Forty Years of It

by Brand Whitlock

“No,” replied Jones in a flash, “it is an example of government under the rule of gold.”

Unless it were because of his interference with the nefarious privileges of a few, one can see no reason why the press and pulpit should have opposed him. What had he done? He had only preached that the fundamental doctrine of Christianity was sound, and, as much as a man may in so complex a civilization, he had tried to practice it. He had taught kindness and tolerance, and pity and mercy; he had visited the sick, and gone to those that were in prison; he had said that all men are free and equal, that they have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. He had said that it is wrong to kill people, even in the electric chair, that it is wrong to take from the poor, without giving them in return. He had not said these things in anger, or in bitterness; he had never been personal, he had always been explicit in saying that he, as a part of society, was equally to blame with all the rest for social wrongs. The only textbooks he ever used in his campaigns were the New Testament, the Declaration of Independence, and, of course, his beloved Walt Whitman. And yet the pulpits rang every Sunday with denunciations of him, and the newspapers opposed him. Why was it, because a man endorsed these old doctrines upon which society claims to rest, that society should denounce him?

I think it was because he was so utterly and entirely sincere, and because he believed these things, and tried to put them into practice in his life, and wished them to be more fully incorporated in the life of society. Society will forgive anything in a man, except sincerity. If he be sincere in charity, in pity, in mercy, in sympathy for the outcast, the despised, the imprisoned, all that vast horde of the denied and proscribed, still less will it forgive him, for it knows instinctively that the privileges men have or seek could not exist in a system where these principles were admitted as vital, inspiring force.

There was nothing, of course, for one who believed in the American doctrines to do but to support such a man, and when he appeared to be so utterly without supporters it seemed to be one’s duty more than ever, though I own to having shrunk from such unconventional methods as Jones employed. That meeting at the post-office corner, for instance; someone might laugh, and in the great American self-consciousness and fear of the ridiculous, what was one to do? The opposition, that is, the two old parties, the Republican and Democratic, had nominated excellent men against Jones; the Republican nominee, indeed, Mr. John W. Dowd, was a man to whom I had gone to school, an old and very dear friend of our family, a charming gentleman of cultivated tastes. It was not easy to be in the attitude of opposing him, but my duty seemed clear, and I went into the campaign with Jones, and we spoke together every night.

It was a campaign in which were discussed most of the fundamental problems of social life. A stranger, coming to Toledo at that time, might have thought us a most unsophisticated people, for there were speculations about the right of society to inflict punishment, the basis of property, and a rather searching inquiry into the subject of representative government. This was involved in the dispute as to the propriety of political machines, for the Republicans by that time had a party organization so strong that it was easily denominated a machine; it was so strong that it controlled every branch of the city government except the executive; it never could defeat Jones. There was a good deal said, too, about the enforcement of law, a subject which has its fascination for the people of my town.

XXIV

Besides these interesting topics there was the subject of municipal home rule. This had already become vital in Toledo because, a year or so before, the Republican party organization through its influence in the state, without having to strain its powers of persuasion, had induced the legislature to pass a special law which deprived the Mayor of Toledo of his control of the police force and vested the government of that body in a commission appointed by the governor of the state.

It had been, of course, a direct offense to Jones, and it was intended to take from him the last of his powers. He had been greatly roused by it; the morning after the law had been enacted he had appeared at my house before breakfast to discuss this latest assault upon liberty. The law was an exact replica of a law that had been passed for Cincinnati many years before, and that law had been sustained by the Supreme Court in a decision which had made it the leading case on that subject of constitutional law for a whole generation. Time and again it had been attacked and always it had been sustained; to contest the constitutionality of this new act seemed the veriest folly.

But Jones was determined to resist; like some stout burgomaster of an old free city of Germany he determined to stand out against the city’s overlords from the rural districts, and he insisted on my representing him in the litigation which his resistance would certainly provoke. I had no hope of winning, and told him so; I explained the precedent in the Cincinnati case, and that only made him more determined; if there was one thing more than another for which he had a supreme and sovereign contempt it was a legal precedent. My brethren at the bar all laughed at me, as I knew they would; but I went to work, and after a few days’ investigation became convinced that the doctrine laid down in that leading case was not at all sound.

When I came to this conviction, I induced Jones to retain additional counsel, one of the most brilliant lawyers at our bar, Mr. Clarence Brown, a man who, in addition to his knowledge of the law, could bring to the forum a charming personality, a wit and an eloquence that were irresistible. He, too, set to work, and in a few days he was convinced, as I, that the precedent should be overthrown. Jones refused to turn over the command of the police to the new commissioners whom the governor appointed; they applied to the Supreme Court for a writ of mandamus, we tried the case, and we won, overthrowing not only the doctrine at the Cincinnati case, but the whole fabric of municipal legislation in the state, so that a special session of the legislature was necessary to enact new codes for the government of the cities.