SATURDAY MORNING ON THE EAST SIDE.SATURDAY MORNING ON THE EAST SIDE.
The writer once met a man who had voted for twenty-three years in one ward. For sixteen of these years he had cast his vote from one house in Orchard Street. He had never been farther north than Houston Street, farther south than Hester and had never crossed the Bowery. He had positive convictions on every subject relating to the ward; he knew the life history of every political leader in that portion of the city; could rehearse the disasters that had followed every man who failed to fall in line at the polls; knew what saloon-keepers were forced to obey the law, and who "didn't care a cent" for the law; knew why this man could put his goods on the walk and why the other man could not. He protected his own two daughters from the evils of his home environment as he saw them; was strict to rigorousness about their home-coming; watched the kind of people who moved into the house in which he lived, and doubtless kept it above the average of the neighborhood by his watchfulness. But he did not know who was President of the United States, and did not consider it the business of the poor man. He refused a "job" under the city, because he didn't want to be "beholden." It was all right for the man who needed a job to take it. The only grievance the man had was that the Hebrews were crowding into the neighborhood. This was an invasion of his personal rights; they had their own place on the south side of Grand Street, as the Italians had west of the Bowery, and coming into that region north of Grand Street was an intrusion on the personalrights of himself and his countrymen. The first thing which would happen, if they—his own people—did not look sharp, would be the Hebrews would have a say in politics. The man's mental attitude is typical of the race settlement, the race political rights theory in many sections of New York; the difference is only in the race dominant.
This man was a porter, who for seventeen years was employed in an East Side department store, working in a sub-cellar nine hours a day for nine dollars a week. He could not read, though he came to this country when five years of age. He became a wage-earner at eleven. His daughters became wage-earners at fourteen, having attended public schools until that age. The pride with which this man referred to his daughters' education made one comprehend the gradual absorption by the foreign peoples who come to us of American ideas. Those girls knew they were not educated; they had been forced to contrast their mental equipment with that of the "club ladies," as they called the residents at the College Settlement, where the club of which they were members met. They, too, had been satisfied until brought into relationship with those who represented another world. The revelation, because of contact with the minds of these college-trained women, showed them, so far as they could comprehendit, their own lack of mental training, the first step in their true education.
Women are by nature more conservative than men; they cling longer to early traditions and habits; find it more difficult to adopt new habits of thought. The more closely they are surrounded by people of their own way of life, their own habits of thinking, the more strongly intrenched are they in the customs and habits of their native country, the less are the homes they regulate modified by the new environment. The result is that whole sections of New York to-day are as foreign as the villages from which the people in them came. There are women in New York whose children and grandchildren were born in the city who cannot speak English, nor understand it beyond the merest assent or dissent. Their lives in old age are pitiable.
A sweet, motherly German once said to the writer, and but a short time ago: "I am so lonely. I cannot speak English. I never learn it. I sit in my daughter's house, where German is not used. The children all want to be Americans; they will not talk German. When I sit at the table, I never speak. They all talk, but I do not understand. Sometimes I ask, and the children say they have not time to tell me. They buy only the English papers, and so I cannot read. I wishI had learned English when I first came. I was young then, but I had eight children after I came here, and I did everything for them. I could not take the time, I thought. I see now the children could have taught me. Now they have not the time." This woman was a German in her sympathies, her interests, her standards. Positive race antagonism existed between her and her family. She measured everything by German life and rule, and lived a critic among a people her own only in blood. In answer to the question, she explained that her husband learned English for his "work." The family attended the mission church when they attended church. She attended the German services, but the rest of the family, even her husband, the English services. Her constant plaint was: "I am so lonely. Some day I never speak all day. At the table they speak English."
Hundreds of women like this one sit in homes in New York in which they have no part, barred out by the fact that they speak a foreign tongue. One of the mistakes made in even our church work has been the maintaining of distinctive church services in a foreign tongue. In so far as the churches have done this, they have been an obstruction to good citizenship for time, whatever they may have accomplished for eternity, for the people they call their own.
One of the most earnest of missionary workers in New York, an American citizen born in Italy, protested vigorously to the writer on the policy of maintaining church services in New York in a foreign tongue. "You cannot make a united people using many languages. I would preach that to the people all the time. I use English words in my sermons to my own people, and I tell them to learn English; it is better for them in business. The women ought to learn, for they lose their children. They go away from them because they do not speak the English. In New York they are the victims of oppression, my people, because they cannot speak English. They have to bow the head to the yoke because they are foreigners in a strange land in which they vote. It is a great wrong to them and to the country. It makes the 'boss.'"
The first interest of the mother in the tenement, as of the mother everywhere, is the support of her children; to get for them all that she can. She would prefer that her husband should be honest, which may mean that the only dishonesty of which she has any comprehension is stealing money or other tangible property. In politics the tenement-house women have only a secondary interest. They accept without question the statements of their male relatives as to issues and men.Even this degree of interest represents only the most intelligent of the tenement-house women. The charge that a man used his political position and affiliations to further his own advancement, that he purchased the votes and enthusiasms of less clever voters, would mean to the women educated in their conception of right and wrong under the systems of machine politics that the man was intelligent and trying to do the best he could for his family and his friends. To say that he refused to rally voters to support the party that gave him a position because he was convinced that the party was dishonest in the use it made of the victory it gained at the polls, would arouse the deepest contempt for the man. He would be considered not only untrue to his family, but to his friends. Had he remained in close relation to the politicians who gave him his chance, he would not only provide for his family, but his friends would have the benefit of his influence; he could give them a chance in time.
THE PAST, PRESENT AND MIDDLE PERIOD.THE PAST, PRESENT AND MIDDLE PERIOD.
The man of brains they see drop his tools, take off his overalls and stand in high hat, and eventually frock-coat, the center of a crowd of men who smile at his nod, though they worked shoulder to shoulder but a short time ago—in a trench, perhaps; yes, even came over in the same ship with him. The women do not understand the process of evolution, but they see the results. They soon know that from street sweeper to car conductor, the man who has become a politician under a strong partisan government regulates, and often decides, the wage-earning opportunities of the greater portion of the men in the tenement-house sections. They learn, these women, that it is not a question of how faithful the worker is in the discharge of his duty that insures him work, but that it is some mysterious influence they call "politics," that means work and wages or no work and no wages, and suffering. This conception of the relation of the petty politician to the voters' chance to earn even a meager and uncertain living under the sway of his influence rarely excites more than passing indignation from the women who suffer most because of the system. When the women of the politician's family grow arrogant and snobbish, then the floods of eloquence break loose for a time, and the listener may learn many things of which he would otherwise be ignorant. The increased power of the petty henchman rarely enables him to change the way of living of his family. Sometimes he does not when he can, for he knows that he increases his power as he lives on the level of the average voter in hisdistrict. The less conscience he has, the more patient he is in waiting for the day when his district is only one factor in his political strength.
Even the little children reveal deference to the family of the man who is known to have "pull." There came to an East Side library one afternoon a little girl better dressed than any child who had yet appeared there. She was impudent, noisy, aggressive. In the game-room she cheated in the games, and finally broke up several games of checkers and dominoes by pushing over the boards. No child resented this. The little girl when spoken to seemed astonished by the reprimand. As she was leaving, the writer said to her: "I am sorry, little girl, but I shall have to tell you that you must not come here again unless you mean to obey; you must not talk in the reading-room, and in the games you must play fair. I hope I shall not have to tell you not to come here again." The child stared in astonishment. She went out on the street. In a few minutes several little girls who had frequented the rooms for months came running back in great excitement, one saying breathlessly: "Why, that little girl's father is a school trustee; she does just as she likes in school." "Yes," added another, "and now she says she won't come here any more. She's awful mad." From her point of view this was a calamity."Well, I hope she will not come if she cannot behave," was the comment made. The children stood aghast. The trustee system had been abolished in New York at least two years when this incident occurred. Later the writer found that the father was in the council of Tammany Hall.
A boy of the same neighborhood rang the bell, interfered with children leaving the house, and broke the windows. The time for kindly persuasion ended. When the members of a woman's club in that section using that house were consulted, it was made perfectly clear to the writer that worse troubles would follow if the boy were arrested, for he would not be detained and he would be more ugly than ever. His father was a ward leader who had formerly been a street sweeper, then foreman of the gang, etc., going through the gradations that mark the making of the minor "boss." This boy bullied little children, stole their toys, would break up their games. Yet to have him join in their play was evidently an honor which they bore much to retain. He was only fourteen, yet he was found to be the leader of a gang of boys in the most disgusting immoralities. Even this did not rouse the mothers of the neighborhood to fight for their children's protection. The boy was spreading immoralityof a disgusting nature through a whole neighborhood. The evil he wrought was told in tears in private, but denied in public through fear of the father's power in preventing the accusers' husbands and sons from getting work—one result of the Tammany system that enslaves homes and blasts the innocence of little children in New York.
A clever, hard-working Irish woman was once telling the writer the story of her life and that of her children. At the time she was deeply interested in the future of four nephews, who were the motherless sons of her brother. Out of her experience with sons-in-law she enunciated her conclusions: "I tell me brother, don't let them b'ys learn politics; it's a mighty poor thrade. Sure, when Tammany's in they're all right; but when Tammany's out, where are they? Sure, it's a mighty poor thrade, as I learnt to me sorrer. Betther have them blacksmiths, sez I, like their grandfather at home. I do hope he be's listening to me, for they're foine b'ys." It will be easier for the four "b'ys" to learn politics than any other "thrade," for it is an open union making one demand, obedience to the "boss."
To this woman Tammany was an employer good to the poor man—a doctrine that is taught to the smallest boy. He breathes it in the air; henurses it in the milk that nourishes him. As he gets older he adds a new article to his faith. The Tammany system is the protector of his liberties. It does not restrict him in his right of private judgment. As one studies the race sections, the discovery is made that hundreds of votes are cast for Tammany candidates in the belief that obnoxious restrictions on the sale of liquor on Sundays will be removed, or that the laws will not be enforced. The hope of raising the moral tone of the voters is futile while any portion of them justify the casting of a ballot for the sole reason that it will make it possible for the voter to break the law with impunity. The most demoralizing legislation is that which makes a man a sneak as well as a law-breaker. May the day be hastened when no man who stands in moral rectitude in the presence of man and God will be forced to maintain what he believes his rights in defiance of the law. We are a cosmopolitan country, owing power and greatness to the sons and daughters of many lands. The Puritan conception of government is out of place to-day. The larger conception of man not controlled by the law, but the master in himself of the restraints it would place upon him, is the American conception of manhood, and toward this the best legislative action must trend. Thinking men and women who have studied thesocial conditions of New York know that no more calamitous influence is set in motion in New York than a sense of injustice that protects and justifies to the people the breaking of a law. When this goes farther, and any considerable number of the citizens combine for the purpose of overcoming it by defying or by ignoring it, the foundations of the government are threatened. It is time for fanaticism to feel the pressure of broad-minded balanced public opinion. A law administered at the demand and according to the conscience of people unaffected by its administration, used by them against an equally intelligent class who feel that personal liberty has been curtailed at the expense of their right of judgment, is class legislation. No greater evil influence has been active in New York than the creating of a sentiment that endorsed the breaking of the liquor laws. It has been a prolific source of blackmail; it has enabled politicians, who live at the public expense, to pose to men whose personal right of judgment had been curtailed as the apostles of freedom. The short-sighted friends of temperance have by their misdirected activities created political capital for the men who in official life have made New York's problems.
Legislation enacted without the will of the people governed is provocative of two things: contemptand defiance of the law; unrest that makes for antagonism to government. The lower in the scale of reason the voter is, the less able he is to get any point of view but his own. His comprehension of the rights of others depends on the comprehension of his rights expressed in the law designed for his regeneration. He certainly never goes higher in the scale of reason while he defies the law in satisfying his sense of justice and freedom; he cannot rise in the scale of living while he stoops to acts he would avoid if his sense of justice were not outraged. He justifies his act because of his sense of oppression. He cannot respond to any effort looking to the general good of the city while he smarts under a sense of liberties curtailed by the very people who ask for his help.
When President Roosevelt was Police Commissioner he enforced the law governing the sale of liquor on Sunday. The city was torn asunder for weeks. The discussion filled the columns of the daily press. The fact, after weeks of discussion with one group of tenement-house women—all the wives of skilled workers—was finally made clear that the law was at fault, if fault there was, not the Commissioner. The law, if bad, must be repealed; but as long as it was the law it must be enforced. During this discussion much light was obtained. One woman told how cleverly the lawwas evaded by the liquor dealer two doors from her house. He hired the back room on the top floor of the house next door, keeping the liquor in a closet. The men in the secret entered the house two doors distant, went up to the roof and down the scuttle to the room where the liquor was to be had. Some of the group listened to her description with flashing eyes. When she finished she was given to understand that she had played the part of traitor. It was all right for her to do it. She was safe. Her husband was in a good, independent position; it made no difference to him how much trouble came because of her "telling tales." To others it was a disgrace that men who had only a few cents to spend for a little pleasure with their friends should have to sneak like thieves, as one of the women expressed it. All condemned having the liquor in their own homes in quantities, as they condemned the illegal selling. "When a man sneaks in like that he stays longer and spends more than when he can walk in openly and walk out again as he does other days. When he has it in the house he never stops treating and drinking until it's gone." The "free lunch" was deplored; but every one of the forty-five women decided that it was the only meal fit to eat that hundreds of laboring men ever had; that men were forced to eat at lunch countersin barrooms and buy liquor who would never go there if their mothers and wives knew how to cook. They claimed that the women would cook for their families if they knew how. They did not know how. They were forced to go to work in factories as soon as they left school, and never had a chance to learn anything about housekeeping; their mothers never knew how to keep house. Could a stronger argument for domestic science teaching in our public schools be advanced?
When the High License bill was before the Legislature at Albany several years ago, the writer was asked to speak at a mothers' meeting in one of the poorest sections of what was then the city of Brooklyn. On her way to the mission she counted nineteen liquor saloons on three blocks; in every case they were on the lower floor of a tenement house. The hall was over a pork and provision store; a loft without any attempt at more than broom cleanliness, walls bare, grimy, and seeming to ooze grease. The atmosphere of smoked meat was sickening. Nothing in the way of a shelter could have been more barren and repellent, yet it was a mission maintained by a church.
About one hundred women—the wives of day laborers and longshoremen—were present. Some were bareheaded: several with babies in theirarms. The subject chosen was the High License bill. It was a discussion. At least ten of the women spoke. The scene will never be forgotten. One woman, about thirty, after listening intently, rose with a baby on her arm, and turning passionately to those in the hall, said: "Why don't yer talk honest? Every one of us drink. Some of us, not many, drink because we love it. Most of us drink because we're discouraged and don't know what else to do. We're fools; it don't help us; it makes it worse. Some of us would never touch it if it were not brought to us. We know that anything that would take away the drink from our doors would save us. Drive them out!" She turned to the platform appealingly. "Drive them out, so that we, yes, and the men, would have to walk four or five blocks to them, and we'll be different. It is easy sending the children now. Make it harder! Make it harder!"
"Shall we close them?"
"You couldn't do it," she said. "You couldn't do that. Make it cost more to start them, and there won't be so many. They'll be farther apart, and they won't try so hard to make us drink. Many a woman has learned to drink because she had to pass the holes to get to her home. Tell thetruth like me, or say whether I'm telling the truth!" was her appeal to the audience.
The flood-gates were opened. Every woman agreed with the first speaker that the saloon could never be abolished; it could be regulated. Beer, they thought, to most women was a greater temptation than strong liquors. The number of saloons near their homes they thought the heaviest burden the poor man's family had to bear. They understood perfectly that the brewers paid for the licenses, and that the saloons were the meeting places where votes were controlled. They thought the saloons ought to be open at least Sunday afternoon, but they would have them close earlier Saturday night. They thought that any law that made a man a sneak to get a drink was an evil. They saw that such a law enabled the politician to say which man could sell liquor and which could not. One of them, who could neither read nor write, had discovered that the saloons selling a certain brewer's beer had more freedom than any of the saloons selling other beers; they thought the saloon-keepers paid either in money or drinks for the votes of the men who frequented their places in the interest of the politicians who owned the saloons or protected them. There was not the slightest evidence that one woman theresaw any dishonesty in the system. There were no principles in politics, only men. Things remained with them the same no matter who was elected. It was a district which was under the control of one party, having an unquestioned majority, which steadily increased through the efforts of a shrewd leader who had no visible means of support.
The section in which this group of women lived was a long, narrow strip bordering on the East River. The residences of a population each occupying its own house at this time held the reeking tenements in check on the east. Within ten years this has been wholly changed. The handsome old residences have become tenement houses, overcrowded, uncared for, occupied by people now at the level of former despised neighbors. The better class of the laborers' families have left the houses bordering on the river, and these have been given over to the poorest and most hopeless of the day laborers. There is a thoroughfare which has stores brilliantly lighted for five blocks. Every want of the people can be supplied in them. The people, old and young, settle placidly in the region. It is their world. The language of the little children on the streets, from early morning until late at night, is appalling. A kindergarten was started, but the people who started it did not have money enough to secure the right kind of a room, nor to make the room attractive, nor to keep it so clean that that would in itself make it more attractive than the homes of the children. It was finally given up, because even the small amount expended was not forthcoming at the end of the third year. It could have had four times the number of children the room would accommodate at one time, but no one cared enough to support it.
A SOCIAL CENTER BECOMES POLITICAL.A SOCIAL CENTER BECOMES POLITICAL.
The half-grown boys are coarse-looking, use profane and coarse language unknowingly in their ordinary conversation on the street. Their attitude toward girls is brutal. The girls of this section are free in their manners, slangy and coarse in their conversation. They earn the lowest wages paid to women in the factories and lofts that abound in the region. The schoolhouses are old and dark; the streets are neglected and dirty. The smoky, grimy mission-room disappeared long ago. Not one influence is at work to raise the general moral tone of this community, the voting power of which outnumbers four to one regions where every influence in and out of the homes tends to develop moral standards and political intelligence in the same political unit.
The region is a social plague spot, neglected and allowed to spread. It does not present as aspecial feature to arouse activity the evils of the "Red Light" district, but only the blasting influence of a region sunk in the apathy of deadened moral natures, killed by the hopelessness of changing the environment of their homes until it represents all they ask of life. The poverty of the people makes well-nourished bodies impossible, and lack of physical power makes moral resistance impossible.
Recently in one of the most crowded of the tenement-house sections of New York, where the grip of poverty holds degradation, where the people live as remote from American civilization as when in their own land, the writer viewed the parade in the evening of the voters of the district, who had been the guests of the district leader, a State Senator, at an outing. These outings are the annual "round-ups" of the voters. The expenses of these outings run into the five figures, it is said, in this district. Boats and a grove are hired. Chowder, coffee, sandwiches and beer are provided free. Games of chance, to which, it is whispered, the district leaders are not disinterested observers, and athletics are the features of the outings. The return at night is an occasion for fireworks and a parade. Caps and canes are provided for the voters often; sometimes only a ribbon badge. The expenses are met by the saleof tickets, which sometimes sell as high as five dollars. These tickets the liquor dealers, in fact, the tradesmen of all kinds in the district, men holding office under the city government who are affiliated with the leader and the men who hope to secure rights or privileges, legal or illegal, through the leader's influence, know it is wise to purchase. To the mass of the men of the district it means perhaps the one day of freedom in the year, when they have the pleasure of enjoying drinks and food wholly at the cost of another.
In this particular parade were five thousand men, not one thousand of whom bore the slightest outward evidence of American citizenship, but the right to vote, as their presence in the column indicated. It scarcely seemed possible that the scene was in America. Swarthy women and children crowded gayly decorated fire-escapes, crowded the windows, and made movement impossible on the streets. Arches of lights, lanterns swinging from fire-escapes and on ropes from sidewalks to roofs, were in the colors of the land from which these people came. The flags and bunting displayed presented colors of a foreign land, with here and there the flag of the country whose political destiny their votes controlled to a large degree. The next day the white caps worn by the men in this parade appeared on the heads of schoolboys andworking boys by the hundred, the wearers proud to wear the colors of the man who, so far as their knowledge or experience, or that of their parents, went, was the greatest man, the man of the widest range of authority, in the United States. What do they care who is at the head of the city government? The men do not need to ask who is the district leader; he finds them through his unpaid workers and the coalition is accomplished. Soon the immigrant, turned citizen, understands the principle. He gets work and votes for the leader. It is simple and direct. When the extent of one's knowledge enables him to handle a broom or to sell peanuts or bananas in the new country, and that under the supervision of a blue-coated tyrant who levies on the voter's cart, if not his pocket, when and where he pleases, moral arguments in a foreign tongue are not convincing to that voter. He would rather not submit to the supervision and its attendant tax; he would rather not have his work intermittent; but he learns that protest increases his evils, and he submits. The blue-coated tyrant is a friend of the "boss" who helped get his license, and it must be right. Whatever comes to him, he must not antagonize the "boss." That is the first lesson he learns in American citizenship, at the point where it is most effective, his wage-earning privileges.
A DOORWAY ON THE EAST SIDE.A DOORWAY ON THE EAST SIDE.
There are leaders so strong and tactful that year after year their reign is unquestioned. Only the police and the ambulance surgeons know when there is an attempted revolution—when the leader's right is questioned by another would-be leader. There is only one issue—the man; nobody cares for the principle—if there be a difference of principle—involved.
In one of the old sections of the city in which is a ward that for forty years has excelled in crime; a section which at the present time presents the meanest and lowest of the tenements in New York; in which there is less effort to counteract the evils of the environment of the homes or change the environment due to the control of the "boss" than in any other section, a political feud culminated in the fall of 1901, defeating the man who had been the leader for years. It was stated that the man who won had expended $35,000; the man who lost, $12,000 in the struggle. This is a section where poverty is the universal inheritance of the people who make this section home.
For weeks the section was in a condition of constant warfare. The smallest boys were organized as gangs and shouted the name of the leader they had chosen their hero. Boys of five wore the buttons of their heroes. From fire-escapes,on wagons hung bits of white cloth declaring the names of the contestants. One of these, to avoid unpleasant embarrassment, had gone to California after the Lexow investigation. A favorite legend displayed by his enemy's friends was, "Paddy is the man who to Californy ran." This was displayed on one fire-escape on which opened the windows of two families, each espousing the cause of the contending leaders. The week before the balloting for leader the legend was kept in place by the constant vigilance for twenty-four hours of the day by the family whose sentiments it expressed. "Paddy" was defeated. The next morning the two neighbors, who had been enemies for weeks, leaned, each from her own window, chatting amicably, while the son of one was arranging the legend on the fire-escape to include both families. On either side was gracefully arranged an American flag, while the harp of Erin hung just in the middle of the fire-escape. Peace reigned in Warsaw. "Paddy's" friends, like the fairies of childhood, disappeared in the night. The whole district, as one man, accepted the change of rulers, and the new leader's banners were thrown to the breeze everywhere. Nothing succeeds like success in the tenement-house regions. For a couple of weeks peace seemed to reign in the district. The followers ofthe old leader found themselves displaced; new followers controlled the favors in the district. There began a new distribution of patronage. Then the old leader's displaced friends, with a few loyal souls, rallied about him. He had made money enough through his political affiliations to be defiant, and announced that the political corruption of the party to which he had belonged compelled him to rally to the support of the movement to overthrow it. Some of his followers were loyal to bravery, and declared, too, against the political system. Two of them, because of these declarations, were discharged forty-eight hours later from places in a city department where they drew salaries of $1200 per year. Their places were given to two of the new leader's followers. Two weeks later all had returned to the old allegiance, and the papers announced that the head of the Tammany system had decided that the patronage of the district would be evenly divided between the two factions.
Independence of action is costly under such a system; costly in loss of wages to the voter; of food, raiment, shelter to his family.
A voter who refuses to surrender the ease of his home or the pleasure of his club for the good of the district in which his home is located is not in a position to criticise his poor neighbor who willnot jeopardize the position secured by his vote that supports his family to maintain the theory of American citizenship. Why should he make sacrifices to free the city from disgrace when his independent neighbor refuses to sacrifice his ease to protect his family from the inevitable evils of a corrupt city government?
It was the conferring the rights of citizenship on immigrants almost as soon as they landed that fastened on New York an evil that has grown until the city has been held in the shackles of a spoils system that overshadows its commercial supremacy and makes it the argument against democratic government. The heaviest disgrace for this condition rests not on the men who profit by the system but on the good men who permit it to develop. It was the logical result of their indifference to the city's good and their responsibility for that good. This inactivity on the part of the mass of responsible citizens made the control of the city offices for personal ends easy to the men who, because of lack of training and moral turpitude, could not conceive of a service for other than personal ends. Shrewdness made them see that the immigrant was the ladder on which they could climb to political power and stability. They met the immigrant as friend and neighbor; they secured him work; they schooled him to citizenship, and began at once to train him in that deadliest of all influences in a democracy, class in politics. So long as this system of education prevails, the appearance of a candidate for local office who does not bear the "hall-mark" of the neighborhood will be resented.
EARLY MORNING AMONG THE PUSHCARTS.EARLY MORNING AMONG THE PUSHCARTS.
As time went on and the immigrants came from many countries, a new evil sprang up—the race section; the section where, maintaining all the characteristics of the country from which the people came, the men exercise the rights of citizenship at the behest of a political trainer who is able to promise favors for obedience, and work vengeance for disobedience. Behind him is a power which he must obey until the day comes when by his own shrewdness he is able to cross swords with those above him in the political system, becoming himself a dictator. In the process of his evolution from ward heeler to district leader he has trained those who follow him so well that he duplicates himself scores of times, increasing his power every time he makes a follower, either by fear or favor, perpetuating the system that makes the city, as has been aptly said, a "gold mine" which it costs the operators nothing to work.
The man at the bottom knows the duplicate of the leader nearest his own level; this manis his friend, his countryman often. The links in the chain are unbroken, and the man who dares to disobey the orders issued from the top feels not only the displeasure of the henchman, but the combined strength of the chain, or as much of it as is necessary to compel him to obey or to crush him. The poor man whose tool to earn a living is a shovel, a pick or a broom is not in a position to defend his rights; he has no public sentiment in the only world he knows to support him in any attempt he may make to attain his rights when defrauded by the political system he, in utter ignorance, has helped to establish. When he is thrown out of work given to secure his vote, he has no redress. The man at the bottom must make the rule of his life "Small favors thankfully received." His hope for work in the future depends on keeping in friendly touch with the system; this is the first principle of American citizenship grasped by the naturalized citizen.
Just before our last national election a number of men employed in skilled labor in one of our city departments were laid off. To some of those men this loss of work meant suffering for their families; to others it meant debt and dependence. It was startling the spirit in which this loss of work and wages were accepted by these men. The district leader, elected by the people to make the lawsat Albany, in order "to hold his district in line" for this election, had to provide forty-eight voters with places. He demanded from the department forty-eight places; the work was in his district. No one questioned his right to make this demand; these places represented his political capital. In no way could his demands be met except by the discharge of forty-eight men then at work who lived outside the district. It was done. The men laid off, almost to a man, accepted it as the fortune of the political protégé. Scarcely a word of resentment was expressed. There were removals into this special district before the next municipal election, and new enrollments under the leader's banner, irrespective of the political bias of the voters. Some of the men were sullen and felt the loss of manhood; some said, "I'll vote as I like, but I must have work;" others believed that only under this leader's banner could a poor man hope to get his rights—the privilege to earn his living; or, in their language, "He is hustling for his friends."
Not only does the skilled and unskilled manual laborer find that the approval of his district leaders is necessary to secure work under the city, but that the affiliations and power of the district leader and his political followers can secure him work under corporations holding public franchises. He knows that the district leader securesprivileges, licenses, votes for franchises, directly or indirectly, with the distinct understanding that his recommendations insure places to the men who carry them. Under corrupt city government the man in business who does not cater to the political powers finds his privileges curtailed; that he is made the target for petty annoyances. Especially is this true in the downtown districts, where in the transaction of business the rights of citizens to the streets are ignored. Until one has lived close to it, it is almost impossible to believe the power over the working masses the smallest cog in the political machine exercises. It is this that makes imperative the control of the city by men of high moral standing. No amount of unselfish philanthropy can save a city governed by the corrupt.
There are sections in the city of New York where from the time the boy is old enough to recognize the power of a policeman he guides his life to curry favor with this visible expression of power. He knows almost as soon as he can talk the man who rules in the world in which he lives. He sees his playmate defy the policeman because his father is a man of power, or the friend of the man who rules the district. "Pull" is the law, all the law he recognizes. He hears discussed from his earliest years the dependence of his classon the political powers who govern, not for the good of the city, but that they may have their rights; their rights, as interpreted, being the securing of a place for a longer or shorter period at the nod of a "boss." Their district is all the city thousands of the inhabitants of these sections know. How can it be otherwise? They are never called for any purpose to any other part of the city, unless it be the cemetery. Family, friends, business all center within a score of blocks. If a distance must be traversed, it is through thoroughfares that but duplicate regions they know, all a part of the kingdom of the "boss."
When the observer sees five thousand men walking behind a banner conferred on the leader of the district because every man in it who votes votes at his dictation, there comes to him a faint apprehension of what political power in the tenement-house district is. This district leader interprets all these men know of this country or its institutions. They know that he secures work for them; that he befriends them in time of trouble. He interprets Christ's doctrine to them: "I was hungry and ye gave me meat; thirsty and ye gave me drink. I was a stranger and ye took me in; naked and ye clothed me; I was sick and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me." This is what the district leader does, if not inperson, by proxy. Is it any wonder he can control votes? Is it any wonder that the poor, ignorant, unequipped voter should curry favor, bow to him, acknowledge his supremacy even to the law? For this the voter can break the law, and the leader secure remission of the penalty. The leader's nod has been known to guide the judge on the bench. The leader can make the innocent suffer because his power is greater than the law to which the innocent appeal. This is the moral doctrine with which we inoculate our newly made citizens, and under which the children of our overcrowded tenement houses grow up. As the boys approach manhood they know no greater privilege than to serve the man who has the power to give them place, and he begins to cultivate their acquaintance early.
It takes brains, moral standards, a knowledge of life and experience to put the district leaders and their cohorts in the place they belong. Talking against them accomplishes nothing while the majority he represents keeps him in power, yes, makes him possible. He makes morality an evil, dishonesty justice to the people who know him as the representative of republican principles. They are the people. They have left one land because it deprived them of rights. Rights as they know them are personal, and the district leader secures them.
MEETING THE NEEDS OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD.MEETING THE NEEDS OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
The opposition to the reform movement by the people governed by the district leader comes from the conviction, dimly conceived or implanted, that the election of the men who represent it would mean that everywhere merit and not "pull" would keep the voter at work; that business would have to be conducted according to law; that crime would be punished; that no man would hold the keys of the prison for their benefit, but for the protection of the community.
One of the greatest moral lessons administered to the people of New York in a language that all understood, and one which all classes in the community needed, was given by the late Colonel George E. Waring. When he organized the Department of Street Cleaning on the merit system; when he proved to every man in the department that if he did his work no man could displace him; that he could defend himself, a man before men, if charges were brought against him, Colonel Waring changed the moral character of New York. Every man in that department had his friends to whom he carried the message; stood a free man employed by the city; a man who dared to vote as he would though in public service;would not be deprived of the right to earn his daily bread because of the use he made of his rights as an American citizen. This moral lesson went into every home. The woman whose husband handled a broom, drove a cart, held her head up, for the magic D. S. C. had changed a "job" that enslaved her husband to an employment that honored him.
The enforcement of the law in the gathering of the garbage; the cleanliness of the streets in the tenement-house districts equal to those of the avenues, for the first time in generations brought the great truth to the consciousness of the people in the tenement-house regions that all men were equal. That the clean streets led to clean halls and cleaner homes was natural; and the further evolution meant clean characters, because of moral freedom to express opinion in a ballot cast at no man's command.
And then came the summers when, for the sake of the children, extra exertions were made to keep the streets clean. Slowly the truth dawned on the dullest mother that the babies were not dying in such numbers; were not so ill, because the streets were clean, the garbage collected and the streets washed and cool. Twenty years of Colonel Waring, and the moral tone of the most ignorant would be changed. For the right to earnhis living honestly, honorably, to cast his ballot as an American citizen, would be guaranteed to every voter employed in a city department employing the greatest number of voters with the least manual ability, the least education.
A city is just as honest as the greatest number of citizens casting a ballot with the least knowledge of its value and effect; it comes no higher in the scale of integrity than that. Every man who stands behind a broom because he earns what is paid him, and knows that he stays there just as long as he continues to earn his wages, represents a wealth of manhood in a democracy, a part of the nation's capital as a world power.
When Colonel Waring discharged the first man convicted of accepting a bribe for collecting the refuse of the city contrary to the law of the department, he gave a practical demonstration of the truth of the Declaration of Independence that all men are born free and equal. He showed by that act that the poor man who could not pay a bribe was protected by the law; that wealth purchased no privileges at the expense of the city. Just where the spoils system had worked its deepest degradation it received its most effective lesson. The greatest benefit that Colonel Waring, that man of law and order, conferred upon New York, was not its clean streets, but the moral lesson thata city department can be administered to secure the best interests of the people on the principles that control the best business houses of the city.
To the shame of the city be it said that it had so long been accustomed to the spoils system that it could not accept the theory of Colonel Waring. It was impossible for even the philanthropic workers to believe that a man would not be placed, if they used their personal "pull" with the head of the department. The politicians learned quickly that the system in that department ignored "pull." When they did accept it, they determined to overthrow the man who robbed the spoils system of its largest perquisite where it was most effective in numbers. The combination of the political machines accomplished the city's disgrace in 1897. It was redeemed in 1901 by a people who had suffered cruelly; who saw in the four years of misrule that they had made their own chains of bondage.
The importance of environment is at last admitted as a factor in character-building. That light and air are indispensable to cleanliness, and physical cleanliness to health, and health to morals, is the gospel that the evils of the tenements have forced the philanthropists to declare until the thinking public is convinced of its truth.
There are tenement houses that have reputations as positive as individuals. Thoughtful, intelligent wives of working-men would not, could not be persuaded to move into them because of their reputations. Often the evils of these tenements are justly attributed to the housekeepers. Housekeepers of tenements are women who pay the whole or a part of their rent by overseeing the house; attending to the cleaning, collecting the rents, letting the rooms, adjusting differences between tenants—"a go-between" between the agent or the owner and the tenants. The owner or agent employing these women upholds their decisions when differences between the tenants and housekeepers arise. This clothes them with greatauthority, and often enables them to do great injustice. They are feared usually. Families will endure restrictions of liberties, every deprivation of their rights, because protest would mean eviction or discomforts that would compel them to move.
Under some agents and owners these housekeepers have absolute control of the property. They frequently make and enforce rules that utterly ignore the rights of tenants. This rule is often as absolute as though they were the owners of the house. Strange as it may seem, this class of housekeepers usually make the property under their control pay; they usually keep up the character of the houses under their control because they have standards and compel those about them to live up to them.