Methinks the editor who should understand his calling and be equal thereto, would truly deserve that title of ποιμὴν λαῶν, 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.
Methinks the editor who should understand his calling and be equal thereto, would truly deserve that title of ποιμὴν λαῶν, 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 theJournal.
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 declarethat 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.
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 trusthim 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 thewatchkey 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 itsauto 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 Committeeen 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 subpœna, to punish contempt of court, and to imposesummary 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, whoseraison d’êtreis 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 ofmunicipal 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.
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 theplébiscitewhich installed him at the Tuileries. The two-chambered elective council of the city has even less control over his municipal appointments than the senate andCorps Législatifof 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 greatmeasure 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 anotherparty.” 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 termsde novofor 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.
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, inwhich 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 theUnited 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 andFree 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.
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 intolerantmeasure, 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 thefirst 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 cosmopolitancharacter 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 theJournalsent 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:—