Disfranchised, without a choice of parties; denied, so the Municipal League declares, the ancient right of petition; and now to lose “free speech,”—is there no hope for Philadelphia? Yes, the Philadelphians have a very present hope. It is in their new mayor, John Weaver. There is nothing in his record to inspire faith in an outsider. He speaks himself of two notorious “miscarriages of justice” during his term as District Attorney; he was the nominee of the ring; and the ring men have confidence in him. But so have the people, and Mr. Weaver makes fair promises. So did Ashbridge. There is this difference, however: Mr. Weaver has made a good start. He compromised with the machine on his appointments, but he declared against the protection of vice, for free voting, and he stopped some “wholesale grabs” or “maces” that appeared in the Legislature, just before he took office.
One was a bill to enable (ring) companies to “appropriate, take, and use all water within this commonwealth and belonging either to public or to private persons as it may require for its private purposes.” This was a scheme to sell out the water works of Philadelphia, and all other such plants in the State. Another bill was to open the way to a seizure of the light and power of the city and of the State. Martin and Warwick “leased” the city gas works. Durham and his crowd wanted a whack at it. “It shall be lawful,” the bill read, “for any city, town, or borough owning any gas works or electric light plant for supplying light, heat, and power, to sell, lease, or otherwise dispose of the same to individuals or corporations, and in order to obtain the best possible returns therefor, such municipal body may ... vest in the lessees or purchasers the exclusive right, both as against such municipal corporations and against any and all other persons and corporations, to supply gas or electricity....” As in St. Louis, the public property of the city is to be sold off. These schemes are to go through later, I am told, but on Mr. Weaver’s declarations that he would not “stand for them,” they were laid over.
It looks as if the Philadelphians were right about Mr. Weaver, but what if they are? Think of a city putting its whole faith in one man, in the hope that John Weaver, an Englishman by birth, will give them good government! And why should he do that? Why should he serve the people and not the ring? The ring can make or break him; the people of Philadelphia can neither reward nor punish him. For even if he restores to them their ballots and proves himself a good mayor, he cannot succeed himself; the good charter forbids more than one term.
CHICAGO: HALF FREE AND FIGHTING ON
(October, 1903)
While these articles on municipal corruption were appearing, readers of them were writing to the magazine asking what they, as citizens, were to do about it all. As if I knew; as if “we” knew; as if there were any one way to deal with this problem in all places under any circumstances. There isn’t, and if I had gone around with a ready-made reform scheme in the back of my head, it would have served only to keep me from seeing straight the facts that would not support my theory. The only editorial scheme we had was to study a few choice examples of bad city government and tell how the bad was accomplished, then seek out, here and abroad, some typical good governments and explain how the good was done;—not how to do it, mind you, but how it had been done. Though the bad government series was not yet complete, since so many good men apparently want to go to work right off, it was decided to pause for an instance on the reform side. I have chosen the best I have found. Political grafters have been cheerful enough to tell me they have “got lots of pointers” from the corruption articles. I trust the reformers will pick up some “pointers” from—Chicago.
Yes, Chicago. First in violence, deepest in dirt; loud, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, irreverent, new; an overgrown gawk of a village, the “tough” among cities, a spectacle for the nation;—I give Chicago no quarter and Chicago asks for none. “Good,” they cheer, when you find fault; “give us the gaff. We deserve it and it does us good.” They do deserve it. Lying low beside a great lake of pure, cold water, the city has neither enough nor good enough water. With the ingenuity and will to turn their sewer, the Chicago River, and make it run backwards and upwards out of the Lake, the city cannot solve the smoke nuisance. With resources for a magnificent system of public parking, it is too poor to pave and clean the streets. They can balance high buildings on rafts floating in mud, but they can’t quench the stench of the stockyards. The enterprise which carried through a World’s Fair to a world’s triumph is satisfied with two thousand five hundred policemen for two million inhabitants and one hundred and ninety-six square miles of territory, a force so insufficient (and inefficient) that it cannot protect itself, to say nothing of handling mobs, riotous strikers, and the rest of that lawlessness which disgraces Chicago. Though the city has an extra-legal system of controlling vice and crime, which is so effective that the mayor has been able to stop any practices against which he has turned his face—the “panel game,” the “hat game,” “wine rooms,” “safe blowing”;—though gambling is limited, regulated, and fair, and prostitution orderly; though, in short, through the power of certain political and criminal leaders—the mayor has been able to make Chicago, criminally speaking, “honest”—burglary and cruel hold-ups are tolerated. As government, all this is preposterous.
But I do not cite Chicago as an example of good municipal government, nor yet of good American municipal government; New York has, for the moment, a much better administration. But neither is Chicago a good example of bad government. There is grafting there, but after St. Louis it seems petty and after Philadelphia most unprofessional. Chicago is interesting for the things it has “fixed.” What is wrong there is ridiculous. Politically and morally speaking, Chicago should be celebrated among American cities for reform, real reform, not moral fits and political uprisings, not reform waves that wash the “best people” into office to make fools of themselves and subside leaving the machine stronger than ever,—none of these aristocratic disappointments of popular government,—but reform that reforms, slow, sure, political, democratic reform, by the people, for the people. That is what Chicago has. It has found a way. I don’t know that it is the way. All that I am sure of is that Chicago has something to teach every city and town in the country—including Chicago.
For Chicago is reformed only in spots. A political map of the city would show a central circle of white with a few white dots and dashes on a background of black, gray, and yellow. But the city once was pretty solid black. Criminally it was wide open; commercially it was brazen; socially it was thoughtless and raw; it was a settlement of individuals and groups and interests with no common city sense and no political conscience. Everybody was for himself, none was for Chicago. There were political parties, but the organizations were controlled by rings, which in turn were parts of State rings, which in turn were backed and used by leading business interests through which this corrupt and corrupting system reached with its ramifications far and high and low into the social organization. The grafting was miscellaneous and very general; but the most open corruption was that which centered in the City Council. It never was well organized and orderly. The aldermen had “combines,” leaders, and prices, but, a lot of good-natured honest thieves, they were independent of party bosses and “the organizations,” which were busy at their own graft. They were so unbusinesslike that business men went into the City Council to reduce the festival of blackmail to decent and systematic bribery. These men helped matters some, but the happy-go-lucky spirit persisted until the advent of Charles T. Yerkes from Philadelphia, who, with his large experience of Pennsylvania methods, first made boodling a serious business. He had to go right into politics himself to get anything done. But he did get things done. The aldermanic combine was fast selling out the city to its “best citizens,” when some decent men spoke up and called upon the people to stop it, the people who alone can stop such things.
And the people of Chicago stopped it; they have beaten boodling. That is about all they have done so far, but that is about all they have tried deliberately and systematically to do, and the way they have done that proves that they can do anything they set out to do. They worry about the rest; half free, they are not half satisfied and not half done. But boodling, with its backing of “big men” and “big interests,” is the hardest evil a democracy has to fight, and a people who can beat it can beat anything.