This is all by way of introduction to the story of an article that was not written. About the time the Pittsburg flare-up began to show itself in the papers, it occurred to us that some exposition of the situation there would be of value and interest to our readers. Before going about it, we debated it very carefully. Some of us in the office (and this magazine is edited by all of us) were fairly familiar with the subject, and we believed it would subserve no useful purpose to tackle it along the "Shame of the Cities" lines. We agreed that the way to approach Pittsburg was to consider what had happened there, not as a sporadic outburst, but as an economic symptom. Whom could we get that was far enough from the controversies involved to treat the subject objectively and with a big perspective? Brand Whitlock. The Mayor of Toledo knows more about cities and their governments, and the evils that arise within them, than any other man, and he can write—with knowledge, with sympathy, with clarity. Also he knew Pittsburg. So we telegraphed to find if he was free to write an article, and, when he replied in the affirmative, the following letter was sent him:
April 1, 1910. DEAR MR. WHITLOCK:
The article we want is on Pittsburg. It is neither our purpose nor our desire merely to "muckrake" Pittsburg or any other city. The eruption there is typical of similar conditions in other great civic centers throughout the country, and it seems to us it might be made the text of a diagnosis of the whole municipal problem in America.
Here are a few thoughts that occur to me which might be represented:
We have come to realize that the real trouble in our country is Privilege. Big business, in its ruthless pursuit of results, has the ultimate responsibility for the ills that confront us in political, social, and commercial life. The graft scandals, the bank defalcations, etc., are simply symptoms of internal disorders. They are the eruptions of the disease.
Pittsburg might be called the typical get-rich-quick community. Its great wealth is based on the abundant coal and iron with which the Creator loaded its environment. Down on those deposits fasten thousands of Americans seized with the mania of money-making. They coin the coal and iron into millions. They work feverishly; they work their men furiously. It's a mad, frenzied scramble for success and sensation. To get rich quicker, they exact excessive protection from Congress—first to prop up infant industries, then to consolidate abnormal profits. If the government undertakes to deny their demands, they bluster first, then intrigue, then intimidate. Mills are closed down; the "prosperity" of the country is threatened, lobbies are organized, corruption funds subscribed, until Congress succumbs and new "jokers" are written into steel tariffs.
In the meantime a huge city is upreared. But this city is run for the benefit of its industries, not for the comfort of its inhabitants. Street railway, gas, electric corporations are organized, ostensibly to serve the community, actually enabling a greedy group to make more money. Again, what cannot be gained by request is won by force and guile.
Over and over again the various processes are repeated, until you have built up a sort of City Monstrous, dedicated to machinery, in which all the men and many of the women are just machines, and there is no ideal save that of feverish industrial adventure and accomplishment. Power—blind, ruthless, marvel-working, bending backs and bodies to its will—is Pittsburg's god, and Success its divine attribute Success that spells Gold, the instrument of exploitation and sensation. What wonder that weaker men, confronted by the colossal rewards of industrial conquest, are frenzied with the gold fever? In the absence of communal patriotism, graft becomes an incident. Graft and greed are the minor watchwords of success. Get money, anyway—but get it. Is it surprising that cashiers graft, that aldermen graft, that city officials graft, that there's a very pandemonium of graft? Isn't it the way the other fellows get rich?
All of a sudden the poison clogs the pores, and the infection blotches the surface—and every one is horrified. The great manufacturers, the great merchants, the great lawyers—high priests of the Power God—throw up their hands. Can such things be? Dreadful, horrible!—blindly oblivious of their own responsibility for the epidemic.
More startling still to the conquerors were the pitiless revelations of the Survey, exhibiting in mathematical terms the cost to the human factor of this monstrous material success. Hordes of anaemic, emaciated men and women, exhausted by long hours of toil, piled thick in wretched hovels, underfed, half-clothed, dragging out a miserable existence unrelieved by leisure or rest or recreation—the Juggernaut toll of efficiency—of the passion for results at any price. Against this horror, what avails Pittsburg's panorama of splendid churches, of lordly palaces, of noble art museums, of great orchestras, richly endowed educational institutions—the patriotic tribute of the conquerors to civilization? What is this boasted civilization of ours worth—not Pittsburg's only, for Pittsburg is an incident—if it be reared on the wrecked and depleted bodies of men at its base?