Popular misgovernment in the United States

by Alfred Byron Cruikshank

“The phenomena of municipal democracy in the United States are the most remarkable and least laudable which the modern world has witnessed; and they present some evils which no political philosopher, however unfriendly to popular government, appears to have foreseen, evils which have scarcely showed themselves in the cities of Europe, and unlike those which were thought characteristic of the rule of the masses in ancient times.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 377.)

It would be impossible in this volume to give even a summary account of the effects of manhood suffrage upon municipal government in this country. In New York City the ill results of the extension were plainly discernible shortly after its institution in 1826 and increasingly thereafter. (See Myers’ History of Tammany Hall; the Evarts Report; and Moss’s American Metropolis hereinafter referred to.) The local affairs of the other smaller and newer cities were not of course prominent till later years. There is not space here to treat the subject in detail, and only a few illustrative instances can be given. But this must be said at the outset, that the record of city government in the United States since 1830 has been infamous; that on the whole it is a history of ignorance, incapacity, venality, waste, extravagance, corruption and robbery, carried to such an extent as to demonstrate the utter incapacity of the populace for self-government; and that nothing but the circumstance that in one way or another means have been found to check the power of the people and their municipal representatives put in power by the controllable vote has saved many of these cities from bankruptcy and ruin. Looking into the record of the conditions of our own time in our great cities, we find them thus described by Bryce:

“A vast population of ignorant immigrants; the leading men all intensely occupied with business; communities so large that people know little of one another, and that the interest of each individual in good government is comparatively small.” There are, he says, large numbers of ignorant and incompetent immigrants controlled by party managers; a large shifting population, and the political machinery so heavy and complicated as to discourage the individual, who feels himself a drop in the ocean. “The offices are well paid, the patronage is large, the opportunities for jobs, commissions on contracts, pickings, and even stealings, are enormous. Hence, it is well worth the while of unscrupulous men to gain control of the machinery by which these prizes may be won.”

He further says:

“The best proof of dissatisfaction is to be found in the frequent changes of system and method. What Dante said of his own city may be said of the cities of America: they are like the sick man who finds no rest upon his bed, but seeks to ease his pain by turning from side to side. Every now and then the patient finds some relief in a drastic remedy, such as the enactment of a new charter and the expulsion at an election of a gang of knaves. Presently, however, the weak points of the charter are discovered, the State legislature again begins to interfere by special acts; civic zeal grows cold and allows bad men to creep back into the chief posts.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. I, p. 649; Vol. II, 99-100.)

Bryce condemns the giving the suffrage to the immigrants. “Such a sacrifice of common sense to abstract principles has seldom been made by any country.” But it is manifestly absurd to charge all our municipal corruption upon the immigrants. Our native crop of controllable voters far exceeds the imported one. Bryce is compelled to recognize the situation in Philadelphia, where the Gas Ring ruled politics for a generation by controlling the native American vote under American managers. He says that “most of the corrupt leaders in Philadelphia are not Irishmen, but Americans born and bred, and that in none of the larger cities is the percentage of recent immigrants so small.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. II, p. 421.) Though nothing will induce Bryce, or any other British or American politician, to see the deformities of manhood suffrage, yet he is willing to testify to the facts. He says:

“There is no denying that the government of cities is the one conspicuous failure of the United States.... In New York extravagance, corruption and mismanagement have revealed themselves on the largest scale.... But there is not a city with a population exceeding 200,000 where the poison germs have not sprung into a vigorous life; and in some of the smaller ones down to 70,000 it needs no microscope to note the results of their growth. Even in cities of the third rank similar phenomena may occasionally be discerned.” (American Commonwealth, Vol. I, p. 608—quoted approvingly by Rhodes, Vol. III, p. 62.)

It is impossible to give here even an outline of the mass of evidence in the case or to make an approach to a picture of the enormous pillage that has been in progress in our municipal affairs. Steffens in The Shame of Cities gives a summary of part of the facts relating to six American cities, namely: New York, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, Minneapolis and Pittsburgh; and it makes a book of 300 pages. In each of the governments of those cities Steffens discovered organized graft, bribery and corruption. In St. Louis he reports a number of the members of the municipal assembly as “utterly illiterate and lacking in ordinary intelligence ... in some no trace of mentality or morality could be found; in others a low order of training appeared, united with base cunning, groveling instincts and sordid desires. Unqualified to respond to the ordinary requirements of life they are truly incapable of comprehending the significance of an ordinance and are incapacitated, both by nature and training, to be the makers of laws.” Franchises, etc., worth $50,000,000 had been granted in the past ten years and scarcely one without bribery. As much as $50,000 was paid for a vote in the municipal assembly. Companies were driven out by blackmail. Boodling was the real business of the city officials. In Minneapolis in 1901 and thereafter the city authorities were in a regular partnership with the underworld and a large and steady revenue was collected for the ring by corrupt methods. In Pittsburgh Steffens found a boss in control and the usual systematic corruption. He noticed that the Pittsburgh method was to put into all places of power dependents of the boss, men without visible means of support; in fact the manhood suffrage idea was carried out to its logical results. There was an agreement in writing between the city boss and the state boss (Quay) for the control of politics. Space will not permit the insertion here even of Steffens’ summary of Pittsburgh graft and corruption; it dealt with franchises, public contracts, profits of vice, public funds and miscellaneous sources of revenue. Philadelphia is described as the most corrupt city in the land. Good citizens there ask “What is the use of voting?” The city machine is a mere dependent of the state machine. The system there is to apply to the public service by way of compromise with the public a handsome percentage of the collected taxes. Steffens recognized in Philadelphia the complete and permanent overthrow of popular and honest government. In Chicago he found a persistent struggle going on against the ever active and ever powerful poison of corruption. He claims that some headway has been made in the direction of reform by the efforts of a powerful Chicago organization known as “The Municipal Voter’s League,” a watchdog affair, reaching after control, and whose existence is a proof and a confession of the absolute breakdown of manhood suffrage. Steffens was compelled to say that he saw no remedy for the sad state of affairs which he described as existing in these six different cities.

The testimony from all sources and periods since 1840 goes to establish the prevalence of municipal corruption and misgovernment. Here is Ostrogorski, referring to the year 1872 and succeeding years:

“Almost all the cities whose population exceeded one hundred thousand, or even a lesser figure, had their Rings. In the course of these last years, many great cities, such as St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco, added new pages of disgrace to the history of municipal corruption carried on under the flag of political parties.” (Democracy and Political Parties in the United States, pp. 84, 85.)