Forty Years of It

by Brand Whitlock

If they were effective, the whole of human kind would have been translated, like Enoch, long ago. Of course, the assertion that they had not been enforced was the obvious retort. And it was true, because it is impossible to enforce all of them. And what is more no one believes that all the laws should be enforced, all the time,—that is, no one believes in absolute law enforcement, since no one believes that the laws should be enforced against him. Everybody hates a policeman just as everybody loves a fireman. And yet the fire department and the police department are composed of the same kind of men, paid the same salaries, and responsible to the same authorities. The duty of the fireman is, of course, the simpler, because there is no disagreement among men about the thing to be done. When a fire breaks out in the city, the fire department is expected to rush to the spot, to pour water on the fire, and to continue pouring water on the fire until it ceases to burn. The reforming mind seems to think that the duty of the policeman is of equal simplicity, and that when a wrong is done, the sole duty of the police consists in rushing immediately to that spot, seizing the wrongdoer, and, by confining him in a prison, thereby eradicate his tendency to do wrong, and, by holding him up as an example to others who are considering the commission of that wrong, to deter them from it.

As far as crimes are concerned, the policemen, indeed, do fairly well. Though that they succeed in any measure at all in discharging their functions is a wonder when one considers the contumely and abuse that are constantly heaped upon them in all our cities. The newspapers, when there are no accounts of crime to print—and the assumption is that crimes and casualties, if they are horrid enough, are the principal events in the annals of mankind worth chronicling—can always print suggestions of the crimes of the police. The reporter, a human being himself, dissatisfied because the policemen cannot gratify his hunger for sensation, is not to blame, perhaps; he views life from the standpoint of his own necessities, and his conception of life is of a series of exciting tragedies enacted with a view to making the first edition interesting, so that the ears of the populace may be assaulted in the gloom of each evening’s dusk by that hideous bellowing of the news “boy,” whose heavy voice booms through the shade like some mighty portent of disaster in the world.

This all sounds pretty hopeless, but if morals are to be wrought by and through policemen, I am sure we shall have to pay higher salaries, and procure men who are themselves so moral that their consciences are troubled only by the sins of others; there is no other way. Unless, of course, anything is left in these modern days of the theory of the development of individual character. But that is the program of a thousand years.

As for the future of municipal government in this land, I venture to set down this prediction: That no appreciable advance will be made, no appreciable advance can be made in any fundamental sense, so long as the so-called moral issue is the pivot on which municipal elections turn, or so long as it is allowed to remain to bedevil officials, to monopolize their time and to exhaust their energies, so that they have little of either left for their proper work of administration.

Either cities must have home rule, including the local police power, with the right to regulate amusements and resorts and even vices according to the will of the people in that city, whatever the rural view may be, or some authority other than the mayor, and far wiser and nobler than any mayor I ever knew or heard of, must be raised up by the state in whom may be united the powers and functions of a beadle, a censor, and a dictator. I have not the slightest idea where one so wise and pure is to be found, but doubtless there are plenty who do, if their modesty would permit them to speak.

XLIII

I used to recall, during the early and acute phase of this discussion, an incident that occurred in the old Springfield days in Loami, down in the Sangamon country. The little village in those days could boast an institution unlike any, perhaps, in the land, unless it were to be found in some small hamlet in the South. In the public square, on a space worn smooth and hard as asphalt, a great circle was drawn, and here, every day when the weather was fine, a company of old men gathered and played marbles. What the game was I do not know; some development of one of the boys’ games, no doubt, but with what improvements and embellishments only the old men who understood and played it could say. Its enthralled votaries played with large marbles, which spun from their gnarled and horny knuckles all day long, with a shifting crowd of onlookers gaping at their prowess. The players were old and dignified, and took their sport seriously. There were to be seen, about that big ring, sages who had sat on juries and been swayed by the arguments of Lincoln; there were gray veterans who had gone with Sherman to the sea and had been with Grant at Appomattox; and now, in their declining years, they found pleasure and a mildly stimulating excitement in this exercise. The skill they developed in the game is said by those who have studied the subject on the ground to have been considerable; some testify that these elders had raised their sport to the point of scientific dignity, and that the ability they displayed ranked them as the equals of golfers or of billiardists.

The exciting tournaments went on for years, the old gentlemen were happy, the little village was peaceful and contented, when suddenly the town was shocked by a new sensation. Loami elected a reform administration. How it came about I do not know; some local muckraker may have practiced his regenerating art, or perhaps some little rivulet of the reform wave just then inundating the larger world outside may have trickled down into Loami. What privilege in the town was menaced I do not know; what portion of eminent respectability felt its perquisites in danger I cannot say; but Privilege seems to have done what it always does when pursued—namely, it began to cry for the reformation of persons instead of conditions. The new reform mayor, like many another mayor, was influenced; and, looking about for someone to reform, his eye wandered out of the window of the town hall one May morning and lighted on the grizzled marble-players, and he ordered the constable into action.

Upon what legal grounds he based his edict I cannot say. It is not vital for, as there were about sixteen thousand laws then running in his jurisdiction, it would not have been difficult to justify his action on legal grounds. It will be remembered that the old men were playing in the public square; perhaps they played “for keeps,” and it may have been that there were certain little understandings of a speculative nature on the side. Above all, the old men were enjoying themselves, and if this were not a sufficient offense what could be? And if a constable’s highest duty were not to interfere with the enjoyment of other folks what would become of the constitution and the law?

At any rate the old men were forbidden to play, their game was rudely interrupted, their ring obliterated, their marbles confiscated. There was, of course, resistance; some skirmishing and scrimmaging; a heated, acrimonious proceeding in the mayor’s court, and afterward hatred and strife and bad feeling, the formation of factions, and other conditions catalogued under law and order. But at length the space worn so smooth under the trees near the bandstand was sodded, and the old fellows might gather in silent contemplation of a new sign, “Keep off the Grass,” and reflect upon this supreme vindication of authority.