Stories from Everybody's Magazine

by Various

INSTEAD OF AN ARTICLE

This is all by way of introduction to the story of an article that was not written. About the time the Pittsburg flare-up began to show itself in the papers, it occurred to us that some exposition of the situation there would be of value and interest to our readers. Before going about it, we debated it very carefully. Some of us in the office (and this magazine is edited by all of us) were fairly familiar with the subject, and we believed it would subserve no useful purpose to tackle it along the "Shame of the Cities" lines. We agreed that the way to approach Pittsburg was to consider what had happened there, not as a sporadic outburst, but as an economic symptom. Whom could we get that was far enough from the controversies involved to treat the subject objectively and with a big perspective? Brand Whitlock. The Mayor of Toledo knows more about cities and their governments, and the evils that arise within them, than any other man, and he can write—with knowledge, with sympathy, with clarity. Also he knew Pittsburg. So we telegraphed to find if he was free to write an article, and, when he replied in the affirmative, the following letter was sent him:

April 1, 1910. DEAR MR. WHITLOCK:

The article we want is on Pittsburg. It is neither our purpose nor our desire merely to "muckrake" Pittsburg or any other city. The eruption there is typical of similar conditions in other great civic centers throughout the country, and it seems to us it might be made the text of a diagnosis of the whole municipal problem in America.

Here are a few thoughts that occur to me which might be represented:

We have come to realize that the real trouble in our country is Privilege. Big business, in its ruthless pursuit of results, has the ultimate responsibility for the ills that confront us in political, social, and commercial life. The graft scandals, the bank defalcations, etc., are simply symptoms of internal disorders. They are the eruptions of the disease.

Pittsburg might be called the typical get-rich-quick community. Its great wealth is based on the abundant coal and iron with which the Creator loaded its environment. Down on those deposits fasten thousands of Americans seized with the mania of money-making. They coin the coal and iron into millions. They work feverishly; they work their men furiously. It's a mad, frenzied scramble for success and sensation. To get rich quicker, they exact excessive protection from Congress—first to prop up infant industries, then to consolidate abnormal profits. If the government undertakes to deny their demands, they bluster first, then intrigue, then intimidate. Mills are closed down; the "prosperity" of the country is threatened, lobbies are organized, corruption funds subscribed, until Congress succumbs and new "jokers" are written into steel tariffs.

In the meantime a huge city is upreared. But this city is run for the benefit of its industries, not for the comfort of its inhabitants. Street railway, gas, electric corporations are organized, ostensibly to serve the community, actually enabling a greedy group to make more money. Again, what cannot be gained by request is won by force and guile.

Over and over again the various processes are repeated, until you have built up a sort of City Monstrous, dedicated to machinery, in which all the men and many of the women are just machines, and there is no ideal save that of feverish industrial adventure and accomplishment. Power—blind, ruthless, marvel-working, bending backs and bodies to its will—is Pittsburg's god, and Success its divine attribute Success that spells Gold, the instrument of exploitation and sensation. What wonder that weaker men, confronted by the colossal rewards of industrial conquest, are frenzied with the gold fever? In the absence of communal patriotism, graft becomes an incident. Graft and greed are the minor watchwords of success. Get money, anyway—but get it. Is it surprising that cashiers graft, that aldermen graft, that city officials graft, that there's a very pandemonium of graft? Isn't it the way the other fellows get rich?

All of a sudden the poison clogs the pores, and the infection blotches the surface—and every one is horrified. The great manufacturers, the great merchants, the great lawyers—high priests of the Power God—throw up their hands. Can such things be? Dreadful, horrible!—blindly oblivious of their own responsibility for the epidemic.

More startling still to the conquerors were the pitiless revelations of the Survey, exhibiting in mathematical terms the cost to the human factor of this monstrous material success. Hordes of anaemic, emaciated men and women, exhausted by long hours of toil, piled thick in wretched hovels, underfed, half-clothed, dragging out a miserable existence unrelieved by leisure or rest or recreation—the Juggernaut toll of efficiency—of the passion for results at any price. Against this horror, what avails Pittsburg's panorama of splendid churches, of lordly palaces, of noble art museums, of great orchestras, richly endowed educational institutions—the patriotic tribute of the conquerors to civilization? What is this boasted civilization of ours worth—not Pittsburg's only, for Pittsburg is an incident—if it be reared on the wrecked and depleted bodies of men at its base?

There would then be the opportunity in the article to suggest the regenerated Pittsburg—all this furious energy hitherto devoted to material success turned to social betterment and decent government. The turn of the worker comes. The conquerors, having learned that they cannot take greedily what belongs to a community, and find happiness, turn magnificently to the rescue of their own downtrodden. The old question—what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul?—has been burned into Pittsburg humanity once again.

For several years the newspapers have carried stories about these successive scandals in Pittsburg, until people have in a measure become confused as to how they connect, whether all are really parts of the same story. I doubt if the average man who reads the article in the morning paper has a clear grasp of what has been going on, and he can't discover it without hunting back through the files. Once we published an article by Owen Wister about the Capitol frauds in Pennsylvania, after the newspapers had been printing countless columns on the subject for months, and it was one of the most successful articles we have used, because of the way it crystallized and interpreted the whole occurrence.

A similar service is here suggested. Write the story of Pittsburg dramatically; crystallize the big exposures of the last few years through which bankers and politicians have been going to prison, culminating with the present crisis in the City Council; bring out the economic significance of these occurrences to Pittsburg, to the United States. Such an article will help all of us to see where we are "at," will help develop civic consciousness in New York, Chicago, San Francisco. It is immensely well worth doing.

I'm not dictating your article. What is written here is purely suggestive. You must tell what you see and find in your own way. You will, anyway. You know most of the facts. You are in touch with the balance. We'll help to get material. If you will, you can put up an article that the country will read. We'd like copy as soon as possible. Sincerely, J. O'H. COSGRAVE,

Editor.

Mr. Whitlock, replied, expressing willingness to handle the subject along the lines indicated, and asked for whatever assistance we could render him. William Hard, a member of our editorial force, had spent some time in Pittsburg, acquiring material for his "Woman's Invasion," and he recommended J. J. Nordman, a reporter of that city, as the best man to equip Mr. Whitlock with the historical details of the exposure. He would thus have immediately a succinct, up-to-date statement of the case for his use as a skeleton.

Mr. Nordman was willing to help, and soon after got into communication with Mr. Whitlock. Here is an account of his service, which was accompanied by a letter from District Attorney Blakeley, certifying to his reliability and knowledge of the facts.

May 10, 1910.
HON. BRAND WHITLOCK, Toledo, Ohio.
Dear Sir:

Mr. Cosgrave has asked me to forward you matter bearing on the
Pittsburg graft expose and such clippings as I may have.

I shall weave the facts together with no effort towards literary form, but rather in letter form, and present it to you not later than Monday next.

Enclosed please find what I have termed a "Retrospect," being a review of the political conditions leading to and making possible the present expose.

Such clippings as I have will be forwarded with matter. I enclose letter from Mr. Blakeley.

Very respectfully,
J. JEROME NORDMAN.

After that we waited, rather impatiently, it must be confessed, for Whitlock's manuscript. After the passage of other admonitory letters and telegrams, we received the following letter. We print it "instead of an article." In our opinion, it is an extraordinarily valuable summary of the whole subject of municipal misrule. It goes far and beyond Pittsburg, and deep into economic, social, and national conditions of which that city is but an instance and an illustration. And, moreover, it sets forth just how such an article, could we find the right man to do it, should be written. Here it is:

Executive Offices
THE CITY OF TOLEDO 3 June, 1910.
JOHN O'HARA COSGRAVE, Esquire,Editor
EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE.
DEAR MR. COSGRAVE:

The Pittsburg story is big, too big and too important and too significant to do at second hand. I have had a valuable correspondence with Mr. Nordman, and he has most kindly put his information, and in clear form, at my disposal. He has sent me his scrapbook of newspaper clippings, and he has written me at length and in detail of the various exposures and prosecutions. I have made inquiries, too, from friends, and I have been thinking over the story that you propose. But it won't go, and I have concluded that it ought not to go in that form; and that is the only form in which it is possible for me now to tell it.

I find just what I expected to find, or I find the familiar symptoms of what I expected to find. The intelligent answers to the several questions I put to Mr. Nordman after our first few letters are exactly what I expected them to be. One city is all cities; and all exhibit the same effects, proceeding from the same causes. Look about you, anywhere, and if you see graft, and bribery, and corruption, you'll find a bi-partisan machine controlling nominations and elections to municipal offices, and representing the few who consider themselves privileged to exploit the people by means of franchises in public utilities, etc. It's as easy as it is for a physician to tell what ails a sallow and emaciated Southern "cracker" who shivers with chills one day, and burns up with fever the next.

And so, in Pittsburg, I found the usual Republican machine with its big boss, the usual Democratic machine and its little boss, and the two, as usual, working together, the Democratic boss and his tools rewarded by a few small offices on "bi-partisan" boards, and the like; then the street railway system and other public utility corporations which these bosses represent, and for which they procure franchises. And after this, the "better element," the "eminently respectable" citizens, supporting this combination, enjoying the fruits of its labor, and influencing the business interests of the city in the way that gives such perfect exemplification of the evils of class government in our cities—the same, old, sordid story.

The revelations, as they are called—though by this time they should have ceased to be revelations, and have become "recognitions" in this country—made by the newspaper clippings before me are the expected indications of the deeper, underlying causes. The superficial observer sees in them merely a corrupt council; and, from the fact that councilmen have taken bribes, he makes the daring deduction that some one gave them the bribes; he sees that councilmen have been grafting, and then is naively astonished by the revelation that some business men higher up, although not very much higher up, have been caught and publicly disgraced. He sees, too, a brave and fearless prosecutor who is sending these men to prison; and there are the usual predictions that out of all this there is to come to Pittsburg "good" government—that is, government by honest men, to be aided, perhaps, by the adoption of the commission plan. That is to say, we have here the subject only in its personal aspect, and not in its institutional, sociological, economic aspect.