L. O. Curon

Common Council—Boodlers—Bribers—Council of 1899—Powers of—Misuse of—Price of Votes—Passage of Boodle Ordinances—Public Works Department and Bureaus—Illegal Contracts—Street Repairing, Etc.—Civil Service Commission—History of—Present Board Tools of Mayor—Examination by—Examples of—Attacks Upon Law—Special Assessments—Asphalt Ring—Fire Department—County Government—Insane Asylum—Sale of “Cadavers”—Contracts—Sheriff’s Office—Jury Bribers—Judges—Revenue Law—Tax Dodgers—Town Boards—Coroner’s Office—Press Trust—Civic Societies—Berry Committee’s Report—Baxter Committee—Opening Testimony—Conclusion.

For a generation the Common Council of Chicago has been governed by a majority of “boodlers.” Aldermen have been, in that period, fairly representative of the wards by which they were elected. The various nationalities, clustered together in such a manner as to give rise to the naming of a ward according to the nativity of its inhabitants, such as Polish, Swedish, Bohemian, German, Irish, etc., have selected as their representatives in the Council, men who, as a rule, in private life were honest. Their selection was usually upon strictly party grounds. The “independent” voter, in municipal elections, is a growth of quite recent years. The class appears to be increasing with great rapidity and to be finding a means of concentrating its strength at the polls.

As honest as an alderman may be when he first takes his seat, he soon finds himself surrounded by influences which appear to exert a fascinating power over him. He must elect to be for or against the gang. Prior to the allowance of a yearly salary the temptation to join the gang was heightened by the promising returns, in a pecuniary way, which the gang could almost guarantee the incoming member. An alderman “once prepossessed is half seduced” and, since it is almost axiomatic that the total seduction of a prepossessed alderman is a mere matter of time and opportunity, the fall always comes when some high spirited, progressive, and perhaps, God-professing citizen, offers from his purse a goodly compensation to the gang for the grant of some public privilege. Thus the public privilege is seized upon by the aldermanic gang as a private privilege which it disposes of to the broad-clothed briber at a price satisfactory to its members. The bribers are found in that sanctified element of the community which attends church under the pretext of fearing and worshipping God.

“But yet, O Lord! confess I must,
At times I’m fash’d wi’ fleshly lust;
An’ sometimes, too, wi’ worldly trust
Vile self gets in!
But thou rememb’rest we are dust,
Defil’d in sin.”

On secular days, its leaders, the accomplished, in thieves’ parlance, the “slick” bribers, whisper their temptations into the ears of public servants willing to become their private tools, like the devil in the garden of Eden, “who squat like a toad close to the ear of Eve.”

The “gang” spots its man with remarkable foresight, and year after year its power to manage public affairs to its own private advantage has become more and more felt by the public.

For the first time in a generation, in this year 1899, it is believed an honest majority is in control of the council. The pleasurable fact is that the majority was elected upon a non-partisan basis, the recommendations of a civic body, as to the honesty and capacity of the candidates in the several wards, having been acted upon by the voters in preference to those of party nominating conventions.

It is, however, too early to predict a new era in the history of the council. “All signs fail in dry weather,” and at this moment there are no indications of an approaching shower of “boodle.” The street car franchise question is drowsy and will not be awakened until the corporations controlling the lines are ready to do so. That they will not do so until some legislation is enacted in 1901, is too apparent to require an effort to prove. For one year at least there is a majority in the council which will, it is hoped, protect public rights; and it is also hoped that in 1900 this majority will not only be retained, but also greatly augmented. Projects may be hidden which in the near, or not distant, future, will come forth to plague the consciences of a number of newly admitted members and put their integrity to the severest of tests.

The power of the Common Council, as confided to it by legislation, over the affairs of two millions of people, is too immense to be wielded by a single ordinance making body. Under our form of municipal government it controls the finances and the property of the city, regulates licenses to sell liquor and to carry on various classes of business, such as auctioneers, distillers, grocers, lumber yards, livery stables, money changers, brokers, junk stores, billiard, bagatelle and pigeon-hole tables, pin alleys, ball alleys, hackmen, draymen, omnibus drivers, carters, cabmen, porters, expressmen, hawkers, peddlers, pawnbrokers, theatres, shows and amusements, and many other classes of occupations.

Its power over the uses to which the streets may be applied is, in one sense, limited; in another almost unlimited. While limited by the charter to the power to lay them out, open, widen and improve them, prevent encroachments and obstructions thereon, lighting and cleansing them, its power to regulate them is almost unlimited. “To regulate” the use of the streets is a broad power, and while several distinct grants of power of regulation are contained in the statute, such as preventing the throwing of ashes and garbage upon them, their use for signs, sign posts, awnings, etc., the carrying of banners, placards, advertisements, etc., therein, the flying of flags, banners or signs across them from house to house, or traffic and sales upon them, nevertheless, the uses to which they may be applied in the way of business enterprises for advertising purposes, are as numerous and as varied as the minds of the originators of the schemes are original and unique.

For the right to use, therefore, in a given way in a given ward, the “gang” alderman long ago established and still maintains a schedule of rates. They are graduated from the insignificant charge for permission to “string a banner,” or establish a fruit stand, up to the highly respectable “rake off” demanded for the use of them for switch tracks, or street railway purposes. It is not so many years ago that a leading morning newspaper furnished the public with some information on this subject, upon the occasion of the passage of an ordinance granting valuable privileges to a railway corporation. Four members of the council, not the “Big Four” of olden times, but the modern “Big Four” leaders of “de gang,” were said to have received for their manipulation of the ordinance, and the organization of their followers for its support, the quite comfortable sum of $25,000 each. Their supporters were to receive $8,000 each for their votes, while the “go between” received $100,000 and a few city lots. The standard price per vote for valuable franchises is $5,000, yet in a pinch of private necessity, a few votes can be commanded at lower figures. The contingency of a possible veto is provided for, so that in that event one-fourth must be added for the second vote to pass the measure over the veto. Thus it has gone on not only with respect to street railway grants, but also for electric lighting, telephone conduits, gas pipes, private telephone wires and that long list of uses devised by business men for the advertisement of their personal interests. The peanut stand privilege, the fruit stand privilege, the bootblack privilege, the banner privilege, all pay cash to some “gang” alderman, as do the policy rooms, pool rooms and saloons with wine room privileges.

It is an amusing, as well as an instructive sight, to witness a meeting of the council upon an occasion when some well announced “boodle” ordinance is called up for passage. The plan of campaign has all been arranged beforehand, and the floor leader selected to command the movement. Let it be an ordinance for granting the right to a street railway company to lay down its tracks, and operate its line, in a given street. The preliminaries have all been gone through with, the signatures of property owners verified, and the price to be paid for favorable votes agreed upon. When the ordinance is taken up its opponents are generally in a disorganized condition. There is among them, as a general rule, no coherence of opposition. The main object to be attained, viz., the defeat of the ordinance as it is presented, is lost sight of in the effort “to make records” by the introduction of amendments, reflecting some individual idea of the member who offers it, without having submitted it to his associate opponents for their judgment. Consequently they disagree among themselves and fall to fighting each other, thereby weakening their opposition. Meanwhile the “gang” sits smilingly by, under instructions to vote down all amendments. When one is offered, of comparative unimportance, the quick-witted lobbyists of the corporations, Jew and Gentile, convey a tip to the leader of the “gang” that the amendment “is all right,” “quite agreeable,” “will be accepted,” etc., whereupon the gang’s leader obligingly informs the chair that it is his profound belief the amendment is a very proper one, and it is graciously accepted. The opposition having some little encouragement, present other amendments, which are, of course, defeated. Sometimes debate is permitted. If the speeches could be reported verbatim and the words spelled out as pronounced, it would make Mr. Dooley reflect on the style of modern oratory, as presented by the “mimber from Archey Road.” The question coming to a vote upon the passage of the ordinance, the roll call begins. From the “Bath House” on the right comes, on the first call, the familiar “Aye.” That response is repeated by every member of the gang without explanation, and in a stolid way, indicating contempt for public opinion. The measure is now out of the way. Preparations are made for the next. Settlements have to be made and everybody satisfied before new matters involving “boodle” can be presented. Occasionally there is a loud “kick” by some slow-witted member who fails to secure his full share of the “swag,” but he is usually placated in some manner best known to the combination, and business goes on in the old way. The division and distribution of the “boodle” are matters of great secrecy and adroit management. It is forced into the pockets of some, or finds its way into them in mysterious ways. It is discovered under a plate at a restaurant, or under a pillow at bedtime; but it seldom passes into the open hand, held rearwards, as the caricaturist pictures the “boodler.”A newspaper thus spoke of the members of the council belonging to the party it represents. “The average —— representative in the city council is a tramp, if not worse. He represents or claims to represent a political party having respectable principles and leaders of known good character and ability. He comes from twenty-five or thirty different wards, some of them widely separated, and when he reaches the City Hall, whether from the west, the south or the north division, he is nine cases out of ten a bummer and a disreputable who can be bought and sold as hogs are bought and sold at the stockyards. Do these vicious vagabonds stand for the decency and intelligence of the party in Chicago?”

This is a picture drawn a few years ago, but it correctly sketches a number of the hold over members of the present council, and a few of the old timers re-elected.

The new members of the council, one-half in number, are committed, by their ante-election pledges, to the policy of refusing the grant of privileges to individuals or corporations without compensation to the public. Whatever of benefit the public may derive from this policy, it is not quite clear that it will operate as a preventive of “boodling.” The ingenuity of the “boodler” combines the cunning of the sneak thief, with the boldness of the highway robber in devising the ways and means to find and secure his “stuff.” It is a matter of congratulation that the boodling species is dwindling away from the public view. How long it will remain in concealment depends upon how long the independent voter wishes to keep it concealed.

The department of the city government to which is committed the control of its public improvements consists of a number of bureaus. The Commissioner of Public Works controls, as part of his executive department, the City Engineer, Superintendent of Streets, of Street and Alley Cleaning, of Water, of Sewerage, of Special Assessments and of Maps. When it is considered that this means the care and management of 1,111 miles of improved and 1,464 miles of unimproved streets, 112 miles of improved and 1,235 miles of unimproved alleys, making a total of 3,924 miles of streets and alleys, the letting of contracts for their repair, improvement and cleaning, and all the details of engineering, sewerage and water pipe extension bureaus, involving the expenditure of millions of dollars, the vastness of the public interests entrusted to the Commissioner may be realized. Under every administration the department is assailed for frauds, stuffed pay rolls, favoritism and boodling. The administration now in power (and which has been in power for two years) has not escaped criticism. Powerful as that criticism was, and founded in truth as it was, it apparently did not affect the minds of a majority of the voters. Contracts were let by this administration, in direct violation of the law which provides for a letting to the lowest bidder, after advertising for bids, where the amount is in excess of $500. Yet a political favorite, who was himself at one time spoken of as a probable appointee to the office of Commissioner, but who stepped aside, as it is charged, as the result of a deal, obtained thereby a contract for street repairs amounting to $230,000, which was never advertised for, but let to him privately in such a manner so that the vouchers in payment were drawn in sums less than $500 each. So grossly evasive of the law was this transaction, that it involved the stoppage of payment of the warrants by the Comptroller of the city. A re-measurement of the work was ordered by him. This developed the astonishing fact that, even if the contract had been properly let, there was nevertheless an overcharge, swindling in its nature, to the extent of $60,000. The Comptroller was, therefore, compelled to withhold his sanction to the payment of the vouchers. In some manner, however, they were paid after some slight reductions were made. This was a blow at the sterling integrity of the Comptroller, whose public services in thoroughly reorganizing his office, and placing it on a business basis, and whose devotion to public interests cost him his life, are the only conspicuous acts, free from shame, egotism, or corruption, of an administration to which he loaned the strength of his good name, and upon which he shed the splendor of his ability and personal honor. He will be long remembered as the one oasis in a desert of maladministration. Both in private and in public walks Robert A. Waller lived an honorable life. He died mourned by all who knew him.

“His life was gentle, and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world: This was a man!”

The attempt to let the contract for the use of a tug for service to the cribs, or water intakes, in the lake, was another breach of the law so flagrant, as to attract public attention for a time. Its consummation was prevented by the threat of court proceedings, which, at once, led to the insertion of an advertisement for bids. But here again fraud was attempted. The specifications were so drawn as to call for boats of certain dimensions, exact compliance with which was almost impossible, except to one towing company to which originally the contract was about to be let without a bid. This company’s bid was $13,000; the lowest bid was $3,500. Still the city authorities hesitated to award the contract to the lowest bidder, but public opinion, and the known ability of the bidder to fulfill his contract regardless of his boats’ dimensions, compelled the letting to him, thereby saving to the city the sum of $9,000. Vouchers about which there was a doubt as to their legality, have been paid to a contractor, who was appointed a brigadier general of volunteers, but who resigned the appointment immediately, it is said, for business reasons, or because he could not be assigned to a pleasing command. These vouchers amounted to $50,000, and their payment, it is rather uncharitably said, induced the gallant contractor to become an independent voter. There is no difference between the manufacture of an independent voter in this manner, and his manufacture by putting him on the pay-roll without work. This method seems to have been adopted by the public works department of the city government, following, perhaps, an old precedent.

The purchase of water meters, under specifications with which only one company could comply, and the laying of water pipes without letting contracts in a lawful manner, are notorious instances of unblushing frauds committed by this department. It is almost incredible that a dynamo should be bought in parts, so that it could be purchased from a friend, and paid for in sums less than $500; yet this was done. Thus a piece of machinery having a fixed price as a whole, was not only purchased illegally, but paid for in such a manner that its price, as a whole, was doubled when bought in pieces. So it was with other electrical apparatus; so it was with the protection to fire hydrants. Instead of advertising for bids for the work of shielding the fire hydrants from the severity of the winter’s cold, they were divided up into companies like those of a regiment of soldiers, each having its contract commander, who received his pay on vouchers each calling for less than $500. The present commissioner is an old politician, who has held several official positions. It is but just to say of him, that, with the general public, he bears a good reputation. His political enemies are not by any means complimentary in their allusions to him, those particularly in the ranks of his own party. He is energetic, self confident, amiable, and a particularly able bluffer when occasion demands it. Without being profound he is efficient, and without being remarkably efficient, he is not at all valueless.

The Civil Service Commission has reached its present age, nearly five years, after suffering all the diseases incident to poor nursing. It is not by any means a vigorous child as yet, but as it gains in strength it will perhaps grow in wisdom. When it recognizes the fact that the people permitted it to be born, it will also recognize the further fact that its parents require of it obedience to their wishes. They demand the enforcement of the Civil Service Law as it is written, for the public good and not for partisan advantage. They would impress upon the commission the conviction of their belief that without a properly administered civil service law, municipal government is a menace to republican institutions; that without it the experiment of municipal ownership of “public utilities” is hazardous, and that the increasing intelligence of the people and their wider knowledge of the science of government have taught them that the political maxim, “to the victors belong the spoils,” is a relic of the barbaric days of politics, in which wide open primaries, stuffed ballot boxes, captured polling places, and thugs were the governing elements of elections.

The civil service law was placed upon the statute book at the instance of those who had made the study of municipal government a duty, and who from that study realized that the growth of great cities, in population, material wealth and industrial development, demands commensurate changes in the manner of governing such communities. The basic principle of the law is the elimination of the spoils system, and the substitution of the merit system. The banishment of the professional politician, that individual who lives upon the spoils of office, is a result certain of accomplishment under the proper administration of this beneficent statute. Foreseeing this result, the professionals in all parties united against it and have sought, and are still seeking, to undermine its provisions and destroy its utility.

The law was put into operation by a board of commissioners not one of whom had ever been an active party man. No body of men ever met for the performance of a public duty, who were less tainted with partisanship than were these gentlemen. They studied the law carefully, and acquainted themselves with its text and its spirit. Their selection was satisfactory to the public, and was a guarantee of honest endeavor to place the affairs of the city under the control of the law’s terms, in all the departments to which those terms applied, and which could be brought within the classified service. They formulated adequate rules, after consultation with able men familiar with the workings of the federal civil service law. Open to criticism as some of these rules were as being more theoretical than practical, nevertheless they were built upon the basis of selection by merit alone, regardless of politics, and were adapted solely to that end. For two years it adhered to the law, enforcing against the party to which the majority of the commissioners belonged a rule which required that no person holding an office which fell within the classified service could take an examination for that position without resigning the position. The law continued to work during 1895 and 1896 as smoothly as new machinery can. In the Spring of 1897 a new city administration came into power of a different political complexion from that under which the law was placed in force. It was then found, to the amazement of the public, which, however, in the hurly-burly of life soon subsided, that these commissioners were incompetent. One placed his resignation in the hands of the Mayor and was almost immediately appointed to the office of comptroller by that officer. The efficiency of his service in his new office, and the quality of his character, have already been referred to in these pages.

Suddenly the same Mayor addressed the late associates of the Comptroller as follows, viz.: “You will please take notice that I have elected to, and I do hereby remove you from the position of Civil Service Commissioner in and for the City of Chicago for the following causes. First: You are and have been in your performance of the duties of said office incompetent. Secondly: In the performance of said duties you have been guilty of neglect of duty.” A new commission was appointed, which proceeded to reverse the rule above referred to, whereupon nearly all the employes of the city were discharged. No examinations having been held for these positions there was no eligible list from which to select their successors. Consequently, in such a case, appointments were made under a section of the statute to fill the vacancies for sixty days, during which time examinations were held to obtain an eligible list. These appointments were, of course, all made from the Mayor’s party. He could not do otherwise in view of the public utterances he had made during his campaign, when he said if he retained any employes appointed under a prior administration of a different political belief, “it will only be for menagerie purposes.”

When the examinations were held and a list certified, it was found that in every instance the sixty day men passed at its head. Such a uniformity of results was in itself evidence of a disregard of the law. From the highest position for which examinations were held, down through all grades, to the lowest, such as barn men, the sixty day man was always marked up to the head of the list.

During the years 1897 and 1898, no less than seven different persons were selected as civil service commissioners, until a board was found willing to act upon the Mayor’s interpretation of the statute. One instance of the abuse of the law will suffice to show the methods resorted to, for the purpose of selecting a party man to fill a vacancy in office. An examination was held of applicants for the position of “foreman of street lamps repairs.” The man who passed at the head was a sixty day man. At thirteen years of age he became a sheet metal worker’s apprentice, and with the exception of a short period when he was engaged in keeping a saloon and made a failure of it, he continued to follow that occupation. He is a heeler for one of the most notorious of the aldermanic gang. It will be observed in contrasting the questions asked him, and those asked his superior, an applicant for the office of Superintendent of Street Lamp Repairs, that a lower degree of educational qualifications is required of the Superintendent, that of his subordinate, the foreman of the gang of repairers. These questions were propounded to the foreman, viz.:

“If the hypothenuse of a right angle triangle is 35 feet and the base 21 feet, what is the altitude?

At 30 cents a square yard what is the cost of lining with metal a cubical room 13 feet long?

If it takes eight men five and one half days to make 100 lamps, how long will it take six men to make 350 lamps?

A building is 302 feet high; the walk and court measure 90 feet; what is the length of a straight line running from the top of the building to the opposite curb?

At 25 cents a square yard what is the cost of a sheet of iron sufficient for the construction of a cylinder pipe closed at both ends 28 feet long, the diameter of whose base is 28 inches?

What is the capacity in gallons of a sphere 15 inches in diameter?If 24 gallons of water flow through a 2 inch pipe each minute how many gallons will flow through a 3 inch pipe under the same conditions?

What is the length of the diameter of a circle whose area equals 1,386 square yards?

Name the materials used in the construction of a street lamp?

Name three essential qualifications requisite for a foreman?”

A street lamp could not be repaired, as a matter of fact, by a person unable to answer these questions! This truth must be apparent to any unbiased mind!

All the other applicants could answer the last two questions only, simply because they were honest; but the metal worker answered them all, and was marked 100, although he had not been at school since he was thirteen years of age, and does not appear to have been much of a student since that time.

The Superintendent’s examination ran as follows, viz.:

“What are the duties of Superintendent of Lamp Repairs?What experience have you had to qualify you for this position?

How many lamps should a tinner complete in a day?

How many signs should an etcher complete in a day?

If a special assessment were levied and confirmed, what would your duty be to secure the erecting and lighting of the lamps?

On what part of the city property should those posts be set?

If posts were to be erected how would you determine what class of posts would be required?

What is the general duty of Superintendent of Lamp Repairs regarding repairs to lamps?”

The attacks on the civil service law come from all sources. A party convention in 1898, in its platform said, “We pronounce the Civil Service Law inefficient, mischievous and hostile to the regnant principles of popular government. We demand its repeal.”

The next convention of the same party resolved: “We pledge the ——— party to the strict enforcement of this, the Civil Service Law.”The Mayor’s consistency and that of his party are identical. If the two removed commissioners were incompetent and neglectful, so must the third have been, and yet that equally incompetent and neglectful commissioner was appointed to an office, the very highest in the gift of the Mayor.

Acting upon the demand of his party for the repeal of this law, the Corporation Counsel began his attacks upon it by a multiplicity of opinions calculated to gradually remove it from the statute book. Ordinances were passed in accordance with these opinions, creating new heads of departments and exempting them from the civil service rules. Positions, filled by civil service appointees, were abolished. The same positions were re-created under a new name, filled by a sixty day man who was then examined, and certified to the head of the list. The police department, the city treasurer, and other branches of the local government which have attempted by judicial proceedings to emasculate the civil service law, have in every instance been foiled by the decisions of the Supreme Court.

The Special Assessment Bureau of the board of public works, has for many years, in conjunction with the alderman, had the origination and passage of ordinances for paving streets, laying sewers, sidewalks, drains, water supply and service pipes, etc. Under a law recently enacted, and now in force, all ordinances originate with a board, named the Board of Local Improvements. The right of petition on behalf of the property owners, is a feature of the new law which smiles at the property owner, while it “winks the other eye.” It holds out a hope, as do other provisions of the law, of reduced assessments, but, so far, the practical benefit to the owner of real estate has not been made apparent. Since the year 1861 and including the year 1897, the enormous sum of $90,402,790.44 has been levied upon real estate for the payment of public improvements. During the year ending December, 1891, the amount levied was over six millions of dollars, and during the following year ending December 31, 1892, just preceding the World’s Fair, the assessments reached the sum of over fourteen millions of dollars. Reference has already been made to frauds in the letting of contracts for street improvements. They are split up and let to favorites without advertising, so that each payment will fall under $500, although the improvement may be a mile in length. The asphalt ring is just as potent as ever. It fights every effort of other dealers in asphalt to procure a contract and it generally succeeds in foisting upon the people its quality of asphalt at a higher price than that offered at a lower price, by other bidders, perhaps equally as good in quality and which has been successfully used in other cities. Failing recently to stampede the board, the ring accepted contracts at a figure submitted by its competitors. This, however, is a familiar trick of trusts, and will last for a very short period of time, unless the board manifests a disposition to consider the merits of the material of competing contractors. The ring will not abandon its struggle so easily. It is powerful, uniting in its behalf the combined efforts of politicians of all parties, who are connected with the asphalt corporations as stockholders and officers. The Board of Local Improvements not long since made the announcement that it was preparing to levy special assessments during the coming year to the amount of $10,000,000. The people may weep and protest, while the contractor smiles and urges.

The one department of the city government, unsurpassed by any of its kind in the world, is the Fire Department. The officers and men are of the best material, of the highest courage, and serve under the strictest discipline. They are fire fighters, not politicians. Their chief is a man of independence of character, honest, taciturn, a strict disciplinarian—a general in command of a corps of which he is justly proud. He tolerates no political interference with his men. In this respect, particularly, he is, always was, and always will be sustained by the entire community. Any attempted management of the department which would tend to lessen its efficiency meets with the chief’s stern resistance. Aside from his own moral and physical courage, his admirable sense of duty, and the fact that the public honor him and support him, he has the powerful assistance of the board of underwriters in any case of damaging intermeddling with his command. Knowing his worth and the merits of his department that intermeddling would bring, instantly, a threat of the rise in insurance rates from this board, a threat which would touch the pockets of many property owners, and consequently one which would solidify them in support of the chief. He shares with his men the dangers of their calling. The gallant men, who during the past year lost their lives in saving the property and lives of others, testified by their sacrifice to the hazardous nature of that calling. A recital of the heroic deeds of those men would not be surpassed by the stories of gallantry in the field of battle with which the pages of American history are replete. While Dennis J. Swenie’s strength holds out he will command his famous batallions to his own honor, and to that of the city of which he is so faithful and loyal a citizen.

Even the possibility of his being supplanted in his command, which appeared recently in the failure to reappoint him at the first opportunity afforded the Mayor, aroused the people to a united protest, which, indications prove, was timely and effective. The omission to send his name to the council with the first of the Mayor’s appointees, may have been, as it was claimed “accidental,” but it is nevertheless the belief that that omission was in the nature of a test of public opinion. If so, the power of public opinion retained him in command, despite political purpose to the contrary.

With the exception of this department all the others of the city are merely run on political lines, as adjuncts of the political party in power, notwithstanding the civil service law. The abuses of that law may become fewer in number, not through any merit of the present board, but because it has about exhausted itself in filling all the offices with men of one political faith by means already explained.

The departments of the County government under a feeble civil service law, different from that applicable to the city, are conducted in the same manner as those of the city for the benefit of machine politicians and their regiments of ward and township workers. They are as corruptly managed as those of the city government.

The institutions at Dunning for the insane and the poor, are generally managed by ward politicians, whose appointments are in the nature of a reward for party services, or rather, services to some particular boss. Recent reports of grand juries note some improvement in their conduct. On the whole, however, they are regarded in the nature of spoils by the ring of party loafers, whose views of government consist, mainly, in doing the greatest good to the greatest number of the ring.

The traffic in dead bodies, or “cadavers” goes on, as it did when exposure came about a year ago through detected shipments to the State of Missouri for the use of a medical college in one of the towns of that state. These pauper dead “escape,” in the language of the employes, from the “killer” ward in which they are stored, a place selected to lay out a corpse suited for the dissecting table. It has been a matter of more than rumor and given currency by the press, that subjects for the dissecting table are selected before the breath has left their bodies. This statement finds more or less verification in the disclosures of the Missouri case before alluded to.

Contractors for county supplies pay a percentage of their prices to a county ring, and, consequently, a poorer quality of food, fuel and medicines, is furnished to these institutions than the contracts call for, which cost the contractor an additional sum by way of boodle to obtain them.

The sheriff’s office has had a standing shame for many years in the cost of dieting prisoners. The county board allows the sheriff for dieting, twenty-five cents a day for each prisoner confined in the county jail. The cost of a day’s dieting is estimated not to exceed ten cents, according to the greed of the sheriff. From this one source alone the sheriff’s office is regarded as one of the most lucrative offices in the county. The excess above the actual cost is clear profit to the sheriff.

Some of the bailiffs of the courts have been discovered within the past year as jury bribers, willing to take any side offering the most lucrative terms. The principal in this disreputable business fled, and now an unseemly quarrel is raging between the city’s detective department, and the sheriff’s and state attorney’s office as to which was to blame for that escape.

The judges of the Courts of Cook County are men of integrity. Some are able jurists, but of late years the standard for judicial qualifications has been, through party machine nominations, considerably lowered. These judges are charged by the law with some duties the nature of which is purely political. Thus, the selection of justices of the peace for the city, the poor man’s court, is confided to them. No scandals, so far, have attended the exercise of this duty, but their selections have not, as a general rule, earned the confidence of the people. “J. P.” means nowadays one who will give judgment for the plaintiff. The evil practices, the frauds and swindles, which have their origin in the system now prevailing for the conduct of justice courts, has given rise to strenuous efforts to reform them by state legislation. This will ultimately be accomplished. While the members from the rural districts, in each recurring state legislature, are difficult to manage, in the one session of their term in the lower house in matters affecting a large city, nevertheless, when fully informed, they have granted such remedial legislation to Chicago for which its civic bodies have made timely application.

A new revenue law has just gone into operation, designed to abolish the inequalities of taxation which grew up and were fraudulently fostered under the repealed law. What its effect will be it is difficult to predict. The personal property holders, those with long lines of stocks, bonds, valuable house furnishings, large bank accounts, and concealed wealth, are very likely to feel unkindly towards the stringent provisions of this law. They have been evading their just share of taxation for years. They are today the most ignorant of the many people calling at the assessor’s office to make out and verify under oath their respective schedules, simply because it is so many years since they were called upon to pay a personal property tax, that they have forgotten all about the form.The holders of large real estate interests, who, for years, have been paying assessors to exempt them from assessment, or reduce their valuations, are, also, most probably confronted with the impossibility of escape from paying their proper share of general taxes. This iniquitous system has been denounced in the press for years. A year ago a town assessor was convicted of the offense, and heavily fined by the court. The tax evaders are as vicious a class in a community as are sneak thieves. Their payment to assessors to lower their valuations is the worst species of corruption. The payrolls of the town assessors present the most conspicuous instances of corruption to be found in any department of the county, or city, government. Many men are carried on their pay rolls and paid from five to ten dollars per day who never do one moment’s work in the making of the assessment. They are simply being nursed for political purposes. In one of the wealthiest towns a payroll fell under the writer’s observation, which showed a clear steal of $2,200 for a period of two weeks only. These officials designated a personal friend to whom all money was paid. One-fourth of these payments were handed over to the “solicitor” who brought in the “business,” one-fourth to the “friend,” and the remaining one-half went to the assessor. Men in high station in national and state councils, state and national committeemen, city and county officers, lawyers, politicians and sporting men were engaged in this business of boodling, throwing upon the owners of small real estate interests more than their fair share of the burdens of taxation. In an address delivered in this city by an ex-President of the United States, he said that as Lincoln had declared this country could not exist half slave and half free, so he declared “it could not exist half taxed and half free” from taxation, that the sin of tax evasion was a new danger to the integrity of the Republic and that its evil lay in the “evasion of just taxation by the rich, and the consequent thrusting of an extra burden on the poor.” The corporations engaged in the manufacture of gas, in the management of traction companies, of live stock exchanges, of packing companies, railroads, steel companies, sleeping car builders and merchants owning large landed properties, have had their agents regularly employed in procuring a reduction of their valuations for assessment, who were nothing more nor less than bribers. Whether these crimes will be as freely attempted under the new law remains to be developed, but some of the distributors of personal property schedules are again playing their old trick of taking money from the poor under promise of returning them as non-holders of taxable personal property. An arrest of one of these robbers, who had accepted one dollar from each of a number of women has been made. The men elected as assessors and as members of the board of review are men of good character and able judgment. The only indication of danger is that a political boss who has lived and thrived at the public crib and whose political methods have always been unscrupulous has been appointed chief clerk of the board of review. His salary is large enough to keep him out of temptation, if he has not forgotten the ways of the righteous. He was an expert “adjuster” in politics. In assessments the “adjuster’s” occupation should now be gone. The difficulty lies in teaching an old adjuster new tricks. The old system of assessment for general taxation was denounced by an official of the county as “nothing more nor less than a gigantic legalized swindle, reeking in corruption, a harbor for ‘grafters,’ ‘petty thieves,’ and ‘sharks,’ and an enormous, unnecessary and galling burden on the tax payers, the expense of which has no justification in reason and should have none in law.”

The new system abolishes but one of the evils of the old. In place of town assessors, a board of five assessors is established whose work is subject to review by another composed of three members. Their labors are, in turn, passed upon by the State Board of Equalization, before which for years railroads and other corporations have had their adjusters, agents or brokers, and before which they will continue to appear and accomplish, as they always have accomplished, the placing of the lowest possible valuations upon railroad properties, and a reduction of capital stock valuations. The board of assessors now values all the real estate in Cook county in place of the assessors in the separate towns within the county.

These towns, six of which are wholly within the city limits, are, through their officials, plunderers of the public, robbing the funds of the towns by increasing their salaries out of all proportion to the services they are required to render, and which could well be dispensed with to the greatest advantage of the people. In the year 1898 they cost the treasury $395,411.55. Absolutely nothing is apparent as the result of this looting of public funds. They occupy, in the business parts of the city, expensive offices, which are open for public use not to exceed four months in the year, and afford, for the remaining months, club accommodations for the hangers on of the political crooks who manage party affairs. Card playing and gambling are their principal occupations. In the division of the proceeds of the robbery, the justices of the peace participate. They are, by virtue of their offices, members of the town board. Their services are not worth ten dollars per annum, but they receive compensation ranging from $200 to $500 per annum.As illustrating the tendency of these town boards, from which the assessment of property for taxation has now been taken away, the following are the valuations of real estate and personal property for the past three years as equalized by the state board. The foundation for the assessments was laid by the town assessors. It will be observed that, notwithstanding the increase in population, the value of real estate and personal property has been steadily declining. The decline is a measure of the boodling propensities of the assessors. Their percentage of award “no fellah can find out.”

VALUATIONS FOR ASSESSMENT.

The value of the taxable real estate in Chicago, according to these figures, decreased in two years $18,883,703, and the value of taxable personal property $5,357,906. During the same period the population increased 234,953. As wealth and population increase in Chicago, values of property decline. At ten per cent of its cash value, which is the basis adopted by assessors for years for taxation value, taxable real estate in Chicago is, in round numbers worth $1,788,000,000.

It is impossible to average the per cent paid for reductions in valuations to the assessors. Of the eighteen millions in reduced valuations in 1898, as compared with 1896, it is safe to say five millions were purchased. As the rate of taxation was between nine and ten dollars on one hundred dollars the amount of taxes paid by those who should not have paid them was $500,000. The assessors were “not working for their health,” but for about fifty per cent of the taxes saved to their principals, with the aid of the friend and the agent who brought the business, or say about $250,000 of “graft.”

The coroner’s office is also one which not infrequently gives rise to scandals. There are open charges made that some of the juries, called by that official, have found exonerating, instead of incriminating, verdicts for a money consideration in the division of which the office participated. An unseemly quarrel between the coroner and the police revealed the fact that both have favorite undertakers to whom the bodies of those meeting sudden death from accident, or otherwise, are taken. In a dispute as to which should control a corpse a most painful truth became public that it was carted about from one undertaking establishment to another, and that even the law was invoked to obtain possession of it by means of a writ of replevin.

The office of the recorder of deeds is one of the most important in the county affairs. Generally speaking it is well conducted, although its records are not as presentable to the eye as are the books of a first-class mercantile firm. Female labor is employed mostly in recording, i. e., spreading an instrument at large upon the records, while male labor keeps up the tract books, indices, etc. The employes of both sexes are favorites of political bosses. The abstract branch of the business of this office is a sublime failure. For years it has cost the county a large sum of money to make good the deficiency—expenses largely exceeding earnings. Its abstracts cannot compete with those of private corporations, which employ experts in that business, and pay them in proportion to their ability, merit alone being their recommendation. The abstract makers employed by the county are shiftless and incompetent. The Torrens system, or the registration of titles, will, in time, but not for many years to come, supersede the abstract system, but not until the public shall have gained more confidence in its merits than it has yet acquired in recorder’s abstracts of title.

It was not the purpose of these pages to pursue inquiry into the corruption existing in both the municipal and county governments. The primary intent was to refer to the vices and crimes which prevail by reason principally of police partnership in their joint proceeds. Both governments are corrupt, and appear to be so because the people consent they shall be corrupt. The lessons the public learn from day to day, through the columns of the press, are forgotten. When election day approaches a revival of the facts through the press is then charged to political trickery, and its charges of maladministration are disregarded as being invented for party purposes. The press condemns while the evils are prominent, then it condones, and becomes the subservient and truculent supporter of the men who permitted vice and debauchery to attain its stalwart growth. The people believe there is a trust press, banded together to obtain favors through school leases, bank deposits of public funds and personal appointments in return for services to be rendered their municipal benefactors. The only non-member of the trust is the organ of the street car corporations and such exposes of villainy as it may present are set down as means to an end—the effort to obtain public privileges without compensation to the city. Newspapers, therefore, in municipal affairs no longer lead public opinion. They cannot again become its leaders until they free themselves from the suspicion of conserving their own interests by the sacrifice of those of the public. The greatest of them delivered but feeble blows during the recent mayoralty campaign, while the lighter weights, who were fighting for a candidate for renewed honors, had been for two years most unmercifully pounding him for his persistent assistance rendered to the vicious classes, in their indulgence in crime and debauchery.

The various civic societies formed for the improvement of municipal government, pay attention solely to matters removed from the insidious and ceaseless advances of crime, close their eyes to evidences of disease apparent on the body politic, and merely dream of higher ideals. They leave to one society the task of the suppression of vice. They give to it neither sympathy nor pecuniary assistance. It begs its way in meetings of its sympathizers, warns the community of the prevalence of crime and indecency, but the community rushes on in the business struggles of the day from year to year, trusting—as it always has trusted—in its public servants for the full performance of their sworn duties—a trust so constantly violated that municipal government has become merely the synonym of the rule of the criminal classes.A special session of the Illinois Legislature was called by the Governor in 1897. Among the subjects included in the call was one suggesting the passage of an act “to establish boards providing for non-partisan police in all cities of the State containing over 100,000 inhabitants.” Pursuant to the recommendations of the executive’s message, a resolution was passed by the Senate for the appointment of a committee of seven members of that body, which recited the recommendation of the Governor; that a bill had been introduced providing for the establishment of non-partisan police boards in all cities containing the necessary population; that charges and scandals had arisen in regard to the management of the police force in Chicago, and that the committee be clothed “with full power to act” and to investigate “fully the subject” and report its findings as early as possible to the Senate at the special session.

The committee consisted of one people’s party, one democratic senator and five republican senators. From the moment of its selection it was branded as a partisan committee, appointed not so much to obtain information which would enable an unbiased judgment to be formed upon the merits of the proposed bill as to accumulate political capital for the use of the republican party. The committee proceeded with its investigation, and on February 10th, 1898, submitted its report, which was adopted February 15th, 1898, by a vote of thirty-three republicans and one democrat, eight democrats voting in the negative. The only democrat voting in the affirmative was a member of the reporting committee.

On the last day of the special session, no legislation having been enacted on the subject of the proposed bill, a resolution was introduced providing for a continuance of the committee, which recited that it had “unearthed a most deplorable state of affairs in the management and control of the police force of Chicago,” and that “the most flagrant violations of the civil service law have been brazenly practiced by those in authority in control of that police force.” Nothing resulted from the latter resolution continuing the committee.

The report covered the investigations of the committee into the operations of the civil service law, and the manner of its enforcement, finding that it was a plaything in the hands of the party then in power, and an object of constant and premeditated attack. It also found the grossest abuses in the management of the police pension fund and in the workings of the police force as an organization. That crime was protected and lewdness tolerated by it, and that in fact it was a powerful ally of the criminal classes, and practically made an unofficial livelihood off unfortunate women of the town, thieves and their fences, gambling resorts and their keepers, and the patrons and keepers of the all night saloons. It found the Chief of Police was cognizant of the facts, and yet took no steps to correct them. That Chief from whose testimony quotations appear in these pages, was re-appointed to command the police force for the next two years.

The findings of this committee made but little, if any, impression upon the public mind. There were no revelations as to the condition of criminal affairs, and the relations of the police therewith, which were new to the people, with the possible exception, perhaps, that it was not known how utterly inefficient and irresponsible the Chief of Police was. From that moment every newspaper has, if not demanded, at least suggested his removal from office. In this respect it but voices the sentiments of the entire community. It is a paradox why, in the face of this public feeling, a majority of the people supported for re-election the staunch friend of the dishonored head of the police force, unless upon the hypothesis that he would not continue to be a part of the new administration. If so, the hypothesis soon failed. The Mayor thought he would “hold him for a while.”

The lesson to be learned from the failure of this committee’s report to attract public attention to the prevalence of criminality and obscenity in Chicago as fostered by the police force is this, that an investigation concerning the methods of government of a city administration controlled by the Democratic party, without a kindred investigation of the methods of a county administration controlled by the Republican party is too partisan to suit the sense of fair play and of justice entertained by every American citizen. It matters not that the order for the investigation had reference only to the passage of legislation for the regulation of the police force in cities of a certain population, and that, therefore, the scope of the inquiry was limited by the terms of the order. Perhaps it was as broad as it could have been made, under the governor’s call, which, by the provisions of the constitution fixed the subjects upon which only legislation could be enacted in special session. Either the call should have been broader, or this particular subject matter should have been omitted from it, and left for the regular session’s consideration. Then all matters pertaining to the manner of conducting both city and county affairs could have been investigated free from the delimitations of an executive call. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the report of the Berry Committee, as it was called, is a stinging indictment against the police force of Chicago, which sooner or later must be tried at the bar of public opinion. It will, in a measure, have blazed the way for a new committee of inquiry, whose sittings have just commenced, in so far as the police department is concerned.

The Baxter Committee was formed under a resolution of the Senate. It consists of five republican and two democratic senators. The resolution refers “to the management and control of the police affairs” of Chicago, and “the conduct of the municipal government thereof, in reference to the expenditure of public money and the enforcement of the law in its several departments.” This language would limit the scope of the committee’s inquiry to city affairs only. The resolution, however, closes with words granting authority to the committee for a “full, complete and perfect investigation of any and all the said subject matters herein named, and such other subjects as they may deem wise and prudent to investigate in the interests of good government.”

If this committee is wise it will not confine its efforts to ascertaining how the city government is managed. It will command public approval if it will extend its inquiries into the affairs of the county government as well. This the community will demand; with less it will not be satisfied. The great mass of both parties is concerned with what will be of the most advantage to good government, not with what will be to the greatest advantage of either party. Hence, if this inquiry has in view a partisan purpose its sessions will merely reproduce tales of the street familiar to the ears of the people, and with which the legislature has been familiar for a decade. To associate these crimes and debaucheries with one administration will in one respect be unfair, because they have progressed under other administrations as well, but it can emphasize the one great and astonishing truth, that never in the history of the city has a police force been permitted to become the bed-fellow of these monstrous evils, to protect them and contribute to their overwhelming power, in such a shameless, openhanded and defiant manner as it has in the past two years, as it is still permitted to do, and as it will probably be permitted to do, for the next two years.

That committee will find nothing in these pages unknown to the observing citizen. The great mass of the people read and forget. These evils are hinted at herein, and gathered together. They may impress those who are unaccustomed to taking notes of passing events. That the growth of crime in Chicago, and the prevalence of bestiality is not generally believed by the majority of its people is a self-evident proposition. It would be an insult to their intelligence and virtue to assert they knew the facts. It is not a criticism of their intelligence to say they do not know the facts. It is rather to their credit that in the pursuit of their business, the care of their homes, and the cultivation of their morals, they judge the great community in which they live by their own standard, and firmly believe that as they know themselves to be good citizens, they believe their fellow men are likewise good citizens. While they rest in this conviction vice is eternally at work, immorality undermining and crime attacking the power of government, capturing one and then the other of its strongholds, until today the criminal classes constitute the balance of power in every city election, and can handle it as they may choose, by the mere concentration of the voting strength of the keepers of eight thousand saloons and their hangers on.

The appointment of a comptroller and corporation counsel acceptable to the public, both being men of sterling integrity, and known ability, is merely a partial promise of reform. The new comptroller is a worthy successor to the deceased Waller, while the new corporation counsel takes his office, with a reputation for probity and legal acumen which are guaranties that neither will be used in an attack upon the people’s laws. But the police department and the public works department are still under the same direction. They give no promise of departing from the protection of criminals on the one hand, nor the illegal letting of contracts on the other. Both of these are inviting fields for the Baxter committee to explore, and when they shall have thoroughly done so, if they shall turn their attention to county affairs, they will probably find pastures just as prolific of the rankest of weeds.The Baxter committee began its hearings on the 18th day of May, 1899. Its opening witness confirmed the truth of many of the facts set forth in these pages. He paid protection money for keeping a gambling house, until the demands for a contribution to a campaign fund became too exacting, when he was “told he had better quit.” “As an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” said the witness: “I quit.”

He testified that gambling was going on everywhere a few days before the committee began its work, named a number of the resorts, and related some of his losses in a few of the games in which, although a professional gambler, he was “skinned.”

Officers were found in them, and protection to the games openly boasted of. The club organization, it develops, is the gambling idea of evading the laws, the theory being that none can gamble unless they are members. The practice seems, however, to be that every man is a member who will not squeal. Houses of disrepute were visited, and the indecencies alluded to in foregoing pages witnessed by the sergeant-at-arms of the committee. His testimony in this respect was too realistic for publication.

A member of a recent grand jury submitted a list of all night saloons he had visited, and found doing business, between the hours of one and five o’clock in the morning. The list contained the names of forty-six saloons, located on eleven different streets. His information was not as startling as was the fact that his joint feat of pedestrianism and absorption of drink is, perhaps, unequalled in sporting or drinking records. He drank in each of the places visited—total drinks, forty-six in four hours. Length of route covered four miles; width, about one-half mile; square miles traversed—two! Can any sprinter, carrying the same weights, surpass this achievement?

The witnesses so far called before the committee are mostly from the detective force, and from among lodging house keepers. Their replies are evasive, and when not so, their memories are clouded. All they had ever known of the subjects upon which they are interrogated had fled from their recollection. “I don’t remember,” avoided many a pitfall.The methods of the committee do not impress an observer as having been the result of much consultation or careful preparation for their work. There is an apparent indifference on the part of some of its members to reaching results, or to remaining steadily in the pursuit of the purposes for which it was organized. Political influences are undoubtedly at work to shorten the lines of its inquiry, and the length of the days it shall devote to their development. This investigation is not wanted by local politicians of either party. It rests with the committee alone to determine whether its work shall be well done or not. To maintain the dignity of the State is their first duty, let their investigation reveal what it may and strike whom it will.

A people who voluntarily submit to taxation for the construction of such a stupendous improvement as the drainage canal costing $28,000,000, who apply their surplus water fund to the building of a complete system of intercepting sewers, who compel the abolition of the murderous grade crossings, through the elevation of railway tracks, all for the improvement of the sanitary condition and safety of their homes and lives, are entitled to the best protection the state can give them against the domination of criminals and debauchees, even if the management of its police force should thereby be placed in the hands of state agencies, or under some other supervision which will compel it to dissolve its relations with vice, and prevent it from utilization for political ends.

Submission to the exactions of trusts, in the shape of telephone and gas companies, does not require them to submit to a trust of criminals and police officials. The element to which it is estimated $70,000,000 is annually paid in Chicago for its drink bill, must be so regulated, as that it shall cease to furnish the balance of power in elections, to exercise a baneful influence over the police, to ruin the young, to encourage debauchery, and breed criminals. A municipal government that cannot, or will not, control these vicious agencies, will ultimately be condemned by a public-spirited people, if they can be, as they sooner or later will be, persuaded to devote a few hours, taken from their business or pleasure, to a vigorous uprooting of a system under which such iniquities can be born and develop to such menacing proportions. There must be an awakening to the fact that

“They say this town is full of cozenage,
As, nimble jugglers that deceive the eye,
Dark-working sorcerers that change the mind,
Soul-killing witches that deform the body,
Disguised cheaters, prating mountebanks,
And many such like liberties of sin.”