XXXIII
I have spoken of the Independents as though they were an authentic political party, when it was one of their basic principles to be no party at all. They were Republicans and Democrats who, in the revelation of Jones’s death, had come to see that it was the partizan that was responsible for the evil political machines in American cities; they saw that by dividing themselves arbitrarily into parties, along national lines, by voting, almost automatically, their party tickets, ratifying nominations made for them they knew not how, they were but delivering over their city to the spoiler. As Republicans, proud of the traditions of that party, they had voted under the impression that they were voting for Lincoln; as Democrats they thought they were voting for Jefferson, or at least for Jackson, but they had discovered that they had been voting principally for the street railway company and the privileges allied with it in interest.
And more than all, they saw that in the amazing superstition of party regularity by which the partizan mind in that day was obsessed, they were voting for these interests no matter which ticket they supported, for the machine was not only partizan, it was bipartizan, and the great conflict they waged at the polls was the most absurd sham battle that ever was fought. It seems almost incredible now that men’s minds were ever so clouded, strange that they did not earlier discover how absurd was a systemwhich, in order to enable them the more readily to subjugate themselves, actually printed little wood-cuts of birds—roosters and eagles—at the heads of the tickets, so that they might the more easily and readily recognize their masters and deliver their suffrages over to them. It is an absurdity that is pretty well recognized in this country to-day, and the principle of separating municipal politics from national politics is all but established in law. Mr. James Bryce had pointed it out long before, but Jones seemed to be almost the first among us to recognize it, and he probably had not read from Mr. Bryce; he deduced the principle from his own experience, and from his own consciousness, if not his own conscience, perhaps he had some intimation of it from the Genius of These States, whose scornful laugh at that and other absurdities his great exemplar Walt Whitman could hear, echoed as from some mountain peak afar in the west. But it was no laughing matter in Toledo in those days. Men were accused of treason and sedition for deserting their parties; it made little difference which party a man belonged to; the insistence was on his belonging to a party; any party would suffice.
I have no intention, however, of discussing that principle now, but it was the point from which we had to start in our first campaign, the point from which all cities will have to start if they wish to be free. The task we faced was relatively greater than that which Jones had faced; we had a full ticket in the field, a candidate for every city office and a man running for the council in every ward in town.Jones had run alone, and though he succeeded there was always a council and a coterie of municipal officials who represented the other interest in the community. Of course he had made our work possible by the labor he had done, great pioneer that he was. He had been his own platform, as any candidate after all must be, but with our large movement it was necessary to reduce our principles to some form and we tried to do this as simply as we could. We put forth our belief that local affairs should be separate from, and independent of, party politics, and that public officers should be selected on account of their honesty and efficiency, regardless of political affiliations; that the people should be more active in selecting their officials, and should not allow an office-seeker to bring about his own nomination; that the prices charged by public service corporations should be regulated by the council at stated intervals; and that all franchises for public utilities should first be submitted to a vote of the people, that the city should possess the legal right to acquire and maintain any public utility, when authorized so to do by direct vote of its people, that every franchise granted to public service corporations should contain an agreement that the city might purchase and take over its property at a fair price, whenever so voted by the people, and that no street railway franchise should be extended or granted, permitting more than three-cent fares, and unless it includes provision for universal transfers, satisfactory service, and reasonable compensation for the use of bridges, and we demanded from thelegislature home rule, the initiative and referendum and the recall.
Perhaps it was not such a little platform after all, but big indeed, I think, when one comes to consider its potentialities, and if anyone thinks it was easy to put its principles into practice, let him try it and see! It was drawn by that Johnson Thurston of whom I spoke, and by Oren Dunham and by Elisha B. Southard and others, citizens devoted to their town, and already with a prescience of the city spirit. They succeeded in compressing into those few lines all we know or need to know about municipal government, and ages hence our cities will still be falling short of the ideal they expressed on that little card. There were many who went with us in that first campaign who did not see all the implications of that statement of principles; none of us saw all of them of course. The movement had not only the strength but the weaknesses of all so-called reform movements in their initial stages. Those who were disappointed or disaffected or dissatisfied for personal reasons with the old party machines, no doubt found an opportunity for expression of their not too lofty sentiments, although later on when they saw that it was merely a tendency toward democracy they fell away, not because the movement had deserted its original ideals but because they at last understood them.
As I now look back on that first campaign, on the experience I had so much dreaded, the perspective has worked its magic, and the hardships and difficulties have faded away, even, I hope, as its enmitieshave faded away, though remembering Jones’s admonition to “draw the sting” I tried to keep enmities out of it. Since I could not bring myself to discuss myself, I resolved not to discuss my opponents, and I went through the campaign without once mentioning the name of one of them—there were four candidates for mayor against me—without making one personal reference to them. And never in any political campaign since have I attacked an opponent. It was enough to discuss the principles of our little platform; and the first task was to get the electors to see the absurdity of their partizanship and to make clear the necessity of having a city government that represented the people or, since that phrase is perhaps indefinite, one that did not represent the privileged interests of the city.
The campaign was like the old Jones campaigns, though not altogether like them.
The legislature, which is always interfering as much as possible with the cities, had changed the time of holding the municipal elections from the spring to the autumn, one change wrought by a legislature in cities that the people approved, since instead of those raw spring winds we now have the glorious weather the autumn usually brings us in the lake regions, with a sparkling air and a warm sun, and a long procession of golden days, on which one really should be playing golf, if one could play golf in the midst of a political campaign, which one could not, since art and politics, or at least the practice of them, are wholly incompatible.
There was no old gray Molly to jog about fromone meeting to another, and if there had been, she could not have jogged fast enough for the necessities of that hour; and we established new precedents when Percy Jones, the son of the Golden Rule Mayor, drove me about at furious speed in his big touring car, the “Grey Ghost” the reporters called it, and it streaked through the night, with its siren singing, from place to place until I had spoken at half a dozen meetings. Every day at noon it wheeled up to the entrance of the factories and shops as the men were coming out for their noon hour. And such meetings I believe were never held anywhere; there was an inspiration as the men crowded about the car to hear the speeches; they were not politicians, they were seeking nothing, they were interested in their city; and in their faces, what is far above any of these considerations, there was an eager interest in life, perhaps a certain hunger of life which in so many of them, such were the conditions of their toil, was not satisfied.