Hamstrung CÆsarism as a Remedy. CHAPTER I. DESPAIRING DEMOCRACY. Despair is a strong word, nor can the citizens be rightly said to despair of the Republic while they are still engaged in making energetic efforts for its salvation. In the strict sense of the word, therefore, it is absurd to speak of a despairing democracy, which is still struggling to avert its threatened doom. But for democracy in the English sense of the word there is no longer any struggle in the City of New York. The ablest and the most hopeful Americans have given it up as a bad job, so far at least as city government is concerned. Hence, it is no misnomer to speak of Despairing Democracy as the natural and, perhaps, inevitable consequence of the display of “Satan’s Invisible World,” a few hints and glimpses of which have been afforded in the preceding chapters. It seems but the other day that Mr. Andrew Carnegie flaunted before the eyes of his former countrymen the magnificent achievements of the principle which in city government is already abandoned in despair. Who could have imagined when reading the exultant pÆan chanted by this American Scot over the achievements of “Triumphant Democracy” in the Western Republic, that within a very few years we should be called upon to chant a dirge over its grave in the first city in the United States. Such an assertion will, no doubt, startle many readers both in the Old World and the New. It will be vehemently contested, chiefly by those who are too deeply immersed in the roaring eddies of the fight to be able to appreciate the significance of the drift of the current which is sweeping them free from their ancient moorings. But outsiders proverbially see most of the game. It is in no spirit of exultation, but rather with a feeling of profound regret, that I note the course which the law of evolution seems to be taking in the great cities of the Western World. That regret is chastened and subdued by two considerations. The first is based upon the belief in the providential government of the universe. The second, which is more personal to myself, is the fact that for nearly twenty years I have been engaged in an attempt to compel hidebound devotees of parliamentary government to admit the virtue that is latent in the Russian autocracy. I am no bigot of Constitutionalism, neither am I guilty of the arrogant folly of pronouncing judgment upon expedients the adoption of which the ablest and wisest men in other lands deem to be indispensable. But the most sympathetic observer, after he has made all allowances, cannot ignore the salient fact of the situation, which is that by universal consent of the ablest and most practical citizens in the foremost city of America, democracy, in the ordinary sense of the term, has hopelessly and irretrievably broken down. Be it carefully observed that I limit the collapse of democracy to that application of the principle which has hitherto been regarded as natural and almost invariable. Democratic government, as defined by Abraham Lincoln, “government of the people, for the people, and by the people,” has in English-speaking lands, and nowhere more so than in New England, been regarded as the government of the community by an elective assembly—that is to say, representatives chosen by the different localities meet together in a common council which is entrusted with authority to manage the affairs of the community. The House of Commons is the most familiar type of such a democratic assembly, but every town council in the land is based on the same principle. Nor is it only in Britain that this principle has been applied. It has hitherto prevailed wherever democracy has been adopted as the system of government; whether in the French Republic, in the German Municipalities, or in any and all of our Colonies, the same principle invariably reappears. The centre of authority is the elective assembly, composed of representatives of the wards or districts or constituencies into which the city or community or nation has been divided.
A VIEW IN BROADWAY. Of course, I shall be told, and justly told, that this system of what may be called parliamentary or municipal democracy is by no means the only form through which democracy can give effect to its will. This, of course, is perfectly true, and that was why I was so careful to limit and define what I meant by democracy. There is no danger of my forgetting that democracy can exist without the usual parliamentary or municipal apparatus. Russia, although governed autocratically, is nevertheless one of the purest democracies in the world. Neither can any Englishman who lived through the Second Empire in France forget that the Third Napoleon always maintained that the Empire was the true and natural outcome of modern democracy. Nevertheless, although the Tsar of Russia rules over a democratic nation, and the Third Napoleon regarded himself as the armed guardian of French democracy, the conventional conception of a democracy in English-speaking lands has never been that of a community governed by an autocrat, but always of a community in which the centre of power lay in the elective assembly. It is this conventional theory of democracy which has been thrown overboard in New York. Hence, from the point of view of the parliamentarian or the conventional believer in government by an assembly of elected persons, the Charter of Greater New York, under which the first election has just taken place, is a more melancholy spectacle than even “Satan’s Invisible World Displayed,” with all its saturnalia of debauchery, violence and corruption. The Charter of Greater New York is the direct outcome, the natural fruit of the bitter experience of Tammany rule. Once more, to quote the familiar saying, “Sin when it hath conceived bringeth forth death,” and the sin revealed by the Lexow Committee has brought forth a deadly harvest in the Charter of Greater New York. Deadly, that is, inasmuch as it is fatal to the principle of vesting the government of the people in the elected representatives of the people in public council assembled. For the central principle of the Charter of Greater New York is the substitution of the authority of a Tsar-Mayor for what has hitherto been regarded as the natural authority of an elected council. This is not a sudden and unexpected change. The evolution of an elective autocracy has been in progress for some years, but it has never before been brought into such conspicuous prominence as by the Charter of Greater New York, for that Charter is the formal embodiment in black and white of the central principle of the Second Empire, with certain modifications which accentuate rather than diminish the expression of democratic despair, of which it is the embodiment. It is this evolution of Bonapartism, of an elective dictatorship, based on universal suffrage, which is the most startling phenomenon of modern politics in the United States. The Third Napoleon never claimed to reign by divine right. His authority was based upon a mass-vote of the electors of France. His throne, although propped by bayonets, was seated on universal suffrage, and in theory he asserted, and in practice in the last years of his reign adopted, the principle that this autocracy, which originally sprang from a mass-vote of the people, needed to be renewed and confirmed from time to time by a plÉbiscite of the whole nation.The government of Greater New York, as it has been established by the Charter under which the recent election took place, is simply the Second Empire of France re-established in the first city of the American Republic, with the limitation that the reign of the despot shall be rigidly limited to four years, after which he shall not be eligible for re-election until the expiry of another term of an equal duration. That this in no sense is an exaggeration, but a simple literal statement of facts perfectly well known in the United States, I shall shortly proceed to show; but before doing so it is well to note some of the circumstances which led up to this extraordinary evolution of autocracy on Republican soil. CANDIDATE VAN WYCK IS SAID TO HAVE POLLED THE SOLID VOTE OF THE CYCLISTS OF GREATER NEW YORK.
MR. SETH LOW.
First Tsar-Mayor of Brooklyn.
CHAPTER II. THE TSAR-MAYOR. The parallel which instinctively occurs to the mind of the observer is one of somewhat evil omen for the future of the American Commonwealth. The Roman Republic evolved the Empire very much in the same way that the Tsar Mayoralty of Greater New York has been evolved from the institutions which preceded it. The Roman Empire was not based upon a plÉbiscite of the citizens, but equally with the New York Mayoralty it ignored the principle of hereditary right. Occasionally the Imperial purple passed from father to son, but for the most part the throne was filled by the only kind of election possible in those days. The Emperor was the choice of men who wielded, not ballots, but swords. A study of the corruption and despair which produced the Roman Empire will supply many curious parallels to the existing state of things in America. In ancient Italy, as in modern New York, elective institutions had been abused until the best citizens despaired of the Republic. The Third Napoleon, in his history of Julius CÆsar, writes concerning the way in which elections were managed in ancient Rome in terms which curiously resemble those employed by the Lexow Committee in explaining how elections were worked in modern New York:— The sale of consciences had so planted itself in public morals, that the several instruments of electoral corruption had functions and titles almost recognised. Those who bought votes were called divisores; the go-betweens were interpretes; and those with whom was deposited the purchase-money were sequestres. Numerous secret societies were formed for making a trade of the right of suffrage; they were divided into decuries, the several heads of which obeyed a supreme head, who treated with the candidates and sold the votes of the associates, either for money, or on the stipulation of certain advantages for himself or his friends. These societies carried most of the elections, and Cicero himself, who so often boasted of the unanimity with which he had been chosen Consul, owed to them a great part of the suffrages he obtained.... This all was struck with decadence. Brute force bestowed power, and corruption the magistracies. Numerous elements of dissolution afflicted society; the venality of the judges, the traffic in elections, the absolutism of the Senate, the tyranny of wealth, which oppressed the poor by usury, and braved the law with impunity.—“Julius CÆsar,” by Napoleon III., vol. i., p. 3. As a way of escape from the disasters which afflicted the Republic, there emerged in natural process of evolution, first, the dictatorship of Sylla, then the triumph of Marius, afterwards the ascendency of CÆsar, which led directly to the foundation of the Empire by Augustus. We are not within sight of the Augustan Empire in the United States, but the same causes which in the natural course of time ripened the Empire of the CÆsars are to be seen in full operation on the banks of the Hudson. The United States is happily at present without the legionaries whose supremacy enabled a succession of military commanders to establish the Roman Empire upon the grave of the Roman Republic. That element of danger may not be wanting in time to come. The growth of imperial ambitions at Washington is one of the most plainly marked signs of the times. A spirit which to-day annexes Hawaii, threatens Spain, and defies Europe with the Monroe Doctrine, will certainly be driven to increase its armaments or to abate its ambitions. These things, however, belong to the next century. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. The system of the Tsar-Mayor first came into operation at Brooklyn in 1882. It sprang, as did the Second Empire, from the timidity of the citizens. Mr. Seth Low, the first Tsar-Mayor, writing in the last edition of Bryce’s “American Commonwealth,” points out this very clearly. He said:— The aim of the Americans for many years deliberately was to make a city government where no officer by himself could have power enough to do much harm. The natural result of this was to create a situation where no officer had power to do good. The idea of allowing citizens in their wards to elect representatives, who should wield all the powers vested in English, French or German town councils, was regarded by Americans as savouring of suicidal recklessness. To trust the elected representatives of the people in an American city, as we trust the town councils of Birmingham and Glasgow, seems rash and reckless to the American statesman. A very thoughtful writer in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science four years ago, singled out the English municipal system as one which no sane American would dream of applying to a great American city. He said:— It may be safely said that this whole organisation of the Birmingham government is an exaggeration of the features which have had the worst effects in the United States. It must make the mouth of a Tammany chief water to think of such a simplification of his labours and increase of the opportunities for plunder. Notwithstanding this, American observers have followed Mr. Chamberlain in declaring that Birmingham is the best governed city of the world. That, however, in no way reassures the American pessimist, who has put on record his conviction that “the vicious principles evolved in English municipal government will overcome any safeguard, and that it is only a question of time when English cities have a taste of what New York has been through.” The result of this deep-rooted conviction in the American mind, that the elect of the people is certain to steal if he gets a chance, was that city governments came into existence dominated by the one desire to paralyse in advance the city council, to limit its opportunities of stealing, and place it more or less at the mercy of the State Legislatures. The result of this system born of cowardice and lack of faith was to transfer almost all power in New York from the city authorities to Tammany Hall. Tammany, in theory at least, was broad based upon the people’s will, nor was there any limitation to the authority of the Boss. After a time the absurdity of this system, and the ruinous results which followed, forced upon the minds of the more intelligent citizens the fact that something must be done, and that at any cost. Some centre of local authority must be created which could be trusted not to steal. Mr. Seth Low explains and defends the establishment of the Tsar-Mayor on the theory that cities in their organic capacity are more accurately described as large corporations than as small states. He says:— The better results flowing from this theory are easily made clear. Americans are sufficiently adept in the administration of large business enterprises to understand that, in any such undertaking, some one man must be given the power of direction and the choice of his chief assistants; they understand that power and responsibility must go together from the top to the bottom of every successful business organisation. Consequently, when it began to be realised that a city was a business corporation rather than an integral part of the State, the unwillingness to organise the city upon the line of concentrated power in connection with concentrated responsibility began to disappear. The charter of the city of Brooklyn is probably as advanced a type as can be found of the results of this mode of thinking. In Brooklyn the executive side of the city government is represented by the mayor and the various heads of departments. The legislative side consists of a common council of nineteen members, twelve of whom are elected from three districts, each having four aldermen, the remaining seven being elected, as aldermen at large by the whole city. The people elect three city officers, besides the board of aldermen—the mayor, who is the real as well as the nominal head of the city, the comptroller, who is practically the book-keeper of the city, and the auditor, whose audit is necessary for the payment of every bill against the city, whether large or small. The mayor appoints absolutely, without confirmation by the common council, all the executive heads of departments. He appoints, for example, the police commissioner, the commissioner of city works, the corporation counsel or counsellor at law, the city treasurer, the tax collector, and, in general, all the officials who are charged with executive duties. These officials, in turn, appoint their own subordinates, so that the principle of defined responsibility permeates the city government from top to bottom. The mayor also appoints the board of assessors, the board of education, and the board of elections. The executive officers appointed by the mayor are appointed for a term of two years—that is to say, for a term similar to his own.—Bryce’s “American Commonwealth,” vol. i. This Charter first came into effect in January, 1882, and Brooklyn has been governed by Tsar-Mayors ever since. Mr. Seth Low, who was the first Tsar-Mayor in America, and who subsequently served a second time, claims for it the virtues and vices of all despotisms. When you have a good Tsar, nothing can be better. When you have a bad Tsar, nothing can be worse. As he says, the Brooklyn system “made clear to the simplest citizen that the entire character of the city government depends upon the man chosen for the office of Mayor.” It is, of course, playing double or quits. If you get a good man, his immense power enables him to be potent for good, but if you get a bad one, Heaven help the city! The Brooklyn system was adopted with modification in several towns, notably in Cleveland, in Cincinnati, and to a certain extent in Philadelphia. The same system was carried out to its ultimate extreme in the Charter of the City of Quincy, in Massachusetts. Mr. Gamaliel Bradford, of Boston, in the May number of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science for 1893, thus explained the evolution of the Tsar-Mayor as it could be seen in the Quincy Charter:— It was provided that the mayor should be the only executive official elected at all, and he by general vote of the city, so that he might be the embodiment of the whole administration and responsible for it. That he might be this, he was given the full power of appointment and removal of all subordinates except the school committee, as to whom even the radical framers of the charter shrank from encountering the popular prejudice. It was held that the separate election of officials, whether by popular vote or that of the council, is destructive of all subordination, of all firm or efficient administration, and of all personal responsibility. But the Quincy charter ran counter to another prejudice much more deeply rooted: the requirement of confirmation of the mayor’s appointments by the council or aldermen. The New York charter of 1884 gave to the mayor the full power of appointment, though that of removal, which seems to be necessary to make the other effective, was still jealously withheld. The Quincy charter gives both powers in full measure. Another object aimed at, though with some compromises, was to get rid of boards or commissions, as overriding the mayor and destroying that personal responsibility which was regarded as so important to public opinion. One man in every place, that man directly responsible to the mayor alone, and the mayor himself to the people, at short intervals; this was the guiding theory. To obviate the almost morbid dread of one man power, it was provided that the mayor might be removed from office by a three-fourths vote of the council, and a new election ordered. The theory was developed by another provision wholly new in the practice of the country: that the heads of departments, as well as the mayor, should be required to be present at the sessions of the council, to explain the wants of administration, and to give a public account of their stewardship in response to the questions of individual members. It was expected that in this way the strength or weakness of the mayor would be made clear to the popular apprehension, and that a better and improving class of men would be chosen with a corresponding effect upon city affairs. Unfortunately, Mr. Bradford was compelled to admit, what Mr. Charles Francis Adams had previously pointed out, that the experiment of the Tsar-Mayor was, in Quincy, by no means justified by its results. Mr. Bradford says:— It must be admitted, upon the evidence of leading citizens of Quincy, that the charter has thus far failed to accomplish its purpose; that extravagance of expenditure, local jobbing and caucus politics are as rampant as in other cities in the State. Nevertheless and notwithstanding the disappointment in Quincy, when the Charter of Greater New York came to be discussed, the advocates of what may be called the English or normal system of vesting the government of the town in the hands of an elective council were in a hopeless minority, and the Charter of New York was drawn up upon the Tsar-Mayor basis. The advocates of the Tsar-Mayor used all the familiar arguments which are employed by apologists for autocracy all over the world. Their great keynote was the need for the concentration of responsibility. “It is necessary,” said Mr. Godkin, “to reduce to its lowest possible point the number of executive officers whom the community has to watch.” Mr. De Witt, Chairman of the Committee, who drafted the Charter for Greater New York, put the matter succinctly when he wrote:—“I am for a Tsar-Mayor, with a short term, and a free right to go again to the people”; and then he added, recurring to the curious vein of fatalism which in Napoleon found expression in a belief in his destiny, “I believe that the Supreme Ruler of the universe moves through the mind of the multitude, and in this age of free schools and ubiquitous journalism, no mayor with plenary power and full responsibility would dare to permit corruption or inefficiency to exist in any department. If he did, the people would have only one head to hit, and one party to demolish.” This change, to which we may take it American reformers are now definitely committed, may be, as Mr. E. M. Shephard declared, “the most important gain in municipal reform in our time,” or it may be the first step down the inclined plane which leads to despotism. My duty is not to dogmatise, but merely to describe. All that I would venture to observe by way of comment is that the new reform seems to be at variance, not only with the universally accepted English idea, which may, of course, be ignored, but equally with the Jeffersonian theory of the fundamental principle of Local Government. It may be necessary to fight fire with fire, and to cast out the Boss by the Tsar-Mayor, but old-fashioned Liberals may be pardoned if they feel that it is a very dangerous game to cast out the Devil by the aid of Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils.
DR. ALBERT SHAW.
Editor of the Review of Reviews, New York.
CHAPTER III. THE CHARTER OF GREATER NEW YORK. The Charter of Greater New York is the last, or rather the latest, of a long series of Charters granted by the State Legislature of New York for the government of the city. There were eleven distinct Charters granted between 1846 and 1890, so that the average life of a Charter is only four years. The Charter preceding this was regarded by Mr. Godkin as the best because it reduced the elective element almost to vanishing point:— No community as heterogeneous as ours can manage its affairs successfully through democratic forms without reducing to its lowest possible point the number of executive officers whom it has to watch, and call to account when things go wrong. As soon as responsibility is widely diffused in such a community, “deals” or bargains between politicians for the division of the offices at once begin. In no community, homogeneous or heterogeneous, can public affairs be managed successfully when the supreme Legislature always stands ready to remodel the Charter whenever the minority in the City can command the support of the majority in the State. It is bad enough in London when the minority in the County Council can appeal to the majority in the House of Commons. But the House of Commons only interferes by way of obstructing legislation desired by the Progressive majority. It never attempts to revolutionise the constitution of the Council, because the majority at Westminster does not agree with the majority at Spring Gardens. It would not be a very great exaggeration to say that in the past the only effective government of the City of New York has consisted of Tammany Hall Executive as a Lower House, and the Legislature at Albany as an Upper Chamber. These two bodies were not shadows. They were both governing realities. When Tammany did not control the State Legislature, Albany was the only hope of the despairing Republicans. How constant was the interference of the State Legislature may be inferred from the fact, vouched for by a return presented to a State Commission on the Government of Cities, that in the ten years between 1880-9 no fewer than 399 different amending laws were passed at Albany affecting the Charter of New York City. A State Legislature which passes nearly forty laws every year changing or amending the City Charter is a factor to be reckoned with.The demand for Home Rule for the city, often repeated, does not seem to be supported in earnest by either party. Both admit the need for it. But neither seem willing to risk anything to obtain it. The Charter of the Greater New York sprang from the Commission appointed in 1896 to consider and report upon the proposed consolidation and unification of the government of the great urban area now known as Greater New York. The subject had long been under discussion, but when the Charter came to be drafted many drew back. Mr. Croker asserted that if the citizens had been permitted to vote yea or nay upon the adoption it would never have come into force. The Referendum was not permitted, and the Charter came into force this year without the preliminary of a popular mass vote. General Tracy, the Republican candidate at the recent election, was President of the Charter Commission, with Mr. De Witt as Chairman of the Committee. Among the other members were Mr. Strong, the Mayor of New York; Mr. Seth Low, the first Tsar-Mayor of Brooklyn; Mr. Gilroy, Tammany comptroller of the City of New York, and several other influential men. They unanimously agreed to recommend the Charter as it stands at present, although Mr. Seth Low and Mayor Strong dissented from one or two of its provisions. The Commissioners set to work in the belief that they were framing a constitution for a city which in the lifetime of those now living would have 6,000,000 citizens. Mr. De Witt, the Chairman of the Committee, who tells us that “his embattled energies laboured at the Charter for eight long consecrated months,” contemplated with pride the result of his handiwork. Speaking of the Charter, he declares:— It is adequate to all the emergencies of the vast future. It is constructed not merely for the present, but for many centuries to come. It has in it all the virtues of existing charters and the vices of none. It will adapt itself to any extent of domain, and to any multiple of population. As well with a population of ten millions as with a population of three millions, it will give to each neighbourhood the utmost care and attention, and to the imperial metropolis, as a whole, the utmost dignity and power. The form of government for Greater New York, it will be the model upon which Greater London will be constructed. Without making quite such a lofty claim for the Charter as this, there is no doubt that it is an important document, and one which will well repay a careful study. It is somewhat voluminous, filling with its annexes no less than one thousand pages. It has, however, been made the subject of a very painstaking and lucid analysis by Dr. Albert Shaw, whose “Studies of Municipal Administration in the Old World and the New” entitle him to speak with some authority on the matters dealt with by the Charter. His analysis of the Charter was published in the Atlantic Monthly for June, 1897, under the title of “The Municipal Programme of Greater New York.” Mr. De Witt published his clear and concise idea of the Greater New York in Munsey’s Magazine, under the title of “Moulding the Metropolis.” The Charter itself, with its 1,620 sections, has been published in popular form at 10 cents by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. The text of the Charter, with the aid of Dr. Shaw’s and Mr. De Witt’s analyses, enables any one to form a tolerably clear idea as to what the Charter does and what the Charter means. Mr. Croker repeatedly assured me, before the recent Mayoral contest began, that the Charter was a monstrosity and an absurdity, that the system of government which it established must inevitably break down, and that not even an archangel could make it work satisfactorily. Mr. Croker can hardly be said to be an impartial judge, but his verdict is sufficiently in accord with that of Dr. Shaw to justify very grave misgivings as to the prospect before the second city of the world. During my stay in New York I was simply besieged by interviewers, begging me to tell them what I thought of the Charter. I turned a deaf ear to their solicitations, preferring to make a more careful study of the Charter itself with the advantage of the analysis of Dr. Shaw. Even now I rather shrink from expressing an opinion, lest it should be misconstrued as implying any claim on my part to sit in judgment on those who are saddled with the responsibility of governing New York. But when doctors differ, the people decide, and when local experts are at hopeless variance as to the merits or demerits of the Charter, it may perhaps be permitted to a British onlooker, even at a distance of 3,000 miles, to put on record the way in which the Charter strikes him. If this should not be denied me, I may say at once that the Charter seems to have written on its face thoroughgoing distrust of the people. The aspect of the Charter is black with despair. It is far worse as an expression of democratic despair than the Brooklyn Charter, for the Brooklyn Charter at least trusted the Tsar-Mayor, whereas the New York Charter shrinks even from doing that. In explaining the provisions of the Charter, I prefer to quote from Dr. Shaw’s analysis. He says:— First comes the mayor, who is entitled the chief executive. He is to be elected for four years and is not eligible for an immediate re-election, and his salary is to be 15,000 dols. a year. The business of city administration is divided into eighteen executive departments. These are the departments of finance, of law, of police, of water supply, of highways, of street-cleaning, of sewers, of public buildings, lighting and supplies, of bridges, of parks, of building, of public charities, of correction, of fire, of docks and ferries, of taxes and assessments, of education, and of health. The members of all these boards, with one exception, are appointed by the Mayor, not elected by the people. The one exception is the City Comptroller, who is at the head of the Finance Department. He is elected at the same time as the Mayor. The Mayor also appoints all the members of the five school boards, which look after education in the five boroughs of Greater New York:— The system provided for in the new charter puts the executive government wholly into the hands of the eighteen departments, which are practically supreme in their respective eighteen spheres, except as they are limited by two important groups, or boards—namely, the board of estimate and apportionment and the board of public improvements. One discovers with some surprise that the ordinance-making power, which would nominally belong exclusively to the municipal assembly, is, in the Greater New York charter, conferred upon all the executive departments. Where then, it will be asked, does the Municipal Assembly come in, for there is a Municipal Assembly which is divided into two chambers? To which the answer is that the Municipal Assembly is practically reduced to the function of a debating society; for, says Dr. Shaw:— The eighteen executive departments take away from the municipal assembly the larger part of the ordinance-making power; the board of public improvements in practice controls municipal plans and policies as regards the construction of works, and the board of estimate and apportionment intervenes to prepare the budget, both on the side of income and on that of disbursement. It is true that the budget must be voted by the Municipal Assembly, which on that occasion sits as one body. But its control is practically nil. The real financial control is vested in the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Mr. F. V. Green, writing in Scribner for October, 1896, points out that the framers of this board carefully avoided the principle of direct election. He says:— Probably in no other part of the globe, however autocratic its government, is such power of taxation and appropriation committed to so unrepresentative a body as in this foremost city of the land of liberty, whose Government originated in a protest against taxation without representation. And it is a still more curious anomaly that this system, which was established as one of the results of the overthrow of the Tweed rÉgime, and has been in operation for twenty-three years, is the most successful feature of the present form of city government—the only one of which criticism is seldom heard. After this non-elective board has approved of the estimates, they are then sent down to the Municipal Assembly to be voted. But, says Dr. Shaw, the Municipal Assembly must complete its action within a certain number of days. It may not add a penny to the estimates at any point whatsoever. It is permitted to throw out items or to make reductions, but it must not offset these by voting increased sums for any object. When it has completed its consideration, the budget goes to the mayor for his final action. The mayor has authority to veto any amendments that the municipal assembly may have made. That is to say, he may restore any amounts that have been subtracted. But, it will be said, the Mayor’s veto may be overridden. It may, but only if there is a majority of five-sixths of the Municipal Assembly against him. Such unanimity is practically unattainable.It would, indeed, seem as if the chief purpose of the Municipal Assembly was to give its members practical lessons in the working of simple sums of vulgar fractions. Again, to quote Dr. Shaw:— No man will ever become intimate enough with the provisions of this charter—no matter how many years he may sit in the municipal assembly—to know for a certainty, without careful reference to the document, by what kind of a majority a particular piece of business must be carried to have validity. Some actions in the municipal assembly may be taken by a majority of those present and voting, provided there is a quorum. Other things may be done by a simple majority of all those elected; still others require a two-thirds majority of all those elected, others a three-fourths majority, others a four-fifths majority, others a five-sixths majority, and others absolute unanimity. I suspect that there may be still other percentages or proportions requisite for certain actions; but the seven that I have mentioned have caught my attention, as I have endeavoured to run through the document. In the report of the Commission presenting the Charter, the Commissioners point out that the Charter introduces, “in accordance with established American polity, a variety of checks and safeguards against the abuse of the powers conferred upon the Municipal Assembly.” There is no doubt on that head. The distrust of the popular elected assembly appears at every turn. The popular assembly is emasculated from the very first moment of its existence. It is carefully deprived of the right of initiative in matters of the first moment, and elaborate provisions are made for depriving it of the exercise of the authority which in England we should regard as absolutely indispensable. To begin with, the Municipal Assembly is forbidden to grant any franchise or right to use the public streets except upon the approval of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment, and then only for limited periods, with due provision for periodical re-valuations. The Municipal Assembly is not allowed to sanction any work involving the expenditure of any large sum of money, or to create any debt, to dispose of any franchise, or to levy any tax, without the concurrence of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment. Even then its decision is subject to the veto of the Mayor. In cases of public improvements of great magnitude and cost, the Municipal Assembly cannot vote by a simple majority. Unless it can muster a majority of three-quarters of its whole membership it can do nothing. It is possible, therefore, for one quarter of the Assembly, plus one, to paralyse that body at will. In fact, it is impossible adequately to explain the impotence of the Assembly which, according to ordinary English ideas, ought to be the source, seat and centre of all powers. No doubt clauses exist conferring upon the Assembly certain powers, but at the end of the clauses you will always find that they have not to be exercised excepting on the initiative of some Department which is not elective, or with the concurrence of some Board which is equally free from the taint of a popular elective origin. All that, however, is consistent enough with the Napoleonic conception of the true method of democratic government. Napoleon, with his ministers of state, never claimed to exercise such control over the Corps LÉgislatif as the Mayor of Greater New York will exercise over his elective assembly. He is allowed a free hand to appoint his own executive, and he can pass his own budget, so long as he can find one-sixth, plus one, of the Assembly to support him. The creation of the Tsar-Mayor, however interesting as indicative of the rooted distrust of elective assemblies which is supreme at present in the American mind, is not the feature of the Charter which reveals most deeply how far the distrust of popular government has gone in the United States. For, after giving the Mayor supreme responsibility, and electing him for a term of four years, these astonishing charter-makers carefully provide that he shall only have a right to remove the commissioners, whom he has been allowed to appoint, during the first six months of his term of office. It is this limitation which shows how thoroughly the modern American distrusts his governing men. Faith in an elective council has perished utterly; but faith in a Tsar-Mayor might have shown the survival of some faith in the elective principle. But the stipulation carefully made in the Charter that the Mayor’s right to remove the heads of departments whom he has nominated shall cease six months after his election, is the most astounding illustration yet afforded of the deep-rooted distrust which the American of to-day has in all elected men. Ex-Mayor Grace, writing after much experience of the working of city governments, declared:— The absolute power of removal as well as of appointment of all commissioners and heads of departments should be vested in the mayor, the power of removal to be subject to no check beyond that of filing the reasons for such removals—expressed in writing. Mr. Seth Low, the first Tsar-Mayor of Brooklyn, and Mr. Strong, the Mayor of the Reform Administration in New York, both declared, in a supplementary report, their conviction that the authority given to the Mayor to make appointments without confirmation ought to carry with it, as a matter of course, the authority to make removals in the public interest without charges at any time. Their protests, however, were overruled. The majority dare not trust the Mayor with such powers. The result is that “for three years and six months the government of the City of New York will be carried on by eighteen separate departments, not one of which is directly responsible or accountable to anybody. They do not derive authority directly from the people, and they certainly owe nothing to the Municipal Assembly. On the other hand, there is no power in the Mayor to hold them accountable.” Says Dr. Shaw:— It is bureaucracy pure and simple. I am not ready to assert it positively, but I am of the impression, from some knowledge of the subject, that the very shadowy municipal assemblies provided some years ago for St. Petersburg and Moscow had a greater legislative and financial authority than the new municipal assembly of the Greater New York; and I am inclined to believe that neither in the administration of those Russian cities nor in the administration of the Russian provincial governments will one find a bureaucratic system so complete and so indirect in its responsibilities to the public as the bureaucracy which the Greater New York charter creates. There is no necessity to go further. I have quoted enough to justify the title of “Despairing Democracy”; for here we have a democracy in such depths of despair that it first emasculates its elective assembly, and then hamstrings its CÆsar. MAP SHOWING THE LIMITS OF GREATER NEW YORK, AS DEFINED BY THE MUNICIPAL CONSOLIDATION INQUIRY COMMISSION. Larger Image
MR. W. R. HEARST.
Editor and Proprietor of the New York Journal.
CHAPTER IV. GOVERNMENT BY NEWSPAPER. Twelve years ago I employed part of the leisure I enjoyed in the safe retreat of Holloway Gaol in writing an essay on “Government by Journalism.” In that essay, which was published after my release in the Contemporary Review, and subsequently republished under the title “A Journalist on Journalism,” I expounded a theory as to the natural and inevitable emergence of the journalist as the ultimate depository of power in modern democracy. One passage I may be permitted to quote, as it bears directly upon the subject of the present chapter:— The future of journalism depends almost entirely upon the journalist, and at present the outlook is not very hopeful. The very conception of journalism as an instrument of government is foreign to the mind of most journalists. Yet, if they could but think of it, the editorial pen is a sceptre of power, compared with which the sceptre of many a monarch is but a gilded lath. In a democratic age, in the midst of a population which is able to read, no position is comparable for permanent influence and far-reaching power to that of an editor who understands his vocation. In him are vested almost all the attributes of real sovereignty. He has almost exclusive rights of initiative; he retains a permanent right of direction; and, above all, he better than any man is able to generate that steam, known as public opinion, which is the greatest force of politics. To rule—the very idea begets derision from those whose one idea of their high office is to grind out so much copy, to be only paid for according to quantity, like sausages or rope-yarn. Bunyan’s man with the muck-rake has many a prototype on the press. To dress contemporary controversy day by day in the jacket of party, to serve up with fresh sauce of current events the hackneyed commonplaces of politics—that in their eyes is journalism; but to rule! Yet an editor is the uncrowned king of an educated democracy. The range of his power is limited only by the extent of his knowledge, the quality rather than the quantity of his circulation, and the faculty and force which he can bring to the work of government. An extraordinary idea seems to prevail with the eunuchs of the craft that leadership, guidance, governance, are alien to the calling of a journalist. Those conceptions of what is a journalist’s duty, if indeed they recognise that imperious word as having any bearing upon their profession, is hid in mystery. If it may be inferred from their practice, their ideal is to grind out a column of more or less well-balanced sentences, capable of grammatical construction, conflicting with no social conventionality or party prejudice, which fills so much space in the paper, and then utterly, swiftly, and for ever vanishes from mortal mind. How can they help to make up other people’s minds when they have never made up their own? Even as it now is, with all its disabilities and all its limitations, the press is almost the most effective instrument for discharging many of the functions of government now left us. It has been, as Mr. Gladstone remarked, and still is, the most potent engine for the reform of abuses that we possess, and it has succeeded to many of the functions formerly monopolised by the House of Commons. But all that it has been is but a shadow going before of the substance which it may yet possess, when all our people have learned to read, and the press is directed by men with the instinct and capacity of government. Now it so happened by a curious coincidence that just about the time I was penning these sentences in happy Holloway, a youth fresh from Harvard, the heir to one of the greatest fortunes in the United States, was deciding to devote his life to the journalistic profession. Mr. W. R. Hearst was the son of Senator Hearst, one of the lucky handful of men who came out from the development of the silver mines of the Far West with many solid millions of sterling gold in his possession. As heir to the Hearst millions, nothing would have been more in accordance with the ways of the millionaire class than for the young graduate to have given himself up to a life of self-indulgent ease. Young Hearst, however, had no inclination for sloth. Journalism attracted him, and he set himself to learn the business of the craft. Money, of course, was available to secure him ample opportunity to indulge his whim, and before long he began to try his prentice hand as editor and proprietor of the San Francisco Examiner. He soon proved that he possessed the editorial instinct as well as the capitalist’s purse, and the Examiner began to be heard of far beyond the Pacific Coast as one of the smartest specimens of American journalism. But the Pacific Coast is a long way off. To reign in San Francisco is less than to serve in New York, and Mr. Hearst soon began to turn a longing eye to the Eastern capital. The same loadstone that drew Mr. Pulitzer from St. Louis to make the New York World the latest and greatest of American newspapers, compelled Mr. Hearst to come to the same city to found a newspaper which would be even later and greater than the World. It was with Mr. Hearst as it was with Themistocles when the laurels of Miltiades would not allow him to sleep. The laurels of Mr. Pulitzer were equally productive of insomnia in the Examiner office. At last, when Senator Hearst died, and the young editor of thirty found himself in undisputed control of a million or two—pounds, not dollars—with a reversionary right, on the death of his mother, to several millions more, he was in a position to realise his ambition. Crossing the continent, he purchased the New York Morning Journal from Mr. Pulitzer’s brother Albert, and began the siege of New York. The World was then in the height of its prosperity. In ten years it had built up a circulation without a rival in the Western hemisphere. The Paris Petit Journal alone distanced the World in Europe. The great gilded dome of the World office, which every night, radiant with electric light, sits as a crown of flame upon the city’s brow, did not rise more conspicuously above the other buildings in its vicinity than the World towered aloft above its contemporaries. When Mr. Hearst sat down in New York he had one ambition, and—so far as he allowed any one to see his secret thoughts—one ambition only. He would publish a newspaper which would beat the World. MR. JOSEPH PULITZER.
Editor and Proprietor of the New York World. He began operations by annexing the pick of the staff of the World. Journalists in the United States sit by no means so tightly in their chairs as they do in this country. The Americans are a restless race. Whether it is that the nomad Redskin left a migratory contagion in the air, or whether the force of gravitation has been suspended on their behalf, or whatever else the cause may be, the fact is indisputable. Whether in politics, in the press, or elsewhere, they shift about with a readiness that seems strangely unnatural to the more stolid Englishman, who is apt to root himself like his native oak. Hence it was possible for Mr. Hearst to begin his campaign in New York by taking away from Mr. Pulitzer several of the brightest and brainiest members of his staff. They left the World to form the staff of the Journal, with regrets no doubt, but without hesitation. For the terms of Mr. Hearst were better than those of Mr. Pulitzer, and they went. Mr. Pulitzer, alarmed by the secession, induced some of them to return by the offer of still better terms than Mr. Hearst, but the young man with the inherited millions outbid the older journalist who had made his own pile, and the Journal started with the cream of the World’s staff. If there be something of Dugald Dalgetty about this sudden transfer of allegiance in English eyes, it was entirely in accordance with the habits and customs of American journalism. A change in proprietors or in editors will be followed by a filing out of all the staff, the members of which no more lament over their fate than gipsies deplore the fall of their tent-poles. To the men recruited from the Journal, Mr. Hearst added some of the best of his Californian staff, and as he paid the highest salaries going, he had the pick of the pressmen of the continent. He picked as a rule wisely and well. But his first choice and the most valuable member of his staff was himself. No one did more to give the newspaper character and success than the young millionaire, who was to be seen in his shirt-sleeves through the hottest nights in the sultry summer toiling away at proofs and formes until the early hours when he saw his paper to press. Members of his staff who were worked like niggers could not complain when they saw their chief working harder than any of his salaried employees. “A millionaire,” they said, “in his shirt-sleeves! He could not work harder if he were working on space for his daily bread!” After having formed his staff, Mr. Hearst launched his paper, publishing it at a cent. The New York Herald is published at three cents. The World was published at two cents. Mr. Hearst published morning after morning an eight and a twelve page paper at a price below the cost of production. Mr. Pulitzer, recognising that at last he had found a real rival, reduced the price of the World to a cent. From that day to this the two rivals have wrestled together without ceasing. They both publish morning and afternoon and Sunday editions. They both are profusely illustrated. They both cater directly and avowedly for the million, and the million responds. The weaker of the old-fashioned papers went down beneath the feet of the contending giants as the forests went down under the trampling of St. Tammany and the Devil. But the circulation of the Journal went up steadily, until in two years Mr. Hearst had a Sunday circulation of 400,000 at five cents, while the average daily sales of the morning and evening journals reached 350,000. The circulation of the World was not seriously impaired. The Journal grew not at the expense of its rival so much as at the expense of the other papers which were less up-to-date. Of course this result was not achieved without prodigious expenditure. Never before were such salaries paid on any newspaper. The secrets of the counting-house are not revealed to the outside world, but Mr. Hearst is said to have half-a-dozen editors and artists, each of whom draws the salary of a Cabinet Minister. Money flowed like water. Nothing was too much to pay for a first-class, exclusive piece of intelligence. Journalists of the old school stood aghast at the Journal’s prices. And, what made the expenditure appear still more outrageous, for a long time there were practically no receipts. Advertisers, even in the United States, are a conservative race. A newspaper appealed in vain for their support. They would come in, but only at low prices. Mr. Hearst said they might stay out; they must come in at his prices or not at all. They took him at his word and stayed out—for a time. But now they are coming in shoals, and the advertisement columns day by day attest the capitulation of the advertiser to the newspaper. The direct cash loss on the first year’s editing of the Journal could hardly be less than £200,000, if, indeed, it did not largely exceed that sum. People began to wonder what Mr. Hearst was after. He could not be after the dollars—he had more dollars than he could count. He was not known to have any distinctive political aspirations. He was spoken of sometimes as the Socialist millionaire, but he never professed any belief in Socialism as a dogma of his creed. Was it only to beat the World? Who could say. The Journal plunged heavily and got hit badly by its advocacy of Bryanism and Free Silver, but Mr. Hearst was no fanatic of silver. He was not a fanatic at all. He was a man as modest in private life as his paper was blatant in print. His editorials were searched in vain to discover any consistent or inconsistent creed. The Journal was like Broadway in print. Broadway at high noon, with cars swinging backwards and forwards along the tracks, and the myriad, multitudes streaming this way and that—life everywhere, but one common governing purpose or direction nowhere. But after a time there was gradually evolved from this feverish chaos of sensationalism some trace of a great conception. Mr. Croker, who, although not glib of tongue, is shrewd of wit and keen of eye, discerned its drift, and set himself to ridicule and belittle what he called “government by newspaper.” Then the Journal itself, taking heart of grace from a series of successes, boldly printed at the head of its editorial columns:— THE “JOURNAL’S” MOTTO: “While Others Talk, the ‘Journal’ Acts.” This appeared immediately after the announcement of the release of the fair heroine Evangelina Cisneros from her Cuban gaol by the enterprise of a Journal reporter. It was followed by an editorial entitled “The Journalism that Does Things.” This article expresses so succinctly the aims and objects of a paper which has played so conspicuous a part in the recent history of New York that I have no hesitation in quoting it here:— The instant recognition accorded throughout the world, outside of Weyler’s palace and offices of most New York newspapers, to the work of the heroes who, in the service of the Journal and of humanity, rescued Evangelina Cisneros from the prison of the Recojidas is broader and deeper than a mere compliment to a single newspaper. It is epochal. It signifies that by a supreme achievement the journalism of action, which is called by its detractors the “new journalism,” and proudly accepts the title, has broken down the barriers of prejudice and vindicated its animating principle. Action—that is the distinguishing mark of the new journalism. It represents the final stage in the evolution of the modern newspaper of a century ago—the “new journals” of their day—told the news, and some of them made great efforts to get it first. The new journal of to-day prints the news too, but it does more. It does not wait for things to turn up. It turns them up. It has taken some time for the understanding and appreciation of these novel methods to become general, but from the very first the Journal has found an immense constituency eager to welcome them. It has provided for this sympathetic body of readers a continuous succession of notable deeds. We may recall a few examples. The Journal has always been an energetic ally of the Cuban patriots. It has rendered them a variety of important services, of which the rescue of Miss Cisneros is merely the latest. Another of a similar, through less dramatic sort, was its action in forcing the Spanish authorities to issue passports to the widow and children of Dr. Ricardo Ruiz, the American dentist who was murdered by his gaolers in Havana. When the Casper Whitney put to sea with water oozing in through every joint, the Journal secured an investigation which resulted in the removal of Captain Fairchild, of the inspection service. The Journal proved by experiments with chartered vessels off Sandy Hook that the ordinary flags of the international signal code could be easily read at night from a great distance under flashlight illumination. This discovery, whose value in saving life and property at sea is incalculable, it dedicated freely to the maritime world. From the beginning the Journal has taken a practical as well as a theoretical interest in the relief of suffering and the elevation of the classes that have lacked a fair chance in life. Last winter it undertook to mitigate the awful distress that prevailed so widely at that time by opening a depÔt in Grand Street, at which hot food was distributed daily to those in need. Thousands of starving people were relieved by this enterprise. On another occasion, when a fire in East Thirty-fifth Street rendered many families homeless, the Journal invited them all to a Christmas dinner, and then, with the co-operation of its readers, established them in newly-furnished homes. But the greatest work of the Journal in the direction of the improvement of social conditions has been the establishment and maintenance of the Journal Junior Republic, which has saved about two hundred boys from the slums, and turned them into good citizens, and which contains the promise of unlimited future development and expansion. RIVERSIDE DRIVE AND GRANT’S TOMB. Last winter, when the aldermen had undertaken to grant a perpetual franchise for the use of the streets to a light, fuel and power company, the Journal served injunctions upon the board and prevented the outrage. At the same time it fought at Albany for dollar gas with such success that even Mr. Platt’s Legislature was compelled to yield to public opinion to the extent of passing a bill providing for a general reduction. The practice of invoking the law against unfaithful public servants has been repeated recently with signal success in the case of Commissioner of Public Works Collis and his pet contractors, who have been compelled to raise the siege of Fifth Avenue. When the East River murder seemed an insoluble mystery to the police, the Journal organised a detective force of its own, and in two or three days identified the victim, Guldensuppe, and his assassins. And when the Long Island Railroad attempted to excuse its wholesale manslaughter at Valley Stream by alleging that an engine could be seen for a distance of one thousand five hundred feet, the Journal took a counterpart of the wrecked tally-ho outfit to the scene, and proved by actual measurement that the driver could not have seen the approaching train until his leaders were on the track, with the engine eighty-four feet away. These are a few of the public services by which the Journal has illustrated its theory that a newspaper’s duty is not confined to exhortation, but that when things are going wrong it should itself set them right if possible. The brilliant exemplication of this theory in the rescue of Miss Cisneros has finally commended it to the approval of almost the entire reading world. These things, all of them, or almost all, are good. Some of them are very good. But all of them together do not prove that in Mr. Hearst we have the man of whom Mr. Lowell spoke when he said:— Methinks the editor who should understand his calling and be equal thereto, would truly deserve that title of p???? ?a??, which Homer bestows upon princes, he would be the Moses of our nineteenth century ... the Captain of our Exodus into the Canaan of a truer social order. Nevertheless, Mr. Hearst is far and away the most promising journalist whom I have yet come across. He has education, youth, energy, aptitude, wealth, and that instinctive journalistic sense which is akin to genius. If in addition to these great qualifications he were to realise the possibilities of his vocation, and to become inspired by a supreme enthusiasm—say to redeem New York, and make the second city in the world in size the first city of the world as a place of human habitation—there is no knowing what incalculable good might lie within his grasp. Certainly no man in all New York has such a chance of combining all the elements that make for righteousness and progress in the city as the young Californian millionaire-editor who founded the Journal. There is, however, no greater delusion than to imagine that a newspaper in America has any influence merely because it is a newspaper. The habit of running newspapers as if they were mere commercial dividend-earning undertakings has so largely discounted the influence of the press as to lead many shrewd observers to declare that they would just as soon have the newspapers against them as in their favour. Carter Harrison had every newspaper in Chicago against him—but his own—and he was elected to the mayoralty by an overwhelming majority. Mr. Croker declared over and over again that if he had stood for the mayoralty of New York he would wish for nothing better than that every newspaper in the city should be against him, in which case he regarded his success as a certainty. Tammany at one time corrupted the newspapers. At another time it bullied them. Now it disregards them. “Mere newspaper talk”—nothing can be more contemptuous than that. If New York is to be raised to the position of being the ideal city of the New World it will not have to be by mere newspaper talk, but by the man behind the newspaper who can make his newspaper the organising, vivifying, rallying centre for all the best forces and influences of the city. If Mr. Hearst has soul enough and heart enough he may do it. I do not know any one else who has got his chance. TAMMANY HALL OF TO-DAY.
THOMAS C. PLATT.
Chief of the Republican Party in New York.
CHAPTER V. WHY NOT TRY THE INQUISITION? “Never prescribe until you are called in,” is an excellent maxim, which like that other more pithy saying, “Mind your own business,” has one somewhat serious drawback. If they were construed literally and obeyed in spirit as well as in letter, what would become of the journalist’s business? For the chief business of the journalist is to look after other people’s business. To chronicle it in the first place; to comment upon it in the second. It is the privilege of the profession. There is no cause for resenting the innocent liberty of criticism and suggestion which is exercised by the press. It can only too easily be ignored; nor has the journalist any means beyond the opportunity of representation and of persuasion for giving effect to his proposals. He has no authority except that which belongs to every man who sees things as they are, and the authority pertains to his ability to make others see them with his eyes rather than to his personal position. Hence those who object to the “damned impudence of the newspaper man” have only to shut their eyes and close their ears, to remove themselves effectively from the area of his jurisdiction. The journalist who in the course of his public duty ventures to pry into “the secrets of the prison-house” is always met by its keepers with an outcry of indignation and resentment. “Why are you poking your nose in our affairs?” they cry in aggrieved chorus; “you stay at home and attend to your own business!” How often have we not heard that plausible demand put forward by the thieves and scoundrels and oppressors of the world, when first the adventurous newspaper man ventures to expose their misdeeds and suggest ways and means for curtailing their evil power. Tammany Bosses have often angrily denounced the meddling of the newspapers in their pickings and stealings. Nor is it only journalists who are met by this protest. We have seen how Police Commissioner McClave was distressed at the wickedness of the hayseed Senators up at Albany who sent the Lexow Committee to trouble the “honest men” of the Police Department. The evildoer who is waxing fat upon his misdeeds, always objects to any one interfering with his plunder. And as the accusation of officious meddling in “what is no concern of yours” is the first brick that lies handy for hurling at the head of the intruder, it is thrown accordingly. The difficulty is immeasurably increased when the journalist is commenting on the affairs of another city or country than his own. For then the crooks can invoke the sentiment of offended patriotism, and shelter their picking and stealing behind the sacred folds of the national flag. When I was in Chicago five years ago I was seriously told by a distinguished American author that it was insufferable impertinence on my part to publish any opinion on current American affairs until I foreswore allegiance to the Queen and naturalised myself as an American citizen! I venture humbly and with all deference to suggest that if a cat may look at a king, it may be permitted to an English-speaking journalist to describe what he sees and to say what he thinks even concerning the affairs of those other English-speaking communities which prefer the Stars and Stripes to the Union Jack. This curious recrudescence of perverted nationalism which would deny the right of comment on American affairs to everyone not born or naturalised in the American Republic, is after all nothing more than a partial reversion to the savage’s jealousy of the stranger who was not a member of the tribe. Let us be thankful that the reversion is not complete, otherwise I should have cause for thankfulness that I escaped with my life. We may, however, brush on one side these absurdities born of the morbid sensitiveness of the Half-grown, who are always suspecting that every word of criticism conceals an assumption of superiority, and a denial of the rights which the Full-grown regard as too self-evident to be questioned. Rational adults do not in these days require a certificate of origin before listening to the ideas of those who are interested in their affairs. The stranger, no doubt, will often make mistakes, which any tyro to the manner born would have avoided. He is like a Frenchman attempting to make a speech in English. But, despite his blunders in details, he looks at things from a different standpoint, he brings to their consideration the experience gained in other communities, and although he may make himself a fool now and then—which Lowell reminded us is one of the inalienable rights of man—he will often strike out new ideas which perhaps by their very absurdity may bear good fruit by rousing attention and provoking discussion. At the close of this cursory survey of one of the gravest problems which can occupy the attention of mankind, the reader may fairly expect me to say whether I see any way out. Must we despair of democracy, then, after all, and abandon all hope of governing great cities by the time-honoured machinery of elective assemblies? Is the Dictator indispensable for the salvation of the Republic? And if we cannot get along without his authority, dare we not trust him to remove his ministers after the first eighth of his term of office? If to these questions I venture to suggest any replies, I hope that I may not be accused of attempting arrogantly to dogmatise upon the solution of local problems the conditions of which it has been obviously impossible for me to master at first hand. I make no pretence to be free from bias or partiality. If my critics complain that my suggestions are based upon my inherited ingrained prejudices, strengthened by a professional instinct, rather than upon a scientific and judicial examination of all the facts, I make no demur. For in dealing with all these complex questions it is extremely difficult to eliminate the habit of mind that dates back to the cradle and beyond the cradle. Hence, for instance, if I scout the notion that there is any reason for despairing of democracy even in New York City, this adoption of the watchword of “Never despair!” is due primarily to two antecedent convictions, neither of which has anything to do with the local circumstances of New York. One is a fundamental faith in the Providential government of the universe, the other a belief that in the evolution of human society, Democracy has arrived, and has come to stay. “Time brings not back the mastodon”; and, despite the present reversion to the tyrant of the old Greek city, in the shape of the Tsar-Mayor, I cannot believe that the great stream of progress is about to change its channel. I cannot believe that the American democracy is permanently forsaking what Jefferson regarded as the fundamental principle of democratic institutions. Jefferson’s familiar and weighty words—“As Cato concluded every speech with the words, Delenda est Carthago, so do I every opinion with the injunction, ‘Divide the counties into wards’”—embody advice that is in accord with all the traditions of the English-speaking race. I may be pardoned for believing that it expresses the sound principle of local self-government, rather than the new-fangled innovation of the vesting of all power in a Dictator elected by a mass vote of so huge a unit as a city of three millions. If this be so, then it follows that it would be well to endeavour, as speedily as it could be done with safety, to regain the ancient ways, and return to fundamental principles by dividing the city into wards, and making the elected representatives of these wards the governing authority of New York. Until the Common Council—composed of representatives each directly elected by ward or district, and held personally responsible by the citizens in that ward for the efficient and honest discharge of his municipal duties—is restored to its natural position as the source and seat and centre of civic authority, it seems to me that we shall continue wandering in the wilderness. The elective assembly is the mainspring of the machine, and although you may turn the pointers round with the watchkey of a Tsar-Mayor, the watch will never keep right time till the mainspring is restored to its right place. This, however, may only be an English prejudice. However frankly I may express my fear that the Tsar-Mayor will not prove a permanent source of security to the law-abiding, honest citizens, I shall be delighted if my forebodings are falsified by the event. For good or for ill the great experiment is to be tried, and the whole human race is interested in its success. I come to safer ground when I say that, whether the centre of authority be the Tsar-Mayor or the Common Council, there is no security for the good government of the city except the public spirit and loyal co-operation of all good citizens. I know nothing more admirable than many of the recent efforts made by the Citizens’ Union and the Patriotic League of New York to arouse an intelligent interest in the community at large in the government of the city. The campaign of Education which has been going on for these last three years is a much more solid security for good government than any tinkering of the civic administrative machine. What seems to be most needed is, that the admirable work done in certain districts should be universalised and made equally effective in all quarters of Greater New York. The need for making general or universal the best work done in certain localities, points to the need of some central body, like the Civic Federation or Citizens’ Union, or Civic Centre, which would cover the same area as the civic administration, and within which it would seek to secure for all voluntary effort the same system and regularity and universality that is attained in the municipal service. Such a Civic Centre or nucleus for the co-operation of all societies and agencies, social, moral, intellectual and religious, would stand to the civic authorities much as the spiritual power stands to the State. A federation so constituted would be the Civic Church of the city; and the State without the Church, is the body without the soul. These are broad general propositions, which seem to me to lie at the root of the whole matter. But I would not like to close this chapter without making one suggestion which, although it will be scouted at first and treated with ridicule and contempt, may nevertheless contain within it the germ of an institution which may remedy some of the more flagrant evils which afflict the body politic. The creation of the Tsar-Mayor shows that the American citizen is not hidebound by prejudice. In presence of the hideous abuses glanced at in the former chapters he has sacrificed his ancient prejudices against Despotism and the One Man power, in order to re-establish the Greek Tyrant as the autocrat of the American City. What I wish, with all deference, to suggest, is that having enthroned the Tyrannus, they should hasten to establish the Inquisition.The proposition is made in all seriousness. As a palliative and corrective for the existing evils I see no suggested solution that holds out more promise. I need not, I hope, explain that I do not suggest the resurrection of the old dread ecclesiastical tribunal, with its familiars and its auto da fe. Neither do I suggest that heretics should be burned alive in Madison Square. What I am after is much more serious business. The suggestion is the offspring of two facts, both unmistakably conspicuous in the contemporary history of New York. One is the emergence of a great journalistic ambition, not merely to chronicle, but to do. The other is the record of the Lexow Committee. The success of the latter in its work of investigation, together with the existence of the new ideal of journalistic duty, seem to suggest that the best immediate remedy for the malady of the body politic would be the establishment on a permanent footing of a Tribunal of Investigation and Inquisition, armed with all necessary powers, to administer oaths, to compel the attendance of witnesses, to commit for contempt, and to punish summarily for perjury. And I would further venture to suggest that in the Journalism that Acts there is here a field even more legitimate for the enterprise of the new journalists than breaking into a Spanish prison or dredging the river for the head of a murdered man. To put it briefly, I would respectfully ask those who are in despair over the corruption that eats like a canker into the hearts of American cities, why not give statutory authority to American journalism to create, maintain and carry on a Lexow Committee en permanence, with extended powers for the purpose of discovering and handing over for punishment all those who are preying upon the public? There is no remedy like the light of day. These evils exist in the midst of our communities because they can be done in secret. The crook in office relies upon the cloak of darkness. Tear away that cloak, proclaim the things done in secret upon the housetop, and the crook will walk in the straight path. The enterprise of the American newspaper is great. But although it can discover Livingstone and rescue Miss Cisneros, it cannot locate the boodler and prove who paid him the boodle. It may suspect. It may know, and it may accuse. But without its Lexow Committee it can neither prove nor convict. It may be objected that to institute such a tribunal would be to create a frightful engine of tyranny, and that the remedy might be worse than the disease. The experience of the Star Chamber is not exactly reassuring. But to this there are several answers. In the first place, beyond arming the proposed Inquisition with adequate powers to enforce attendance by subpoena, to punish contempt of court, and to impose summary penalties for perjury, it would not be vested with any power of inflicting punishment. Having ascertained the facts, it would hand over the guilty person to the ordinary civil and criminal tribunals, binding over all witnesses to appear when the case came on for trial. Its functions would be those of investigation, for the purpose of providing a case for the ordinary tribunals, so that there would be no interference with the safeguards provided by the law and the constitution for the liberty of the subject and the impartial administration of justice. Secondly, the proceedings of the Inquisition would be from the first conducted under the full glare of publicity. Even if it were within its powers to hold a secret session, no action could be taken at such session until it had been confirmed in the light of day. Both at the inception and at the close of a case the Inquisition would be a public tribunal, liable to public criticism and amenable to public opinion. Its chief duty would be the obtaining of material in the shape of authentic information capable of being proved in court, for the protection of the public. It would, therefore, be unreasonable to fear that such a Court, whose raison d’Être is to bring evil out of the darkness into light, could be capable of the abuse which sprang up in the Star Chamber or the Inquisition, where secrecy made power irresponsible. If it be admitted that such a tribunal might with advantage be created, the question would then arise how it should be constituted. The paralysis of faith in the integrity of the elected man which prevails in American citizens would seem to preclude any hope of securing a competent and inflexible Inquisitor-General by an appeal to the principle of popular election—direct or indirect. If, however, the Journalism that Acts is to be allowed to follow the natural path of evolution, it might perhaps be recognised as a power in the State, to whose initiative might be left by statute the task of appointing the Inquisitor and of bringing cases before the Inquisition. If the choice of Inquisitor-General were left to the journalists, each of whom is an inquisitor himself in his own way, you would at least have a small expert constituency, each member of which would have a direct interest in making a good selection. And if the duty of bringing cases before the Court were limited in the first instance to the journalists, the door would be closed against the irresponsible calumnies of miscellaneous scandal-mongers, for the only persons who could then set the tribunal in motion would be the newspaper, which would lose in prestige and in authority should it bring forward a case which on investigation proved to be baseless. I am well aware that the suggestion will be ridiculed, and by no one so much as the journalist in whom the consciousness of his responsibility has not yet been evolved. But if the Journalism that Acts is to do its share in the cleansing of the Augean stable of municipal corruption, it could hardly find a more legitimate field for development than in providing a simple but effective tribunal for the purpose of dragging out of the darkness and secrecy in which they flourish those evils which can never be dealt with until they are accurately located, and brought within the range of public opinion by the searchlight of the Inquisition. ONE OF THE ELEVATED RAILWAYS IN GREATER NEW YORK.
GENERAL TRACY.
CHAPTER VI. THE PLÉBISCITE FOR A CÆSAR. The contest for the mayoralty of Greater New York, which was fought out at the polls on the 2nd of November, has been one of the most famous elections ever fought. To begin with, never before have half a million electors voted in the same day for the election of a chief magistrate. Greater New York contains more that 3,000,000 inhabitants, and 567,000 registered electors. The constituency is not more vast than the powers of the mayor are unlimited. As no chief magistrate before received the suffrages of so many electors, so no chief magistrate was ever invested with such absolute authority. Mr. Van Wyck, the new Mayor of Greater New York, for six months at least is almost as much master of New York as Napoleon III. was master of France after the plÉbiscite which installed him at the Tuileries. The two-chambered elective council of the city has even less control over his municipal appointments than the senate and Corps LÉgislatif of the Second Empire. For so great a stake it was natural that all parties should enter their best men, and that the contest should be fought with as much energy as a Presidential Election. The first to enter the field was Mr. Seth Low, the President of Columbian University, and the candidate of the Citizens’ Union. Mr. Low—or Seth Low as he is usually called—was the first Reform Mayor of the City of Brooklyn, where he was re-elected and served a second term. Although he belongs to the Republican party, he stood as the candidate of those who object to the subordination of municipal to national issues. The one great curse which has plagued New York in the past has been that its citizens never had a chance of voting upon a straight civic issue, but were always pulled hither and thither by the conflicting interest of the Republican or Democratic parties, compared with whose real or imaginary interests the welfare of the city was regarded as dust in the balance. Mr. Low was one of the leading members of the Commission which framed the Charter of Greater New York. He is a man of education, of leisure, of experience, and of the highest character. The Citizens’ Union was formed last winter in the old City of New York, with the object of electing what is called a non-partisan mayor. The Citizens’ Union, although nominally non-partisan, was really recruited in a great measure by the Republicans. Hence it was regarded by the leaders of the Republican machine as virtually a revolt against the Republican Caucus, and the Chairman of the County Republican Committee publicly declared that the Republican party would much rather see a Tammany man installed as the first Mayor of Greater New York than a mayor who was not the nominee of the Republican organisation. And the Republican Party men have had their wish. THE HIGHEST BUILDING IN NEW YORK.
American Surety Company. It was this declaration that led Mr. Seth Low to join the Citizens’ Union, which he had not previously done. About the middle of the year, the ticket which had long been current as to the advisability of nominating Seth Low for the Mayoralty began to crystallise into action. The Citizens’ Union had increased its membership from 6,000 to 25,000, and it had secured nearly 100,000 signatures to a memorial requesting Mr. Low to be put in nomination as a candidate for the Mayoralty. Earlier in the year he had contemplated standing only as a unifying force among the friends of good government, but when the memorial was presented, and the Citizens’ Union insisted upon taking independent action without conferring with the other organisations, he accepted the nomination, and in the beginning of September issued his address. His appeal to the constituency was based, according to his own statements, upon the following principles. First, he stood for the idea of having a free man in the Mayor’s chair, a man who would be responsible to the people who put him there, and not to any party machine. The Reform Mayor of New York, he said, in a passage which stung General Tracy into unwonted fury, must be in the City Hall of New York, and not on a racecourse in England, or in the Senate Chamber of Washington. The suggestion, of course, being that if the Tammany candidate were elected, its master would be Richard Croker, who was supposed to spend his time on English race tracks, while if General Tracy were elected, he would take his orders from Senator Platt, the Republican Boss. Secondly, Mr. Low stood for the idea of Home Rule—Home Rule for New York. A community of three million and a quarter of people ought to be entitled to shape their own destinies in matters that are purely local. Further, he stood as the advocate of good city civic administration, which he defined as a civic government so well administered that no interest in the great metropolis shall be so small as to be beneath its care, and no interest so great that it shall timidly shrink from attempting to deal with it. In Mr. Seth Low’s address, accepting the nomination, he frankly avowed that he was a Republican, and expected to remain one; but he would pledge himself that, in making appointments, he would fill every place with an eye single to the public good. “The patronage of the city shall not be used, so far as it is in the mayor’s power to prevent it, for purposes of either strengthening or weakening one party or another, or any fraction of another party.” On the subject of public franchises, by which the streets of New York have been practically handed over to irresponsible corporations, he made the significant suggestion that the city should be able to deal with every application for a change of the power by which the street railways were worked, as being equivalent to a demand for a new franchise. There is more in this than is discernible at first sight by an English reader. The tramways of New York are largely operated at present by cables and horses. These are being superseded as rapidly as possible by electricity. If no street railway were to be allowed to adopt electricity as a mode of traction, unless it surrendered what we should call its local Act of Parliament, empowering it to use the streets, and had to make terms de novo for that privilege, the relation between the public and the companies would be immediately transformed. At present the companies have got all they want, and pay the city next to nothing. It may not be possible to adopt Mr. Seth Low’s suggestion, but the idea is well worth consideration. In his reference to the Labour Laws of the City, he maintained that they should be administered in the letter and in the spirit. The vexed question of the saloon was dealt with in a lengthy paragraph, in which he balanced himself as best he could between the two schools of restriction and of freedom. The Raines Liquor Law, which was imposed upon the City of New York by the State Legislature, has created an immense amount of irritation by its attempt to secure Sunday closing, and to enforce stricter discipline on the saloons. Mr. Low condemned the Raines law for not taking into account the public sentiment of so cosmopolitan a city as New York. This being interpreted, means that the German citizens object to be deprived of their Sunday beer, and that, to adopt the local vernacular, you cannot swing a great world-city on principles of the hayseed legislators up at Albany. What Mr. Low would do in relation to the licensing does not precisely appear, beyond desiring to adopt some system of local option:— In my opinion, an excise law, so far as it affects the daily life and the habits of the people, should reflect the public opinion of the city. On such points, in case of radical differences of opinion, I should take the appeal to the people themselves. The keynote, therefore, of his address lay in the sentence that he desired to secure for “this Imperial City” the opportunity to start upon its new career under an administration pledged to make the interests of the city its supreme care. Mr. Low had the great advantage of not being a mere theorist, but one who had had four years’ experience in the application of the principles upon which he would propose to act as Mayor of Greater New York. The city government, he maintained, should be organised on business principles. Quite recently he contributed a chapter to Mr. Bryce’s “American Commonwealth” on City Government in the United States, in which he embodied the result of his experience and observation as Mayor of Brooklyn. His dominant idea is that the government of a city should be conducted upon very much the same principles as the management of any corporation, railroad, or joint stock company. The Mayor should be general manager, and the head of every department should hold office at his supreme discretion. Another principle upon which he insists is that wherever executive work is to be done, it must be put in the hands of one man, but that wherever it is not an affair for action, but for discretion, in the multitude of councillors there is wisdom. Where the work is discretionary have a board, where it is executive have one man. The second candidate to enter the field was one as well known in this country as he is in his native land. Henry George, whose sudden death on the eve of the poll gave so tragic a note to the contest, was nominated by the Bryanite section of the Democratic party. He commanded, and deserved to command, a great deal of public support, and still more of popular sympathy. Henry George stood as candidate for Mayor some years since, and was defeated by Tammany Hall joining hands with the Republicans, in order to elect Mr. Hewitt. Mr. Croker talked over that ancient history with me on the steamer, and then expressed a confident conviction that the Labour Unions would never again support Henry George. They were all in line, he said, with Tammany. Henry George, whose book, “Progress and Poverty,” was practically discovered in Great Britain after it had fallen very flat in the United States, was an honest man, full of all generous enthusiasms, and his candidature deserved and obtained general sympathy, because it was the most emphatic, picturesque, and sensational method of expressing dissatisfaction with things as they are. Mr. George was a strong Free Trader, but he was not an advocate of Free Silver. His followers, however, tolerated all differences of opinion in return for the value of his support. They even left him to nominate his own ticket. He was selected as candidate for a party calling itself the United Democracy, which adopted the Liberty Bell as its emblem. The speaker who moved the nomination of Mr. George in the Convention, spoke of him as “the great, the immortal Henry George, the man who had shown the working people the way out of their difficulties. When George is mayor, the problems which vexed the municipality will cease. Corruption and bribery will keep away from the City Hall if George is there. They fear him as the inhabitants of the lower regions do the angels of heaven.” When he accepted the nomination, he declared that he stood not as a Silver Democrat or a Gold Democrat, but as one who believed in the cardinal principles of Jeffersonian Democracy. The defeat of Bryan, he declared, was “the defeat of everything for which our fathers had stood, and it looked to him as though the United States were fast verging into a virtual aristocracy and despotism.” He stood, therefore, upon the doctrine of the equality of men, and in the conviction that in the democracy that believed that all men were created equal lay the power that would vivify not merely New York, but the world. The platform of the United Democracy, after denouncing unscrupulous corporations and corrupt combinations, whose influence is felt alike in local and national courts, proceeds to define the aims and aspirations of its supporters in a manifesto, of which the following is a summary:— It reaffirms the Chicago platform, demands home rule in municipal affairs, denounces the Excise laws, demands not only municipal ownership of franchises but their operation by the municipal government, three cent (or less) car fares on surface and “L” roads, dollar gas, the abolition of contract work for the city, enforcement of the eight-hour law on city work, the representation of labour in the Administration, increase of school accommodation and the introduction into the schools of industrial training: the designation of public places for free exercise of the right of free speech, the opening of court houses and schools for the free use of the people in the evening: it denounces the abuse of injunctions by the courts, and demands the abolition of property qualifications for grand and petit jurors. The clause in the plank of the Tammany platform which refers to the Raines Liquor Law ran as follows:— We condemn the so-called “Raines” Liquor Law as iniquitous and intolerant. It was passed at the instigation of the Republican State machine against the protest of the majority of the people of New York, irrespective of party. It has injured owners of real estate. It has closed avenues of legitimate employment. It has deprived thousands of our citizens of rational enjoyment. It has given rise to a system of spying and official intermeddling abhorrent to a free people. It extorts exorbitant revenues from this city to aggrandise other portions of the State. It sought to deprive the citizen of a trial by jury, and, in the collection of penalties, compels the licensee, at the caprice of the State Commissioner of Excise, to defend himself in remote localities. It protects and masks the dive-keeper, while it harasses and impoverishes the reputable dealer. It promotes intemperance, furnishes a legalised refuge for vice, imperils the innocence of children, and destroys the sanctity of home. We therefore demand its prompt repeal and the enactment of an Excise law, conservative of the public morals and liberal in its provisions, that shall place its administration and revenue, so far as shall apply to this city, within the control of this municipality, thus insuring strict enforcement of law by the consent of the governed. Tammany is almost as pronounced as Henry George was as to the municipal ownership. The following is the paragraph referring to this subject in their manifesto:— All proper municipal functions should be exercised by the municipality itself, and not delegated to others. We favour municipal ownership and municipal control of all municipal franchises. We oppose the granting of any public franchise in perpetuity. We oppose the granting or extending of any such franchise, or the bestowal of any new privilege upon a corporation holding such franchise, without adequate compensation. We, therefore, approve, as a step in the right direction, the provisions of the new Charter, which require adequate compensation to the city for all franchises hereafter to be granted, and which limit the terms of all such franchises, with reversion to the city on their expiration. We denounce the Republican party for its wasteful and reckless grant of valuable public franchises to private individuals by special legislation, with no provision for compensation to the municipality, whereby this city has already lost some of the most valuable franchises on its most important streets.
THE LATE HENRY GEORGE. The most significant plank in the platform is that demanding municipal ownership of monopolies of service as essential to the purification of politics and the protection of the citizen against taxation:— We declare that the functions of street railway transportation, the lighting of the streets and homes of the people, whether by gas or electricity, the carriage of the people by ferries about the waterways of Greater New York, the facilitation of the interchange of speech by telephones or telegraphs, are all purely municipal functions, things which can better be done by organised society than by individuals; we insist that the present system of delegating these functions to corporations has resulted in a heavy sacrifice of public wealth and convenience, the practice of extortion upon citizens compelled to enlist the services of these corporations, and the creation of powerful moneyed interests which, enjoying rich public grants, systematically employ every art of corruption in politics to control the city government for their own profit. Mr. George declared he was a poor man as the candidate of poor men. Mr. George simply stood where he did in 1886. Hence, he simply had to fall back upon his old thunder, and to reproduce the fierce denunciations which he hurled against the existing state of things by which the control of the modern American city was given over to the worst classes of the community. Here, for instance, is a passage in which he lashed the corrupt influences that dominate American politics:— The influences which have degraded the rich and debased the poor, and, under the forms of Democracy, given over the metropolis of our country to the rule of a class more unscrupulous and more arrogant than that of the hereditary aristocracy from which it is our boast that we of the new world have emancipated ourselves? The type of modern growth is the great city. Here are to be found the greatest wealth and the deepest poverty. And it is here that popular government has most clearly broken down. In all the great American cities there is to-day as clearly defined a ruling class as in the most aristocratic countries of the world. Its members carry wards in their pockets, make up slates for nominating conventions, distribute offices as they bargain together, and—though they toil not, neither do they spin—wear the best of raiment and spend money lavishly. They are men of power, whose favour the ambitious must court, and whose vengeance he must avoid. Who are these men? The wise, the good, the learned—men who have earned the confidence of their fellow citizens by the purity of their lives, the splendour of their talents, their nobility in public trusts, their deep study of the problems of government? No; they are gamblers, saloon keepers, pugilists, or worse, who have made a trade of controlling votes, and of buying and selling offices and official acts. It is through these men that rich corporations and powerful pecuniary interests can pack the Senate and the Bench with their creatures. It is these men who make school directors, supervisors, assessors, members of the Legislature, Congressmen. Mr. George was a magnetic man—a man of intense enthusiasm and tireless energy. He spoke night after night, and as the contest waxed hotter and hotter his discourses rose in temperature, until, before the contest came to a close, he pledged himself to send Richard Croker to the Penitentiary as a thief; and he left his hearers in very little doubt that if he could have had his way, the Republican boss would occupy the adjacent cell. To Mr. Seth Low, Mr. George was a great speculative writer and a dreamer. To General Tracy, he was a man who went in for Free License and Free Everything excepting Free Silver. To Tammany he was a most dangerous foe. The following extract from a speech delivered by Charles Frederick Adams is a fair illustration of the kind of ferment that is working under the surface of American politics:— Everywhere that man is oppressed by man the people are straining their ears to hear of Henry George’s election. He is a man of men, one who dues not confine his attention to the great individuals and the more fortunate classes, but one who lends his head and heart to the cause of man. He is the Moses to whom we all look to be led out of the wilderness. He is the lodestar of suffering humanity. This is no single tax movement. It is a movement to benefit down-trodden man, a movement to throw off the chains of serfdom in order that we may once again breathe God’s pure air with freedom. Henry George has the respect of every intelligent man and woman in this country. His name is the keynote to truth and freedom. And yet there are men who claim to be his friend who went to him and asked him not to accept a nomination for first Mayor of the Greater New York. They appeal to his modesty, telling him that he is only wanted by a handful of mere agitators. They know they lied when they tried to turn him aside, and yet they call themselves his friend, but their friendship is like a celebrated kiss in a celebrated garden. It is not a question of silver, the tariff, or anything of that kind; it is the more vital question of trying to rescue a great city from a lot of organised robbers. As a guarantee of our sincerity we ask Henry George to be our candidate and raise us from the contemptible tyranny of little men. If we were held in thraldom by a CÆsar or a Napoleon we might stand it, but, my God! a Croker, a Croker, gentlemen; a Croker or a Platt! The time has come when the common man, that great crucified of eternity, shall say like the crucified divinity: “Choose ye now which ye will serve; he that is not with me is against me,” and with these words I ask you to take off your coats and work for the election of Henry George. The Tammany candidate, who was elected by a majority of 85,000 votes, was Mr. Justice Van Wyck. Henry George stood 5 ft. 6 ins. in his shoes. Mr. Van Wyck stands 5 ft. 7 ins. Mr. Van Wyck is not yet fifty years of age. In 1880 he distinguished himself by publicly denouncing Boss Kelly in Tammany Hall for betraying John Hancock, the Democratic nominee for the Presidency. He was howled down, but he bided his time, and when Mr. Croker and Mr. Sheehan, the past and present Bosses of Tammany, put their heads together to find a man who is best calculated to carry the election, they decided that there was none so good as Mr. Van Wyck. He is a clear speaker, but he refused at this election to follow his opponents on to the platform. Tammany’s victories are not won by oratory. Tammany’s platform had many planks, but three were prominent:—(1) The denunciation of Reform administration, for raising the rates, and increasing the expenditure of the city. (2) An attack upon the Streets Department, with Mr. Colles at its head. The ground for this attack was the irritation that was produced in Fifth Avenue and elsewhere by the Works Department permitting the drainage and other works to be carried on so slowly as to practically render the traffic in the thoroughfares impossible for twelve months at a time. (3) An attack on the Raines Law as in every way an intolerant measure, which protected the evil, and persecuted the reputable. In this respect Mr. Van Wyck was at one with Henry George. The two candidates also agreed in demanding Dollar Gas, a phrase which needs a moment’s explanation. The gas companies which supply New York charge 5s. per thousand feet. It was proved before a Committee of the Legislature that gas can be sold at a profit at 4s. per thousand feet, but the influence of the wealthy corporations was too great to permit such a heavy cut in their charges. The price of gas, therefore, has to come down 2½d. a year for five years, a postponement of the interests of the consumer to the greed of the gas companies which is bitterly resented in New York. Like Mr. Low and Mr. Henry George, Mr. Van Wyck was in favour of building fresh schools for the children, who are at present without school accommodation, and also in favour of more rapid transit and more bridges. On municipal ownership he spoke with an uncertain sound, merely remarking that the corporations now in the control of their streets have gone to such lengths as to require legislation and municipal oversight. By way of appealing to the labour party, he declared that the eight hour law on the Statute Book on the State was a righteous one, and must be maintained, and he denounced government by injunction as a violation of the rights of man, striking at time-honoured principles which are the foundation of the laws. Everything, he declared, was possible for an administration which would have as its guiding thought the future rather than the present, prosperity rather than patronage, progress rather than politics. To be the first Mayor of Greater New York seemed to him to be an opportunity of a generation. If he were elected, he declared that before the end of four years there would be such progress as this hitherto divided city had never before enjoyed. Mr. Van Wyck is the Chief Justice of the City Court. His father was a lawyer of Dutch extraction. It remains to be seen whether his confident prognostication will be fulfilled. General Tracy, the nominee of the Republican Convention, was too good a man to be sacrificed in such a fight. He has served the nation as Secretary for the Navy, and if common rumour be not a common liar, he did a good deal of the work of Secretary of State in the last years of Mr. Blaine. England owes him a special meed of gratitude, because it was he who, when he was in supreme control of the American Navy, insisted upon breaking through all rules and precedents in order to allow Captain Mahan to continue at a post on land, where he had leisure to finish his great work on “Sea Power in History.” General Tracy is also too old a man to be intrusted with the onerous task of governing this great heterogeneous conglomerate of cities which is known as Greater New York. He is nearly sixty-eight years of age, and, although he is hale and hearty, he will be over three score and ten by the time the first Mayor of the Greater New York has to retire from office. His nomination was due to the fixed determination of his partner’s father, Mr. Senator Platt, the Republican machine man, to assert himself at this election. In his eyes the Citizens’ Union is an arrogant upstart, a mutinous offshoot, which has the audacity to deny to the regular Republican machine its legitimate voice in the control of affairs in New York. Mr. Platt and Mr. Croker agree in believing that it is impossible to govern New York without a regular party machine. The Citizens’ Union, of course, would in time become a party machine, but as it starts on non-partisan lines, the process of evolving a Boss from the Citizens’ Union would be slower than would be the case of other organisations based upon regular party lines. In order to secure a platform for General Tracy, the Republican Party men had to repudiate the programme for which they had repeatedly committed themselves in times past. The separation of municipal from national issues had been repeatedly affirmed in the strongest terms by previous Republican conventions; but on this occasion, in order to justify General Tracy’s candidature, the Republican platform was throughout an attempt to introduce the national issues into the city contest. The one great issue before the people, it declared, was the Chicago platform, an admission of which Mr. Bryan after the victory has naturally made the most. Bryanism was confounded with Tammany Hall, and it was asserted in the strongest possible terms that “the code of good government, meaning thereby honest and intelligent administration, can never be divorced from the Republican party.” “We are the people, and wisdom will die with us,” and not wisdom only, but honesty, ability, righteousness and all manner of virtue will only perish from the land unless the regular Republican candidate is put into office and kept there. That is always the burden of their song. General Tracy appealed to the citizens as the candidate of sound money, which has absolutely nothing to do with any municipal issue—the candidate of social order and the endorser of the patriotic and successful administration of William McKinley. Forgetful of the fact that they had declared they would prefer to see a Tammany mayor elected than the candidate of the Citizens’ Union, the Republicans denounced Tammany in no measured terms. “The crimes of the Tammany democracy should never be forgotten or forgiven.” The platform then commends the Raines law on the ground that by removing power from the excise or local license board, and conceding the right to sell intoxicating liquors to any citizen who paid the tax and obeyed the law, it had taken the saloon out of politics, and had liberated the saloon-keeper from the politician. It had also been financially advantageous. But having endorsed the Raines Law up to this point, they hedged in the final paragraph, in which, after referring to the cosmopolitan character of the city, they said that “provisions of the law relating to the times and conditions at and under which liquor may be sold, and the provisions of the law enforced, are wisely to be left to the will of the people of the city rather than to the judgment of their duly constituted authorities.” Finally, the platform pledged the party to a strict enforcement of the labour laws, which were defined as follows:—“The Factory Inspection Law, the Mechanics Lien Law, the Law Regulating the Employment of Minors in Mercantile Establishments, the Anti-Sweating Law, the Law Guaranteeing Union Wages on all Public Works, and the Law Preventing the Subletting of Contracts.” General Tracy in accepting the nomination declared that it was not enough for the Mayor to be negatively honest. “He must be affirmatively and aggressively honest.” But he also harped upon the spectre of Bryanism, which would not down, and invoked for the exorcising of that spectre “the Republican Party, which in the Providence of God, for more than forty years, has been the great bulwark of national honour and prosperity.” Any attempt to disintegrate, weaken or destroy that organisation seemed to him a grievous mistake, fraught with calamity and disaster. On September 27th the Journal sent out an army of reporters, with instructions to interview all the citizens whom they met in the course of the day in certain well-defined districts, in order to ascertain their preference as between General Tracy and Seth Low. The voters were approached indiscriminately, and represented all sorts and conditions of men, from hod-carriers to bankers. The result was that 9,102 citizens were interviewed, 4,835 of whom preferred Seth Low, and 4,267 voted for Tracy. This poll suggested the holding of a much more comprehensive census of opinion. An attempt was made to interrogate a whole vast constituency. Three hundred reporters were sent out with the following ticket:— NEW YORK JOURNAL. | VAN WYCK. | | TRACY. | | GEORGE. | | LOW. | As between B. F. Tracy, the Republican candidate; Seth Low, the Citizens’ Union candidate; R. A. Van Wyck, the regular Democratic candidate; and Henry George, the Independent Democratic candidate, whom do you prefer for Mayor of the Greater New York? Name of Candidate........................................................ Your Signature...................................................... Your Address................................................. Borough of.............................................. Sign this Ballot and send it to the Journal. The town was marked out into districts, and the canvassers proceeded systematically from house to house. Never before had there been so extended a canvass introduced of what they call a straw ballot in any constituency. It was, of course, not a ballot in the sense of secret voting at all, for all the citizens signed their papers, which were then taken to the central office and carefully examined. The census began on the 4th of October and was continued for a week. It was closed with the following result:— Each elector was required to sign his name and address upon a voting card supplied by the canvasser. When the poll was closed the Journal had obtained signed declarations from no fewer than 277,871. The voting was divided as follows:— | | Total Journal Poll. | | Van Wyck | | 89,056 | | George | | 85,050 | | Low | | 59,764 | | Tracy | | 44,001 | | Total | | 277,871 | These figures show that Mr. Van Wyck had 32 per cent. of the constituency, Henry George 30½, Low 21½ and Tracy nearly 16. If on the 2nd of November the whole 550,000 electors had gone to the poll, and those who have not been reached by the canvassers had voted in the same proportion as those who have, the result would have worked out as follows:— | | Position in
Greater New York. | Actual Vote. | | Van Wyck | | 176,269 | 235,181 | | George | | 168,345 | 20,727 | | Low | | 118,288 | 149,873 | | Tracy | | 87,098 | 101,823 | | Total | | 550,000 | 507,604 | All calculations, however, were vitiated by the death of Henry George. His son, whose name was substituted for his father’s at the eleventh hour, naturally could not command the same amount of support.
From Puck.
GREATER NEW YORK: AN OPTIMISTIC VIEW OF THE FUTURE.
CHAPTER VII. THE FIRST MAYOR OF GREATER NEW YORK. Edgar A. Whitney, examined by Chairman Lexow: I was in the gaming-house when the door opened, and Mr. Glennon, the police wardman, gave the word and said, “Is Mr. Pease in?” I said, “No, sir; I am taking care of the game while he is at his supper.” He said, “Come to one side:” he said, “That captain wants this game closed up until after election time; that if the Tammany Hall ticket is elected,” he says, “we will protect you for anything from a poker game to a whore-house.”—Report of Lexow Commission, vol. ii., p. 1603. The above extract from the evidence taken before the Lexow Committee at the end of 1894, immediately after the election which overturned Tammany rule in New York City, condenses into one coarse but expressive sentence the moral issue usually raised by elections in New York. Whether the latest victory of Tammany will have the same result remains to be seen. The election of Mr. Van Wyck, the Tammany candidate, as the first Mayor of Greater New York, which has taken place as these pages were passing through the press, is a curious and suggestive comment upon “Satan’s Invisible World Displayed.” “Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone!” has been the reflection of many a reformer on hearing of the immense majority by which the second city in the world elected to place itself under the governance of the elect of Tammany Hall. But the worst of such an attitude is that Ephraim does not leave other people alone, for in his worship of the false gods he brings down disasters upon other heads than his own. The welfare and good government of the first city in America can never be a matter of indifference to the rest of the world. Tammany Hall seated its candidate by a majority of votes sufficiently decisive. But although Mr. Van Wyck was 85,000 votes ahead of his nearest competitor, he did not poll a majority of the citizens. If the principle of a second ballot which is established on the Continent of Europe had been the law in New York, the issue would have had to be fought out again in a single-handed fight between Mr. Van Wyck and Mr. Seth Low. In default of such a provision, all that can be said is that at the first election of Greater New York Tammany polled 235,000 and the three anti-Tammany candidates 272,000 votes, making a majority against Tammany of 37,000.If Tammany be as black as it is painted, the worst thing about the election is not the return of Mr. Van Wyck, but the divisions of his opponents. That Tammany should be beloved of her own progeny is nothing. What is serious is that those children of light who see the evil of Tammany rule should treat it as a matter of trivial importance compared with the passion and prejudice of personalities and parties. If good men do not combine when bad men conspire, the inference is very obvious. Either the conspiracy of the bad men is not very bad, or the good men hardly deserve their name. The familiar saying of Burke that he refused to draw an indictment against a whole nation may be applied to cities as well as to nations. What is clear enough is that Tammany in the past has discredited democracy. It has done so twice in the most conspicuous and unmistakable fashion. Under Tweed it became a synonym for Thieving. Under Croker’s government the Lexow Report proved it became an organised system of Blackmail. What is it to be under Mr. Van Wyck? That is the question which it is for Tammany to decide. Mr. Croker professed admirable sentiments as to his resolution to make New York the ideal city of the world. Nothing could have been worthy of the man to whom the citizens have entrusted their destiny. We should, however, have had more right to face the future with confidence had Mr. Croker’s contemplation of the past—and such a past—not been quite so complacent. Nevertheless it is a good rule that which Cardinal Manning laid down for dealing with those who protest that they have been cruelly misjudged by their contemporaries. “When a man tells me that he is an honest man,” said the great Cardinal, “I never enter into a controversy with him as to the past. The past is past. And although I may have in my hand conclusive proofs of his guilt, I never refer to the subject. I always say, ‘My friend, you say that you are an honest man. I am delighted to hear it. We will not discuss the past. We might be unable to agree on that subject. But the future is before us. Act as an honest man from henceforth, and I shall treat you as an honest man.’” The Cardinal’s rule may be invoked in favour of extending the same act of oblivion to Tammany and its Chief. The account of past misrule placed on record in the Report of the Lexow Committee cannot be effaced from the page of history. It is a useful and timely service to Tammany itself to popularise the findings of that Committee, if only to remind the men, who are now summoned to make New York the ideal city of the world, of the hole from which they were digged. A vivid remembrance of the horrible pit and the miry clay has ever been regarded as salutary for the pilgrim to the Celestial City. Nothing is more likely to help Mr. Croker and his men to try to obey the Apostolic maxim to forget the things that are behind in order to press forward to those which are before, than the knowledge that every one can give chapter and verse in support of their belief that New York under Tammany rule in the past really deserved the title of “Satan’s Invisible World.” On that point there is no longer any room for difference of opinion. To question it is to justify disbelief in the honesty of the sceptic or the sincerity of his professions as a Reformer. But we may well be content to let the dead past bury its dead if, rising upon the wreck and ruin of these evil days, Tammany should now attain to nobler things. There is at least one great historical precedent justifying a hope that this may be so. When Madcap Hal succeeded to the English throne, there was the same jubilant exultation among Falstaff, Bardolph and all the roystering crew when Pistol rushed in helter-skelter, crying:— And tidings do I bring, and lucky joys,
And golden times, and happy news of price. But the story of their disappointment is one of the most familiar and dramatic scenes in the history of the English-speaking race. The question now is whether Mr. Croker will dare to address his old companions of misrule in the words of Henry the Fifth:— Presume not that I am the thing I was:
For Heaven doth know, so shall the world perceive,
That I have turn’d away my former self;
So will I those that kept me company. If so we may hope that it may be in New York even as it was in olden time in England, and that it may be said of the era that opened when Tammany elected the first Mayor of Greater New York by 85,000 majority:— Yea, at that very moment,
Consideration like an angel came,
And whipp’d the offending Adam out of him.
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Never came reformation in a flood,
With such a heady current scouring faults;
Nor never Hydra-headed wilfulness
So soon did lose his seat, and all at once,
As in this King. THE END.
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