CHAPTER XIV

“The standard of integrity in City Councils is far lower even than in State Legislatures. The calibre of membership has so far deteriorated that in a large proportion of the cities of the country these bodies are held in public contempt.” (Appleton’sCyclopedia of American Government, 1914; Corruption, Legislative.)

In the same work it is stated, in the article on “Bribery,” that “The crime of accepting bribes has at one time or another been proved against members of city councils in a large proportion of American cities.” This from Ida Tarbell, the well-known writer:

“It is not too much to say that the revelations of corruption in our American cities, the use of town councils, state legislatures, and even of the Federal Government in the interests of private business, have discredited the democratic system throughout the world.” (The Business of Being a Woman, p. 79.)

In a report of a commissioner on the Boston city charter, November 6, 1884, it is stated that “the lack of harmony between the different departments, the frequent and notorious charges of inefficiency and corruption made by members of the government against each other, and the alarming increase in the burden of taxation are matters within the knowledge of allwho have taxes to pay or who read the proceedings of the City Council.” That report showed that during the previous thirty years the population had increased 190 per cent; property valuations 200 per cent; expenditures 450 per cent. The appropriations were equal to $27.30 per inhabitant, those of New York $16.76 per inhabitant. The Boston politicians seem to have worked more stealthily and more successfully than the Tweed Ring.

The corruption in Philadelphia city politics has been notorious for a long time. The operations of the infamous Gas Ring caused the debt of the city, which stood at $20,000,000 in 1860, to reach $70,000,000 in 1881. “Taxation rose in proportion, till in 1881 it amounted to between one-fourth and one-third of the net income from the property on which it was assessed, although that property was rated at nearly its full value. Yet withal, the city was badly paved, badly cleansed, badly supplied with gas (for which a high price was charged) and with water.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 410.) In a memorandum presented to the Pennsylvania legislature in 1883 by a number of the leading citizens of Philadelphia, they stated that the city’s affairs were in a most deplorable condition. It is there stated to be the worst paved and worst cleaned city in the civilized world; sewage so bad as to endanger health; public buildings badly constructed and then allowed to decay; slovenly management and high taxation. The Gas Ring system was that already described. The political boss originally gained a following of the floating and controllable voters, by which means he got in addition political control of the city’s gas workmen, and through them of the primaries, and thus complete power over city affairs. Elections were controlled by repeating, personations, violence, ballot box tampering and other frauds. It was not until 1887 that the final defeat of this ring was obtained, after tremendous efforts. In that year the loose city charter of 1854 was replaced by the tight-string Bullitt charter, and the old gas ring was succeeded by a new combination of rascals. Under this régimethe city has been governed by oligarchies of city contractors. One of the sources of corruption and scandal has been the garbage and street cleaning contracts. There have been scandalous dealings with street franchises. The elections have been fraudulently conducted. Citizens have regarded it as hopeless to vote; out of 416,860 qualified citizens in the spring of 1919 only 241,090 registered as voters. Probably only one-half of the voters actually went to the polls, and those who voted were presumably the most unfit. Why should an intelligent man trouble himself to go through such an empty form as that of voting a mere protest against an overpowering gang of organized freebooters? In 1918 the levying of political assessments on city employees was still in force in Philadelphia, and collections were made from ninety-four per cent of the city employees; the total being $250,000 to $500,000 per year to the Republican party alone. A new city charter has now (1919) been enacted and great reforms are promised, but charter tinkering will never cure the evils created by a politically rotten constituency. Judging the future by the past, there will soon be a new Philadelphia plunder machine which will function till about 1950 when there will be a new revolution and a new ring, and so on.

Bryce states that similar complaints to those made by the Philadelphians were constantly made by the citizens of the other principal cities of the United States.

He gives a table of the increase of population, valuation, taxation and debt in fifteen of the largest cities of the United States from 1860 to 1875, as follows:

Bryce described city government in California in 1877 as very bad and continuing bad up to his present writing (1894). He says: “The municipal government of San Francisco wasfar from pure. The officials enriched themselves, while the paving, the draining, the lighting, were scandalously neglected; corruption and political jobbery had found their way even into school management, and liquor was sold everywhere, the publicans being leagued with the heads of the police to prevent the enforcement of the laws.”

And again:

“San Francisco in particular continues to be deplorably misgoverned, and passed from the tyranny of one Ring to that of another, with no change save in the persons of those who prey upon her.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 446.)

It is well known that the great loss of life and property in San Francisco following the earthquake shock of 1906 was chargeable to civic misgovernment. The damage done by the earthquake itself was comparatively light, but the city aqueduct had been so badly built that it was shaken down and the city was left without water, so that it was impossible to put out the numerous fires resulting from the earthquake shock, which, small in their beginnings, were allowed to ravage the city.

The evidence as to smaller cities is similar. “In Minneapolis, for instance,” says Steffens, “the people who were left to govern the city hated above all things strict laws. They were the saloon keepers, gamblers, criminals and the shiftless poor of all nationalities.” (Shame of Cities, p. 65.)

The failure of manhood suffrage is also well illustrated by the history of the City of New York, where there is a large class of unpropertied voters and of which J. B. Miller, writing in 1887, said that the interests of the City were represented almost exclusively by liquor dealers both in the municipal and the state legislatures. In 1840 the New York City debt was $10,000,000, about $33 per capita. In 1870 it was $73,000,000, about $90 per capita. In 1918 (for the new and larger city) it was $1,335,000,000, about $242 per capita. In 1816 the New York tax levy was $344,802, being less than half of oneper cent of the taxable property. In 1918 the tax levy was $198,232,811, being 2.30 per cent of the taxable property. In 1898 the New York City budget was $70,000,000; by 1909 it amounted to $156,000,000. The increase in population was only 39.4 per cent in that time, while the city’s expenses increased 123 per cent.

Further evidence may be found in the report of a Commission appointed by Governor Tilden of New York in 1875, to consider the evils of the municipal government of New York City and the necessity of adopting a new and permanent plan for city government. Tilden was a man of recognized ability. He appointed a commission of ten New Yorkers, including judges, lawyers and publicists, men past middle age and of the highest integrity, business experience and reputation. The chairman was William M. Evarts, a distinguished statesman, leader of the New York Bar, who at times held the offices of Attorney General and Secretary of State of the United States. Their report, which was carefully prepared and unanimous, described the steady deterioration in the government of the city of New York which had then been progressing for a generation past, and which they had seen in progress with their own eyes for that period of time. The following extracts from the report are pertinent:

“In 1850, we reach a period when, as the annals of the metropolis at that time and the recollections of those yet living, who were then familiar with its affairs will attest, a marked decline had occurred, through a great deterioration in the standing and character of the city officers, bringing with it waste, extravagance and corruption.”

The report refers to the period from 1850 to 1860. It says:

“Observers of the local government and politics of the metropolis during this period will remember that it was the time when the local managers first organized on a large scale their schemes to control, through compact political arrangements, the management and distribution of the revenues of the city, which then amounted to so large a sum, and it may be said that from that time to the present, withthe exception of one short but memorable period, the disposition of these revenues has remained substantially in the hands of the chiefs of trained political organizations, which are mainly supported, in some form or other, from this fund.”

Again:

“In truth, the public debt of the city of New York, or the larger part of it, represents a vast aggregate of moneys wasted, embezzled or misapplied.”

This waste and theft of public money the report refers to had its direct cause in the incapacity and rascality of public officials all or most of whom as we know were chosen either directly or indirectly by manhood suffrage. The report further says on this point:

“We place at the head of the list of evils under which our municipal administration labors, the fact that so large a number of important offices have come to be filled by men possessing little, if any, fitness for the important duties they are called upon to discharge.... There is a general failure, especially in the larger cities, to secure the election or appointment of fit and competent officials.... Animated by the expectation of unlawful emoluments they expend large sums to secure their places and make promises beforehand to supporters and retainers to furnish patronage or place.”

Also:

“It would be clearly within bounds to say that more than one-half of all the present city debts are the direct results of the species of intentional and corrupt misrule above described.”

Further:

“We do not believe that, had the cities of this State during the last twenty-five years had the benefit of the presence in the various departments of local administration of the services of competent and faithful officers, the aggregate of municipal debts would have amounted to one-third of the present sum, nor the annual taxation one-half of its present amount; while the condition of thosecities in respect to existing provisions for the public needs would have been far superior to what is now exhibited.”

The New York City tax levy for 1877, the year of the report, was $28,400,000, one-half of which was caused by official robbery. Therefore, according to the report of these able and experienced citizens made after an examination of the city’s finances, the city had been robbed of a sum which represented fourteen millions a year, and which capitalized at five per cent amounts to $280,000,000, a fair estimate of the amount of politicians’ loot up to that time. In other words, every family in New York had on an average, been plundered to the tune of $1400 by state and city politicians. If this $280,000,000 was not loot what was it? And if not chargeable to manhood suffrage to what is it chargeable?

The committee showed its opinion of the cause by its choice of the remedy. It recommended the creation of a Board of Finance to control municipal expenditures, and to be elected by tax and rent payers only. This expedient, so objectionable to greedy and grafting politicians, was never adopted or even offered to the people for adoption. The report fell flat in a legislature elected by the controllable vote, and of course thoroughly corrupt and unpatriotic.

Looking back still further and for the benefit of those who would like additional evidence upon the political degeneracy of New York City, a few facts will be given taken from Myers’History of Tammany Halland by him taken mostly from public documents, commencing about 1826 shortly after “the great advance” which the twaddling sentimentalist writers tell us was made by the introduction of manhood suffrage.

In the November election of 1827 was the greatest exhibition of fraud and violence ever seen in the city. “Now,” (says Myers) “were observable the effects brought forth by the suffrage changes of 1822 and 1826.” Repeating flourished and honest voters were beaten and arrested for trying to vote. Next year, in 1828, hundreds, if not thousands, of illegal votes were counted, including those of boys of nineteen andtwenty years of age. This practice was continued in the ensuing decade. It was then just one year after the complete triumph of manhood suffrage in New York State that money was first used to influence voting in New York City elections. The city was carried in 1828 by Tammany Hall for Andrew Jackson. Four years later in 1832, and subsequent years, the price of votes in New York City was stated at $5.00 each. Paupers from the almshouse and convicts were voted at the polls. In 1838 Swartwout, a Jackson collector of the port, and an unsavory politician, became a defaulter for $1,200,000, an enormous sum for that time, and Price, the United States district attorney, defaulted for $75,000. Civic frauds were frequent and increasing. An aldermanic committee in 1842 reported that dishonest office holders had recently robbed the city of near $100,000, equivalent to a theft of $2,000,000 from New York City in our time. The wholesale naturalization mill was put in operation, turning out several thousand new voters a year. From 1841 to 1844 the total vote of the city was thus increased about twenty-five per cent in newly naturalized foreigners alone; most of them probably without interest in the country or real understanding of its institutions and history. At the election of 1844 it was estimated that twenty per cent of the votes were fraudulent. The primaries were organized by violence and reeked with fraud. The character of many of the noted city politicians was notoriously bad, including professional gamblers, pugilists and even thieves. About this time the city political gangs began to appear. The ward heelers with a following of repeaters were a new power in politics. In one period of ten months, 1839-1840, there were nineteen riots and twenty murders in a city of only 300,000 population. Mike Walsh’s was the principal gang. The gangs increased in number till in 1856 the Bowery Boys and Dead Rabbits had a pitched street battle in Jackson Street, where ten were killed and eighty wounded.

The sale of nominations to office first became notorious in 1846. Prices ranged from $1,000 to $20,000. This circumstance alone is almost convincing proof of universal corruption in public affairs since no one buys an office unless with the knowledge that money is to be made corruptly in its administration; and this is usually impossible or too dangerous to be undertaken unless the general administration is so corrupt as to be tolerant of fraud, bribery and extortion. The common council was notoriously for sale; it was believed that every city department was corrupt. In 1851 the Williamsburg Ferry scandal broke out and it was shown that $20,000 in bribes had been paid to New York City aldermen. The “Forty Thieves” was the name given to the New York City aldermen of 1852, to whom one Jacob Sharp first applied for a franchise to build a street railway on Broadway, New York. An injunction was obtained; but they passed the franchise in defiance of the injunction. Of the aldermen who thus voted, one was imprisoned for a fortnight and the others fined. A similar affair was the sale of the New York Third Avenue Street Railroad Franchise by the same board of aldermen; over $30,000 was said to have been paid in bribes for this franchise, a great sum for those days.

Occasionally when a quarrel broke out over the distribution of the spoils the most appalling disclosures were made; such as those on an investigation by the Grand Jury in 1853, when it appeared that the aldermen demanded a share in every city contract. On February 26th, 1853, the grand jury of New York County handed down a presentment with testimony to the effect that enormous sums of money had been expended for the procurement of street railroad franchises in New York City. It was ascertained that $50,000 had been paid in 1851 for the Eighth and Ninth Avenue Railroad franchises; that in 1852 $30,000 was paid in bribes for the Third Avenue Railroad franchise; that money was paid for aldermanic votes on franchises of the Catharine Street, Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Grand Street and Wall Street ferries. Numerous other instances were given of bribery of members of the common council in connection with sale of city property andother contracts. Evidence as to police corruption was plentiful. The chief of police had received one hundred and sixty-three conveyances of property in one year. (Board of Aldermen Documents, Vol. XXI, part 2, No. 55, pp. 1333-35 and p. 1573; Myers’History of Tammany Hall, 167.)

Out of sixty thousand votes polled in 1854, ten thousand were for sale. “In the city at this time were about ten thousand shiftless, unprincipled persons who lived by their wits and the labor of others. The trade of a part of these was turning primary elections, packing nominating conventions, repeating and breaking up meetings.” In 1856 Josiah Quincy saw $25.00 paid for a single vote for a member of Congress. The day “was enlivened with assaults, riots and stabbings.”

The frauds and scandals in city affairs continued and grew from 1854 to 1860; it was impossible to learn from the city’s books how much was being plundered. In three years the taxes nearly doubled. From 1850 to 1860 the expenses of the city government increased from $3,200,000 to $9,758,000.

Politics in the old Sixth Ward of New York is briefly sketched by Frank Moss, at one time Police Commissioner, in his interesting work,The American Metropolis. No doubt civilization existed in that district from 1845 to 1865, the period referred to by Moss; there were churches and schools, family and business life as elsewhere. It was originally a fairly respectable neighborhood, but thanks to manhood suffrage, the political life of the community was thoroughly savage and its representatives savages, and it and they did much to degrade the whole ward. First we find “that hard-faced, heavy-handed old rapscallion Isaiah Rynders was the controlling spirit. There was nothing that Rynders could not or would not do, and there are many dark stories of his conduct during the draft riots of 1863.” He was the Boss of the district, his assistants were ruffians, his leaders and backers were office-holding politicians with the “Hon.” prefix to their notorious names. He was succeeded by Con Donoho, the head of the street cleaning department, whose gang finallytrounced the Rynders gang into submission and who became thereafter “on close terms with the strongest political men of the city.” Moss finds thirty years later a similar alliance between crime and politics in the Eighth Ward of New York, among whose political rulers are, he says “pimps, gamblers, thugs, fighters and dive keepers.”

In 1860 the mayor was accused of selling appointments to offices. The Grand Jury in a presentment charged him with robbing the tax payers of $420,000. TheNew York Tribunein June 1860 publicly charged the municipal authorities with theft of public funds. Other newspaper criticism was silenced by orders for public advertising. The money voted for street cleaning was squandered, and the streets were so filthy that the death rate in 1863 was thirty-three per thousand. In a court proceeding in 1867 it incidentally transpired that $50,000 had been paid the common council for one gas franchise.

In 1857 the notorious William M. Tweed came into prominence and acquired political power which he retained for fourteen years, during which time he and his followers were steadily at work looting the city and squandering and amassing fortunes. The history of the Tweed régime of plunder in New York City is well known. In 1867 he was at the height of his power. Prior to that date all public contractors in New York City had been required to add ten per cent to their bills and pay over that percentage to certain politicians. In 1867 this percentage was increased to thirty-five per cent of which twenty-five per cent went to Tweed. The County Clerk’s and Register’s office brought in $40,000 to $80,000 a year each; the Sheriff’s office $150,000 a year. A part of this income was of course available for election purposes. Tweed and all his associates became rich notwithstanding that they lavished millions in the purchase of voters and public officials. Out of his stolen millions Tweed in the winter of 1871 gave $50,000 to the poor of his own ward and perhaps as much more throughout the city. This made him popular with the thriftless or pauper classes. Many of his transactions were inthe nature of purchases of the state legislature at Albany. He influenced the press by means of advertising contracts, presents to reporters, etc. One newspaper got a profit of nearly $200,000 on a printing contract; another got $80,000 a year for advertising; presents to newspaper men ranged from $200 to $2500 a year. In 1871 theNew York Sunproposed to erect a statue to the great man. At his daughter’s wedding the gifts were worth $100,000. From $36,000,000 in 1868 the city debt rose to $136,000,000 in 1871. The new county court house cost the city $12,000,000, of which $9,000,000 was undoubtedly stolen; repairs on armories the value of which was $250,000 were charged at $3,000,000 and so on. The total thefts of the Tweed ring amounted to somewhere between $100,000,000 and $200,000,000; the precise figure has never been ascertained. Had Tweed been less greedy, had his gang taken $25,000,000 instead of six times that sum they might have escaped. They went too far and the Tweed ring was overthrown in 1871 by a powerful citizens’ movement.

The reader may wonder what the decent people of New York were thinking, saying and doing all these years while these operations of the managers of the controllable vote were in progress. Just exactly what they are now thinking, saying and doing all over the country;—complaining and deploring that it can not be helped. Sometimes on the heels of some unusually scandalous disclosure a reform movement would be started, aided perhaps by young men intensely patriotic, fresh from school and college where they had read about our fine political structure in books that fail to refer to the rotten foundation. They learned by sad experience as others before them that the stream will rise no higher than its source; that with a controllable electorate kindly provided by the manhood suffrage constitution and an organization of scallawags, loafers and criminals to control it the politicians had the best of the situation. Bryce, who was in New York in 1870 and saw the Tweed Ring in its glory, gives us a fine picture of the effect of manhood suffrage in prostrating public conscience andenergy. He says that the respectable democratic leaders winked at the Ring’s misdeeds for the sake of the vote; that the press had been purchased or subsidized; that the bench was controlled; that three-quarters of the citizens “paid little or nothing in the way of direct taxes, and did not realize that the increase of civic burdens would fall upon them as well as upon the rich.” Here you have the case as plain as day; the electorate, whose business and function it was to secure good government and prevent these evils, failed in its duty; it was itself corrupt and inefficient; and why? Because three-quarters of it paid little or no direct taxes. In other words, they were not property holders. Just as the human soul is undiscoverable except as revealed by the human body, so civilization exhibits itself in property; and the rabble who are unfamiliar with property and are devoid of sympathy with its rights, feel no interest in good government or in any other incident of civilization.

Bryce further says:

“Moreover, the Ring had cunningly placed on the pay rolls of the city a large number of persons rendering comparatively little service, who had become a body of janizaries, bound to defend the government which paid them, working hard for it at elections, and adding, together with the regular employees, no contemptible quota to the total Tammany vote. As for the Boss, those very qualities in him which repelled men of refinement made him popular with the crowd.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 391.)

Notwithstanding the Tweed disclosures there was no serious attempt to apply the only practical remedy by reforming the electorate. Here and there a voice was heard crying in the wilderness, but no one regarded it. In October 1876, a writer in theNorth American Reviewwas clear-eyed enough to read the lesson of the Tweed Ring. He wrote:

“A very few unscrupulous men, realizing thoroughly the changed condition of affairs, had organized the proletariat of the City; and through the form of suffrage had taken possession of its government.They saw clearly the facts of the case, which the doctrinaires, theorists and patriots studiously ignored or vehemently denied.”

And as a remedy he proposed “A recurrence to the ancient ways; a strong executive, a non-political judiciary,” and that “property must be entitled to representation as well as persons.”

Of course, the article had no perceptible effect.

Once more the impossible task of creating a good government by means of the votes of a purchasable constituency was attempted. Such of the ablest men of the city as were willing to dip into the mire of manhood suffrage politics devoted themselves to the task but in vain. The hopelessness of the undertaking ought to have been apparent from such facts as this, that Tweed’s own district re-elected him senator by a large majority in November 1871 after he had been thoroughly exposed and while he was being prosecuted for his crimes. The so-called reformers who supplanted the Tweed clique in public office were only political adventurers of a different type; more scrupulous, refined or timid than their predecessors, but politicians after all, since none other could be induced to enter the political arena. The coarse robberies of Tweed’s time were discontinued, but the government of New York City by a political clique organized on the basis of the use of the city spoils to secure the controllable vote was continued. It was only for a few months that the tempest cleared the air. The good citizens soon forgot their sudden zeal, or became discouraged at the odds against them in a manhood suffrage community. Neglecting the primaries where they had obtained but slim results they allowed nominations to fall back into the hands of spoilsmen, and the most important city offices to be fought for by factions differing only in their name and party badges, because all were clearly bent upon selfish gain. Roosevelt, writing in 1886, tells something of the political conditions of this reformed “after-Tweed” period:

“In the lower wards (of New York City), where there is a large vicious population, the condition of politics is often fairly appalling,and the (local) boss is generally a man of grossly immoral public and private character. In these wards many of the social organizations with which the leaders are obliged to keep on good terms are composed of criminals or of the relatives and associates of criminals.... The president of a powerful semi-political association was by profession a burglar; the man who received the goods he stole was an alderman. Another alderman was elected while his hair was still short from a term in the State prison. A school trustee had been convicted of embezzlement and was the associate of criminals.” (Century Magazinefor November, 1866.)

Ostrogorski thus describes the period following Tweed’s overthrow:

“The principal instrument of this plunder was the police; they levied a regular toll prescribed by a fixed tariff on all the saloons, houses of ill fame, and gambling hells; extorted money on false pretenses or on no pretenses at all from small traders whom they had the power of molesting. Other perfectly lawful businesses were subjected to a tribute; steamboat companies, insurance societies, banks, etc., paid blackmail in return for the protection accorded to them. The police captains and even the policemen had to buy their places. The government of the city in fact became a huge market in which the officers might as well have sat at little tables and sold their wares openly.” (P. 81.)

In other words, the much vaunted reform uprising which overthrew Tweed was without radical or permanent results, because it left the city still at the mercy of the controllable vote.

A few later incidents may be added to Mr. Myers’ interesting collection. In 1874 one McKenna was shot dead in an election fight in New York and Richard Croker was accused of the crime and tried; the jury disagreed. Croker afterwards became Tweed’s successor and political boss of New York, retiring about 1899 to his native Ireland, with millions made out of politics. About this time the Harlem court house was built. The amount possible to steal was small, but the politicians displayed a spirit worthy of past days; for $66,000 worth ofconstruction they collected from the city $268,000, or at the rate of four to one. In 1884 twenty-one members out of twenty-three of the Board of Aldermen of New York voted to give the franchise for a surface railway on Broadway to the Broadway Surface Railroad Company. The rival road, the Broadway Railroad Company, tried to bribe the Aldermen with $750,000, half cash and half bonds. The Aldermen feared the bonds might be traced, and considered it wiser to accept the $500,000 cash offered by the Surface Company. Each alderman was to receive $22,000. Three aldermen were convicted, six fled to Canada and three turned State’s evidence. Ten others were indicted but never brought to trial. After 1884 more scientific methods replaced the rough old ways, and New York City settled down to a steady stream of boss and machine rule, supported by small graft, blackmail, voluntary contributions and assessments on office holders. During the Croker régime, which commenced about this time, it was understood that men of means, or corporations who wanted “protection” in their property rights or in their various transactions, lawful or otherwise, were expected to send their checks for proportional sums to Croker without word or comment. For these contributions he could not be required to account as he held no public office. It was believed that Croker was fair to his contributors and that if trouble came they would be looked after. This surely was better than paying blackmail to all sorts of government officials. The machine therefore ran smoother than in Tweed’s time; and probably the same kindness towards political bosses is still practised by business men and corporations. There can be no legal objection to such methods, they are safe in every way. In 1889 the Fassett investigating committee appointed by the state senate took about 3500 pages of testimony in regard to city affairs showing that blackmail was systematically levied on gambling houses, liquor saloons, and other places. In 1892 there arose the “Huckleberry” street railway franchise scandal connected with the grant of a valuable franchise in the Bronx, New York City. In 1894the Lexow Committee made a new state senate investigation into New York City politics, disclosing fraudulent voting under police protection; sale of police appointments at prices from $300 to $15,000; blackmail levied systematically on liquor sellers, gamblers, swindlers, and loose women. The revenue from these sources was estimated at $7,000,000 annually. This did not include contributions from corporations. In 1900 the so-called Mazet Senate Committee conducted a third investigation which brought out evidence tending to show that the mayor (Van Wyck) had been a party to a conspiracy to create a monopoly of ice in the City of New York. The essential meanness of a scheme to fatten on the needs of the poor during the sultry months was apparent even to the most stupid voter; the mayor became unpopular and at the end of his term retired to Paris with great wealth as it was said. The Mazet committee unearthed the fact that the city contracts went to politicians, not to business men.

Particulars of other scandals, such as the Ramapo Water Scheme; the system of judicial assessments for office, the silent partnerships of political leaders in city contracts, and police corruption must be omitted here for want of space. About 1900 the New York, Westchester and Boston Railroad Company, an adjunct of the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad Company, was seeking a franchise to enter New York City; it obtained it in 1904 from the New York municipal authorities. Ten years afterwards in 1914 it was ascertained in an investigation by the Interstate Commerce Commission that in order to get the franchise the Railroad Company had been required to distribute $1,500,000 in cash to politicians and to give a $6,000,000 contract to a business corporation controlled by politicians. This same corporation obtained other contracts from other quarters, about $15,000,000 in all, through political influence.

The foregoing instances of New York municipal scandals are more than sufficient for the purposes of this chapter. For an extended account of some of the evils and problems ofAmerican municipalities the reader is referred toEaton on Government of Municipalities, published in 1899, and to other works herein referred to. But you cannot (says Steffens) put all the known incidents of the corruption of an American city into a book; and it is probable that a mere sketch of all the actual discovered and known American municipal frauds and malpractices committed or culpably permitted in the past eighty years would fill many large volumes. The statements of the writers hereinbefore quoted in proof of the deplorable failure of American municipal government, though necessarily general in terms are sufficient and convincing; and the specific instances herein mentioned were given not so much to sustain this undisputed general testimony as to illustrate it; and as a local map or sketch may aid a traveller to call to mind the ground traversed in past years, so here to assist the memory of the reader as to the details and quality of frauds and rascalities notorious in their time, and with the story of which he is or has been more or less familiar.

Nor will the limits of this volume permit an attempt to set forth an account however slight of the various futile efforts made from time to time to reduce the stream of municipal corruption. They have all failed because they did not reach the source of the flow. In some American cities an attempt at a qualified dictatorship has been made; instead of the election of all civic functionaries, as required by the logical application of the manhood suffrage doctrine, the plan has been adopted of electing only a mayor, for four years, and giving him the unqualified power of appointment of all other city officials. Instead of the annual election of say ten heads of bureaus, or departments, a year, making forty appeals to popular wisdom, we have thus in four years only one such call for thevox populi. This is on its face a complete admission of the failure of manhood suffrage; and in reality, this one-man system has always been adopted after some disgusting exposure of rottenness in city government had demonstrated that failure. Bryce furnishes a chapter, written by Mayor Low, a reformmayor of Brooklyn, advocating this sort of dictatorship, which was in use during his incumbency. Low says that the local city legislative bodies have almost everywhere abused their powers. This fact is notorious. Local self-government of cities by boards of aldermen, or city councils, elected by the people under the manhood suffrage system, has been productive of so many grotesque blunders, shameful wastes and robberies, beside neglect and mismanagement of city affairs, that it has been frequently thrown into the discard, and replaced by boards, commissions, superintendents and other appointive officials, as proposed by Low. But according to the manhood suffrage theory this is all wrong and the municipal legislatures chosen by the people, boards of aldermen, common councils (it used to be a joke among the young men to call them “common scoundrels”) or what not should have power to lay, collect and expend all city taxes. But every one knows that if that were done, a perfect riot of extravagance and plunder would forthwith ensue followed by insolvency, disorder, and finally anarchy. Take the City of New York for instance, where the Board of Aldermen, which is the municipal legislature, is elected by manhood suffrage, and give that body the power of governing the city which logically belongs to it upon the manhood suffrage theory, and in one month’s time, demoralization would be apparent; the police and fire departments unreliable, fire insurance rates doubled, expenses mounting upward, the air filled with political scandals, and the city’s credit stunned and languishing. Such is no doubt the opinion of probably nineteen New York business men out of twenty, based upon history, traditions, experience and observation. If manhood suffrage be right in principle, the government of cities by representatives chosen at ward or district elections would be the most successful feature of the American democracy; for all the adjuncts of a working democracy, public schools, newspapers, conferences and discussion of political questions abound in the city more than in the country; but the contrary is the case. All these advantages are offset and moreby the simple fact that the controllable vote is greater in the city than in the country. As to city government by officials appointed under legislative authority, that too has always failed for the reason that it has always been corrupted by the legislative taint. Most of Tweed’s plundering was done with legislative sanction.

There is nothing in the American atmosphere nor in the American blood to prevent a pure civic administration. This appears by the actual experience of the City of Washington. In 1867 Congress established municipal government by manhood suffrage in the District of Columbia. “Under these “conditions unrestricted suffrage produced extravagance, corruption “and other incidents of bad government.” (Lalor’sCyclopedia, Suffrage.) Result, that in 1878 Congress had to abolish elections in the District and to go back to the system which had been adopted in 1798 of a government by an appointed board of three commissioners. “Nevertheless” (says Eaton) “the City of Washington, under this new system, has “had the most economical, efficient, and respectable government “of any city in the United States.” (Government of Municipalities, p. 156.) Here the appointing power is absolutely free from the influence of the controllable vote or of any vote of the people of Washington. This instance shows clearly that the mischief in our popular system lies in the electorate itself. Meantime the people of Washington are to be congratulated that they are free from the brutality and roguery of a universal suffrage popular government.

BRIEF REFERENCE TO MANY NOTED DISCLOSURES OF GOVERNMENTAL CORRUPTION MOSTLY IN STATE AND FEDERAL AFFAIRS SINCE THE INSTITUTION OF MANHOOD SUFFRAGE IN THE UNITED STATES.

Itis an unpleasant task, that of dragging to light past records of malversation in office, and it is nearly equally unpleasant to inspect them after production; and though it be necessary for the purpose in hand to set before the reader a number of instances of such misdeeds, the tale will be condensed and shortened as much as possible, down almost to a mere enumeration of the scandals referred to. Most writers, native and foreign, who have undertaken to criticize official delinquency in this country, have been content to rely upon their readers’ general knowledge of the facts. The present writer is aware that his readers also are probably already prepared to give from memory and tradition a general assent to the accusations herein contained, but he wishes for present purposes to refresh this recollection and to fortify this tradition. After all, most of us have but a dim remembrance of even the most interesting details of past history; that is why each generation repeats the mistakes of the last one. The distinguished Spanish philosophical novelist Blasco Ibañez has been frequently heard to say that nations learn but little by their mistakes; that when disaster comes the people cry aloud in pain, anger and indignation, and make strong resolves of future amendment; but when the trouble passes they forget alike the lessons learned and the good resolutions taken. The writer earnestly desires to create in the minds of his readers such a feeling of indignation as can only arise from a clear and definite realization of the facts, and yet it is impossible to give them in detail; the volume would be too great. The scandalous instances referred to in this chapter and elsewhere in this book are but a very small part of the story of popular misgovernment in the United States under the manhood suffrage régime, and even if to them were added every other instance of official misconduct discovered or published for the period we are considering the whole would fall far short of a full measure of the mischief done, for it would amount to no more than a recital of its superficial indications and symptoms. We all know that gross but hidden corruption may long fester in the body politic, or in a public institution, unknown to the world at large, until disclosed by some flagrant display, which like a spot on the surface of an apple reveals the decay and putridity within. And so here, the whole American political system has been corrupted by the virus of the controllable vote; and these scandals are but the eruptions denoting the diseased inward condition. Besides this, the reader is asked to bear in mind that the instances here given by no means constitute a complete record; they are only a few of the most important publicly disclosed cases. No attempt was made at thorough research or investigation; only those are mentioned which are generally known, and which came readily to the writer’s memory, or appeared on a cursory examination of a few publications; whereas out of one hundred discovered, an average of but ten are publicly denounced and but one judicially convicted. Here are only the large and important, only the national and state plunder conspiracies; the misdeeds of the chiefs and masters; for each one of these there have been a hundred smaller thefts, pilferings and frauds; a thousand village, town and county knaveries. Below or attached to each chief were scores or hundreds of subordinates or followers; how many of them escaped the contagion of the evil example of their leaders and superiors? These half hundred scandals about to be set down in this chapter, properly considered, do not merely represent the trespasses of fifty individuals; they really show forth the misconduct and depravity of a class and the corruption and disgrace of an entire political system.

The Golphin claim for $43,000 was an old revolutionary claim originally made not against the United States, but against Georgia. In 1835 a politician named Crawford became attorney for the claimants on a contingent fee of one-half. In 1848 a bill authorizing its payment out of the U. S. Treasury was passed through Congress without discussion, and the claim was paid in full. In 1850, this same Crawford being Secretary of War, the Treasury Department was induced by some one to pay the claimant $191,000 for back interest in addition to the principal already paid. Of this sum Crawford received $94,000. The names of three cabinet officers were smirched by the scandal which ensued on the discovery of the facts.

A majority of the Wisconsin legislature of 1856 was bribed to vote for a valuable land grant to the La Crosse and Milwaukee Railroad Company. Stocks and bonds to the amount of $175,000 were distributed among thirteen senators, and $335,000 among members of the Assembly. The Governor received $50,000; his private secretary $5,000, and other officials corresponding sums all in bonds of the company. (Rhodes, III, p. 61.)

“The investigation of the scandal of the Milwaukee and La Crosse Railway Company in Wisconsin (1858) showed that about $900,000 worth of bonds had been distributed among legislators and prominent politicians in the state. Conditions like these have probably obtained in all the states at some time or other.” (Reinsch, p. 231.)

In 1857 three members of the National House of Representatives were proved guilty of corrupt practices, and resigned their seats to avoid expulsion.

In 1867-8 was the famous Erie Railroad scandal which for months occupied the attention of the public of the entire country. It presented a series of dramatic incidents, and the merest possible outline of its history is sufficient to enlighten the reader as to the rotten conditions then prevailing in NewYork State politics. William M. Tweed was the political boss of New York City and was aiming to control the Legislature. The judges of the New York Supreme Court had been elected by manhood suffrage and one of them named Barnard was one of his creatures. Jay Gould, a financial adventurer of New York City, who died worth fifty millions of dollars, was then at the beginning of his career; one of his associates was a still more picturesque adventurer named Fisk. The Vanderbilts, then and now a very wealthy family of New York City, desiring to get control of the management of the Erie Railroad Company started to purchase in the open market enough shares of its stock for that purpose. To defeat this project one Drew, then in control of the Erie Railroad Company, issued 58,000 new shares of Erie stock. It was charged that this issue was illegal and that Drew kept printing the shares as fast as the Vanderbilts could buy them. Jay Gould was reported to have pocketed several millions by the transaction. Thereupon, the Vanderbilts took legal proceedings to annul this 58,000 shares. Drew, Fisk, Gould and others escaped during a fog in rowboats from New York City across the Hudson River to New Jersey and began a suit for conspiracy against the Vanderbilts and Judge Barnard of the Supreme Court. An attempt to kidnap them and bring them back to New York was made and failed. Gould obtained a handsome residence in New Jersey, and the Drew clique and he began an effort to acquire a corrupt control of the New Jersey Legislature for the purpose of getting their acts legalized, and also had a bill introduced into the New York Legislature with that object. Doubtless it was hoped to set the two legislatures of New York and New Jersey underbidding each other for the Drew-Gould money. The New York legislators were only getting $300 a year salary at that time, and were eager for a share of the money which was expected to be distributed in payment for this legislation. All ordinary business of the New York legislature was comparatively neglected, while groups gathered about the hallways and the cloak room of the Capitol in Albany talkingin undertones. A fair rate for members’ votes was mentioned as between $2,000 and $3,000 each. The Erie people, however, at first offered only $1,000 a vote, $500 down and $500 when the bill became a law. Boss Tweed advised the members to stand firm and they would get more from the Vanderbilts. The matter got before the Railroad Committee of the Assembly. The Committee was reported to be divided. Suddenly a rumor started that Vanderbilt and Drew were compromising. This created a panic among the Albany legislators. Some of them it was said began to offer to take $500. Soon the Assembly Railroad Committee reported unanimously against the bill; the report was agreed to and the bill was supposed to be killed. A member of the Assembly named Glenn then stated openly that he had been approached and offered a bribe of $500 to vote for the Erie Bill and asked for a committee of investigation. The committee was appointed and reported that they had examined the books of the railroad company and found that no money had been used to influence the legislature. Glenn resigned his seat. Finally the bill actually passed the Legislature. This was followed by vehement charges of corruption in the public press and elsewhere. It was stated that one senator had obtained $15,000 from one side, and then $20,000 from the other side; and still not satisfied, wanted $1,000 more for his son who acted as his private secretary. Another committee of investigation was appointed which subsequently reported that they could find no proof of wrong doing. Vanderbilt and Drew now compromised matters and Tweed joined the Drew, Gould and Fisk combination and was made a director of the Erie Company as part of a scheme to obtain the votes of the counties through which the Erie Railroad ran for Hoffman, who was Tweed’s man, as Governor. Tweed was to manage the courts in the interests of the Erie. Then began an effort by the Erie to get control of the Albany & Susquehanna Railroad and thereupon ensued another fight in the courts, Judge Barnard, who was Tweed’s judge, issuing orders on one side in New York and Judge Peckham making counteracting orders in Albany. Gould and Fisk secured the Grand Opera House at Eighth Avenue and Twenty-third Street, New York City, for the main offices of the Erie Railway Company, where they also established their personal headquarters. Miss Josie Mansfield, a well-known friend of Fisk’s, took an adjoining house, where it was alleged Judge Barnard held court and issued injunctions and orders of various kinds. The Susquehanna Railroad people found it impossible to get service upon either Gould or Fisk of court orders issued on their behalf, because no one who was not known to be friendly could get into the Opera House where the clique in power were well guarded. The President of the Albany & Susquehanna Company thereupon sent his own son to New York to serve papers. They never were served and the body of the young man was found a corpse in the Hudson River soon afterwards.

The Erie Railroad scandal was connected with the Wall Street conspiracy to corner the gold market as it was called, in which Fisk and Gould were also interested. Gold coin was then selling at a premium everywhere in the United States; the price fluctuated from hour to hour; a New York Brokers Exchange, called the Gold Room, was entirely devoted to this speculation; a daring attempt was made by Gould, Fisk and others to monopolize the gold supply and advance the price enormously. The mystery as to what, if any, high politicians were concerned in this plot was never solved. Says Henry Adams: “The Congressional Committee took a quantity of evidence which it dared not probe and refused to analyze. Although the fault lies somewhere on the administration and can lie nowhere else, the trail always faded and died out at the point where any member of the administration became visible.... The worst scandals of the Eighteenth Century were relatively harmless by the side of this, which smirched executive, judiciary, banks, corporate systems, professions and people, all the great active forces of society, in one dirty cesspool of vulgar corruption.” (Education of Henry Adams, p. 271.)

On March 18, 1875, Governor Tilden, in a special message to the New York State Legislature, stated that for five years ending Sept. 30, 1874, millions had been wasted on the canals by unnecessary repairs and corrupt contracts. Upon ten fraudulent contracts New York State had paid more than one and one-half million dollars while the proposals at contract price called for less than half a million. The exact figures are:

A commission to investigate was created. Indictments were found against the son of a state senator, a member of the board of canal appraisers, an ex-canal commissioner, two ex-superintendents of canals, and one division engineer. (SeePolitical History of New York, Alexander, p. 324.)

From 1867 to 1872 were in progress the Union Pacific Railroad irregularities commonly known as the Credit Mobilier frauds in which a number of prominent United States Congressmen were implicated.

The Freedmen’s Bureau (Federal) irregularities covered 1871 and 1872, and after investigation large sums remained unaccounted for.

From 1872 to 1874 were exposed the Internal Revenue Moiety frauds, involving millions and implicating Secretary Richardson of the United States Treasury and many other Treasury and Internal Revenue officials.

In 1874 were investigated and exposed the District of Columbia government scandals involving “Boss” Shepherd and others connected with the Washington City administration.

The noted whiskey ring frauds were perpetrated from 1869 to 1874 and were exposed about the latter date. In those frauds a number of important United States government officials were implicated and the Treasury was defrauded out of over two millions thereby.

Pennsylvania State politics have for over half a century had the reputation of being extremely corrupt. One of its mostnoted political bosses was Simon Cameron, who was at the head of the principal Pennsylvania ring for about twenty years prior to 1877. He was able more than once to force or purchase his election as United States Senator and was also able to deliver the vote of the State of Pennsylvania to Lincoln in the Chicago Convention of 1860 thus defeating Seward. For this service and as the result of a bargain then made he was appointed by Lincoln Secretary of War in 1861. His administration of that office was so scandalous that he was soon compelled to resign. (Arena, January, 1905.)

The Belknap War Department scandals covered the period from 1870 to 1876. Belknap was Secretary of War and being threatened with impeachment resigned his office.

The Star Route frauds exposed in 1881 were the result of conspiracies between high post-office officials at Washington, a former United States Senator Dorsey of Arkansas and others. Large sums of government money were obtained by means of fraudulent mail contracts.

Philadelphia.Next to the New York Tweed Ring the most famous in American municipal life was the Philadelphia gas ring (1870-1881). Its boss (Republican), named McManus, absolutely controlled about twenty thousand voters who were dependent on the ring in one way or another. No candidate hostile to the ring could be nominated for office. The possession of the great city offices gave the ring members opportunity to make fortunes and at the same time the power to contribute large sums to the party funds. Great numbers of city employees were put under pay. The debt of the city, which was $20,000,000 in 1860 rose in 1881 to $70,000,000. Finally a committee of one hundred citizens was created to obtain redress and there were legal proceedings against those implicated and some convictions. Referring to this episode a writer says:

“Its debt (Philadelphia’s) increased at the rate of three millions a year without any important improvement being introduced into the municipal plant; inefficiency, waste, badlypaved and filthy streets, unwholesome and offensive water and a slovenly and costly management. The ring manufactured majorities at the polls by means of frauds in the voting and counting of the ballots; it bought votes wholesale and retail, forcing all those who received salaries from the city to provide the wherewithal for corruption. The policemen themselves had to contribute. Like the Tammany Ring, the Gas Ring stopped the mouth of the press by regular subsidies so that not a single paper could be found to plead the cause of honest government.” The story of the Philadelphia Gas Ring is well told by Mr. Bryce. (American Commonwealth.)

Philadelphia municipal scandals have been so numerous that they would require a volume to themselves to treat them fully. In 1901 there was the Street Franchise scandal. Fourteen street franchises worth millions were granted free by the Philadelphia city government to members of a political ring. As proof of the rascality of the transaction John Wanamaker publicly offered the city $2,500,000 cash for these same franchises, admitting that they were worth much more. The political corruption there was said to equal that of anything ever known in New York except in Tweed’s time. In certain parts of the city in 1905 about forty per cent of the vote cast was said to be fraudulent. “Crimes against the ballot box no longer seemed to affront the public conscience.”

In 1898 there was a great scandal in connection with the failure of the People’s Bank of Philadelphia in which United States Senator Quay and State Treasurer Haywood were implicated. About $500,000 state funds and $50,000 city funds disappeared and were never recovered.

In 1900 occurred the Grand Rapids Water Scandals. Bribes to the amount of $100,000 were distributed to City officials. The City Attorney was convicted, and there were twenty-four indictments of ex-aldermen, politicians, newspaper men and others.

Spanish War Scandals.These were numerous. Here is one specimen of many. In 1899 military goods were sold for$10,500 and purchased back for $60,000. There were indictments and convictions.

In January, 1903, President Roosevelt instituted an investigation in the Post Office Department which resulted in the revelation of a large number of fraudulent contracts by which the government had been robbed of thousands of dollars, and the criminal conviction of two United States senators.

St. Louis.The following interesting story of political rascality appeared inMcClure’sin November 1902. In 1898 one Snyder, capitalist and promoter, came to St. Louis with a traction proposition inimical to the interests of the city railways, who were then paying seven members of the council $5,000 each per year to protect them, besides paying another councilman a special retainer of $25,000 to watch these seven boodlers. Snyder set about buying the members, who then went back on their first bargain, and arranged a meeting to see if they could not agree on a new price. The meeting broke up in a row and each man started in to work for himself. Four councilmen got from Snyder $10,000 each, one got $15,000, another $17,500, another $50,000; twenty-five members of the House of Delegates got $3,000 each. In all Snyder paid $250,000 for the franchise, and as the traction people had raised only $175,000 to beat it, the franchise was passed. Then Snyder sold out to his old opponents for $1,250,000. He was criminally convicted some years later on charges growing out of this affair.

Missouri—1903. Baking Powder Scandal. Various members of the legislature charged with accepting bribes in connection with legislation in favor of the baking powder monopoly.

1904—Oregon Land Scandal. Senator Mitchell, Congressman Williamson and others were charged with conspiracy and bribery in an attempt to defraud the government. Two congressmen were convicted.

St. Louis.In an editorial in theArenafor January 1905 it is stated that in St. Louis free government has been destroyed by shameful crimes; and in an article by Lee Meriwether, formerly Labor Commissioner for Missouri, and author of a number of books of travel, the writer describes a transaction by which a street franchise was obtained in St. Louis in January 1902 by one Turner. The amount to be paid the municipal council for the franchise was $135,000 which was put in a safety-vault box of which an agent had one key and the boodlers the other. The franchise was granted, but a citizen obtained an injunction from the courts, whereupon the agent refused to pay. Afterwards Turner became State’s evidence; the box with the $135,000 was produced in court, a number of the members of the municipal council were convicted, and some fled the country.

California Legislature.In 1905 the California Senate appointed a committee of seven to investigate alleged mismanagement of certain building and land associations. A majority of the committee selected an agent to approach the officers of one of the associations, with the result that the sum of $1400 was agreed upon and paid to stop the investigation. The agent confessed; four senators were expelled, and two were convicted by the courts.

Ohio.An important investigation was undertaken by the Drake Committee of the Ohio Senate in 1906. In inquiring into the affairs of Cincinnati, the committee caused the return to the public treasury of over $200,000, which had been given as gratuities to (state) treasurers, by banks favored in the deposit of Hamilton County funds.

New York Insurance Frauds.A New York legislative committee investigated the great life insurance companies in 1905-6. Results showed that Republican as well as Democratic legislators had been bought, and that enormous corruption funds had been contributed to both political parties. Bribery expenditures were classified on the various insurance companies’ books as “legal expenses.” In 1904 alone, the Mutual Life Insurance Company thus disbursed $364,254, the Equitable Life Assurance Society $172,698, the New York LifeInsurance Company $204,019. From 1898 to 1904 the Mutual Company expended more than $2,000,000 in so-called “legal expenses” supposed to be payments to influence legislation. From 1895 to 1904 the total payments made by the New York Life to its chief lobbyist at Albany were $1,312,197.

Boston, Mass.In 1907 public hearings before a committee of investigation resulted in eleven indictments mostly of city officials and contractors for frauds against the city. Gross incompetency, neglect and non-efficiency of some of the city departments and officials and mismanagement of city business was revealed.

Pennsylvania, 1907. The State Capitol scandals. About $9,000,000 was paid for furniture for the State Capitol, being an excess of $6,000,000 over actual cost. There were a number of criminal convictions of public officials in connection with this affair.

San Francisco—1907 and 1908. The Ruef Scandals. These related to the procuring of street franchises by the bribery of members of the San Francisco board of supervisors through the agency of Abraham Ruef, a political boss. Nearly one hundred indictments were filed, and there were some confessions and convictions.

Lorimer Scandal.A general corruption fund called “the jack-pot” was made in 1908, from which payments were made to the Illinois legislators for their votes. Lorimer was elected United States Senator, January 11th, 1909, through a Republican-Democratic combination. There were negotiations for the delivery of a block of fifteen votes at prices reported to be as high as $30,000. Certain votes were purchased at $900 to $2500. There were judicial proceedings and some confessions.

The New York “Yellow Dog” Scandal.On the investigation of charges that Senator Allds of New York had in 1910 accepted money for preventing legislation, it was shown that in the course of a few years two or three joint funds were raised among bridge-building companies for political “protection” at Albany. The names of a former speaker of thelegislature and another member, both dead, were given as having received these bribes.

Colorado.In theCosmopolitan Magazinefor December, 1910, it was stated that on one occasion, when the franchises of some public service corporations were in peril, a Republican leader took $20,000 of his campaign fund to Democratic headquarters to save the day for his “interests.” As many as 8,000 fraudulent votes have been available in Denver for whichever party was slated by the “interests” to win.

Pennsylvania.William Flinn, who together with Senator Quay was in control of Republican politics for many years in Pennsylvania, testified before a senatorial committee in 1912 that he had contributed so far that year nearly $150,000 to the political campaign, both for the work in the primaries before the convention, and for the presidential campaign after the convention.

In an article entitled “Case of the Quaker City” (Outlook, May 25, 1912) the writer states that Philadelphia has paid a contractor $520,000 each year to remove its garbage, which he has then resold in the form of profitable products; in an outlying district people have been arrested for feeding their own garbage to their own pigs; the contractor wanted it. Upon a change of administration in 1912, over $800,000 of unpaid bills for 1911 and previous years were found. It required about $4,000,000 of borrowed money to make up the deficiency in appropriations for current expenses for 1912, and about as much more to provide for routine items of neglected maintenance, such as condemned boilers, elevators, dilapidated sewers, dangerous bridges. All this notwithstanding the fact that, in addition to funds raised from taxation and other current revenue, $51,000,000 was borrowed in the last four years with practically nothing to show for it. Commenting on this state of affairs the writer says:

“To democracy are we committed. Does this mean that we are forever to live loosely, scandalously, until nature rebels and we have to fly to a violent cure, a political Carlsbad, acivil war, be cleansed only to begin over again each time? Does the theory of democracy exact more than human nature has to give?”

Congress.The United States Congress, judged by any proper ethical standard, has been for a long time past a more or less corrupt body, as has frequently appeared by its frequent large and scandalous misappropriations of public funds made on the demand of a very low class of voters manipulated by rascally politicians. The money thus stolen and wasted has earned the euphonious title of “Pork,” and has usually been distributed in the shape of appropriations for unnecessary public buildings, or harbor improvements. Federal court houses costing very large sums have been extravagantly built and are being maintained in places where the court sits only a few days in a year, and where therefore the hiring of a few rooms for the occasion of the court’s session would have been sufficient. Among the items represented in the appropriation bill for 1913 are the following:

The City of New Haven, with a population of 180,000, for a post-office, pink marble, $1,200,000.

For court houses:—

At Texarkana, Texas, where court is only held four days a year, $110,000. At Harrison, Arkansas, having a population of 1600, where court is only held nine days in a year, $100,000. At Evanston, Wyoming, having a population of 2500, where court is only held two days in a year, $15,000. At Mariana, Fla., where court only sits two days a year, $70,000.

Gadsden, Alabama, a small town, Federal building, $188,000. At Anderson, S. C., a court house at $70,000 was ordered, and at Pikeville, Ky., and in twelve other towns where there was no court sitting, court houses were voted.

Post-office at Gainesville, Fla.: population 6000; cost $150,000.

In Virginia the Federal building at Big Stone, with a population of about one thousand, cost or is costing $100,000 and a few years ago it was stated that at that time there weretwenty-five others being erected or recently built in that State in similar small towns costing from $5,000 to $75,000 each.

Expensive post-offices were ordered at Newcastle, Wyoming, with a population of 975; Jasper, Ala., with a population of 2500; Vernal, Utah, with a population of 836, and another place with a population of 942. Four other small towns in Utah each have expensive post-offices.

These are samples of the Federal Building Bill or “Pork” Bill as it was called, of 1913, amounting to $45,000,000, which was rushed through both houses on the log-rolling principle. It was in effect a congressional conspiracy to plunder the government. Of this bill Senator Kern said that it was the “boldest and most audacious raid on the public treasury that has been attempted in recent years. The pork in this barrel is of such quality that it smells to Heaven.” This kind of rascality has been increasing. There was bought a few years ago at Seattle for a federal building at a cost of $160,000, land which was seven feet under water. In 1906 the Federal Government had only 503 buildings in the United States, and therefore the rate prior to that time had only been four new buildings a year. In 1916 it had 967, an increase of 464, at the rate of 46 a year for the preceding ten years. These appropriations were generally made with the object of getting the votes of political contractors and laboring people, who are supposed to represent a propertyless class, and not being required to pay any direct taxes are believed to be indifferent to the depletion of the public treasury.

Pension Frauds.Under President Cleveland the Commissioner of Pensions Lockrien unearthed enormous pension frauds; he dropped 2266 names from the rolls and reduced the ratings in 3343 cases. The cases of clear fraud amounted to $18,000,000 a year.

Former Secretary of War, Stimson, states that from 1878 to 1908 the cost of the Federal Government increased nearly 400 per cent, while the increase in population was less than 84 per cent.

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