Steffens himself is a proof of the evil conditions: a man who has spent ten years studying our politics, who went to the task with no preconceptions, and only a passion for honesty and fair dealing—and who has been made into a thorough-going radical by the irresistible logic of facts. It was his particular service to the Republic to trace the stream of graft to its fountain-head, which is what he calls “big business”; and the series of papers in which he proved that thesis to our people will long be studied as models of the higher journalism—the journalism which is to ordinary newspaper writing what statesmanship is to politics.
As I say, there is no need of proof; but simply by way of illustration, and to call the picture to the reader’s mind, let me quote a few paragraphs from one of these papers—“Pittsburg, a City Ashamed”:
“The railroads began the corruption of this city. There always was some dishonesty, as the oldest public men I talked with said, but it was occasional and criminal till the first great corporation made it business-like and respectable. The Pennsylvania Railroad was in the system from the start, and as the other roads came in and found the city government bought up by those before them, they purchased their rights of way by outbribing the older roads, then joined the ring to acquire more rights for themselves and to keep belated rivals out. As corporations multiplied and capital branched out, corruption increased naturally, but the notable characteristic of the ‘Pittsburg plan’ of misgovernment was that it was not a haphazard growth, but a deliberate, intelligent organisation.... The Pennsylvania Railroad is a power in Pennsylvania politics, it is part of the State ring, and part also of the Pittsburg ring. The city paid in all sorts of rights and privileges, streets, bridges, etc., and in certain periods the business interests of the city were sacrificed to leave the Pennsylvania road in exclusive control of a freight traffic it could not handle alone.”
The “bosses” who ruled Pittsburg were Magee and Flynn, and Mr. Steffens prints in full the agreement between them and Senator Quay, by which they divided the boodle of the state. “Magee and Flynn were the government and the law. How could they commit a crime? If they wanted something from the city they passed an ordinance granting it, and if some other ordinance was in conflict it was repealed or amended. If the laws of the state stood in the way, so much the worse for the laws of the state; they were amended. If the constitution of the state proved a barrier, as it did to all special legislation, the Legislature enacted a law for cities of the second class (which was Pittsburg alone) and the courts upheld the Legislature. If there were opposition on the side of public opinion, there was a use for that also.
“As I have said before, unlawful acts were exceptional and unnecessary in Pittsburg. Magee did not steal franchises and sell them. His councils gave them to him. He and the busy Flynn took them, and built railways, which Magee sold and bought and financed and conducted, like any other man whose successful career is held up as an example for young men. His railways, combined into the Consolidated Traction Company, were capitalised at thirty million dollars. There was scandal in Chicago over the granting of charters for twenty-eight and fifty years. Magee’s read, ‘for nine hundred and fifty years,’ ‘for nine hundred and ninety-nine years,’ ‘said Charter is to exist a thousand years,’ ‘said Charter is to exist perpetually,’ and the Councils gave franchises for the ‘life of the charter.’”
And all this was a regular profession, a custom of the country, which its devotees studied. “Two of them told me repeatedly that they travelled about the country looking up the business, and that a fellowship had grown up among boodling aldermen of the leading cities in the United States. Committees from Chicago would come to St. Louis to find out what ‘new games’ the St. Louis boodlers had, and they gave the St. Louisans hints as to how they ‘did the business’ in Chicago. So the Chicago and St. Louis boodlers used to visit Cleveland and Pittsburg and all the other cities, or, if the distance was too great, they got their ideas by those mysterious channels which run all through the ‘World of Graft.’ The meeting place in St. Louis was Decker’s stable, and ideas unfolded there were developed into plans which the boodlers say to-day, are only in abeyance. In Decker’s stable was born the plan to sell the Union Market; and though the deal did not go through, the boodlers, when they saw it failing, made the market-men pay ten thousand dollars for killing it. This scheme is laid aside for the future. Another that failed was to sell the court-house, and this was well under way when it was discovered that the ground on which this public building stands was given to the city on condition that it was to be used for a court-house and nothing else.... The grandest idea of all came from Philadelphia. In that city the gas-works were sold out to a private concern, and the water-works were to be sold next. The St. Louis fellows have been trying ever since to find a purchaser for their water-works. The plant is worth at least forty million dollars. But the boodlers thought they could let it go at fifteen million dollars, and get one million dollars or so themselves for the bargain. ‘The scheme was to do it and skip,’ said one of the boodlers who told me about it, ‘and if you could mix it all up with some filtering scheme it could be done. Only some of us thought we could make more than one million dollars out of it—a fortune apiece. It will be done some day.’...
“Such, then, is the boodling system as we see it in St. Louis. Everything the city owned was for sale by the officers elected by the people. The purchasers might be willing or unwilling takers; they might be citizens or outsiders; it was all one to the city government. So long as the members of the combines got the proceeds they would sell out the town. Would? They did and they will. If a city treasurer runs away with fifty thousand dollars there is a great halloo about it. In St. Louis the regularly organised thieves who rule have sold fifty million dollars’ worth of franchises and other valuable municipal assets. This is the estimate made for me by a banker, who said that the boodlers got not one-tenth of the value of the things they sold.”
Two or three years ago, before I met Mr. Steffens, I thought that he knew only as much as he “let on”; and so I wrote him an “open letter,” to point out the consequences of this régime of “big business.” The story of this manuscript is an amusing one, and worth telling for the light it throws upon my argument. Mr. Steffens was so good as to say that it was the best criticism of himself that he had ever read; and it was scheduled for publication in one of our three or four largest magazines. But alas—it was purchased by the enthusiastic young editor, and then read by the elderly and unenthusiastic proprietor. When I rebelled at the long wait which followed, the proprietor invited me to dinner, and unbosomed his soul to me. He was the dearest old gentleman I ever met, and he put his arm about me while he explained the situation. “My boy,” he said, “you are a very clever chap, and you know a lot; but why don’t you put it all into a book, where you can’t hurt anyone but yourself? Why do you try to get it into my magazine, and scare away my half million subscribers?”
So the letter was shelved. But the questions it asked are now the questions which events are asking of the American people; and so I shall take the advice of the elderly and unenthusiastic proprietor—and publish some of the letter in a book! It ran as follows:
This is the question I have wished to ask you, Mr. Steffens. “A revolution has happened,” you tell us; we have no longer “a government of the people, by the people, for the people,”—we have “a government of the people, by the rascals, for the rich.” And if we find that that revolution, which has overthrown the law, and which defies the law, cannot be put down and overcome by the means of the law—what are we going to do then? Are we going to sit still, and content ourselves with saying it is too bad? Are we going to bear it—to bear it forever? Can we bear it forever? And if we cannot bear it forever what are we going to do when we can bear it no longer?