One need go into no further details as to why and wherefore Berlin, Hamburg, even Cologne in these days, Leipsic, Düsseldorf, Dresden, Munich, keep their streets in such fashion, that they are as corridors to the outside of Irish hovels, as compared to the city streets of America; for the definite and all-including answer and explanation are contained in the two words: no politics.
Berlin is governed by a town council, under a chief burgomaster and a burgomaster, and the civic magistracy, and the police, these last, however, under state control. The chief burgomaster and the burgomaster are chosen from trained and experienced candidates, and are always men of wide experience and severe technical training, who have won a reputation in other towns as successful municipal administrators.
In May, 1912, Wermuth, the son of the blind King of Hanover’s right-hand man, and he himself the recently resigned imperial secretary of the treasury, was elected Oberburgomaster of Berlin. Such is the standing of the men named to govern the German cities. It is as though Elihu Root should be elected mayor of New York, with Colonel John Biddle as police commissioner, and Colonel Goethals as commissioner of street-cleaning. May the day come when we can avail ourselves of the services of such men to govern our cities!
The magistracy numbers 34, of whom 18 receive salaries. The town council consists of 144 members, half of whom must be householders. They are elected for six years, and one-third of them retire every two years, but are eligible for re-election. They are elected by the three-class system of voting, which is described in another chapter. This three-class system of voting results in certain inequalities. In Prussia, for example, fifteen per cent. of the voters have two-thirds of the electoral power, and relatively the same may be said of Berlin.
Unlike the municipal elections in American cities, the voters have only a simple ballot to put in the ballot-box. National and state politics play no part, and the voter is not confused by issues that have nothing to do with his city government. The government of their cities is arranged for on the basis that officials will be honest, and work for the city and not for themselves. Our city organizations often give the air of living under laws framed to prevent thievery, bribery, blackmailing, and surreptitious murder. We make our municipal laws as though we were in the stone age.
These German cities are also, unlike American cities, autonomous. They have no state-made charters to interpret and to obey; they are not restricted as to debt or expenditure; and they are not in the grip of corporations that have bought or leased water, gas, electricity, or street-railway franchises, and these, represented by the wealthiest and most intelligent citizens, become, through the financial undertakings and interests of these very same citizens, often the worst enemies of their own city. The German cities are spared also the confusion, which is injected into our politics by a fortunately small class of reformers, with the prudish peculiarities of morbid vestals; men who cannot work with other men, and who bring the virile virtues, the sound charities, and wholesome morality into contempt.
We all know him, the smug snob of virtue. You may find him a professor at the university; you may find him leading prayer-meetings and preaching pure politics; you may find him the bloodless philanthropist; you may find him a rank atheist, with his patents for the bringing in of his own kingdom of heaven. These are the men above all others who make the Tammanyizing of our politics possible. Honest men cannot abide the hot-house atmosphere of their self-conscious virtue. Nothing is more discouraging to robust virtue than the criticisms of teachers of ethics, who live in coddled comfort, upon private means, and other people’s ideas.
Germany is just now suffering from the spasms of moral colic, due to overeating. All luxury is in one form or another overeating. Berlin itself has grown too rapidly into the vicious ways of a metropolis, where spenders and wasters congregate. In 1911 the betting-machines at the Berlin race-tracks took in $7,546,000, of which the state took for its license, 16 2/3 per cent. There were 128 days of racing, while in England they have 540 days’ racing in the year!
In 1911, 1,300,000 strangers visited Berlin, of whom 1,046,162 were Germans, 97,683 Russians, 39,555 Austrians, 30,550 Americans, and 16,600 English. Berlin killed 2,000,000 beasts for food, including 10,500 horses; she takes care of 3,000 nightly in her night-shelters, puts away $17,500,000 in savings-banks, and has deposits therein of $90,500,000. On the other hand, she has built a palace of vice costing $1,625,000, in which on many nights between 11 P. M. and 2 A. M. they sell $8,000 worth of champagne. No one knows his Berlin, who has not partaken of a “Kalte Ente,” or a “Landwehrtopp,” a “Schlummerpunsch,” or “Eine Weisse mit einer Strippe.” There is still a boyish notion about dissipation, and they have their own great classic to quote from, who in “Faust” pours forth this rather raw advice for gayety:
“Greift nur hinein ins volle Menschenleben!
Ein jeder lebt’s, nicht vielen ist’s bekannt,
Und wo Ihr’s packt, da ist es interessant!”