appealing human
element is lacking all through. His good abilities are self-sufficient;
his dignity is smug; his courtesy seems not kind; his self-reliance is
called obstinacy because, though he listens, he seems not to care;
though he understands, he shows no sympathy, and when he decides, his
reasoning is private. His most useful virtues—probity, intelligence, and
conscientiousness—in action are often an irritation; they are so
contented. Mr. Low is the bourgeois reformer type. Even where he
compromises he gets no credit, his concessions make the impression of
surrenders. A politician can say “no” and make a friend, where Mr. Low
will lose one by saying “yes.” Cold and impersonal, he cools even his
heads of departments. Loyal public service they give, because his taste
is for men who would do their duty for their own sake, not for his, and
that excellent service the city has had. But members of Mr. Low’s
administration helped me to characterize him; they could not help it.
Mr. Low’s is not a lovable character.
But what of that? Why should his colleagues love him? Why should anybody
like him? Why should he seek to charm, win affection, and make friends?
He was elected to attend to the business of his office and to appoint
subordinates who should attend to the business of their offices, not to
make “political strength” and win elections. William Travers Jerome, the
picturesque District Attorney, whose sincerity and intellectual honesty
made sure the election of Mr. Low two years ago, detests him as a
bourgeois, but the mayoralty is held in New York to be a bourgeois
office. Mr. Low is the ideal product of the New York theory that
municipal government is business, not politics, and that a business man
who would manage the city as he would a business corporation, would
solve for us all our troubles. Chicago reformers think we have got to
solve our own problems; that government is political business; that men
brought up in politics and experienced in public office will make the
best administrators. They have refused to turn from their politician
mayor, Carter H. Harrison, for the most ideal business candidate, and I
have heard them say that when Chicago was ripe for a better mayor they
would prefer a candidate chosen from among their well-tried aldermen.
Again, I say, however, that this is only one way, and New York has
another, and this other is the standard American way.
But again I say, also, that the New York way is on trial, for New York
has what the whole country has been looking for in all municipal
crises—the non-political ruler. Mr. Low’s very faults, which I have
emphasized for the purpose, emphasize the point. They make it impossible
for him to be a politician even if he should wish to be. As for his
selfishness, his lack of tact, his coldness—these are of no consequence.
He has done his duty all the better for them. Admit that he is
uninteresting; what does that matter? He has served the city. Will the
city not vote for him because it does not like the way he smiles? Absurd
as it sounds, that is what all I have heard against Low amounts to. But
to reduce the situation to a further absurdity, let us eliminate
altogether the personality of Mr. Low. Let us suppose he has no smile,
no courtesy, no dignity, no efficiency, no personality at all; suppose
he were an It and had not given New York a good administration, but had
only honestly tried. What then?
Tammany Hall? That is the alternative. The Tammany politicians see it
just as clear as that, and they are not in the habit of deceiving
themselves. They say “it is a Tammany year,” “Tammany’s turn.” They say
it and they believe it. They study the people, and they know it is all a
matter of citizenship; they admit that they cannot win unless a goodly
part of the independent vote goes to them; and still they say they can
beat Mr. Low or any other man the anti-Tammany forces may nominate. So
we are safe in eliminating Mr. Low and reducing the issue to plain
Tammany.
Tammany is bad government; not inefficient, but dishonest; not a party,
not a delusion and a snare, hardly known by its party name—Democracy;
having little standing in the national councils of the party and caring
little for influence outside of the city. Tammany is Tammany, the
embodiment of corruption. All the world knows and all the world may know
what it is and what it is after. For hypocrisy is not a Tammany vice.
Tammany is for Tammany, and the Tammany men say so. Other rings proclaim
lies and make pretensions; other rogues talk about the tariff and
imperialism. Tammany is honestly dishonest. Time and time again, in
private and in public, the leaders, big and little, have said they are
out for themselves and their own; not for the public, but for “me and my
friends”; not for New York, but for Tammany. Richard Croker said under
oath once that he worked for his own pockets all the time, and Tom
Grady, the Tammany orator, has brought his crowds to their feet cheering
sentiments as primitive, stated with candor as brutal.
The man from Mars would say that such an organization, so
self-confessed, could not be very dangerous to an intelligent people.
Foreigners marvel at it and at us, and even Americans—Pennsylvanians,
for example—cannot understand why we New Yorkers regard Tammany as so
formidable. I think I can explain it. Tammany is corruption with
consent; it is bad government founded on the suffrages of the people.
The Philadelphia machine is more powerful. It rules Philadelphia by
fraud and force and does not require the votes of the people. The
Philadelphians do not vote for their machine; their machine votes for
them. Tammany used to stuff the ballot boxes and intimidate voters;
to-day there is practically none of that. Tammany rules, when it rules,
by right of the votes of the people of New York.