The leaven in a great city

by Lillian William Betts

There are leaders so strong and tactful that year after year their reign is unquestioned. Only the police and the ambulance surgeons know when there is an attempted revolution—when the leader's right is questioned by another would-be leader. There is only one issue—the man; nobody cares for the principle—if there be a difference of principle—involved.

In one of the old sections of the city in which is a ward that for forty years has excelled in crime; a section which at the present time presents the meanest and lowest of the tenements in New York; in which there is less effort to counteract the evils of the environment of the homes or change the environment due to the control of the "boss" than in any other section, a political feud culminated in the fall of 1901, defeating the man who had been the leader for years. It was stated that the man who won had expended $35,000; the man who lost, $12,000 in the struggle. This is a section where poverty is the universal inheritance of the people who make this section home.

For weeks the section was in a condition of constant warfare. The smallest boys were organized as gangs and shouted the name of the leader they had chosen their hero. Boys of five wore the buttons of their heroes. From fire-escapes, on wagons hung bits of white cloth declaring the names of the contestants. One of these, to avoid unpleasant embarrassment, had gone to California after the Lexow investigation. A favorite legend displayed by his enemy's friends was, "Paddy is the man who to Californy ran." This was displayed on one fire-escape on which opened the windows of two families, each espousing the cause of the contending leaders. The week before the balloting for leader the legend was kept in place by the constant vigilance for twenty-four hours of the day by the family whose sentiments it expressed. "Paddy" was defeated. The next morning the two neighbors, who had been enemies for weeks, leaned, each from her own window, chatting amicably, while the son of one was arranging the legend on the fire-escape to include both families. On either side was gracefully arranged an American flag, while the harp of Erin hung just in the middle of the fire-escape. Peace reigned in Warsaw. "Paddy's" friends, like the fairies of childhood, disappeared in the night. The whole district, as one man, accepted the change of rulers, and the new leader's banners were thrown to the breeze everywhere. Nothing succeeds like success in the tenement-house regions. For a couple of weeks peace seemed to reign in the district. The followers of the old leader found themselves displaced; new followers controlled the favors in the district. There began a new distribution of patronage. Then the old leader's displaced friends, with a few loyal souls, rallied about him. He had made money enough through his political affiliations to be defiant, and announced that the political corruption of the party to which he had belonged compelled him to rally to the support of the movement to overthrow it. Some of his followers were loyal to bravery, and declared, too, against the political system. Two of them, because of these declarations, were discharged forty-eight hours later from places in a city department where they drew salaries of $1200 per year. Their places were given to two of the new leader's followers. Two weeks later all had returned to the old allegiance, and the papers announced that the head of the Tammany system had decided that the patronage of the district would be evenly divided between the two factions.

Independence of action is costly under such a system; costly in loss of wages to the voter; of food, raiment, shelter to his family.

A voter who refuses to surrender the ease of his home or the pleasure of his club for the good of the district in which his home is located is not in a position to criticise his poor neighbor who will not jeopardize the position secured by his vote that supports his family to maintain the theory of American citizenship. Why should he make sacrifices to free the city from disgrace when his independent neighbor refuses to sacrifice his ease to protect his family from the inevitable evils of a corrupt city government?

It was the conferring the rights of citizenship on immigrants almost as soon as they landed that fastened on New York an evil that has grown until the city has been held in the shackles of a spoils system that overshadows its commercial supremacy and makes it the argument against democratic government. The heaviest disgrace for this condition rests not on the men who profit by the system but on the good men who permit it to develop. It was the logical result of their indifference to the city's good and their responsibility for that good. This inactivity on the part of the mass of responsible citizens made the control of the city offices for personal ends easy to the men who, because of lack of training and moral turpitude, could not conceive of a service for other than personal ends. Shrewdness made them see that the immigrant was the ladder on which they could climb to political power and stability. They met the immigrant as friend and neighbor; they secured him work; they schooled him to citizenship, and began at once to train him in that deadliest of all influences in a democracy, class in politics. So long as this system of education prevails, the appearance of a candidate for local office who does not bear the "hall-mark" of the neighborhood will be resented.

EARLY MORNING AMONG THE PUSHCARTS.

As time went on and the immigrants came from many countries, a new evil sprang up—the race section; the section where, maintaining all the characteristics of the country from which the people came, the men exercise the rights of citizenship at the behest of a political trainer who is able to promise favors for obedience, and work vengeance for disobedience. Behind him is a power which he must obey until the day comes when by his own shrewdness he is able to cross swords with those above him in the political system, becoming himself a dictator. In the process of his evolution from ward heeler to district leader he has trained those who follow him so well that he duplicates himself scores of times, increasing his power every time he makes a follower, either by fear or favor, perpetuating the system that makes the city, as has been aptly said, a "gold mine" which it costs the operators nothing to work.