For a generation the Common Council of Chicago has been governed by a majority of “boodlers.” Aldermen have been, in that period, fairly representative of the wards by which they were elected. The various nationalities, clustered together in such a manner as to give rise to the naming of a ward according to the nativity of its inhabitants, such as Polish, Swedish, Bohemian, German, Irish, etc., have selected as their representatives in the Council, men who, as a rule, in private life were honest. Their selection was usually upon strictly party grounds. The “independent” voter, in municipal elections, is a growth of quite recent years. The class appears to be increasing with great rapidity and to be finding a means of concentrating its strength at the polls.
As honest as an alderman may be when he first takes his seat, he soon finds himself surrounded by influences which appear to exert a fascinating power over him. He must elect to be for or against the gang. Prior to the allowance of a yearly salary the temptation to join the gang was heightened by the promising returns, in a pecuniary way, which the gang could almost guarantee the incoming member. An alderman “once prepossessed is half seduced” and, since it is almost axiomatic that the total seduction of a prepossessed alderman is a mere matter of time and opportunity, the fall always comes when some high spirited, progressive, and perhaps, God-professing citizen, offers from his purse a goodly compensation to the gang for the grant of some public privilege. Thus the public privilege is seized upon by the aldermanic gang as a private privilege which it disposes of to the broad-clothed briber at a price satisfactory to its members. The bribers are found in that sanctified element of the community which attends church under the pretext of fearing and worshipping God.
“But yet, O Lord! confess I must,
At times I’m fash’d wi’ fleshly lust;
An’ sometimes, too, wi’ worldly trust
Vile self gets in!
But thou rememb’rest we are dust,
Defil’d in sin.”
On secular days, its leaders, the accomplished, in thieves’ parlance, the “slick” bribers, whisper their temptations into the ears of public servants willing to become their private tools, like the devil in the garden of Eden, “who squat like a toad close to the ear of Eve.”
The “gang” spots its man with remarkable foresight, and year after year its power to manage public affairs to its own private advantage has become more and more felt by the public.
For the first time in a generation, in this year 1899, it is believed an honest majority is in control of the council. The pleasurable fact is that the majority was elected upon a non-partisan basis, the recommendations of a civic body, as to the honesty and capacity of the candidates in the several wards, having been acted upon by the voters in preference to those of party nominating conventions.
It is, however, too early to predict a new era in the history of the council. “All signs fail in dry weather,” and at this moment there are no indications of an approaching shower of “boodle.” The street car franchise question is drowsy and will not be awakened until the corporations controlling the lines are ready to do so. That they will not do so until some legislation is enacted in 1901, is too apparent to require an effort to prove. For one year at least there is a majority in the council which will, it is hoped, protect public rights; and it is also hoped that in 1900 this majority will not only be retained, but also greatly augmented. Projects may be hidden which in the near, or not distant, future, will come forth to plague the consciences of a number of newly admitted members and put their integrity to the severest of tests.
The power of the Common Council, as confided to it by legislation, over the affairs of two millions of people, is too immense to be wielded by a single ordinance making body. Under our form of municipal government it controls the finances and the property of the city, regulates licenses to sell liquor and to carry on various classes of business, such as auctioneers, distillers, grocers, lumber yards, livery stables, money changers, brokers, junk stores, billiard, bagatelle and pigeon-hole tables, pin alleys, ball alleys, hackmen, draymen, omnibus drivers, carters, cabmen, porters, expressmen, hawkers, peddlers, pawnbrokers, theatres, shows and amusements, and many other classes of occupations.
Its power over the uses to which the streets may be applied is, in one sense, limited; in another almost unlimited. While limited by the charter to the power to lay them out, open, widen and improve them, prevent encroachments and obstructions thereon, lighting and cleansing them, its power to regulate them is almost unlimited. “To regulate” the use of the streets is a broad power, and while several distinct grants of power of regulation are contained in the statute, such as preventing the throwing of ashes and garbage upon them, their use for signs, sign posts, awnings, etc., the carrying of banners, placards, advertisements, etc., therein, the flying of flags, banners or signs across them from house to house, or traffic and sales upon them, nevertheless, the uses to which they may be applied in the way of business enterprises for advertising purposes, are as numerous and as varied as the minds of the originators of the schemes are original and unique.
For the right to use, therefore, in a given way in a given ward, the “gang” alderman long ago established and still maintains a schedule of rates. They are graduated from the insignificant charge for permission to “string a banner,” or establish a fruit stand, up to the highly respectable “rake off” demanded for the use of them for switch tracks, or street railway purposes. It is not so many years ago that a leading morning newspaper furnished the public with some information on this subject, upon the occasion of the passage of an ordinance granting valuable privileges to a railway corporation. Four members of the council, not the “Big Four” of olden times, but the modern “Big Four” leaders of “de gang,” were said to have received for their manipulation of the ordinance, and the organization of their followers for its support, the quite comfortable sum of $25,000 each. Their supporters were to receive $8,000 each for their votes, while the “go between” received $100,000 and a few city lots. The standard price per vote for valuable franchises is $5,000, yet in a pinch of private necessity, a few votes can be commanded at lower figures. The contingency of a possible veto is provided for, so that in that event one-fourth must be added for the second vote to pass the measure over the veto. Thus it has gone on not only with respect to street railway grants, but also for electric lighting, telephone conduits, gas pipes, private telephone wires and that long list of uses devised by business men for the advertisement of their personal interests. The peanut stand privilege, the fruit stand privilege, the bootblack privilege, the banner privilege, all pay cash to some “gang” alderman, as do the policy rooms, pool rooms and saloons with wine room privileges.