History for ready reference, Volume 7
Volume 11, page 653.
MOROCCO: A. D. 1896-1906. The Creeping of the French Algerian Boundary into Moroccan Territory. A Justification of the Encroachment.
"Something has happened during the two weeks preceding the Conference at Algeciras [see EUROPE: A. D. 1904-1906], which may or may not be brought to the attention of the international diplomats. France from the start has refused to submit her doings along the Algerian frontier to the discussion of the conference. That concerns herself and Morocco alone. What has been happening would in any case put the conference in face of an accomplished fact. Some time ago M. Jonnart, Governor-General of Algiers, was informed that emissaries from Fez were notifying the frontier tribes, whose submission to France dates only from the last few years, that Germany would help the Sultan very shortly to force the French to evacuate their tribal territories. … M. Jonnart at once set out on a long and ceremonious visit to the tribes along the extreme southern frontier. He was accompanied by General Lyautey, the ‘pacificating’ general, who has been M. Jaurès’ bugbear in this Moroccan affair. The Governor-General returned to Algiers Friday last, just in time to have his news ready for the conference. He has reason to be satisfied. Except for a vague idea that the Moroccan territory along the Algerian frontier is a ‘hled-es-siba’—a country where the Sultan has difficulty in collecting his taxes—the foreign press has not kept pace with what has been going on for the last ten years. In one word, during that time France has brought under her domination a stretch of territory of some thousands of square miles. It is true that this territory is sparsely settled by wilfully independent tribes, who so far alternately aided in the Algerian harvests and raided the French outposts. This situation quite justifies the action of the French troops, which has consisted in throwing forward the unbroken line of outposts that enclose and keep in order the French dominion, and not in any military conquest of volatile tribes. M. Jaurès always fell foul of the latter policy, which he ascribed to the military; but it would be as useless as it is absurd. What General Lyautey has been doing all these years, without Germany or any other friend of the Sultan giving sign of life, is not only reasonable: it is better—it has proved effective. And M. Jonnart’s tour has secured the formal submission of these tribes whose territory geographers have all along made a part of Tafilalt--the southeasternmost of the four ancient kingdoms which, together, make up the empire of Morocco. The boundary between Morocco and French territory in Algiers has never been settled since the original treaty of 1845. That drew a line from the coast southward about a hundred miles to Teniet-es-Sassi, four degrees of longitude west from Paris, and then stopped. Whatever was to the south—then a No Man’s Land, so far as France was concerned—was to be divided amicably along as natural a line as possible, leaving the east to France as a sphere of influence (the word had not yet been invented). During these sixty years the frontier line has remained about the same on the maps. But France has steadily prolonged her settled domination southward, gaining over a Mohammedan population by serving their material interests without offence to their religion. The railway now reaches Beni Ounif, only a short distance from Fighig, whose Amel is among those notified that Morocco with German help will soon send the French over the desert and far away. At Beni Ounif, besides the Grand Hotel for tourists, there are extensive counting houses for the trade of all the Hinterland, with an appropriate banking system, and everything to draw the Moroccan tribes. There is no doubt that this territory has always been nominally a part of Morocco. … And now M. Jonnart has visited officially the great Zaouia, or religious centre of Kenadsa, still farther to the west."
_Paris Special Correspondence New York Evening Post, February 3, 1906._
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MOROCCO: A. D. 1903. State of Affairs in the Moorish Sultanate. Abd el Aziz, the young Sultan. His expensive tastes. His enjoyment of the Playthings of Civilization and Science.
"Regarded as a Moorish ruler and leader, the late Sultan, Mulai Hassan, was a strong man, almost, perhaps, a great man. The loss of Morocco is that apparently she cannot produce his like in the present generation. She was richer a few years ago; and that is part of her decadence. Mulai Hassan had a companion of his right hand: Ba Hamed, the Grand Wazeer. In them Morocco could boast the possession of two strong men; crude, narrow of vision, even brutal and merciless, if judged by European standards, yet genuinely strong men. The greater of them died, and his subordinate successfully hid the fact (though the Court was journeying at the time) from all Morocco, masquerading as one in close attendance upon a Sultan whose corpse, as a fact, was tied in its litter, until city walls were reached, preparations made, and the succession of the youth Abd el Aziz assured. Be it remembered that Ba Hamed, the survivor, was a strong man in his own right. Young Abd el Aziz [who succeeded his father in 1894] was docile perforce, and Ba Hamed ruled, without pity, with greed, and quite unhampered by what Europe calls honour or justice. …
"Rather more than two years ago [1901], when already the country was perturbed by news of the French advance upon and occupation of Igli, the Moorish town which was regarded as the depot and junction via which the caravan traffic of the desert filtered through Morocco to the coast; at this critical juncture, in the thick of conflicting intrigues, poisonings, and official treachery, Ba Hamed, the greatly feared, greatly hated, and rigidly obeyed Wazeer, died at Marrakish, leaving many scheming heirs-presumptive to his office, but no single successor to the mantle of his authority, the inherent masterfulness of his personality.
"Still youthful Abd el Aziz IV. stretched forth both hands and personally took up the fallen reins of government with a great flourish of trumpets and display of energy. … Optimistic Europeans, naturally gratified by the active good sense with which Abd el Aziz checked his Filali tribesmen’s turbulent resentment of contact with the French in Igli and its oasis, freely predicted a new lease of life for the Moorish Empire. They credited the new broom with powers which, in view of its origin and environment, had been little short of miraculous. And they omitted reflection regarding the hand which moved the new broom. This was a power behind the Parasol, a latent intelligence, not wholly Moorish, capricious, feminine, subtle, unstable, and somewhat vitiated from long repression in an unwholesome atmosphere. The late Mulai Hassan’s Circassian wife, young Abd el Aziz’s mother, Lalla R’kia, had also found a dangerous emancipation in the death of Ba Hamed. …
"Casually observant Nazarenes saw rich, cruel officials swept from their high estate by wholesale, and predicted the birth of probity at Court. Notorious gainers by oppression were loaded with chains in Kasbah dungeons; the young Sultan’s brother, the One-Eyed, whom cautious Ba Hamed had kept secure in Tetuan prison, was established on parole at Mcquinez, and ‘Here’s positive purity of administration!’ cried the surface-reading hopeful in Christian-ridden Tangier.
"Of a sudden, all movement ceased. The young Sultan was lost sight of—behind the curtain. … It is not given to us to know anything of pale Lalla R’kia’s attitude during this breathing space. … (Lalla R’kia died last year.)
"Speaking metaphorically, his Shareefian Majesty Abd el Aziz reappeared on the arm of a commercial agent, a French Israelite, with a genius for the ‘placing’ of imported commodities. Allah’s Chosen had been initiated into the select manias of Europe, and become addicted to golfing, the use of the camera, the bicycle, and other less pretty pastimes from the West. …
"Commercial agents continued to press upon the young Sultan the latest and most expensive of electrical and other toys, and those far-seeing gentlemen, the newspaper correspondents, bade Europe take note of the remarkable enlightenment and progressive wisdom of the ruler of Morocco, as evidenced by his interest in motor cars and Broadwood pianos. And the friends of these optimistic gentry criticised the present writer as a croaker and a bird of ill-omen when he published in _The Fortnightly Review_ for July, 1901, the following extract from a letter sent him by a Moorish friend:
"‘To sum all up, my friend, I grieve because I find the affairs of my native land in parlous order, demanding as never before in the history of Morocco the guidance of a strong, clear mind, a veritable Sultan. That my country’s affairs most urgently need. They have a governing power composed of half a dozen corrupt creatures, of a corrupt, short-sighted, cruel, and desperately greedy Wazeer, whose rightful Lord is occupied exclusively in—Bah! We have spoken of those whose graves will be defiled, and of the trumpery gauds from Paris bazaars. And this, while the turbulent Sus is aflame, the far south-east a mine charged by French aggression, waiting only the match of knowledge of our Lord’s indifference; the country between Tafilalt and Fas is openly given over to brigandage and anarchy, and even Al Ksar, Arzila, and the Gharb, Tangiers outskirts, are full of unrest and disorder, crimes and indifference to crimes.’"
_A. J. Dawson, Morocco, the Moors, and the Powers (Fortnightly Review, February, 1903)._
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"I have not seen the Sultan face to face, but I have conversed with nearly all the leading Europeans who have been with him either at Marrakesh or Fez, and from what they have told me I have been forced to conclude that Mulai Abd-el-Aziz is a charming, kindly, headstrong man, suffering badly from youth, who delights in reforms for the sake of their novelty and lacks the brain power that distinguished his father, Mulai el Hassan, and his grandfather, Mulai Mohammed. While he stayed in his southern capital he was comparatively free from the attacks of commercial attaches and other rogues, whose designs upon his treasury should have been obvious, though he was guilty of many extravagances, including displays of fireworks that made his envoy to England speak slightingly of the special display arranged in his honour at the Crystal Palace. In Fez the agents surrounded him like summer flies. He has twelve motor cars and no roads to ride them over; he paid between three and four thousand pounds for a yacht, sixty feet long, that was to be used on the Sebu river, which is no more than thirty feet wide; in spite of the Koran’s prohibition, he has purchased a crown at a price I am afraid to name. He has put some of his soldiers into European uniforms and boots, only to find that they run away from Bu Hamara as readily as they did when dressed in native garments. He has developed an enthusiasm for photography—I have seen some of his work—and in addition to cameras with cases of pure gold, he has one apartment of his palace loaded from floor to ceiling with dark plates, and he was persuaded to order ten thousand francs’ worth of printing paper. He has a menagerie in the grounds of the palace at Fez, and on a day when it was reported that the lion sent from England had quarrelled with and killed the lion sent from Berlin, one of the European visitors to the court suggested to him that a contest between the victorious lion and the Bengal tiger would afford good sport. ‘No,’ said Abd-el-Aziz, ‘the lion cost me three thousand pounds!’ All Europe knows that the Sultan is poor."
_S. L. Bensusan, Britain, France, and the Moorish Empire (Contemporary Review, November, 1903)._
MOROCCO: A. D. 1903-1904. Appearance of the Mahdi, Bu Hamara, as a leader of Insurrection.
In 1903 there appeared in Morocco one of the prophetic pretenders called Mahdis, of whom so many have arisen in the Moslem world, to take advantage of occasions of religious excitement, and to lead a rising of wild tribes. This Moorish Mahdi, known as Bu Hamara, was helped to a leadership of insurrection by an incident which greatly stirred the religious temper of tribes wherever known. An English missionary was killed at Fez, and the murderer, flying to a sanctuary of special sanctity, was pursued thereto by the Sultan’s guards, and slain within the sacred bounds. Against this sacrilege, committed to satisfy hated Christians, Bu Hamara roused the country, preaching extermination of all Christians within it. The insecure throne of Abd el Aziz was made more insecure, English influence in Morocco was shaken, the French frontiers east and south were endangered, and Bu Hamara’s revolt appears to have had much to do with the producing of all that followed,—in the Anglo-French Agreement of 1904, the Algeciras Conference, the dethronement of Abd el Aziz, etc.
MOROCCO: A. D. 1904. Declarations of England and France concerning Morocco in the Agreements of the Entente of 1904. Explanatory Despatch.
See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1904 (APRIL).
MOROCCO: A. D. 1904-1909. Exploits of El Raisuli. The Kidnapping and Ransoming of Messrs. Perdicaris and Varley. The Capture and Ransom of Kaid Sir Harry MacLean. Present Respectability of Raisuli as a Moroccan Governor.
One of the chiefs in that mountainous strip of northern Morocco, nearly parallel to the Mediterranean, which is called "The Riff," has played a startlingly troublesome part in recent Moroccan history. His name is Mulai Ahmed ben Mohammed, but he is commonly designated in all news-mentions of his doings by the title he bears,—El Raisuli, chieftain of a clan. The first exploit which made this title familiar to all the world was in May, 1904, when he kidnapped, from their residence near Tangier, a naturalized American and an Englishman, Mr. Ion Perdicaris and his stepson, Mr. Varley, carrying them into the mountains and holding them captive until he had extorted a ransom of $70,000, despite the utmost efforts of France, Great Britain, and the United States, with the aid of the Sultan, to obtain their release on less humiliating terms. This success failed, however, to satisfy the audacious brigand, and in July, 1907, he laid hands on another important hostage, this time a British officer, Sir Harry MacLean, who had been long in the service of the Sultan of Morocco, as military adviser, with the title of Kaid. Kaid MacLean ventured to visit the brigand in his mountain retreat for some negotiation, and was detained in pawn. Raisuli held this notable captive until the following February, and released him then on receipt of $25,000, cash down, with a pledge of $75,000 more at the end of three years, if he gave no fresh trouble within that time. Meanwhile, he and twenty-eight of his family were to be under British protection. Before this transaction was closed a new Sultan had won the Moroccan throne (as will be explained below) and he thought it wiser to employ the energies of Raisuli officially than to try to maintain a contest of authority with so unmanageable a subject. Accordingly, in February, 1909, Raisuli was appointed governor of twelve tribes in Northern Morocco, and is now one of the most respectable representatives of government in the last of the Barbary States.
MOROCCO: A. D. 1905-1906. German hostility to the Anglo-French Agreement. The Kaiser’s speech at Tangier. The International Conference at Algeciras. The resulting Act.
See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1905-1906.
MOROCCO: A. D. 1907-1909. Mob-murder of Dr. Mauchamp at Morocco City. Conflict with Tribesmen at Casablanca. Bombardment by French and Spanish Ships. Campaign against the Tribes. Dethronement of Sultan Abd el Aziz by his brother Mulai Hafid. Fresh friction between France and Germany. Its Pacific Settlement by Arbitration at The Hague.
Organization of police forces for the service which France and Spain were commissioned by the Powers at the Algeciras Conference to perform in Morocco was retarded, necessarily, by the prevailing anarchy in the Empire, and fresh causes of disorder occurred before the means for prompt treatment of them were prepared. In the spring of 1907 a French citizen, Dr. Mauchamp, at Marrakesh (Morocco City), undertook to install at his house the apparatus for wireless telegraphy. His Moorish neighbors suspected some diabolical intention, when he raised the necessary mast on his house, and proceeded with fanatic enterprise to kill the man of too much science and to demolish the house. The French Government demanded punishment of the outrage, with indemnity to the family of the victim, and put a force in motion, under General Liautey, which occupied the city of Ujda, not far from the Algerian frontier, to hold it until the demands of justice were complied with. None of the Powers signatory to the Algeciras Conference raised objections to this proceeding.
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A more serious intervention was occasioned in July, 1907, when the French took control of the collection of customs at the ports, as directed by the Algeciras agreement. At Casablanca, on the Atlantic coast, the tribesmen attacked a number of European laborers, employed there in quarries, and killed eight. All the foreign residents of the region were in danger, and French and Spanish war-ships were hurried to the scene. The local Moorish official confessed his inability to protect the threatened foreigners, who had taken refuge in the French, Spanish, and British consulates, with hostile tribes swarming around the town, and he asked for help. Marines were landed on the 4th of August and were attacked. "A sanguinary battle followed between the Arabs and the European soldiery, the French cruiser opening fire and shelling the Moorish batteries. Scenes of great disorder and violence followed upon the firing, a raging mob of Moors attacking and pillaging the entire city. The Jews particularly were massacred by hundreds. Another French warship soon appeared upon the scene, accompanied by a Spanish cruiser, and troops were landed to the number of 4000. General Drude, the French commander, was chosen to head the allied troops, Spanish and French, and reinforcements were hurried from France." A number of encounters followed. "The most serious were the attacks, on August 28, and September 2, upon Casablanca and its outskirts, both resulting from a reconnaissance in force by the French Algerian irregular cavalry and the famous Foreign Legion. Seven or eight thousand Moors attacked the Europeans, sweeping down from the hills with all the ferocity and courage traditional in their race. By the aid of machine guns and the batteries from their warships the French succeeded in repelling the tribesmen with considerable loss of life."
Justification of the bombardment of Casablanca was somewhat questioned at the time, and with good reason if the following account of the circumstances, by an eye-witness, a Scotch missionary, are to be believed. His statement was published in the Glasgow _Herald_, and is given here as summarized in _The Outlook_, of September 21, 1907.
"This missionary, Dr. Kerr, has lived many years in the country, and he asserts that in many ways the French residents and officials have continually irritated the Moors and provoked them to anger. Dr. Kerr states that no further outbreaks occurred after the massacre of French and Spanish workmen on July 30, and that when the bombardment began on August 1 there was absolutely no immediate provocation for it. He denounces it as contrary to the usages of civilized war and as ‘wicked and unjustifiable,’ adding that the British merchants in Casablanca will probably sue the French Government for damages caused to their property by what they consider an unnecessary bombardment. The punishment of the Moors concerned in the murder of the eight workmen, says Dr. Kerr, no one could object to, but instead of this the punishment took the form of an unprovoked massacre of persons many of whom were entirely innocent. The details of the affair as he gives them are certainly deplorable, and if his assertion that the landing force of the French fired the first shot is true, the succeeding episodes described are unpardonable. One of these episodes may be quoted here:
"‘I saw two young women walking as quickly as they could. … Suddenly a volley was fired into them by the Spanish marines. They fell, but picked themselves up, and took refuge in a ledge of a wall. After waiting a few minutes they made to return, when another volley was fired at them, and they fell again. … One of these brave daughters of Ishmael refused to flee without taking with her the "khaik," or outer garment, which fell from her [thus leaving her face uncovered, contrary to Moslem law]. She turned back, picked up her garment, and fled as fast as she could, bleeding all over.’"
In the fall of 1907 General Drude was succeeded in the command at Casablanca by General d’Amade, who prosecuted a more vigorous campaign against the obstinately hostile tribes of the region, and made but slow progress in reducing them to submission.
Meantime a rising against Sultan Abd el Aziz, in favor of one of his brothers, Mulai Hafid, had been started and was making rapid headway. Mulai Hafid was proclaimed Sultan at Marrakesh on the 25th of August, 1907, and on the 4th of the following January his supporters had gained possession of Fez and proclaimed him there. Abd el Aziz kept the field against his rival until August, 1908, when he had practically no following left, and the direction of Government was assumed formally by Mulai Hafid. His authority had soon become established so fully that the German Government addressed a note to the Powers proposing an immediate recognition of it. France and Spain objected, insisting that Mulai Hafid must confirm existing treaties, accept responsibility for the debts of the previous regime, give pledges of indemnity for the Casablanca outbreak, disavow the "Holy War" which he had countenanced and which had given him his success, and take effective measures for securing the safety of foreigners in the Empire. Their objection was approved generally; Germany assented to the requirements proposed, and it was not until Mulai Hafid had satisfied them that he obtained recognition as the legitimate sovereign of Morocco. This was given in the following note, handed to his representative on the 5th of January, 1909, by the _doyen_ of the Diplomatic Body at Tangier:
"The signatory Governments of the Act of Algeciras have received the letter which Mulai Hafid sent to them through the agency of the Diplomatic Body at Tangier in reply to their _communiqué_ of November 18. The Governments represented in Morocco received with satisfaction this reply, in which they saw a proof that the explanations which they formulated in their Note of November 18, in the interest of the relations of friendship and confidence which they desire to maintain with the sovereign authority of the Shereefian Empire, are in accordance with the views of Mulai Hafid. In consequence the signatory Powers of the Act of Algeciras have decided to recognize his Majesty Mulai Hafid as legitimate Sultan of Morocco, and have charged the _doyen_ of the Diplomatic Body at Tangier to notify their recognition of him to the representatives of his Majesty in that town."
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Before this settlement was reached an incident had occurred at Casablanca on the 15th of September, 1908, which irritated the chronic sensitiveness of feeling between Germany and France. Five or six soldiers of the Foreign Legion in French service at Casablanca, including three Germans, deserted, and the German Consulate attempted to protect the Germans when their arrest was undertaken by French gendarmes. There was some struggle, but the arrest was accomplished, and the demand of the Consul for the release of the three Germans was refused. Germany demanded satisfaction for the treatment of her Consul. France maintained that satisfaction was due to herself for the interference of the Consul with her military rights; but offered to submit the affair to the Hague Tribunal for arbitration. Germany was willing to arbitrate the questions involved if France would first express regret for the official conduct on her side of the matter. France in reply suggested expressions of regret by both parties; and on these terms, supposedly vindicating national dignity on each side, the case went to The Hague. The Court of Arbitration held its first meeting on the 1st of May, 1909, and announced its judgment on the 22d of the same month. As summarized in an English despatch from The Hague, the opinion of the Court was as follows:
"The Court considered that in this case there was a conflict of jurisdiction between the Consular and the military authority of two foreign Powers, the one Power exercising full Consular authority over her subjects, who happened to be soldiers in the Foreign Legion of the other Power. The latter Power had effected the military occupation of a certain territory, and in consequence exercised full authority over that territory. As it was impossible to decide this conflict by any absolute ruling, which might indicate in a general way the precedence of either jurisdiction, the Court considered that the question must be determined by the particular circumstances of any given case.
"In this case the jurisdiction of the occupying force had precedence because the persons in question did not leave the territory occupied by that force. The Court decided that the Secretary of the German Consulate at Casablanca wrongly and through a grave and manifest error tried to embark in a German steamer deserters of the French Foreign Legion, who were not of German nationality. The German Consul and the other officials of the Consulate were not responsible for that fact; the Consul, however, in signing the safe conduct, which was laid before him, committed an unintentional error.
"The German Consulate in the circumstances obtaining at that time was not entitled to grant its protection even to deserters of German nationality; the legal error, however, which was committed in this connexion by the officials of the Consulate could not be reckoned either as an intentional or as an unintentional error.
"The French military authorities were wrong in not respecting, as far as possible, the _de facto_ protection exercised over those deserters in the name of the German Consulate. The circumstances did not justify either menace by revolver on the part of the French soldiers, or the blows given to the Moroccan soldier of the Consulate."
This proved satisfactory to all concerned, and the Casablanca incident was happily closed.
A more important adjustment of matters between Germany and France, aiming at a general clearing of causes of friction in their relations, so far as concerned Morocco, had preceded the Casablanca arbitration by nearly three months. All Europe had been surprised and delighted on the 9th of February, 1909, by the announcement of a Franco-German Agreement, just concluded, in the following words:
"The Government of the French Republic and the German Imperial Government, actuated by an equal desire to facilitate the execution of the Act of Algeciras, have agreed to define the significance which they attach to its clauses with a view to avoiding any cause of misunderstanding between them in the future.
"Consequently, the Government of the French Republic, wholly attached to the maintenance of the integrity and of the independence of the Shereefian Empire, decided to safeguard economic equality there, and accordingly not to impede German commercial and industrial interests, and the German Imperial Government, pursuing only economic interests in Morocco, recognizing at the same time that the special political interests of France are closely bound up in that country with the consolidation of order and of internal peace, and resolved not to impede those interests, declare that they will not prosecute or encourage any measure calculated to create in their favour or in favour of any Power whatsoever an economic privilege, and that they will endeavour to associate their nationals in business for which these may be able to obtain contracts (_l’entreprise_)."
This most important agreement resulted from negotiations that were said to have been opened by a suggestion from the German Foreign Secretary, Baron von Schön. Its importance to Europe was hardly exaggerated by the Paris _Matin_, when it said:
"It is a great and happy event, the importance of which need not be emphasized. … This close of the Moroccan quarrel may, if such be the desire, mark a date of capital importance in the history of Europe. In fact, as Prince Bülow has said and repeated, Morocco was only a pretext. If therefore it has become an object of agreement, it is not merely because it has been recognized that the local problem was not insoluble, but also because the general situation has changed or because the ‘opportunity’ no longer exists."
MOROCCO: A. D. 1908. A German Statement of the Moroccan Policy of Germany.
See (in this Volume) GERMANY: A. D. 1908.
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MOROCCO: A. D. 1909. Discontent with the new Sultan. His struggle with Pretenders. Spanish War with the Tribes of the Riff. Success of Mulai Hafid against his Rivals. French operations in and around the Moorish Empire. French Mauretanie. French Demands. The Mannesmann Mining Concession.
France and Spain were now strengthened in the execution of their Algeciras commission, by a harmonious backing in Europe, and the native Government in Morocco had acquired, seemingly, a strong and capable man at its head. Sultan Mulai Hafid made that impression very positively on a correspondent of the London _Times_, to whom he gave audience on the 13th of February, and who wrote of him that day: "It is quite evident that Mulai Hafid is a man of large and independent ideas, with a leaning toward democracy. In appearance and manner he is most attractive, and both his looks and his conversation betoken a character at once strong and of quick decision. Everything he says is very much to the point, and his remarks are often touched with humour and even cynicism. His openmindedness and cordiality extend almost to breaches of the rigorous Moorish etiquette."
Five days later the same correspondent wrote again: "The Fez Moors had hoped at Mulai Hafid’s accession for material though indefinite advantages, for they felt that the new Sultan, who owed his throne not to inheritance but to election, would be an instrument in their own hands, and that they would be able to exert their influence for their own purely selfish ends. But they had counted without Mulai Hafid. Once on the throne, he consolidated, at all events locally, his power, and the Fez population, who during the previous reign had undoubtedly held and used considerable influence, found themselves in the hands of a firm, masterful man, who did not hesitate to tax them to an extent formerly unknown, and gave them clearly to understand that he would brook no interference in matters of policy. The effect was instantaneous. The Fezzis began openly to regret the slack _régime_ of Mulai Abdul Aziz, and Mulai Hafid became unpopular, as any monarch who really governs in Morocco must always be.
"But if Mulai Hafid was unpopular, he inspired at the same time a wholesome fear. His indifference to public opinion, his breaches of the absurd prescriptions of Moorish etiquette, his personal supervision of every detail, and the publicity in which he lives show not only remarkable courage, but also remarkable knowledge of the people whom he governs. … Yet he has but a small army, and he is financially hampered. He receives Europeans publicly, and grants audiences in the presence of the whole Court, often before the whole army. He invites his guests to be seated, and chats in a natural and sympathetic manner on all kinds of subjects. But it is quite apparent that his _entourage_ is in terror of him. Never have the viziers had less freedom or fewer opportunities for plunder. The Government is Mulai Hafid, and Mulai Hafid alone, and yet Mulai Hafid is a democrat. He desires to put down—and has already largely done so—the fanatical and always mischievous influence of the great Shereefian families. He works from morning till night, and keeps every one else working. His negotiations with the French Minister are progressing in a way that astonishes every one. … Mulai Hafid obtained the throne by preaching a holy war against Europeans. He will maintain himself upon the throne by a policy of reform which will win for him the assistance of France against his own fanatical people."
But subsequent events did not realize the confident expectations of this writer. A month later he reported:
"Shereef Sid Mohammed Kittani, a descendant of a former dynasty and chief of an important reactionary religious sect, who was freely spoken of as possible Sultan before Mulai Hafid’s proclamation, left Fez secretly yesterday. Apparently he had previously succeeded in dispatching his family and movable property from time to time to some spot in the Berber tribelands without exciting suspicion. His flight has caused what can only be described as consternation. His influence is very great, and he is known to lay claim to the Throne."
Within another month this pretender had defeated Mulai Hafid’s forces in a sharp engagement and had an army encamped about eighteen miles east of Fez. French officers were reported to be doing notable work in organizing and equipping the Sultan’s troops. On the 8th of May there was alarming news that Mulai el Kebir, another brother of Mulai Hafid and of the ex-Sultan, Abd el Aziz, "who was accompanying the Southern Kaids to Fez, had left their camp secretly by night and had fled into the Zimmour country," and "many believe that he will take advantage of the Sultan’s unpopularity to raise a rebellion." Two days later "nothing is known of the whereabouts of Mulai el Kebir," and "the Sultan does not conceal his anxiety. Mulai-el-Kebir was on the best terms with his Majesty, but the Sultan’s severe treatment of other members of his family no doubt filled him with fear."
From Paris, on the 26th of May, it was telegraphed that the Sultan’s Minister of Finance, El Mokri, then visiting Paris on a financial mission, "observes that Mulai Hafid’s authority is more solidly established at present than might at first sight appear to be the case. At no time has any Sultan been recognized over a much wider area of Moroccan territory. In the Beled el Makhzen his sway is uncontested. The kaids of the Haouz and the southern Atlas have always been his partisans. El Mokri has no fear of the pretenders."
There were now two pretenders in the field: for Mulai Kebir had been heard from, "beyond Mekinez," where he had raised the standard of revolt. And Bu Hamara was on the stage of civil war again, east of Fez, with an army which "is camped at less than four hours distance from the capital," and which is "actively pillaging the only tribe that remains loyal to Mulai Hafid in that region." Troops sent against him a few days later were said to have been badly beaten. The Sultan was reported to be in quarrel with his viziers; was ill,—invisible in the palace,—and the situation did not seem to look well for him.
Then, suddenly, all news reports from Morocco became silent as to Mulai Hafid and his rivals, and gave entire attention to a serious outbreak of warfare in that northeastern corner of the empire, known as the Riff, where Spain has had a long recognized "sphere of influence," and where she had undertaken the working of valuable iron mines near Melilla. Hostilities were begun in July by an attack of tribesmen on the miners, killing several, and the Spanish troops sent to the scene met disaster, being insufficient in force. In the end, so extensive a rising of Moorish tribesmen had occurred that Spain was obliged to put a large army into the field against them and organize a costly campaign. It was not until late in September that much success attended the Spanish arms, and not until late in November that the campaign was regarded as closed, the Spanish forces having secured positions which, when fortified, were expected to give them a firm footing in the region, and having brought most of the tribes to terms.
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Meantime, the war had been bitterly unpopular among large classes in Spain, and the feeling had been manifested in destructive rioting at Barcelona and elsewhere.
See (in this Volume) SPAIN: A. D. 1907-1909.
What France had been doing meanwhile, in and around Morocco, has been told by a writer in _The Atlantic Monthly:_
"During the year [May, 1908, to May, 1909] the French army under General d’Amade, has continued occupying Casablanca, and the fertile Chaouïa (Shawia) region. It has forced peace, law, and order, and open markets on the inhabitants, to their great advantage. Agriculture has revived; and German trade itself has run up two million francs. Even so the ‘economic interests’ of Germany in Morocco are scant indeed compared with those of France and England; they are perhaps less than those of Spain—and yet they have long threatened the peace of Europe. … Meanwhile the interior of Morocco has been chiefly occupied in the unmaking and making of Sultans. Toward the German Emperor these fighting Moors have now a feeling much like that of the Transvaal Boers when the Kruger telegram failed to lead to eventualities. … The real success of France is along the entire land-frontier of Morocco. For its whole length this is now also the frontier of French territory,--Algiers to the east, the Sahara with its line of French posts to the south, and so on to the Atlantic Ocean through the new French civil territory of ‘Mauritanie.’ Here foreign geography will still be incomplete for some time; but it is childish to dismiss these territorial stretches as so many acres of sand. The empire which France might have had in Canada was, in like manner, denounced by Voltaire as acres of snow.
"France absolutely refused to allow any question concerning this land-frontier to be brought up at the Conference of Algeciras. It is no business of Europe; it concerns the two neighbors, France and Morocco, only.
"General Lyautey has had its more than eight hundred miles well under control. … Of late years France has successfully occupied territory farther and farther to the south, pushing forward the railway, and throwing out a long line of military posts through the Sahara. People who amuse themselves marking obscure changes of conquest on the map, may safely stick their pins one full degree farther west all along this part of Algiers, beginning where Spain at Melilla blocks the way along the Mediterranean coast."
_Stoddard Dewey, The Year in France (Atlantic Monthly, August, 1909)._
When newspaper attention reverted to Mulai Hafid a great improvement was found in his affairs. Seemingly, the pretenders to his throne had disappeared, and Bu Hamara, the rebel, now styled El Roghi, was decisively routed by troops of the Sultan on the 16th of August, captured a few days later, and taken to Fez in an iron cage. On the 13th of September it was announced that he had been executed the day before. Later, this was contradicted, and there seems to be no certainty as to his fate.
The Moroccan Government was now being sharply pressed by France with demands over which negotiation had proceeded hitherto very slowly. M. Pichon, the French Minister for Foreign Affairs, made a statement on the subject to the Chamber of Deputies on the 23d of November, to the following effect: "On August 14 the representatives of the Sultan received a note summing up the conditions imposed by the French Government. These conditions were the evacuation of the Shawia region on condition of the organization by the Maghzen of a force; the evacuation of Casablanca when the French Government felt convinced that the organization of the Shawia police had become sufficiently effective; the organization of the police service on the Algero-Moroccan frontier; the payment of the Maghzen’s debts and the reimbursement of the costs of the French military expeditions. The Maghzen owed at present £3,200,000, more than £400,000 of which was due to private creditors. The French Government would allow the Moroccan Government to raise a loan in France in order to facilitate the payment of its debts. … The French conditions had been acknowledged to be very moderate by all who had had cognisance of them. Germany had recently informed the Maghzen that it was high time to contract a loan. M. Pichon dwelt on the loyalty with which the Franco-German Agreement had been observed by the Berlin Government. Nevertheless the adhesion of the Moroccan Government had not yet been obtained. That Government had admitted the principle of the loan of 80,000,000f. and that of the indemnity of 70,000,000f. for the French military expedition, but there was disagreement still in regard to the guarantees required for the realization of that operation. Mulai Hafid, moreover, demanded the immediate evacuation of the Shawia and of Casablanca. On November 6 M. Pichon informed the Sultan’s envoys that it was futile to continue the _pourparlers_ if France did not obtain a satisfactory reply. It would not be without danger for the Moroccan Government to persevere in its attitude."
A little later it was made known that the Sultan had yielded to the terms prescribed by the French Government and was to obtain the loan which would help toward the payment of his debts.
By this time a new Morocco question had sprung out of a sweeping mining concession which certain German exploiters, the Brothers Mannesmann, had obtained from Sultan Mulai Hafid, in distinct violation of the agreements at Algeciras which the Sultan had been a party to. The Mannesmann mining rights under this concession, if allowed, would swallow up all others, and large interests, French, Spanish, German, English, Italian, and Dutch, were arrayed against their claims. The backing of the Mannesmanns in Germany, however, by commercial and newspaper influence, appears to have been very powerful, and it has not been easy for the Government to resist being drawn into alliance with it. But the attitude of the Imperial Government appears to have been strictly loyal to the Algeciras agreements, and it has gone no farther for the Mannesmanns and their partisans than to negotiate with the other Powers concerned for a submission of the question of legality in the Mannesmann concession to a Court of Arbitration. That will probably be the mode of settling it.
{431}
MOROS, The.
See (in this Volume) PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1901-1902.
MORRIS, SIR EDWARD: Premier of Newfoundland.
See (in this Volume) NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1908-1909.
MORTON, PAUL: Secretary of the Navy.
See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1901-1905.
MORTON, PAUL: President of Equitable Life Assurance Society.
See (in this Volume) INSURANCE, LIFE.
MOSCOW, Risings and Disturbances in.
See (in this Volume) RUSSIA.
MOSLEM LEAGUE.
See (in this Volume) INDIA: A. D. 1907 (December); also, 1907-1909.
MOSQUITO TERRITORY, THE.
See (in this Volume) CENTRAL AMERICA: A. D. 1905.
MOTIENLING.
See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904 (JULY-SEPTEMBER).
MOVING PICTURE SHOWS.
See (in this Volume) SCIENCE AND INVENTION.
MUIJTEHEDS: The higher Persian Priests.
See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1905-1907.
MUKDEN: A. D. 1903. Opened to Foreign Trade.
See (in this Volume) CHINA: A. D. 1903 (MAY-OCTOBER).
MUKDEN: Battle of.
See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904-1905 (SEPTEMBER-MARCH).
MULAI AHMED BEN MOHAMMED, EL RAISULI.
See (in this Volume) MOROCCO: A. D. 1904-1909.
MULAI HAFID: Sultan of Morocco by Dethronement of his Brother.
See (in this Volume) MOROCCO: A. D. 1907-1909, and 1909.
MULAI HASSAN, Late Sultan of Morocco.
See (in this Volume) MOROCCO: A. D. 1903.
MULLAH, ABDULLA MUHAMMED.
See (in this Volume) AFRICA: SOMALILAND.
MULLAS: The common Persian Priests.
See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1905-1907.
MUNICIPAL COMMITTEES IN INDIA.
See (in this Volume) INDIA: A. D. 1907-1909.
----------MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Start--------
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: American Democracy’s most Serious Problem. Present Interest in it. Hopeful Movements.
Americans have long been forced to acknowledge that political democracy in the United States makes its worst showing in the government of municipalities; and those who give any searching thought to the matter have little dispute over reasons for the fact. It connects very plainly with another fact, namely, that _municipal politics_, as a political interest distinct and apart from the interests of government in Nation and State, has had no growth in the country as yet. Up to the time of the formation of the national union, the few cities of America had a quite positive political life of their own, which might have carried them into conditions very different from what they have realized since, if it had not undergone the absorption that it did in the politics of a national government. The national political parties formed then on exciting issues, sectional, constitutional, and economic, caught all political feeling into their embrace, not instantly, but gradually, and surely, and appropriated the whole mechanism of political organization to themselves. Cities are the natural centers of such mechanism, and the great parties of Federal politics were able easily to impose on them a domination which left no free working of public opinion on the immediate concerns of the cities themselves. All political action was drawn into the mill which turns out Presidents, Congresses, Tariffs, Bank Acts, etc., and the mere by-product of Mayors, Aldermen, and City Ordinances which it drops incidentally into the cities, receives almost no stamp of quality or design from the local mind.
Until the wheels of local government are loosened in some way from the clutch of the great party machines, and can work independently, under motive forces of their own, to produce the satisfaction of local needs, interests, and aims, there will be little success in undertakings of municipal reform. How to accomplish that political ungearing is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the problems now occupying the minds of the American people. Fortunately it is occupying their minds. Within the last few years they have given more thought to this subject than it ever received from them before; and it has been bold thought, as well as profoundly earnest. It has not been afraid of hospitality to new ideas and new experiences, but is giving them fair hearings and fair tests. The present attitude of the whole country in this matter is of the happiest hopefulness, and every day brightens the prospect of a better future for municipal government in America.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: BOSTON: A. D. 1909. A Plan of Government chosen by popular vote.
In connection with the election of November 2, 1909, the citizens of Boston, Massachusetts, had two plans of City Government submitted to their vote, and the charter under which the City will be ruled and its business conducted after the beginning of February, 1910, was determined by the choice between these plans which a majority expressed at the polls. One of the plans emanated from an official body, called the Finance Commission, which had been appointed to investigate bad conditions in the City Government, and whose investigations had given rise to the demand for a radical reform. This plan had the approval, moreover, of a citizens Committee of One Hundred, which had given much attention to the subject; but it was exceedingly unsatisfactory to the party politicians, whose personal interests were flagrantly disregarded in its scheme. These drafted a form of charter which fitted their own purposes, and the two plans were submitted to the Legislature in the winter of 1909. That body escaped the responsibility of a decision between them by referring both to the voters of Boston. The charter wanted by the party managers was designated as "Plan No. 1"; that of the Finance Commission and the Committee of One Hundred as "Plan No. 2." {432} A strenuous campaign of education was fought for some weeks before election day by the supporters of Plan No. 2, who seem to have included practically all single-minded seekers of good government, and an equally active campaign of wire-pulling was carried on by the champions of Plan No. 1. The education was successful in convincing 39,175 voters that Plan 2 should be preferred, while 35,306 were persuaded to the contrary, and about 34,000 remained so indifferent or undecided that they gave the question no vote. But public considerations prevailed over party motives and influences by 3869 votes, which is a highly important fact.
The charter thus adopted for Boston differs in many features from what has acquired the name of "the Des Moines plan," but is fundamentally akin to it in principle and aim. Its prime purpose is to divorce local politics from national politics, freeing municipal elections from the baneful control of parties which have nothing rightly to do with the city’s affairs. Its secondary object is to concentrate official responsibility in a moderated way. It subjects the mayor of Boston, at the middle of his term, to a reconsideration of the vote which elected him (in the nature of the Swiss "recall"), but it does not introduce the initiative and referendum. The operation of the new charter under its provisions was outlined as follows by the Boston _Herald_ on the day following its adoption:
"By the acceptance of plan 2, party and all other designations will be eliminated from the ballots for the municipal elections, which will be held on the first Tuesday after the second Monday in January of each year. The coming city election will be held on January 11.
"Candidates for mayor must be nominated by petition of not less than 5000 registered Boston voters. The candidate who receives the highest vote at the city election will hold office for four years, unless recalled at the end of two years. The salary will be $10,000 a year.
"At the state election in the second year of the mayor’s term the ballots will contain the question: ‘Shall there be an election for mayor at the next municipal election?’ And this will be answered by ‘Yes,’ or ‘No.’ If a majority of the registered voters vote ‘Yes’ an election for mayor will be held at the following city election.
"Whether recalled or not, the mayor holding office will have his name on the ballot at the city election unless in writing he requests the election commissioners not to place his name on the ballot. The mayor then elected will hold office for four years, subject to recall at the end of his second year.
"The city council will consist of nine members, all elected at large. The salary will be $1500 each. In the election on January 11 the voters may vote for nine candidates, and the nine receiving the highest votes will be declared elected. The three highest will have three-year terms, the three next highest will serve for two years and the next three for one year each. Each year thereafter three candidates-at-large will be elected, and the voters may vote for three. All members of the city council will be elected at large, and there will be no ward members of the body. By the abolition of party designations no primary elections or caucuses for municipal offices will be held.
"All candidates for mayor, city council and school board must be nominated by papers of not less than 5000 registered voters. No voter may sign more than one paper for mayor, not more than nine for council for the first election and for three candidates thereafter, and not more than two papers for the school board when there are two members to be elected.
"If a candidate for any of the offices decides to withdraw from the contest before the election, vacancies in nominations for any cause may be filled by a committee of not less than five persons authorized in the nomination papers to fill such vacancies.
"Members of the street commission, formerly elected at large, will be appointed by the mayor, subject to approval by the civil service commission, but without restriction as to their political affiliation. All department heads will be appointed by the mayor, subject to approval by the civil service commission.
"The new municipal year will begin on the first Monday in February, when the mayor and city council will be inducted into office."
The election, held at the appointed time, January 11, 1910, was managed so badly as to divide the vote of the reforming element between three candidates, against one, the former Mayor, Fitzgerald, whose scandalous administration had afforded the prime incentive to the reform movement, and thus giving opportunity for his election by a small plurality. A committee of the reform leaders had chosen for their candidate Mr. James J. Storrow, President of the Boston Chamber of Commerce, and strove to concentrate the opposition to Fitzgerald upon him; but the Mayor in office, who had secured renomination, persisted in keeping the field, and won the petty number of 1816 votes, which a little more than sufficed to elect Fitzgerald. The vote given the latter was 47,142, against 45,757 to Mr. Storrow, and 613 to the fourth candidate, Taylor. A recount of the vote was secured, but made no substantial change.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: California: Charter-framing Power given to Cities.
"All cities in California except the very smallest are permitted to frame their own charters, which become effective upon ratification by the legislature. The cities are quick to avail themselves of this privilege, with the result that almost every possible experiment in municipal organization may be found on trial somewhere in California. That the cities are progressive is shown by the fact that within the past decade every city of any size in the State has remodeled its organization either by a new charter or by far-reaching amendments. A high standard of efficient city organization has been set by the recent charter of the city of Berkeley [adopted 1909], which furnishes a very perfect example of the ‘commission’ plan. Elections are freed from the influence of national parties, and the possibility of a final choice in the direct primary is sufficient to bring out the entire vote of the city.
"The popular initiative, the referendum, and the recall are now generally established in all the larger cities of the State, but outside of San Francisco and Los Angeles without sufficient use to test their value for good government. In San Francisco the popular initiative has been used more frequently for bad measures than for good. In Los Angeles the spectacular removal of the mayor in 1909 will doubtless be regarded as a justification of the method of recall."
_Frederick H. Clark, Head of History Department, Lowell High School, San Francisco, California._
{433}
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Chicago: The Municipal Voters’ League.
In 1896 there was thought in Chicago of attempting to organize a strictly Municipal Party for action in municipal politics alone, and a conference of citizens appointed a committee to deal with the scheme. The committee decided this project to be impracticable, but its deliberations resulted in the creation of a Municipal Voters’ League, acting through a non-partisan committee of nine, whose function was to scrutinize all candidacies and nominations for the City Common Council, and afford information concerning them to voters of all parties who desired the election of honest and capable men. A permanent office force was employed, and thorough investigations made as to the record and character of every nominee for the Council. The results of these investigations were published, with recommendations for or against the respective candidates. The league brought pressure to bear, in the first place, to prevent the nomination of objectionable candidates, and then exerted its influence to defeat such candidates at the polls.
This has been done with such effect in election after election as to produce a remarkable change in the character of the Council. Similar agencies have been brought into action in a number of cities within the few last years, with equally good results.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Chicago’s Struggles for a Better Charter.
A body known as the "Charter Convention," made up of delegates appointed by or representing the Governor of the State, the State Assembly, and the several branches and departments of the City Government, was organized in December, 1905, and labored at the framing of a new City Charter until the early part of 1907, when the product of its labors was submitted to the Legislature of Illinois. Some of the main features of the charter were these:
Consolidation in the municipal government of Chicago of the power vested in the board of education, township, park, and other local governments within the city;
submission of propositions to popular vote;
aldermen to be elected once in four years;
the raising of adequate revenue by the issue of bonds and by other means;
the power to own, maintain, and operate all public utilities in the city, including intramural, railroads, subways and tunnels, and telephone, telegraph, gas, electric lighting, heating, refrigerating and power plants;
the parks to be under the management of a city department of parks;
the public-school system to be a department of the city government and under the control of a board of education of fifteen members appointed by the mayor for terms of three years;
the public library to be managed by a board of nine directors appointed by the mayor for terms of six years.
As it went to the Legislature this draft charter represented much compromising of divergent opinions, and, probably, was not really satisfactory to anybody. The Legislature made it less so by amendments, and when it went to the people of Chicago, in September, 1907, for their verdict on it at the polls, they rejected it by 121,935 votes against 59,786.
Early in 1908 the Charter Convention was reassembled and revised its former work, cutting the requisite legislation up into seven distinct bills, with a view to securing better chances of success for some reforms, if the whole could not be won; but the entire lot was killed in the Legislature.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: The Galveston or Des Moines Plan. Its Features. Extent of its Present Trial.
Curiously enough, the present trend of opinion on the question, "What structure of municipal government will lend itself best to the reforms that it needs?" is in a direction that was given to it by accident, about ten years ago. Perhaps nothing short of a great catastrophe, like that of hurricane and flood, which wrecked the city of Galveston, on the 8th of September, 1900, could have broken the conventional pattern on which our cities were constructed so long. At all events, it was that catastrophe which started a crack in the antique pattern first. In improvising for the needs of a desperate emergency, the wrecked community had sense and energy enough to follow the plain instincts of business, and put itself, as a municipal corporation, under the kind of administration that any other corporation would construct. All the folly of localized interests in this and that part of the town, requiring to be "represented" by ward aldermen, went out of their heads. Their common calamity compelled them to understand that particular interests within the narrow bounds of a civic commonwealth are either included in or superseded by the common interests of the whole. They acted accordingly; dismissed their locally representative aldermen, dropped their old corps of administrative functionaries, and put the undivided management of their affairs into the hands of five commissioners, with a "mayor-president" at the head.
It would not seem to have needed much political wisdom to predict the success of this experiment; but the quick effect of its teaching was more than there could be reason to expect. Houston, the near neighbor-city, was prompt to receive and apply the lesson, but bettering it somewhat. For Houston employed the whole time of its five business managers, paying them fair salaries for the service; whereas Galveston contented itself with less service and paid less.
The two examples then presented, of a municipal corporation conducting its business in the plain mode and by the plain methods of the commercial corporations, drew increasing attention, in all parts of the country, west and east. Boston was soon discussing the Galveston experiment with deep interest, and at a meeting of the highly influential Economic Club of that city, in January, 1907, President Eliot, of Harvard University, declared that he saw in it the dawning of a brighter day. "We have got down very low," he said, "in regard to our municipal governments, and we have got dark days here now, but we can see a light breaking, and one of the lights broke in Galveston. I have personally been interested in the enormous improvement in just one branch of municipal business in our country within the last ten years—that is, school boards and school administrations. There has been a real wave of reform sweeping over the country, in the great cities particularly, with regard to school boards, and every bit of that experience goes the way I am describing it. {434} It is all in the direction of a few men not paid, originally determining the general policy of the schools of the city and trusting entirely to experts for executive action. Our whole experience in Massachusetts with the commissions we have had, tends the same way. If we ask what have been the best performances of the governmental functions in Massachusetts for the last twenty-five years, we have but one answer to make, namely, the work of our commissions, water, sewage, railroads, gas and electric lighting, public libraries where owned by the city, hospitals where owned by the city. You can think of numerous instances in Massachusetts where admirable work has been done by commissions acting on the principles which I have described. I say the day is dawning. What it needs, that the light may grow and get to full noon, is that the people, the great body of the people, should be convinced that municipal government means nothing but good, intelligent conduct of business."
Meantime, in the West, action was already following study of the Galveston plan of city government, and the four states of Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota passed acts in 1907 to enable the adoption of it by any city so desiring. One of the first to exercise the privilege was the city of Des Moines, Iowa, certain of whose progressive young business men had been studying the municipal problem of late, and who had determined to bring some system of local government into operation that would make their city what it ought to be. On the basis of the Galveston plan they worked out the details of a charter which has become the model of its species most widely accepted, so that more has been heard latterly of "the Des Moines Charter" than of "the Galveston Plan." What is called the Des Moines charter, however, was no special enactment for that city, but a legislative frame of municipal government which any city in Iowa having not less than 25,000 inhabitants may fit itself into.
It confides the whole management of strictly local affairs in the city to four councilmen and a mayor, all elected by the voters of the city at large. It divides their administration into five departments, namely: The department of Public Affairs; The department of Accounts and Finances; The department of Public Safety; The department of Streets and Public Improvements; The department of Parks and Public Property.
The mayor, by virtue of his office, is chairman of the council. He is also superintendent of the department of public affairs, and exercises a general supervision over the whole of the city administration.
The council thus composed, with the mayor at its head, is invested with all executive, legislative and judicial authority, formerly exercised by perhaps twelve different officers, and twelve different boards. It appoints the city attorney, the city treasurer, the city auditor, the city engineer; and, in fact, every other appointive official. It makes every appropriation, and conducts the entire affairs of the city. "At the first meeting of this council, immediately following the election of its members, the work of the city is assigned to its most appropriate department; to one of these five departments. Each of the members of the council is also named as superintendent of a particular department; the theory of the law being that the man who is best qualified, by reason of his experience and training, will be placed at the head of that department where his training and experience will be of most value. As superintendent of this department, he is held strictly accountable for all matters which come within his jurisdiction; he is also charged with responsibility for all that is done or not done in his particular department." In the nomination and election of this important council, no party names are permitted to be connected with the candidates, in any manner whatsoever. Each candidate for the office becomes so by the filing of a petition with the city clerk, bearing the signatures of not less than twenty-five citizens, who make affidavit to the effect that the man is of good moral character, of age, and qualified to fill the office. "Ten days before the election is held, the city clerk takes the petitions which have been filed and prepares the ballot. He does this by arranging the names of candidates in alphabetical order. The candidates for mayor are arranged under the heading ‘Mayor’; the candidates for councilmen are also arranged in alphabetical order under the heading ‘Councilmen.’ There is no party designation, and because of this alphabetical arrangement there can be no favorite position on the ballot. The result is, that the candidate comes before the whole people of the city on his own merit, and on his own record."
As a citizen of Des Moines has described the proceeding, "after the primary has been held the general election is called, and in order to secure names for the ballot in the general election, we take the two candidates who have received the highest number of votes for mayor at the primary, and place their names on the ballot. In order to secure the councilmen, we take the eight candidates for councilmen who have received the highest number of votes at the primary and place their names on the regular election ballot. This gives us two opportunities to weed out undesirable men. In the first place, we have the choice among all candidates at the primary. At the election, we have the choice of one of two men for mayor, and the choice of four out of eight candidates for councilmen."
A most important provision of this Iowa charter for cities has to do with the civil service. "At the first meeting of the city council, after the election of these five commissioners or five councilmen--they are not commissioners—they appoint a civil service board composed of three members, and this civil service board, in whose charge is placed the work of preparing a civil service examination, is appointed for a period of six years. Thus they are removed from any influence that might be exerted by the councilmen, who are only elected for two years. This civil service commission prepares once a year an examination for all employees of the city, with the exception of unskilled labor and the heads of the departments, such as city attorney, city treasurer, city assessor, etc. (all of whom are appointed by a majority vote of the council). Having passed the examination successfully, the applicant is placed in a position, and so long as his work is satisfactory and he remains competent, he cannot be removed. He may be suspended, but he cannot be removed, and he is entitled to a hearing before the civil service board. This provision at once takes away all chance of a machine being built up through patronage."
{435}
This is a sufficient description of the official frame of government that has been instituted at Des Moines and other cities of Iowa under a general law of that State. The law goes farther, and connects with this frame or system a supplementary provision of methods for giving the whole body of the people an immediate agency in municipal legislation and a power to recall their election of any elected official during his term. By the use of the Swiss process of "initiative," a sufficient number of voters (25 per cent. of the whole) can propose measures which the Council must either adopt or else submit to the general vote, and can suspend measures adopted by the council until the general body of citizens has voted for or against them. These features, of the initiative, the referendum and the recall, are no more essential attachments to the Des Moines or Iowa form of municipal organization than to any other. To what extent the States and cities making trial of the general features of the Galveston scheme of municipal organization have followed Iowa in making the Swiss additions to it, information at present is wanting. Apparently the Des Moines pattern is having wide acceptance.
In the fall of 1909 the towns in the United States which had adopted the so-called Des Moines plan of government were reported to number 12 in Texas, 7 in Kansas, 6 in Iowa, 3 in Massachusetts, 3 in California, 2 in Colorado, 2 in Missouri, 2 in Tennessee, 1 in West Virginia, 1 in Mississippi, 1 in North Dakota, 1 in South Dakota, being 42 in all. Movements looking to the introduction of the same system were on foot in other cities. At the November election a draft of charter on the lines of the Des Moines plan was submitted to popular vote in the city of Buffalo, New York, and approved by 8848 electors, out of a total of 11,346 who expressed themselves on the subject. The total vote, however, was only about one-sixth of that cast for candidates at the election. On the strength of the opinion expressed, the Legislature is now being asked to enact the charter. Should it do so, the form of government will have trial in the largest city that has yet introduced it.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: London, England: Defeat of the Progressives in the County and Borough Elections.
See (in this Volume) LONDON: A. D. 1907-1909.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Los Angeles, California: Experiments and Experiences.
Since 1900, Los Angeles, California, has been going through some interesting experiences, due to a series of charter amendments. The former charter of the city had been of the common pattern, organizing the municipal government under a mayor and a board of aldermen elected by wards. The amendments of recent years have created a Board of Public Works, with large powers in the management of municipal work; have changed the Board of Education from a body of nine members elected by wards to a membership of seven chosen from the city at large; have provided an elaborate system of municipal civil service regulation; and finally have provided for a complete system of popular initiative and referendum in municipal legislation, and for recall of elective officers. Popular initiative in legislation is made possible upon the demand by petition of 15 per cent of the voters, estimated upon the total vote for mayor at the preceding municipal election; referendum in ordinary legislation is required upon a petition of 7 per cent of the voters; a recall election must be ordered upon the demand of 25 per cent of the voters concerned in the filling of the office. The official whom the petition seeks to remove is made a candidate for reflection without other nomination, unless in writing he notifies the city clerk that he is not a candidate.
The recall methods, provided for in charter amendments of 1903, have been put into actual service; first, in 1906, when a councilman was replaced by vote of the Ward, and again in February, 1909, when a recall election was ordered for the office of mayor. The proceedings in this case attracted widespread attention and interest throughout the country. They failed, however, to afford a perfect test of recall methods for the reason that after the election had been ordered but before the date had arrived the mayor in office resigned, thus surrendering without a struggle to the opponents who had sought his removal.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Michigan: Home Rule for Cities.
The lately revised Constitution of Michigan authorizes cities and villages to frame, adopt and amend their charters, and to pass laws and ordinances in regard to their municipal concerns. Under this improved Constitution, the Michigan Legislature of 1909 adopted the necessary legislation for the formulation of action and for the limitation of taxes and debts. The following, from the New York _Evening Post_, is a summary of the more important provisions of the Act: "Charters of new cities will be framed by a commission of nine electors chosen by popular vote. Revised charters of existing cities will be framed, after a vote of the electors in favor of revision (submitted by a two-thirds vote of the local legislative body or on an initiatory petition of twenty per cent. of the total vote cast for Mayor), by an elected commission of one member from each ward and three electors at large. Candidates for charter commissioners are to be placed on the ballot without party affiliations designated. Charter amendments may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of the local legislative body, or by an initiatory petition of twenty per cent. of the vote for Mayor.
"Every charter and charter amendment, before submission to the electors, must be submitted to the Governor of the State, but if disapproved by him, and passed on reconsideration by a two-thirds vote of the Charter Commission or local legislative body, shall be submitted to the electors. Copies of charters and charter amendments approved by the electors of the city shall be certified to the secretary of state, and shall thereupon become a law.
"The law names certain things which each city charter shall provide, and imposes certain restrictions on the powers of cities. There must be an elected Mayor and a body vested with legislative power; the clerk, treasurer, and assessors, and other officers may be elected or appointed. This permits the establishment of a commission system, or of a Mayor and council with distinct powers. Provision must be made for the levy, collection, and return of State, county, and school taxes, for annual appropriations for municipal purposes, and for a system of accounts.
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"Provision may be made for municipal taxes and for borrowing money up to prescribed limits, for the regulation of trades, occupations, and amusements, for the purchase of franchises, for a plan of streets within three miles beyond the city limits, 'for a system of civil service,' for the referendum, and the following omnibus clause: for the exercise of all municipal powers in the management and control of municipal property and in the administration of the municipal government, whether such powers be expressly enumerated or not; for any act to advance the interests of the city, the good government and prosperity of the municipality and its inhabitants, and through its regularly constituted authority, to pass all laws and ordinances relating to its municipal concerns, subject to the Constitution and general laws of the State.
"Limitations include the following: Existing limits to the tax rate and borrowing powers to remain until a change is authorized by vote of the electors, with a maximum limit of 2 per cent. of the assessed valuation for the tax rate and 8 per cent. for loans; but, as authorized by the Constitution, bonds may be issued beyond this limit for public utilities, when secured only upon the property and revenues of the utility. A sinking fund must be provided for bonds. A charter or charter amendment may not be submitted oftener than once in two years. The salary of public officials may not be changed after election or appointment. Certain municipal property may only be sold or vacated when approved by three-fifths of the electors voting thereon.
"A separate act was passed for villages. This follows the main features of the law for cities, but is briefer."
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: New York City: A. D. 1901-1909. The Municipal Elections of 1901, 1903, 1905, and 1909.
See (in this Volume) NEW YORK CITY.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: New York City: A. D. 1905-1909. The Working of the Bureau of Municipal Research.
The Bureau of Municipal Research, instituted in New York City by an organization of citizens in 1905, has proved to be as effective an agency as has ever been employed for the straightening of crookedness and the correcting of negligence in the conduct of municipal affairs. Its working is described fully in an article which appeared in the _Atlantic Monthly_ of October, 1908, by the head of the Bureau, Dr. William H. Allen, under the title, "A National Fund for Efficient Democracy." What the writer aims to do, and does most effectively, is, first, to show how inefficient our democracy is in its practical working, how demoralizing that inefficiency is, how feebly education and religion are struggling against its demoralizations, so long as they do not work to make government efficient; and then he unfolds the remedy indicated in results obtained already from the public enlightenment—the citizen education—which the Bureau of Municipal Research is developing in New York. His final purpose is to plead for the great national fund that would establish a central foundation for the extending and organizing of similar educational work throughout the country at large.
The simple object of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research has been to make and to keep the public acquainted with the working of things in its government; to make and keep it attentive to the facts of efficiency or inefficiency in that working, which proves to be the kind of political education that bears the most practical fruits. The aim of the bureau, says Dr. Allen, has been "educative, not detective. Infinitely more interested in pointing out what is needed than what is wrong, it realizes that the great problem of democracy is not the control of the officer, but the education of the citizen. It began, not by laying down principles of government or discussing men, but by studying the needs of the community and its official acts. It would educate democracy in facts about democracy’s acts and methods, democracy’s need, and democracy’s opportunity." Something of the results achieved is set forth in the following passage:
"Three years, $150,000, and scientific method, have accomplished results surpassing all dreams of those who outlined its programme. So convincing are these results that onlookers who said three years ago, ‘The tiger will never change its stripes,’ are now saying, ‘You could hardly do this in cities where the tiger marks are less obvious.’ Although many phases of municipal administration have not yet been studied, there is hardly an obstacle to efficiency and honesty that has not been encountered and overcome by light. The real-estate bureau that eluded all graft charges is being reorganized to prevent either graft or one hundred per cent. profits for land sold the city at private sale. While its own staff, consisting of three investigators in 1907 and 40 in the summer of 1908, can of itself do no inconsiderable educational work, the bureau gauges its effectiveness, not by what its own staff accomplishes, but by what the city’s staff of 70,000, and through them the city’s population of 4,000,000, are enabled to accomplish because of its educational effort.
"Methods that manufacture corruption and inefficiency, and that for 50 years defied political reform, are giving way to methods by which 70,000 employees must tell the truth about what they do when they do it, about what they spend when they spend it, in clear, legible form. … Tammany officials, when interested, make excellent collaborators. The commissioners of accounts, for 30 years, through reform and Tammany administrations alike, a whitewashing body that condoned and glossed over wasteful and corrupt acts, have become, as a direct result of the bureau’s work, a great educational agency."
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: New York City: A. D. 1909. Proposed New Charter, not acted on in the Legislature.
A Commission appointed for the purpose by Governor Hughes, after long and careful study of the subject of a new charter for Greater New York, reported in March, 1909, submitting a recommended draft, which was submitted to the Legislature then in session, but obtained no action from that body before its adjournment. The ruling principle in the work of the Commission had been that of reducing the number of elected administrative officers, of putting into separate hands the power to appropriate and the power to spend money, and of concentrating power and responsibility in a few. {437} As originally organized, the "Greater New York" City is divided into five boroughs. At the head of each borough is a Borough President, who has charge of the streets and the public buildings within the borough. There is also a Board of Estimate and Apportionment, consisting of the Mayor, Comptroller, the President of the Board of Aldermen, and the Borough Presidents. There is also a Board of Aldermen. The Commissioners proposed that the Borough Presidents shall cease to have administrative functions and shall devote their attention exclusively to the great financial work of the Board of Estimate and Apportionment; that the administrative work be given to heads of departments responsible to the Mayor, and to bureaus, some of them under the Board of Estimate and Apportionment and some under the various departments; and that the Board of Aldermen be supplanted by a Council of thirty-nine members to serve without pay; to have enlarged legislative powers, but none connected with the grant franchises, which the Board of Estimate and Apportionment should control. A new Department of Street Control was proposed, to take over all street work, abolishing the Street-Cleaning Department.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Philadelphia: A. D. 1905. A Temporary House Cleaning of the Municipality. Mayor Weaver’s Conversion.
"Philadelphia has reformed. It is the swiftest and most thorough municipal revolution known in American civic annals. Without an election and without primaries, without warning and without preparation, the great deep of small householders,—which is Philadelphia,—moved from below. When the work was over, Mayor Weaver, who led the revolution, had not only changed the heads of the two executive departments, with ten thousand employees, but he was in full control of City Councils; he was recognized as the head of the city Republican party organization; he had forced the city Republican committee to withdraw the local ticket already nominated and await the choice of another ticket by the reform leaders; he had begun criminal prosecution, stopped work on contracts for filtration plants, boulevards, and highways amounting to some twelve million dollars, beginning a searching investigation by a board of expert engineers, and had defeated two grabs, one a contract for seventy-five years in gas and the other a street-car grab of one hundred and ten miles of streets, sought by the two local public-service corporations, the United Gas Improvement Company and the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company. Both had been successfully passed before this revolution broke, and both were recalled, on the demand of the mayor, by the same councils that had passed them.
"The coherent homogeneous vote of the myriads of small homes which make up Philadelphia has made this sweeping victory possible against great odds. The party majority in Pennsylvania and Philadelphia is the strongest in the country. The city machine is as well organized as Tammany Hall. It holds city, State, and federal patronage. For ten years it has without challenge chosen the executive officers at Harrisburg and Philadelphia and held the Legislature and Councils. The city ring, in a decade of unchecked rule, has issued $40,000,000 of city bonds; let on the filtration plant alone $13,660,000 of contracts; as much more on various public improvements, and had pending work authorized, but not let, costing about $30,000,000. The criminal investigation already made indicates that on the filtration-plant contracts alone the margin of loose profit is from 28 to 30 per cent. In this period the city gas works have been leased for a term ending in 1927, on provisions which yield $2,000,000 a year, twice the expected profit to the lessee, the United Gas Improvement Company. The other public-service corporation, the Philadelphia Rapid Transit Company, has had a free gift of a subway and over two hundred miles of street without payment and without limitation. The combination, under an antiquated law which threw no safeguards about the ballot of a venal vote controlled by machine office-holders of the great corporations, railroad and public-service, and of a corrupt combination of contractors and politicians, seemed omnipotent. By the adroit use of State and city appropriations for private charities and educational institutions, the respectable were placated. The leaders of this organization were also wise enough to meet reforms non-political halfway. The last State legislature passed excellent sanitary legislation, reorganized on sound lines the city schools of Philadelphia, passed efficient child-labor laws, and at many points improved State legislation. Carefully separating political management and elected officers, the leaders of the machine chose judicial candidates usually unexceptionable, and elected as governor of the State and mayor of Philadelphia men honest, dull, highly respected, without stain but pliant.
"In April, so far as Philadelphia was concerned, self-government seemed to have disappeared. Its charter was amended, in the teeth of universal protest, so as to rob future mayors of all powers. Senator Boies Penrose and Insurance Commissioner Israel W. Durham made all nominations, State and city. The former awaits investigation. Durham has been shown to be a silent and secret partner in a contracting firm holding $13,660,000 of contracts, under city ordinances he passed, led by officers he chose, and yielding some 30 per cent. profit. In Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, the corporation pays the machine and the machine aids the corporation. It is like this in other States, but preeminently in that founded by Penn. After a long series of like gifts and franchises, councils voted the Rapid Transit Company one hundred and ten miles of streets, passed a costly boulevard system, and in return for $25,000,000 intended for more contracts proposed to lease the city gas works for seventy-five years, postponing reduction in the price of gas for three-quarters of a century.
"This ran the pliant fingers of the machine into the pockets of every householder who had a gas bill to pay, some two hundred and eighty thousand in number. Suddenly this great mass moved from within. The pulpit of small churches knew it before the press, the little division leaders before the ward managers, and they before the chiefs of the organization. In a week, the city seethed. Children of councilmen came crying from the public schools. No one would play with them. Callous, thick-skinned politicians found their mail, their telephones, and their daily tours one hot rain of protest from their old neighbors. Division leaders reported defection by the avalanche. {438} The small householder, the narrow burgher, comfortable, contented, owning his house, careless over ideals, education, corruption, and venal voter, was aflame over a bigger gas bill. It is the old story of ship money and stamp taxes. No vote was necessary. No primary was needed. The leaders of a political machine are ignorant of much, but they know the voice of the voter in the land. John Weaver, the mayor, chosen by the machine, and its lifelong friend and supporter, had been a fair case lawyer and district attorney. Honest, narrow, clean-lived, of a legal mind, restive at the way he was treated as a mere figurehead, he recognized the civic revolution because he was himself of the class that had risen. He had, moreover, in his day won his division and was a ward leader."
_American Review of Reviews, July, 1905._
The Israel W. Durham referred to above, who was the absolute "boss" of Philadelphia from 1896 to 1905, died on the 28th of June, 1909.
See, also, PENNSYLVANIA: A. D. 1906.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: A. D. 1909. The old Evil Conditions revived. Defeat of Revolt against them.
The old mastery of the City Government by an all-powerful and shameless political "machine" was recovered at the end of the term of Mayor Weaver, and conditions were soon as rotten as before the momentary and partial cleansing had been performed. In 1909 a hopeful revolt against them was undertaken, under the lead of D. Clarence Gibboney a young lawyer who as secretary of an active "Law and Order Society," had shown inspiring powers of leadership and high qualities of sincerity and resolution. Gibboney had been put forward for District Attorney in 1906 on Democratic and Independent tickets, and had suffered defeat. Now he was brought again to the front, for that office, from which the plunderers of the city could be most advantageously attacked. A William Penn Party had been organized in the interest of reform, and his nomination by this was endorsed by the Democratic organization. A great effort was made to rouse the conscience and the self-respect of the city, to throw off the thraldom of blind partisanship under which it submits to be corrupted and robbed. But the effort failed. Gibboney was rejected by a majority of about 40,000 voters.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Pittsburg: Achievements of a Reforming Mayor.
George W. Guthrie became Mayor of Pittsburg in 1906. "When Mayor Guthrie went into office there was no merit system in Pittsburg; but he soon established an effective one of his own, and at the 1907 session of the Pennsylvania Legislature effectively co-operated with the Pennsylvania Civil Service Reform Association and similar bodies, with Mayor Dimmick, of Scranton, and the business bodies of second-class cities, to secure a law which would permanently establish the merit system in them. He and his colleagues succeeded. A short time ago some one asked the Mayor how many Democrats he had appointed to office. His immediate reply was, 'I haven’t the least idea. The question of party has never entered into the matter.’ …
"The tax levied in February, 1906, before Mayor Guthrie assumed office, was 15 mills. That levied in February, 1907, the first under his administration, was 12½ mills. This year, had it not been for the annexation of Allegheny, the city would have required only 10 or 10½ mills. The Mayor’s first estimate was 11 mills; but the final figures, as made up by the Finance Committee, showed that the lower figure would have been sufficient. When the Mayor entered office, there was a cash deficit of $400,000, caused by the payment of bills left over from the previous administration. He closed his first year with a small surplus, and the second (1907) with a large one. The total tax valuation of the old city of Pittsburg is $599,852,923. Its total bonded indebtedness is $24,956,001, and its net indebtedness (arrived at by deducting bonds in the saving fund) is $16,532,425, or .0275 per cent of the valuation. This highly desirable financial result, however, has not been reached by any false economy. Inadequate salaries have been raised. All the street repairing for 1907 was paid for out of the tax levy, and the work on the filtration plant has been pushed unceasingly. Enough of the filter beds are finished to provide for present needs, and as soon as they are ‘ripened’ and the pumping machinery rearranged the city will have filtered water. …
"For many years, under the old regime, Pittsburg had been free from many of the evils of an open city; but a syndicate of Councilmen and politicians had made immense sums out of the business. They controlled the leases of the houses, which they sublet at exorbitant sums. They also controlled the supplies which were furnished to them. The Mayor issued but one order for the regulation of this district. He made no attempt to solve the entire problem. As the law was plain about the sale of liquor, he declared that that must stop absolutely; and that no house could be run on streets on which there were surface cars. This order proved to be the death-blow of the combination that had previously existed. The politicians, when they heard the order, laughed. They had fooled every other Mayor, and they thought they could fool Guthrie. He would need Councils and must necessarily ‘deal’ with them. But he needed no one, and he ‘dealt’ with no one. He waited six weeks for his warning to be taken, and then he acted. One Saturday night the police drew a net around the district, and over one thousand arrests were made. Then came the final blow that stopped political interference. Under the old system police magistrates had been in the habit of holding fines or delaying sentences, which, under the pressure of political influence, were remitted or suspended. Such money as was paid in was held for a month before being turned over to the city treasury. … Mr. Guthrie established the rule that all fines and jail sentences, once imposed, would have to stand unless revoked by the county courts. Not only have the revenues of the city largely increased by this policy, as we have already seen, but one of the greatest sources of political evil has been removed. Since this policy was inaugurated there has been no political or machine interference in the administration of the law. Incidentally, I may mention that one Councilman went to jail for his complicity with the protection of the social evil.
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"The situation in Pittsburg is so changed and improved that the Secretary of the Civic Voters' League was able to say recently; ‘While we have forced Councils to be good, elected the best Mayor in the country, put in county offices men of ability and honesty, forced the politicians to give us a good civil service measure, I am convinced that our most important victory has been to convince the political leaders and bosses that there is a new era in politics, and that for the future none but the best men can be elected to public office.’"
_Clinton Rogers Woodruff, A Mayor with an Ideal (The Outlook, April 25, 1908)._
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Defeat of the Reforming Mayor in 1909, but no Discouragement of the Reforming Activity of the Voters’ League. Unparalleled Success in convicting Bribed Officials and their Bribers.
Mayor Guthrie, nominated for reëlection in 1909, was defeated by the nominee of a corrupt party "machine"; but this put no check on the efforts of the Voters’ League behind him to hunt down the corrupting influences and agencies which had mastered the city once more. A fortunate accident gave the League a single clue to the hidden labyrinth of rascality, and it sufficed for astounding revelations. It tracked and caught, first, a single ex-Councilman, who had handled large sums of bribe-money, receiving and dividing it among his fellow members of a gang known as the "Big Six." This man, John P. Klein, when he found himself helplessly in the toils, and likely to be the scape-goat for all his confederates and their corrupters, made confessions which uncovered much, if not all, of the bribe-giving and bribe-taking of several past years. Down to the 23d of March, 1910, when the following summary was published, the results coming from this confession had been as follows:
In penitentiary— W. W. Ramsey, ex-president of the German National Bank; William Brand, ex-president of the Common Council; Joseph C. Wasson, ex-Councilman, and H. M. Bolder.
Under sentence to the penitentiary— John F. Klein, ex-Councilman.
Awaiting disposition of their cases— E. H. Jennings, president of the Columbia National Bank, and F. A. Griffin, cashier, who pleaded _nolo contendere_.
Under indictment— Forty-one Councilmen.
Confessors of bribe-sharing— Twenty Councilmen, former and present, Select and Common.
More confessors awaiting turn— Ten former and present Councilmen.
As this goes to the printers, the bribe-givers, including some of the multi-millionaires of Pittsburg, are being dragged into court.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: St. Louis: A. D. 1900-1940. The Unearthing of Thievery and Corruption by Circuit Attorney Folk. Prosecutions, Confessions, and Convictions.
One of the most notable and effective cleansings of a corrupted municipality that has occurred in the United States was accomplished in St. Louis by Joseph Wingate Folk, using the powers of the office of Circuit Attorney of the City, to which he was fortunately elected in the spring of 1900. That bribery was active among the Aldermen and Councilmen of the two chambers of the municipal legislature, and that unscrupulous men of business were habitually employing it to secure iniquitous franchises and jobs, appears to have been a matter of common belief; but the belief had not roused feeling enough to bring about any change, until the opportunity to act was given to Mr. Folk.
One notoriously suspicious transaction, which consolidated the street railways of the city, was outlawed for all but a single actor in it by the Missouri statute of limitations, which bars criminal proceedings after three years; but the one man had been absent from the State during so large a part of those three years that he could be reached by the law, and the Circuit Attorney turned the search light of a grand jury investigation on his case. This man, R. M. Snyder, of Kansas City, was indicted, arrested, and held for trial under bonds of $50,000. From that beginning Mr. Folk went on to the probing of a more recent franchise grant, and unearthed the fact that two deposits of cash, for sums of $60,000 and $75,000 were boxed in safety deposit vaults, each guarded by duplicate keys held on one side by a corporation agent, and on the other side by agents of the Council and the Aldermanic body respectively, waiting for distribution among the officials who had sold the public franchise for those sums. A rival corporation had, meantime, attacked the legality of the grant, held it up by an injunction, and so kept these corruption funds in suspension between the bribers and the bribed.
By what resolute persistence, what shrewdness, what bold ventures of surmise, Mr. Folk uncovered the cunningly secreted facts, terrified the "boodlers" and the bribers into betraying one another, and fastened their crimes upon them, cannot be told here. Two of the wealthy buyers in the rascally trade, a Mr. Turner and a Mr. Stock, became witnesses for the State against the men whose crime they had bought. The two agents for Aldermen and Councilmen, who held the keys of the deposited bribe, J. K. Murrell and Charles Kratz, fled to Mexico, forfeiting their bail. Three others of the accused, Emil Meysenberg, Julius Lehmann and Harry Faulkner, were tried, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for three and two years. The escape of Murrell and Kratz beyond reach of extradition embarrassed the prosecution of the remaining confederates, who seemed likely to go free for lack of sufficient evidence; but unexpectedly, in September, 1902, Murrell reappeared in St. Louis, saying that he could not endure exile any longer and was ready to bear the penalty of his wrongdoing. On his confessions eleven aldermen were arrested, charged with bribery in two cases and with perjury before the grand jury. Seven others made successful flights.
In the course of the next year another of the refugees from justice returned, supposing his time of danger to have passed. This was Charles F. Kelly, who had been Speaker of the St. Louis House of Delegates and a ready tool of Edward Butler, the St. Louis political "Boss" and legislative broker. Butler had been involved in the prosecutions, and Kelly had fled to avoid giving testimony against him, being paid, as he confessed finally, $50,000 for his retirement into obscure foreign parts. What happened to him later, and what confessions he made were the subject of a brief story in THE OUTLOOK of November 5, 1904, in part as follows:
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"Returning when it was believed that his patron was secure through the operation of the statute of limitations, Kelly was arrested and sentenced to two years in the penitentiary for perjury in his testimony in one of the boodle cases. He appealed to the Supreme Court, and meanwhile was rearrested on the charge of accepting a bribe in another deal. At, this juncture he complained that Butler had deserted him and had advised him to plead guilty. ‘It didn’t look right,’ he said in an interview, ‘that we should take our medicine and that he should go free.’ Therefore he determined to relate his dealings with Butler in the bribery cases. In his statement he says that he has reason to believe that boodling had been in progress in the St. Louis Municipal Assembly for the last twenty-five years. The boodlers did not fear exposure, because they ‘knew that most of the politicians and many of the large financiers of St. Louis’ would be with them. One prosecutor who attempted to bring them to justice was ‘bluffed off.’ When Mr. Folk began his work, there were threats of assassination, and finally a deliberate plot was arranged to ruin the prosecutor’s influence by falsehoods. ‘Prominent financiers’ as well as the boodlers were engaged in this attempt, according to the confession.
"The general scheme of the boodle ‘combine’ is already fairly well known, but Mr. Kelly adds some interesting details. There were nineteen members, and the combine was ‘not along party lines.’ ‘My experience,’ he remarks, ‘has been that boodlers line up according to their interests, and not under party standards.’ The members of the combine held regular meetings, and decided by a majority vote on the prices to be charged for various measures. There was a ‘fixed schedule of prices’ for bills in accordance with the value of the privileges to be given. The combine rarely sold out for less than a thousand dollars, though once ‘some of the boys took five dollars each, but were so ashamed of it they would not speak of it afterwards, because the price was so small.’ The combine was in the habit of selecting one of its members to act as agent in the deals, and only in one or two instances did the representative prove untrustworthy. ‘Among ourselves,’ says this frank boodler, ‘we had a high code of morals, and it was considered extremely dishonest for a member of the combine to accept bribe money without dividing it among his fellows.’ A particularly interesting feature of the confession is the warning which it gives to St. Louis of the danger of a relapse to the old conditions when Mr. Folk’s term as Circuit Attorney shall have expired. Kelly asserts that Butler advised his indicted friends to get continuances until a new Circuit Attorney should be elected, and that he promised them that the prosecutor should be ‘his man.’ ‘What,’ asks Kelly, ‘has been done in St. Louis? Nothing at all. The prosecutor has, after three years’ fighting, whipped us. But it seems to me, such is the condition of public sentiment in St. Louis, that when the new prosecutor, who of course will be Ed Butler’s man, takes charge, boodlers will be in clover again.’ In his opinion the great trouble is that ‘so many of the large corporations of the city are mixed up in boodle one way or another’ that the town is willing to tolerate corruption."
Here, as in all exposed cases, the power to organize "boodle" or "graft" in municipal government is found to have been derived from the "machines" of the national political parties.
The exhibit of character and ability made by Mr. Folk in his extraordinary enforcement of law in St. Louis, to the overthrow of the stronghold of municipal thieves and corruptionists, so commended him to the people of Missouri that they nominated and elected him Governor of the State in 1904, despite the most desperate endeavor of the party organizations to defeat him. In his higher office he continued his work of reform.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: SAN FRANCISCO: A. D. 1901-1909. The Struggle with Political Corruption.
"Before the enactment of the charter of 1899 the mayoralty in San Francisco had little power, and successive political bosses had ignored it. Instead of this, they aimed to control the municipal Board of Supervisors, which had the awarding of contracts and franchises. The charter of 1899 changed all this, by concentrating vast powers of appointment and removal in the mayoralty, the office being filled by biennial election. The office was ably and honestly administered for the first two years by Honorable Jas. D. Phelan.
"During the latter portion of Phelan’s term there occurred a long and bitter industrial struggle, known as the ‘Teamsters’ Strike,’ in which the sympathy of other labor organizations was deeply stirred. At the request of the employers Mayor Phelan consented to placing the city police upon drays and wagons as guards for non-union drivers. This action aroused violent denunciation on the part of the union labor leaders. It also served as a political object lesson. It was seen that to gain possession of the mayoralty in the interest of union labor would be a great political advantage, especially in a recurrence of industrial strife.
"In the following election (1901) Eugene E. Schmitz, orchestra leader at the Columbia theatre and head of the musicians’ union, the candidate of the union labor party, was elected mayor by 21,776 votes as against 30,365 votes somewhat evenly divided between the Republican and the Democratic candidates. Two years later (1903) Schmitz was reëlected in the same way, and in 1905 he was again successful, this time securing a large majority over the fusion candidate nominated by the Democratic and Republican parties combined. Throughout the whole period Schmitz's chief political manager was Abraham Ruef, a native of San Francisco, well educated, gifted and ambitious, an adroit politician, previously affiliated with the Republican party. In 1904 he was a delegate at large for California in the Republican national convention at Chicago.
"Almost from the beginning of the Schmitz administration it became recognized throughout the city that the most certain way of obtaining favors from the mayor’s office was through the law office of Abraham Ruef, who acted as the legal and political adviser of Mayor Schmitz. Ruef steered a different course from political bosses generally. He kept his office open for all comers, high and low. He was thoroughly accessible. He welcomed all applicants and dealt out encouraging assurances to every request. It soon became a matter of general belief that under the guise of legal services Ruef was selling licenses, securing special privileges for favored clients and protecting illegal concerns. Ruef’s income increased enormously during the Schmitz regime, but to the end he maintained this pretense of ‘attorney’s fees,’ and only a few months before he was indicted for extortion he stoutly maintained before a public meeting that he had never made a dollar out of politics.’
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"In 1905 the grand jury made a thorough investigation of the municipal administration and became convinced of the existence of a wide-spread system of bribery and corruption. In its report to the Superior Court, filed August 19, 1905, it stated: ‘that wholesale and wide-spread violation of law is open, notorious and flagrant; that it meets with the acquiescence of the mayor; that it receives the approval of the police commission; that it is aided, abetted and protected by police officials. … We find that vice and crime have been organized so systematically, and fostered with such vigilant attention to detail, that nothing which business acumen or political expediency could suggest has been neglected or omitted.’ For lack of legal evidence, however, or the funds with which to carry on an investigation for securing it, no indictments in these matters were returned.
"The municipal election of 1905 gave to Ruef the control of the Board of Supervisors as well as the administrative departments of the city. The great upheaval in business conditions produced by the earthquake and fire of April, 1906, brought new and wealthier clients to his office. Evidence made public in the later prosecutions goes to show that Ruef was paid to secure from the Board of Supervisors for the United Railroads permission to use an overhead trolley system for operating its street cars instead of the cable system in use before the fire; that the gas company had bribed the supervisors to raise the price of gas from 75 to 85 cents per thousand feet; and that the telephone companies had used the same means to promote their interests.
"The work of securing the evidence upon which criminal indictments could be based was performed by a few determined men. Rudolph Spreckels, a young man of large fortune, came forward with a pledge of $100,000 for the expenses of a searching investigation. District Attorney William H. Langdon, who had been elected on the same ticket with Schmitz, announced that he would conduct the inquiry without regard to party affiliations, and appointed Francis J. Heney, assistant district attorney. A man of courage and devotion to public honesty, Heney had gained distinction by the successful prosecution of land frauds before the Federal courts in Oregon. Heney requested and obtained the assistance of William J. Burns, a detective in the United States Secret Service.
"Ruef and Schmitz were soon indicted by the grand jury, charged with extorting money from restaurant proprietors. During the progress of his trial Ruef changed his plea from ‘Not guilty’ to ‘Guilty.’ Judgment against him was delayed, however, by the prosecution for the purpose of gaining evidence against others. Schmitz was tried on a similar charge and with the aid of testimony given by Ruef was convicted and [July, 1907] sentenced to imprisonment for five years in the state penitentiary.
"Meanwhile, some of the weaker supervisors having been caught in a trap set for them by Burns, confessions of bribery were obtained by the grand jury from fifteen out of eighteen members of the Board. In return for these confessions the district attorney entered into immunity contracts with the supervisors, and became temporarily the directing power in the municipal government. The office of mayor was declared vacant, and Honorable. Edward R. Taylor, a learned and conscientious man, a professor in the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, was appointed to the position. Gradually the whole Board of Supervisors was replaced by honest and experienced men.
"On the confessions of the discredited supervisors there followed a large number of indictments against Ruef, Schmitz and the various officers and employees of the public service corporations concerned in corrupting the city government. By May 25, 1907, the number of so-called ‘graft’ indictments was 137, against 19 persons. From collateral issues the number of indictments later rose to 160. The indictments against a few of the accused were subsequently dismissed. Five of the original 19 accused persons had been put on trial one or more times previous to January, 1910,—the expiration of the term of office of District Attorney Langdon. These trials were carried on with the utmost rancor on the part of opposing counsel. The greatest difficulties were encountered in securing juries and in several cases juries failed to agree. Throughout the community and in the public prints there developed factional division and bitterness. This factional hatred culminated in acts of violence and terrorism. Two houses in Oakland, Alameda County, one occupied, the other owned by James L. Gallagher, former supervisor and lieutenant of Ruef, later a most important witness for the prosecution, were dynamited and nearly destroyed. For these crimes a culprit was discovered and sent to the state prison for life by the courts of Alameda County. On November 13, 1908, during the trial of Ruef on bribery charges, Mr. Heney was shot from behind while at his post in the court-room by a half-demented sympathizer with the accused. A day later the assassin took his own life while in jail. By the merest chance Mr. Heney’s wound proved not to be fatal, and after a few months he returned to his duties.
"Even in the few cases in which convictions were obtained judgment was arrested by appeals to the higher courts, which uniformly resolved all technical questions in favor of the accused. To the end of 1909, the record of these cases is as follows:
"Number of indictments 160.
"Contracts of immunity 19.
"Tried and acquitted twice: Tirey L. Ford, attorney for the United Railroads.
"Trials in which the jury disagreed: Louis Glass, manager for the Pacific States Telephone Co.; Tirey L. Ford; Abraham Ruef; Patrick Calhoun, president of the United Railroads.
"Judgments reversed by higher court, Eugene E. Schmitz and Louis Glass.
"Plea of guilty nullified by higher court: Abraham Ruef.
"Convicted, but appeals to higher court in progress: Abraham Ruef and M. W. Coffey, a supervisor who broke his immunity contract.
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"Thus it is evident that the prosecution has so far failed to punish extortion and bribery by criminal procedure. The real results of the prosecution are to be found in the prompt reform of the municipal government of San Francisco in 1907, and, in a larger way, in an awakened public conscience and a strengthened sense of civic duty. These results are not limited to San Francisco, but are a part of the great work of political regeneration in which the whole country is concerned.
"The question of further efforts to secure convictions in these ‘graft’ cases was made a political issue in San Francisco by the candidacy of Mr. Heney for the office of district attorney in 1909. That a large number of voters considered such continued efforts useless or hopeless was shown by his defeat by a decisive majority of 10,000 votes against him."
The new Mayor placed at the head of the City Government by this election was the nominee of the same Union Labor Party which had seated Schmitz and his manager, Ruef, and it was made plain that he represented the opposition to all that had been done and attempted toward municipal reform.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: Spain: A. D. 1907-1909. Municipal Reforms.
See (in this Volume) SPAIN: A. D. 1907-1909.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: The Transvaal: A. D. 1909. Introduction of Proportional Representation.
See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: United States: The "Municipal Program," framed by the National Municipal League.
"At the joint invitation of the City Club of New York and the Municipal League of Philadelphia, a Conference for Good City Government was held in Philadelphia in January, 1894. Out of this conference grew the National Municipal League, formally organized in New York City in May, 1894. The League includes in its affiliated membership, the leading municipal reform organizations of the country, and, in its associated membership the leading students of municipal government. At the annual meeting of the League in 1897 held in Louisville, a special committee was appointed ‘to report on the feasibility of a _Municipal Program_ which will embody the essential principles that must underlie successful municipal government, and which shall also set forth a working plan or system, consistent with American industrial and political conditions, for putting such principles into practical operation; and the Committee, if it finds such _Municipal Program_ to be feasible, is instructed to report the same with its reasons therefor, to the League, for consideration.’
"The Committee appointed under this resolution made a preliminary report at the annual meeting of the League held in Indianapolis in 1898, and a final one at the annual meeting of the League held in Columbus in 1899. The Committee did not claim that its report constituted the final word upon the subject referred to it, but its members were convinced, as a result of their studies and investigations, that ‘_A Municipal Program_’ which would embody the essential principles that must underlie successful municipal government was entirely feasible, and they recommended certain Constitutional Amendments and a general Municipal Corporations Act, as setting forth a working plan or system consistent with American industrial and political conditions, for putting such principles into practical operation. The Committee’s recommendations were unanimously adopted by the League at its Columbus meeting."
_Horace E. Deming, The Government of American Cities, page 203 (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York)._
As originally published, the "Municipal Program" has gone out of print, but Mr. Deming, under an arrangement with the League, has reproduced it as an appendix to his book, with an explanatory discussion of it. The main objects sought in it are "to clothe the city government with such broad powers as will enable it to perform all the appropriate functions of a local government without resort to the State Legislature for the grant of additional power"; and to "prevent the interference by the State Legislature with the free exercise by the city of the governmental powers granted it." Beyond this, the designers of the "Program" have worked out what seemed to them the most effective plan of organization in municipal government for the exercise of such full powers.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: WISCONSIN: Organization of a Municipal Reference Bureau by the State University.
Within the past year a Municipal Reference Bureau has been organized in connection with the Extension Department of the Wisconsin State University, its purpose being to offer the widest possible use of the material on questions relative to municipal government which the University has collected, by answering inquiries. The Bureau is under the charge of Mr. Ford H. MacGregor, and will work in cooperation with the very useful Legislative Reference Department of the Wisconsin Free Library Commission, which was organized a few years ago and is still conducted by Dr. Charles McCarthy.
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT.
See, also, (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: UNITED STATES, AND SOCIAL BETTERMENT.
----------MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: End--------
MURRELL, J. K.: Confessions.
See (in this Volume) MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: ST. LOUIS.
MÜRZSTEG PROGRAMME, The.
See (in this Volume) TURKEY: A. D. 1903-1904, and 1905-1908.
MUSHIR-ED-DOWLEH.
See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1907-1908 (SEPTEMBER-JUNE).
MUSTAFA FAZIL PASHA.
See (in this Volume) TURKEY: A. D. 1908 (JULY-DECEMBER).
MUTINY IN THE RUSSIAN NAVY.
See (in this Volume) RUSSIA: A. D. 1905 (FEBRUARY-NOVEMBER).
MUTUAL LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY: Legislative Investigation.
See (in this Volume) INSURANCE, LIFE.
MUZZAFER-ED-DIN: Late Shah of Persia.
See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1905-1907.
MYTILENE, International Occupation of.
See (in this Volume) TURKEY: A. D. 1905-1908.
{443}
N.
NABUCO, DR. JOAQUIN: President of Third International Conference of American Republics.
See (in this Volume) AMERICAN REPUBLICS.
NACIONALISTAS.
See (in this Volume) PHILIPPINE ISLANDS: A. D. 1907.
NAGEL, CHARLES: Secretary of Commerce and Labor.
See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909 (MARCH).
NAKAMURA, GENERAL.
See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904-1905 (MAY-JANUARY).
NANSHAN, BATTLE OF.
See (in this Volume) JAPAN: A. D. 1904 (FEBRUARY-JULY), A. D. 1904-1905 (MAY-JANUARY).
NAPOLEON I.: Declining Worship of his Memory in France.
See (in this Volume) WAR, THE REVOLT AGAINST: A. D. 1907-1908.
NASR-UL-MULK: PRIME MINISTER OF PERSIA. His exile.
See (in this Volume) PERSIA: A. D. 1907-1908 (SEPTEMBER-JUNE), AND 1908-1909.
NATAL.
See (in this Volume) SOUTH AFRICA.
NATHAN, ERNESTO: MAYOR OF ROME.
See (in this Volume) ITALY: A. D. 1909.
NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION, The.
See (in this Volume) SOCIAL BETTERMENT: UNITED STATES.
NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION, The: Its notable Conference on Industrial Disputes. Its great Committee for Intermediation and Conciliation.
See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1902.
NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION, The: Its Intermediation in Coal Strike.
See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1902-1903.
NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION, The: National Conference at Chicago, 1907, on Trusts and Combinations.
See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL, &c.: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1907.
NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION, The: Its work in Promotion of Trades Agreements.
See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1908.
NATIONAL CIVIC FEDERATION, The: Its work for Uniformity in State Legislation.
See (in this Volume) LAW AND ITS COURTS: UNITED STATES.
NATIONAL CONSERVATION ASSOCIATION.
See (in this Volume) CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: UNITED STATES.
NATIONAL FARMERS’ UNION.
See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1902-1909.
NATURAL RESOURCES, The Conservation of.
See (in this Volume) CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES.
NATURALIZATION: Convention between American Republics.
The following Convention was adopted and signed at the Second Conference of the American Republics, at Rio de Janeiro, 1906.
See (in this Volume) AMERICAN REPUBLICS.
"Article I. If a citizen a native of any of the countries signing the present Convention, and naturalized in another, shall again take up his residence in his native country without the intention of returning to the country in which he has been naturalized, he will be considered as having resumed his original citizenship, and as having renounced the citizenship acquired by the said naturalization."
"Article II. The intention not to return will be presumed to exist when the naturalized person shall have resided in his native country for more than two years. But this presumption may be destroyed by evidence to the contrary."
"Article III. This Convention will become effective in the countries that ratify it three months from the dates upon which said ratifications shall be communicated to the Government of the United States of Brazil; and if it should be denounced by any one of them, it shall continue in effect for one year more, to count from the date of such denouncement."
"Article IV. The denouncement of this Convention by any one of the signatory States shall be made to the Government of the United States of Brazil and shall take effect only with regard to the country that may make it."
NATURALIZATION: In the British Empire: Proposed Uniformity of Law.
See (in this Volume) BRITISH EMPIRE: A. D. 1907.
NATURALIZATION: In the United States: The Question of Treatment of Expatriated Citizens who visit their Native Country. The Principle asserted to Germany. New Law of American Citizenship.-
Consequent on an increasing disposition in Germany to curtail the revisiting of their native country by Germans who had become naturalized citizens of the United States, the American Ambassador to Berlin discussed the subject with the German Foreign Minister, on the 12th of August, 1902, and reported the substance of the conversation to Washington: "Statements were made on the part of the embassy as follows: No sympathy whatever is felt with the person who deliberately emigrates and avails himself of the American naturalization laws for the mere purpose of escaping military service in Germany, and there is no wish on the part of the American authorities to enable such persons to make a convenience of their American naturalization. The embassy has also consistently declined to intervene in behalf of persons whose wish was to make their permanent residence in Germany. It is thought, however, that where German emigrants have fulfilled the conditions necessary to entitle them to ‘be treated as American citizens’ they should actually be so treated, and when they have emigrated in good faith they should be permitted to sojourn in Germany, for their business or pleasure, to visit at their former homes, or to enjoy the benefits afforded by German watering places, etc., in accordance with the terms of the treaty with Prussia of 1828. The sovereign right of Prussia to expel persons whose presence is not considered desirable is not contested, but it is thought that the American Government has the right to know why the presence of any American citizen is so considered.
"Dr. Von Mühlberg’s attention was called to a number of cases now pending, where naturalized American citizens have received orders to leave the country after a stay of a few weeks. He said that he would take the matter up personally and would communicate with the Prussian minister of the interior in regard to it at once."
{444}
In reply from the Department of State at Washington, the action of Ambassador White was approved, and it was said further: "You should lose no suitable opportunity to press and to emphasize the considerations which you advanced in your interview with Dr. Von Mühlberg. The essence of the right of expulsion which the German States claim is that it should be reasonably and justly applied in cases obviously calling for so extreme a measure. Expulsion should not be invoked indiscriminately, so as to operate as a deterrent to the exercise of the rights of expatriation and acquisition of new allegiance granted under the naturalization treaties, or so as to neutralize, by indirection, treatment stipulated thereafter regarding the recognition of the new national character."
_Papers relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1902, page 441._
The doctrine of citizenship stated by Ambassador White on this occasion was embodied subsequently in a new citizenship law, which came into force on the 2d of March, 1907. The new law was based on a report made by an official commission, one of the members of which has written of it as follows:
"When a future historian shall write an account of the achievements of this the most remarkable administration of our government since the Civil War, he will give prominent place to the naturalization law of a year ago and the citizenship law which was approved last March and is now becoming effective; for these two measures are the culmination of a hundred years of effort for reform, and affect the very foundation of our political structure. …
"So far as the naturalization law is concerned, the objections to it come chiefly from petty courts throughout the country which are now not permitted to naturalize, and which formerly derived part of their prestige and their fees from naturalization business. Dissatisfaction with the new citizenship law flows from those people who have been living abroad in fancied security of their American citizenship, and who now find themselves obliged to take positive steps to preserve a status which they have heretofore supposed attached to them indefinitely, without the performance of any obligations on their part. Both of these laws originated in the House of Representatives, but each resulted from a report made by executive officers, and the Senate can claim little agency in them. The citizenship law was based upon a report made to Secretary Root by a board of officers of his Department, the members being James Brown Scott, the Solicitor for the Department of State, David Jayne Hill, our Minister at The Hague, and the writer of this article, with Samuel B. Crandall, Ph. D., of the Department as Secretary. … From this report sprang a bill, introduced in the House by the Honorable James Breck Perkins of New York, which became a law on March 2nd.
"The law does not change or even modify the American doctrine of citizenship. That was already settled by the Constitution and the decisions of the Supreme Court. Anybody born in the United States, no matter what his race, unless he is an Indian living with a tribe, or however ineligible to our citizenship he may be for any other reason, is a citizen of the United States. …
"Broadly speaking, an individual becomes a citizen of the United States by birth or naturalization, and these facts have been well settled; but how does he lose American citizenship? This was the question to which the citizenship board chiefly addressed itself, and which Congress settled a few months ago by declaring that an American shall be held to have expatriated himself when he becomes naturalized as a citizen of another country, or when he takes an oath of allegiance to another state, or when he lives permanently outside of the United States without intent to return. …
"We have had a constantly increasing number of so-called American citizens living abroad—men who have lived in the United States for only five years and in many cases have fraudulently secured naturalization papers after less than five years of residence; who never were really domiciled there; who never have performed any of the duties of American citizenship and who never intended to do so. … Until the new naturalization law went into effect, it was not actually against the letter of the law for a man to commit this fraud; for, when he applied for citizenship, he was required merely to show that he had resided in the United States for five years, and no inquiry was made concerning his future intentions."
_Gaillard Hunt, The New Citizenship Law (North American Review, July, 1907)._
NAVAL CONFERENCE, INTERNATIONAL, AT LONDON, 1908-1909.
_See (in this Volume) War, The Revolt against: A. D. 1907 (appended to account of Second Peace Conference at The Hague)._
NAVIES.
See (in this Volume) WAR, THE PREPARATIONS FOR: NAVAL.
NAVIGATION LAWS: Proposed British Imperial Policy.
See (in this Volume) BRITISH EMPIRE: A. D. 1907.
NEERGAARD, M.: PREMIER OF DENMARK.
See (in this Volume) DENMARK: A. D. 1905-1909.
NEGRO PROBLEMS, IN THE UNITED STATES.
See (in this Volume) RACE PROBLEMS: UNITED STATES.
NELIDOW, M.: President of the Second Peace Conference.
See (in this Volume) WAR, THE REVOLT AGAINST: A. D. 1907.
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1870-1905. Increase of Population compared with other European Countries.
See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1870-1905.
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1902. Offer of mediation between Great Britain and the Boers.
See (in this Volume) SOUTH AFRICA: A. D. 1901-1902.
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1903. Laws against Railway Strikes. Failure of General Labor Strike to prevent their Enactment.
See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1903.
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1903. Agreement for Settlement of Claims against Venezuela.
See (in this Volume) VENEZUELA: A. D. 1902-1904.
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1904. Military operations against the Atchinese.
A Dutch military expedition against the long-insurgent natives of the old Sultanate of Atchin, in Sumatra, which was said to have carried death to a thousand women and children, gave rise to stormy scenes in the Netherlands when its session was opened in September. The excuse of the Government was that the warriors used the women and children as shields.
{445}
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1905-1909. Defeat and Fall of the Calvinistic Party of the Reverend Dr. Kuyper. The Suffrage and Education Questions. The six principal Parties. Success of the groups of "the Right" in the latest Elections.
Elections to the lower chamber of the States-General, held in June, overthrew the Conservative majority in that body and gave the Liberals a small majority of 4. An important issue between parties had been on the question of universal suffrage, but the support given to its advocates was not strong enough to justify immediate attempts on their part to carry any measure of law. A royal Commission was appointed, however, to investigate and report generally on the need or expediency of a revision of the Constitution. The defeated Ministry of Dr. Abraham Kuyper represented an ultra-Calvinistic Church element in politics, and its defeat appears to have been due in the main to educational laws which it had carried through. According to the Dutch review, _De Gids_, from which the following has been translated, the aim of the new laws and the objection to them were much the same as in the English controversy over the Education Act of 1902, when church and clerical influences carried the day against the supporters of secular schools. "These educational laws," said _De Gids_, "were unanimously supported by, if they did not wholly originate with, the clericals, or the Anti-Revolutionary party, as they call themselves, of which Dr. Kuyper is the astute and able leader and head. They had the undivided support also of the Catholics, but were strenuously opposed by the Liberals and all the anti-clericals, including the Social Democrats. The Anti-Revolutionists and Catholics on the one hand, and the Liberals and their allies on the other, form, respectively, the Right and Left in the Chambers."
Since 1905 there seems to have been little if any change in the Dutch parties. On the approach of the quadrennial general elections of June, 1909, a correspondent of the London _Times_ wrote of "the complex grouping" of the political parties contending in them: "There are six which may fairly claim to be important. The largest is probably the Catholic. It is estimated that a third of the population is Catholic by religion, and of the Catholics a very large proportion belong to the Catholic political party, and vote consistently in accordance with the commands of its leaders. Next to the Catholics come the strict Calvinists, who have been organized by Dr. Kuyper into a compact and most formidable party, generally called the Anti-Révolutionnaire party. It finds its chief supporters among the rural population and the petite bourgeoisie, and owes its name to the doctrine, sedulously preached by Dr. Kuyper, that the Radical and Liberal parties are fomenting an anti-religious revolution, and that it is therefore necessary to choose between Christianity and Heathenism. This doctrine is generally known as ‘the antithesis,’ and, though its influence has waned somewhat in the towns, it still has considerable influence in the country. Closely allied to the Anti-Révolutionnaire party is the Christlijk Historisch party, which is more aristocratic, but less energetic, with many principles but no very definite programme. It not infrequently speaks against the Calvinist party, but as a rule joins it when it comes to voting.
"These three parties, Catholic, Anti-Révolutionnaire, and Christlijk Historisch, form the Right. The Left is composed of the Old and United Liberals, the Radicals or Vrijzinnige Democraten, and the Socialists, representing all shades of opinion from what in England might be called Whiggism to extreme Socialism. The questions which really divide these parties, as distinguished from the party cries on which the election is being fought, are Clericalism and Socialism, and a very large proportion of the electors are not quite sure which enemy they most fear. There is no doubt that the Anti-Révolutionnaire party and the Catholics represent two forms of Clericalism, while the Socialists are openly Collectivists. The other parties, with the exception of the Vrijzinnige Democraten, can be better described as opposed to the two extremes than as presenting any clearly marked characteristics of their own."
The first balloting of this election took place on the 11th of June and the second on the 23d. The Anti-Révolutionnaires came out of it with 23, the Catholics with 25, the Christlijk Historischs with 12, making 60 for the groups of "the Right"; against a total of 40 in the groups of "the Left." Of this minority only 7 were in the ranks of the Social Democrats. Dr. Kuyper was among the defeated candidates.
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1906. At the Algeciras Conference on the Morocco Question.
See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1905-1906.
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1906. The Second Peace Conference at The Hague convoked by the Queen.
See (in this Volume) WAR, THE REVOLT AGAINST: A. D. 1907.
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1908 (April). Treaty with Denmark, England, France, Germany, and Sweden, for maintenance of the Status Quo on the North Sea.
See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1907-1908.
NETHERLANDS: A. D. 1908-1909. Trouble with Castro of Venezuela.
See (in this Volume) VENEZUELA: A. D. 1908-1909.
NEW BRUNSWICK: A. D. 1901-1902. Census. Reduced representation in Parliament.
See (in this Volume) CANADA: A. D. 1901-1902.
NEWCOMB, PROFESSOR SIMON.
See (in this Volume) SCIENCE AND INVENTION: CARNEGIE INSTITUTION, AND AERONAUTICS.
NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1902. British Colonial Conference at London.
See (in this Volume) BRITISH EMPIRE.
NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1902-1905. Negotiation and Senatorial Destruction of the Hay-Bond Reciprocity Treaty with the United States.
In November, 1902, a Treaty of Reciprocity which would have settled the long-standing disputes over American rights of fishing on the Newfoundland coast, on terms of most equitable advantage to both countries, and especially favorable to the interests of the general public in the United States, was concluded and signed at Washington by Secretary Hay and the British Ambassador, Sir Michael Herbert. The Premier of Newfoundland, Sir Robert Bond, had taken a principal part in the negotiation, and the resulting document was known consequently as the Hay-Bond Treaty. It secured to the New England fishermen the coveted privilege of buying bait and other supplies and hiring crews in Newfoundland ports; and it admitted the greater part of American manufactures into the island duty free. {446} On the other hand, it opened the markets of the United States to the fish and fish products, the coal, oil, and ores of Newfoundland, for the benefit of the consumers of the country. The treaty was hailed with satisfaction by the general public of the United States, but opposed by a few interests whose gains might be lessened if any breach in their monopoly of the sale of salted fish and coal and oil should be permitted. The majority which has seldom failed of late to be retainable in the United States Senate for the service of such private interests, against the public good, was promptly organized by Senator Lodge, first for pocketing the Treaty throughout more than two years, and finally for amending it to death, in February, 1905. The provisions that made it advantageous to Newfoundland were cut out, and it was reduced to a state which made it insulting as an offer of reciprocity. It suffered the fate which, in late years, is quite certain to befall any project of real statesmanship that has to go through the hands of the United States Senate.
NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1904. Convention between England and France touching Fishery Rights.
See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1904 (APRIL).
NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1905-1909. Renewed Disputes over American Fishing Rights on the Treaty Coast. Arrangement of a Modus Vivendi. Agreement on Questions to be submitted to a Tribunal of Arbitration at The Hague. Constitution of the Tribunal.
The endless friction that has attended the exercise of treaty-rights by American fishermen in the Newfoundland fisheries was freshly roughened in the fall of 1905, by a new enactment of the provincial legislature, to prevent the sale of bait or outfits and supplies of any nature to foreign fishermen, and by orders from the Minister of Marine and Fisheries forbidding vessels of American registry to fish on the Treaty Coast. This reopened debate between the State Department at Washington and the Foreign Office at London, over the intentions and meanings of that first article in the Treaty of 1818 which has been a source of incessant dispute for ninety-one years. The following is the language of the article:
"Article I. Whereas differences have arisen respecting the liberty claimed by the United States, for the inhabitants thereof, to take, dry, and cure fish, on certain coasts, bays, harbours, and creeks of His Britannick Majesty’s Dominions in America, it is agreed between the High Contracting Parties that the inhabitants of the said United States shall have, for ever, in common with the subjects of His Britannick Majesty, the liberty to take fish of every kind, on that part of the southern coast of Newfoundland, which extends from Cape Ray to the Rameau Islands, on the western and northern coast of Newfoundland, from the said Cape Ray to the Quirpon Islands, on the shores of the Magdalen Islands, and also on the coasts, bays, harbours, and creeks, from Mount Joly, on the southern coast of Labrador, to and through the Streights of Belleisle, and thence northwardly indefinitely along the coast, without prejudice, however, to any of the exclusive rights of the Hudson’s Bay Company. And that the American fishermen shall also have liberty, for ever, to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays, harbours, and creeks of the southern part of the coast of Newfoundland, here above described, and of the coast of Labrador; but so soon as the same, or any portion thereof, shall be settled, it shall not be lawful for the said fishermen to dry or cure fish at such portion so settled, without previous agreement for such purpose, with the inhabitants, proprietors, or possessors of the ground. And the United States hereby renounced, for ever, any liberty heretofore enjoyed or claimed by the inhabitants thereof, to take, dry, or cure fish on or within three marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks, or harbours of His Britannick Majesty’s Dominions in America, not included within the above-mentioned limits: provided, however, that the American fishermen shall be admitted to enter such bays or harbours, for the purpose of shelter, and of repairing damages therein, of purchasing wood, and of obtaining water, and for no other purpose whatever. But they shall be under such restrictions as may be necessary to prevent their taking, drying, or curing fish therein, or in any other manner whatever abusing the privileges hereby reserved to them."
With reference to the present obstruction to American fishing in Newfoundland waters, the contention of Secretary Root was set forth in the following propositions:
"1. Any American vessel is entitled to go into the waters of the Treaty Coast and take fish of any kind.
"She derives this right from the Treaty (or from the conditions existing prior to the Treaty and recognized by it) and not from any permission or authority proceeding from the Government of Newfoundland.
"2. An American vessel seeking to exercise the Treaty right is not bound to obtain a licence from the Government of Newfoundland, and, if she does not purpose to trade as well as fish, she is not bound to enter at any Newfoundland custom-house.
"3. The only concern of the Government of Newfoundland with such a vessel is to call for proper evidence that she is an American vessel, and, therefore, entitled to exercise the Treaty right, and to have her refrain from violating any laws of Newfoundland not inconsistent with the Treaty.
"4. The proper evidence that a vessel is an American vessel and entitled to exercise the Treaty right is the production of the ship’s papers of the kind generally recognized in the maritime world as evidence of a vessel’s national character.
"5. When a vessel has produced papers showing that she is an American vessel, the officials of Newfoundland have no concern with the character or extent of the privileges accorded to such a vessel by the Government of the United States. No question as between a registry and licence is a proper subject for their consideration. They are not charged with enforcing any laws or regulations of the United States. As to them, if the vessel is American she has the Treaty right, and they are not at liberty to deny it.
"6. If any such matter were a proper subject for the consideration of the officials of Newfoundland, the statement of this Department that vessels bearing an American registry are entitled to exercise the Treaty right should be taken by such officials as conclusive."
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On the British side, Sir Edward Grey raised two principal objections to these propositions of Mr. Root: First—that "the privilege of fishing conceded by Article I of the Convention of 1818 is conceded, not to American vessels, but to inhabitants of the United States and to American fishermen;" second, that "inhabitants of the United States would not now be entitled to fish in British North American waters but for the fact that they were entitled to do so when they were British subjects. American fishermen cannot therefore rightly claim to exercise their right of fishery under the Convention of 1818 on a footing of greater freedom than if they had never ceased to be British subjects. Nor consistently with the terms of the Convention can they claim to exercise it on a footing of greater freedom than the British subjects ‘in common with’ whom they exercise it under the Convention. In other words, the American fishery under the Convention is not a free but a regulated fishery, and, in the opinion of His Majesty’s Government, American fishermen are bound to comply with all Colonial Laws and Regulations, including any touching the conduct of the fishery, so long as these are not in their nature unreasonable, and are applicable to all fishermen alike."
To the first of these objections Mr. Root replied;
"We may agree that ships, strictly speaking, can have no rights or duties, and that whenever the Memorandum, or the letter upon which it comments, speaks of a ship’s rights and duties, it but uses a convenient and customary form of describing the owner’s or master’s right and duties in respect of the ship. … The liberty assured to us by the Treaty plainly includes the right to use all the means customary or appropriate for fishing upon the sea, not only ships and nets and boats, but crews to handle the ships and the nets and the boats. … I am not able to discover that any suggestion has ever been made of a right to scrutinize the nationality of the crews." As for the second objection, the American Secretary appealed to history against it. "The qualification," he said, "that the liberty assured to American fishermen by the Treaty of 1818 they were to have ‘in common with the subjects of Great Britain ’ merely negatives an exclusive right. Under the Treaties of Utrecht, of 1763 and 1783, between Great Britain and France, the French had constantly maintained that they enjoyed an exclusive right of fishery on that portion of the coast of Newfoundland between Cape St. John and Cape Raye, passing around by the north of the island. The British, on the other hand, had maintained that British subjects had a right to fish along with the French, so long as they did not interrupt them. The dissension arising from these conflicting views had been serious and annoying, and the provision that the liberty of the inhabitants of the United States to take fish should be in common with the liberty of the subjects of His Britannic Majesty to take fish was precisely appropriate to exclude the French construction and leave no doubt that the British construction of such a general grant should apply under the new Treaty. The words used have no greater or other effect. The provision is that the _liberty_ to take fish shall be held in common, not that the _exercise_ of that liberty by one people shall be the limit of the exercise of that liberty by the other."
As between these chief disputants in the matter, the first result of their exchange of arguments was a ready disposition to arrange some _modus vivendi_, under which peace might be kept on the fishing grounds until fresh undertakings could be planned for a lasting interpretation of the old enigmas in Article 1 of 1818. But the provincial Government of Newfoundland resented bitterly the imperial interference with its measures, charging that it was in violation of a pledge "given by the late Lord Salisbury in the House of Lords in 1891, to the effect that the colony had been given unlimited power with respect to its internal affairs." They were promptly told, however, that what concerned action under a British treaty went considerably beyond the internal affairs of their colony.
Considerable correspondence on the terms of the proposed _modus vivendi_ brought an agreement on the 6th of October, 1906, set forth in the following communication from Ambassador Whitelaw Reid to Sir Edward Grey.
"I am authorized by my government to ratify a _modus vivendi_ in regard to the Newfoundland fishery question on the basis of the Foreign Office Memorandum, dated the 25th ultimo, in which you accept the arrangement set out in my Memorandum of the 12th ultimo, and consent accordingly to the use of purse seines by American fishermen during the ensuing season, subject, of course, to due regard being paid in the use of such implements to other modes of fishery, which, as you state, is only intended to secure that there shall be the same spirit of give and take and of respect for common rights between the users of purse seines and the users of stationary nets as would be expected to exist if both sets of fishermen employed the same gear.
"My Government understand by this that the use of purse seines by American fishermen is not to be interfered with, and the shipment of Newfoundlanders by American fishermen outside the 3-mile limit is not to be made the basis of interference or to be penalized; at the same time they are glad to assure His Majesty’s Government, should such shipments be found necessary, that they will be made far enough from the exact 3-mile limit to avoid any reasonable doubt.
"On the other hand, it is also understood that our fishermen are to be advised by my Government, and to agree, not to fish on Sunday.
"It is further understood that His Majesty’s Government will not bring into force the Newfoundland Foreign Fishing-Vessels Act of 1906, which imposes on American fishing-vessels certain restrictions in addition to those imposed by the Act of 1905, and also that the provisions of the first part of section 1 of the Act of 1905, as to boarding and bringing into port, and also the whole of section 3 of the same Act, will not be regarded as applying to American fishing-vessels.
"It also being understood that our fishermen will gladly pay light dues if they are not deprived of their rights to fish, and that our fishermen are not unwilling to comply with the provisions of the Colonial Customs Law as to reporting at a custom-house when physically possible to do so."
To explain the stipulation relative to "purse seines" it should be said that the New England fishermen claimed to be driven to the use of them, by the local regulations which hampered their fishing otherwise.
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As formulated in the note of Ambassador Reid the _modus vivendi_ was accepted by the British Government and went into effect. In due time thereafter the two Governments entered upon a discussion of ways and means for accomplishing a definite and final settlement of the whole question of American rights in the Newfoundland fisheries. The outcome was an agreement signed at Washington on the 27th of January, 1909, to the effect that the following questions shall be submitted for decision to a Tribunal of Arbitration, constituted as subsequent articles provide:—
"Question 1. To what extent are the following contentions or either of them justified?
"It is contended on the part of Great Britain that the exercise of the liberty to take fish referred to in the said Article, which the inhabitants of the United States have for ever in common with the subjects of his Britannic Majesty, is subject, without the consent of the United States, to reasonable regulation by Great Britain, Canada, or Newfoundland in the form of municipal laws, ordinances, or rules, as, for example, to regulations in respect of
(1) the hours, days, or seasons when fish may be taken on the Treaty coasts;
(2) the method, means, and implements to be used in the taking of fish or in the carrying on of fishing operations on such coasts;
(3) any other matters of a similar character relating to fishing; such regulations being reasonable, as being, for instance—
"(a) Appropriate or necessary for the protection and preservation of such fisheries and the exercise of the rights of British subjects therein and of the liberty which by the said Article 1 the inhabitants of the United States have therein in common with British subjects;
"(b) Desirable on grounds of public order and morals;
"(c) Equitable and fair as between local fishermen and the inhabitants of the United States exercising the said Treaty liberty and not so framed as to give unfairly an advantage to the former over the latter class.
"It is contended on the part of the United States that the exercise of such liberty is not subject to limitations or restraints by Great Britain, Canada, or Newfoundland in the form of municipal laws, ordinances, or regulations in respect of
(1) the hours, days, or seasons when the inhabitants of the United States may take fish on the Treaty coasts, or
(2) the method, means, and implements used by them in taking fish or in carrying on fishing operations on such coasts, or
(3) any other limitations or restraints of similar character—
"(a) Unless they are appropriate and necessary for the protection and preservation of the common rights in such fisheries and the exercise thereof; and
"(b) Unless they are reasonable in themselves and fair as between local fishermen and fishermen coming from the United States, and not so framed as to give an advantage to the former over the latter class; and
"(c) Unless their appropriateness, necessity, reasonableness, and fairness be determined by the United States and Great Britain by common accord and the United States concurs in their enforcement.
"Question 2. Have the inhabitants of the United States, while exercising the liberties referred to in said Article, a right to employ as members of the fishing crews of their vessels persons not inhabitants of the United States?
"Question 3. Can the exercise by the inhabitants of the United States of the liberties referred to in the said Article be subjected, without the consent of the United States, to the requirements of entry or report at custom-houses or the payment of light or harbour or other dues, or to any other similar requirement or condition or exaction?
"Question 4. Under the provision of the said Article that the American fishermen shall be admitted to enter certain bays or harbours for shelter, repairs, wood, or water, and for no other purpose whatever, but that they shall be under such restrictions as may be necessary to prevent their taking, drying, or curing fish therein or in any other manner whatever abusing the privileges thereby reserved to them, is it permissible to impose restrictions making the exercise of such privileges conditional upon the payment of light or harbour or other dues, or entering or reporting at custom-houses or any similar conditions?
"Question 5. From where must be measured the ‘3 marine miles of any of the coasts, bays, creeks or harbours’ referred to in the said Article?
"Question 6. Have the inhabitants of the United States the liberty under the said Article or otherwise to take fish in the bays, harbours, and creeks on that part of the southern coast of Newfoundland which extends from Cape Ray to Rameau Islands, or on the western and northern coasts of Newfoundland from Cape Ray to Quirpon Islands, or on the Magdalen Islands?
"Question 7. Are the inhabitants of the United States whose vessels resort to the Treaty coasts for the purpose of exercising the liberties referred to in Article 1 of the Treaty of 1818 entitled to have for those vessels, when duly authorized by the United States in that behalf, the commercial privileges on the Treaty coasts accorded by agreement or otherwise to United States trading vessels generally?"
Of the remaining articles of the Agreement, IV. and V. provide for the determination of future questions that may arise, and for the composition of the Tribunal of Arbitration, which is to be chosen from the members of the Permanent Court at The Hague.
The agreement above was formulated at a conference in Washington between Secretary Root, Ambassador Bryce, Honourable A. B. Aylesworth, Canadian Minister of Justice, and Attorney-General Kent of Newfoundland. In March the following were chosen from the general membership of the Permanent Court at The Hague to constitute the Tribunal for this arbitration, namely: Dr. Luis Maria Drago, Argentina; Jonkheer de Savornin Lohmnan, Netherlands; Judge George Gray, United States; and Sir Charles Fitzpatrick, Chief Justice of Canada, with Dr. H. Lammasch, of Vienna, to be umpire on points of disagreement.
The case for the United States was delivered to the British Embassy at Washington, and that for Great Britain to the American Embassy at London, on the 4th of October. A little later it was announced that the _modus vivendi_ of 1908 had been renewed until the termination of the arbitration proceedings.
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NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1907. Imperial Conference at London.
See (in this Volume) BRITISH EMPIRE: A. D. 1907.
NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1908-1909 (November-May). Six Months of Political Deadlock.
From November, 1908, until the following May an extraordinary deadlock resulted from a tie between rival parties in the House of Assembly. The situation, as described by a correspondent of the London _Times_, was as follows:
"Each side has 18 seats. Neither, therefore, can elect a Speaker, much less undertake the control of public business, when Parliament meets. Sir Robert Bond, who carried 32 seats against 4 in 1900 and 30 seats against 6 in 1904, returns with only half the House—18 men. In the former contests Sir Edward Morris, who now leads the Opposition against him, had been a member of his Cabinet and his ‘right-hand man,’ and the November results prove that Morris’s withdrawal was a serious injury to Bond. Morris went out a year or so previously owing to a disagreement as to raising the rate of wages on public works, and, being the leading Roman Catholic politician of the Island, had 14 seats, of that creed, as a solid block in Bond’s party during all this period. It was therefore felt, when he resigned, that this ‘solid 14’ would be broken, and this conclusion proved correct, because Morris carried half of them in spite of the open and avowed hostility of many of the priests in the diocese of St. Johns."
Sir Robert Bond retained the Prime Ministry until the end of February, 1909, when, having failed to obtain a dissolution of Parliament and a new election from the Governor, Sir William Macgregor, he resigned. Sir Edward Morris then took office, and the continued deadlock made it necessary, in a few weeks, to command a dissolution and call a new election, which was held on the 8th of May. It broke the tie of parties effectually, Sir Edward Morris carrying 26 seats, against 10 filled by the partisans of Sir Robert Bond.
NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1909. A Year of Misfortune and Depression. Scant earnings from the Fisheries and from Whaling. Attitude of the people toward Confederation with Canada.
"The Fisheries represent fully eighty per cent. of the exports, and in order to understand the financial stringency which has now fairly settled down upon ‘Our Cousin to the East’ it must be borne in mind that while the catch of fish remains about the same from year to year, the price has been steadily increasing for the past ten years, until last year it was double what it was a decade ago. But this year the price has suddenly fallen to what it was at the beginning of the decade. In other words, the value of last season’s catch will be just about half what it was the season before; and, instead of the merchants receiving $7,800,000 for their fish, they will receive considerably less than $4,000,000; and the individual fisherman who at the former price was barely able to earn $350 will receive this year probably less than $175, on which to support himself and family for the year, and to provide himself with an outfit for the next season’s work. Many of course will not receive that much. … Although other industries are springing up in Newfoundland, the codfishery remains the great staple and dependence of the population—the vast majority of which are fishermen, born and bred, who do not readily adapt themselves to other methods of earning a living. The present depression is widespread and far-reaching, and every form of industry and trade, business and commerce in the Colony is suffering seriously thereby. The latest ill report comes from Bay of Islands, to the effect that the winter herring fishery on the west coast—the scene of the present controversy with the United States—is a failure. Last spring’s seal fishery was not up to the average, and owing to many accidents to the fleet, necessitating heavy outlay for repairs, the promoters have realized much less than they otherwise would have secured. The whale fishery, also, which a few years ago had assumed enormous proportions, and was yielding handsome returns, has now almost reached the vanishing point. To complete the sum of the Colony’s misfortunes comes the partial suspension of [iron] mining operations at Bell Island, during the winter months, at the very time when the men need employment most, and when, as a result of the lack of it, they will probably emigrate to other countries.
"This combination of misfortune is not only causing distress among all classes of citizens, but the government will also keenly feel the loss of revenue; for a conservative estimate of the reduction in the customs revenue for the current fiscal year puts the figures at $450,000; in other words, that the revenue will not exceed $2,000,000.
"The great drawback in Newfoundland institutions is the disproportion between the big machinery of government and the small population to be governed. A local politician has aptly described it as ‘the trappings of an elephant on the back of a rat.’"
_Edwin Smith, The Land of Baccalhos (Canadian Magazine, July, 1909)._
Another writer in the same number of The _Canadian Magazine_ discusses the opposition in Newfoundland to union with the Dominion of Canada as follows: "The political leader who should to-day appeal to the Newfoundland electorate on the question of Confederation would be disastrously defeated. But on the day when the leader of a party in the Island Colony makes up his mind to risk temporary defeat for the purpose of accomplishing Confederation, that day brings union between Newfoundland and Canada within the horizon of the proximate future. That leader must—unless the financial exigencies of the Island bring him extraneous aid—face an arduous campaign of education, but it will be a campaign crowned with victory.
"These are the impressions left on my mind by a visit to St. John’s made with the object of studying the political deadlock and the causes which led up to it. … The residents of the outports—all settlements except St. John’s are known as outports—are opposed to Confederation because they have been told that it would mean a heavy increase in their taxes; that their windows, all their domestic animals and all their personal property would be taxed. If this wrong impression were dispelled by a campaign of education, and they understood that instead of higher taxation Confederation would mean the opening up of the country, bonuses for the fishermen, and new markets for the fish in Canada and abroad through the services of Canadian Commercial agents, instead of opponents of union they would become its advocates."
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NEWFOUNDLAND: A. D. 1909. (July-August). The Imperial Defence Conference.
See (in this Volume) WAR, THE PREPARATIONS FOR: MILITARY AND NAVAL.
NEW HEBRIDES: Arrangement between England and France.
See (in this Volume) EUROPE: A. D. 1904 (APRIL).
NEW PROTECTION, The.
See (in this Volume) LABOR REMUNERATION: THE NEW PROTECTION.
NEW YORK CENTRAL RAILROAD COMPANY.: Fined for unlawful Rebates.
See (in this Volume) RAILWAYS: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1897. Leadership in the Administrative Control of Tuberculosis.
See (in this Volume) PUBLIC HEALTH: TUBERCULOSIS.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1900-1903. Beginning of Tenement House Reform.
By a steady process, accelerated in the last ten years, the congested tenement districts of New York have become one great aggregation of sunless and airless rooms. Immense buildings have gone up by the thousands, five, six, and seven stories high, in which practically no provision for ventilation has been made; and in which the occupants are undergoing a slow process of asphyxiation. Nor are these disadvantages confined to the submerged proletariat. The New York tenement system is pervasive. … Two-thirds of the total population of New York, or 2,500,000 out of 3,500,000, live in tenement houses, a proportion which is increasing every day. …
"It was not until Governor Roosevelt’s appointment of the De Forest Tenement House Commission in 1900 that the necessary remedial legislation took practical shape. This act itself was the result of many years’ struggle against corrupt politicians,—Tammany Hall, the self-appointed guardian of the poorer classes, has been a bitter enemy of tenement reform,—and against vested interests. Its long delay had greatly exaggerated the problem; for meanwhile the conditions described had accumulated in appalling Volume. The commission, however, was of high civic character, and was composed of men, several of whom had made an exhaustive study of the tenement problem. The law which was passed as a result of their investigation was the first sweeping and effective tenement measure since the enactment in 1867 of the first tenement house act. The newly elected Low administration found the enforcement of this statute one of its most important responsibilities. The law created a new branch of municipal service,—the tenement house department; and gave the tenement commission, in the shape of an elaborate code of housing laws, important supervision over the building of new tenements and the maintenance of old."
_B. J. Hendrick, A Great Municipal Reform (Atlantic Monthly, November, 1903)._
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1900-1909. Subways and Tunnels.
It was not until 1900 that the building of subways for city transit in New York was begun. The first line, from the City Hall to Kingsbridge and the Bronx Park, was opened in 1904. During its construction plans for its extension southerly and under East River into Brooklyn were adopted, and contracts were let. The original work was executed under an arrangement with a company known as the McDonald Syndicate, whereby the City gave its credit to secure the requisite funds and would acquire the ownership of the subway and road at the end of fifty years. In 1902 the interests of the McDonald Syndicate were transferred to a new corporation, the Interborough Rapid Transit Company, which ultimately acquired a general control of the city railway service, and ran a crooked career to results of disaster, so far as the public was concerned. In 1905 the Board of Rapid Transit Commissioners, then exercising authority in this region of municipal affairs, under the New York State Rapid Transit Act of 1891, approved plans for an extensive additional system, comprehending as many as nineteen routes, with various "spurs," and the Board of Estimate and Apportionment consented to the execution of the plan.
The East River Tunnel to Brooklyn was finished early in 1908, and the first two tubes of four Hudson Tunnels, connecting Manhattan Island with New Jersey was opened in the last week of February, the same year. This first pair of the Hudson Tunnels realized a project which had been undertaken as far back as 1878 and which had undergone two financial failures, in 1882 and 1892. In 1902 its remains and its charter were passed on to a third courageous company, organized by Mr. William Gibbs McAdoo, who became the master-spirit of bold enterprise at New York in this engineering field. In 1903 Mr. McAdoo organized another company for the undertaking of a connection of the Pennsylvania Railroad in Jersey City with downtown New York, and also for connecting the uptown and downtown tunnels by means of a north and south line along the New Jersey water-front, so as to connect the Lackawanna, Erie, and Pennsylvania Railroads with the tunnel system, and thereby be able to give to their passengers an uptown and downtown railway delivery.
The second pair of Hudson River tubes (the downtown link) forming this New York and Jersey City Tunnel were opened on the 19th of July, 1909. Writing of the event a few days before its occurrence, the New York Evening Post summed up the existing and prospective conditions of entrance to and exit from the island of Manhattan by under-river passages as follows:
"Since the city entered its rapid transit boom and the practicability of sub-river tunnels was demonstrated to the satisfaction of the leading engineers of the world, fourteen such tubes have been under construction here. Four of them are in operation. The downtown link of the Hudson Company’s system will add two more, and the remaining eight are to be opened in the course of the next two years, according to present plans.
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"After the opening of the downtown Hudson tunnels, the travelling public will look forward to the operation of the other eight tubes, as follows: Two Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels beneath the Hudson River and four under the East River, meeting in Manhattan at the great terminal station now nearing completion, between Thirty-first and Thirty-third Streets, along Seventh Avenue; the pair of Steinway-Belmont tunnels, deriving their name from the originator of the franchise and the present controlling influence, running from Forty-second Street to Long Island City and held practically by the same men who control the operation of the Manhattan-Bronx subway (the Interborough Company).
"The Pennsylvania tubes under the North (Hudson) River are practically completed, and await only the finishing of the depot, while the East River tubes, though a little behind hand on account of difficulties met in the form of treacherous rock ledges, are within possibly a year of opening. The Steinway-Belmont tunnels are completed, and will be ready for operation as soon as the company makes a satisfactory arrangement with the Public Service Commission."
An official party in a passenger car went through the Pennsylvania Railroad’s tubes between New Jersey and Long Island on the 18th of November.
Work on a Fourth Avenue Subway in Brooklyn was begun November 13.
The Hudson Terminal at Cortlaudt and Church Streets is one of the most interesting structures in the world. Below the street is the terminal station, where all the trains "downtown" arrive and depart. This station is wholly below tide level. It is surrounded by a cofferdam of reinforced concrete 8 ft. thick, 400 ft. long, and 177 ft. wide, and is sunk 95 ft. deep to solid rock. Forty feet below the street is the track floor. Twenty feet below the street is the great "Concourse," where all traffic is collected and distributed to the various train platforms underneath. On the Concourse the Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley, and the Erie Railroads have ticket offices, where tickets to any part of America may be bought. This Concourse, which is about 1½ acres in extent, is one of the show places of New York. Above the street level are two great office buildings, each 22 stories in height, and containing approximately 27 acres of rentable area.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1901-1903. Municipal Elections. Tammany’s Loss and Recovery of the Government.
Tammany Hall suffered defeat in the municipal election of 1901, the Honorable Seth Low, formerly a notable Mayor of Brooklyn and latterly President of Columbia University, being carried into the Mayor’s office by a roused movement of reform which fused the elements of opposition to the corrupting Tammany power. Unfortunately the Mayor’s term of office had been shortened to two years by the charter amendment of the previous year, and the term was too brief for much depth and thoroughness of reform; but the city was greatly cleansed during those two years. When the next election came, in 1903, Tammany had rallied its hungry forces and secured a highly respectable nominee for Mayor, in the person of Honorable George B. McClellan, son of the famous General of the Civil War. Mayor Low, renominated by a second Fusion of opponents to Tammany, experienced defeat.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1904 (June). The Burning of the Steamer Slocum.
A catastrophe of such horror as to be historical attended the burning of the excursion steamer _General Slocum_, at New York, on the 15th of June, 1904. The boat left a New York dock in the morning with a Sunday-school picnic party aboard numbering about eleven hundred,—nearly all women and children. While passing through that part of the East River known as Hell Gate, within the New York City limits, fire was discovered in the forward part of the vessel. It was then flood tide, and the eddies and currents in those waters are very strong. The captain decided that it would be folly to attempt to land on either shore, or to beach his boat. He therefore headed the _Slocum_ for an island two miles up stream. As the boat went forward at full steam, the fore-and-aft draught thus created fanned the flames and hastened her destruction. On the discovery of the fire by the passengers, the wildest panic ensued. It was found that the life-preservers with which the _Slocum_ was equipped were worthless. No attempt was made to lower boats or life-rafts. The crew were engaged in trying to cope with the fire, but their efforts were futile. Within twenty minutes, the boat went to her doom, and of the women and helpless children who had embarked so gaily an hour before, more than nine hundred were drowned or burned to death. Hundreds were saved by the heroic efforts of policemen, river men, and the nurses on North Brother Island, the seat of New York’s hospital for contagious diseases, where the _Slocum_ was finally beached. Most of those who met this awful death had come from a single densely populated district of New York’s great "East Side." In some cases, whole families were wiped out.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1905. Institution of the Bureau of Municipal Research.
See (in this Volume) MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: NEW YORK CITY.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1905. The Municipal Election.
Especial excitements were given to the municipal election of this year in New York by the appearance in it of William R. Hearst, proprietor of several newspapers in the country which are foremost representatives of the recklessly sensational journalism called "yellow." The methods by which these papers won a great circulation include much that can hardly be described otherwise than as demagoguism, and many groups and classes of people who are restlessly discontented in life, whether reasonably or otherwise, had learned to look on Mr. Hearst as a champion of human rights. This prepared material from which to organize a personal following that took the character, for a time, of a formidable political organization, incorporated under the name of the Independence League; and the great wealth which Mr. Hearst had inherited, and which his prosperous newspapers replenished, was spent lavishly in exploiting, supporting, and controlling the organization. His political ambitions aimed high, and the mayoralty of New York City, for which his Independence League nominated him in 1905, was by no means the contemplated end.
The Tammany Democracy gave its nomination to George B. McClellan, son of the famous General, while the Republican party named William M. Ivins, a prominent lawyer of the city. The canvas was a heated one, and as it progressed the League of Mr. Hearst was seen to be dangerously large. As a consequence. Republicans who feared its control of the City government even more than they feared that of Tammany, threw their votes for McClellan, giving him a plurality of about 3500 over Hearst, and leaving Mr. Ivins far behind. {452} Frauds were claimed and the election contested by Hearst and his supporters, who secured, by order of a Justice of the Supreme Court of the State, a recounting of the ballots in four election districts, with the result of a gain of seventeen votes for Mr. Hearst. Appeal was then taken to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court for an order directing not only a recount but a recanvass of votes. Such an order was granted, but set aside by the Court of Appeals, to which the question went then; the court of last resort reversing, also, the order under which the four boxes had been recounted. The assertion of fraud was still maintained with vehemence, and the legitimacy of Mayor McClellan’s title to the office he filled was denied for more than a year. The Legislature then passed an Act directing a recanvass and recount of the entire ballots of the election, which had been preserved under seal. This was a labor of months, performed under the direction of Judge Lambert, of the Supreme Court. It gave a gain of 1094 votes to Hearst and a gain of 231 to McClellan, leaving a net gain of 863 to Hearst, and diminishing McClellan’s plurality in the total vote to 2791. The validity of his election was thereupon declared.
A more successful and far more notable independent candidacy than that of Mr. Hearst, in the New York City election of 1905, was conducted for the purpose of retaining Mr. William Travers Jerome in the office of District Attorney for the county of New York. He had been carried into the office on a fusion ticket, four years before, and had performed its important duties with a courage, a force, an independence and a rectitude that were beyond praise. The machines of the parties would not nominate him for reëlection; but an extraordinary rally of the friends of good government in all parties put him into the field, with an emergency organization that sufficed to carry him triumphantly through. He was elected by a plurality of about 16,000. So striking a proof of the political popularity which a high quality of public service can win has not often been given.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1905-1909. The Undertaking of Works for a Water Supply from the Catskill Mountains.
In 1905 the City of New York procured authority from the Legislature to construct the works necessary for an adequate supply of water, additional to that which had been drawn for many years from the Croton River for old New York and from the Ridgewood system for Brooklyn. The source determined on was in the Catskill Mountains, including several streams, called creeks,—namely Esopus, Rondout, Schoharie, and Catskill,— having a total water shed of 885 square miles, and estimated to furnish about 770 millions of gallons daily, even in dry years. The plan of the project in its entirety contemplates the construction of eight great reservoirs for storing and controlling the waters derived from these streams. The first to be built and the largest of such reservoirs is named the Ashokan, on Esopus Creek, about 14 miles west of the Hudson River at Kingston, near Brown’s station on the Ulster and Delaware Railway. Work on this was begun in 1907. It is being constructed in the form of two basins, having a united length of about twelve and a half miles, lying between hills which are connected by numerous massive dams. The dams necessary to complete the enclosure of the water have a total length of more than five miles.
In a straight line the distance from the Ashokan Reservoir to New York is 86 miles; but the windings of the course that will have to be given to the great aqueduct from the reservoir to the city will add six miles to its length. The aqueduct is to pass from the western to the eastern side of the Hudson at Storm King Mountain, through a tunnel in solid rock, far beneath the river bed. From Breakneck on the western shore it will cross a corner of the Croton watershed to a filter site, and to two final reservoirs, the Kensico and the Hill View. In connection with both Ashokan and Kensico reservoirs the plan of the system contemplates an aeration of the water, by flinging it to the air in thousands of fountain jets.
In the parts of the great concrete aqueduct that can be built in an open cut its dimensions are seventeen feet of height and seventeen and a half feet of width. Where it traverses tunnels the width is reduced to thirteen feet. Its delivery of water to New York is calculated to add 500,000,000 of gallons daily to the water supply of the city. The undertaking as a whole is claimed to be the greatest that any city has yet engaged in, while the engineering work involved is said to be second only in magnitude to that of the Panama Canal.
_Alfred D. Flinn, The World's Greatest Aqueduct (The Century Magazine, September, 1909)._
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1907 (April). Great Peace Congress.
See (in this Volume) WAR: THE REVOLT AGAINST: A. D. 1907.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1909. Unearthing of Corruptions in the Custom House.
See (in this Volume) UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909 (OCTOBER-NOVEMBER).
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1909 (June). The Wall Street Investigation, so-called. Report on the Operations of the Stock Exchange and other Exchanges.
See (in this Volume) FINANCE AND TRADE: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1909. Renewed Struggle against Tammany, with Partial but Substantial Success.
Although Tammany elected its candidate for Mayor in the municipal election of 1909, its domination was practically overthrown by the defeat of its nominees for all other offices of importance in the City Government. A coalition of the Republicans with anti-Tammany Democrats and other organizations had presented a fusion ticket headed by a prominent and much-trusted business man, Mr. Otto T. Bannard. William R. Hearst entered the field again, as an independent nominee, and Tammany named Judge William J. Gaynor, who had been one of its opponents, as a Democrat, in the past. Judge Gaynor was elected by a plurality of 73,016, the vote cast for mayor being: Gaynor 250,678; Bannard 177,662; Hearst 153,843. The City Comptroller, four of the five borough presidents, and the President of the Board of Aldermen, were elected by the Fusionists. By the election of Mr. McAneny to be President of the Borough of Manhattan (the old New York City), a very eminent political reformer and one of great force, was brought into the City Government. As president of the energetic City Club, which became a power in reform politics under his lead, and as secretary of the National Civil Service Reform League, Mr. McAneny had given abundant proof of his capacity and his earnestness in work for good government.
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By controlling twelve of the sixteen votes in the important Board of Estimate, the opponents of Tammany stripped that organization of all power over public "jobs." As the fact was expressed exultingly in one of the journals of New York on the day after election, "after January 1 Charles F. Murphy and his associates no longer will say who shall have public franchises; they, too, will no longer fix the budget, sell the city’s bonds, and pay political debts with salary increases. In other words, the Tiger has lost his grip on the city’s purse-strings, and this fact, perhaps, more than any other, has turned his den into a cavern of gloom."
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1909. Proposed New Charter, not acted on in the Legislature.
See (in this Volume) MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT: NEW YORK CITY.
NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1909-1910. The Shirtwaist Makers’ Strike.
See (in this Volume) LABOR ORGANIZATION: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1909-1910.
NEW YORK LIFE INSURANCE COMPANY: Legislative Investigation.
See (in this Volume) INSURANCE, LIFE.
NEW YORK, NEW HAVEN AND HARTFORD RAILROAD CASE.
See (in this Volume) COMBINATIONS, INDUSTRIAL: UNITED STATES: A. D. 1901-1906.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1899-1909. The Barge Canal under Construction.
On the 8th of March, 1899, Theodore Roosevelt, then Governor of New York, appointed a committee of private citizens, for service without pay, in studying and reporting on the policy to be adopted by the State of New York in dealing with its canals. The appointed chairman of the committee was General Francis Vinton Greene, and the following account of the recommendations made by the committee is taken from a paper on the subject contributed by General Greene to Volume XIII. of the Publications of the Buffalo Historical Society, published in December, 1909:
"The other members were Major Thomas W. Symons of the Corps of Engineers, United States Army, then stationed at Buffalo in charge of river and harbor improvements, Honorable Frank S. Witherbee of Port Henry in the Champlain district, Honorable George E. Green, State Senator from Binghamton in the southern tier of counties, Honorable John N. Scatcherd of Buffalo, and the two state officials most intimately connected with the administration of canals, viz., Honorable Edward A. Bond, State Engineer, and Honorable John N. Partridge, Superintendent of Public Works.
"The request of the Governor was simply that we should study the canal problem and advise him. … We devoted the greater part of the year 1899 to a study of the subject, and made our report to the Governor under date of January 15, 1900. … The Governor promptly transmitted the report to the Legislature, adopting the conclusions and recommendations which it contained, and advising that legislation be enacted to carry them into effect. This was done in successive years … ; finally the project was ratified and adopted by an overwhelming vote of the people in the election of 1903. …
"As to our conclusions and recommendations, the first question to be decided was whether or not the canals should be entirely abandoned. It was claimed by many that canal transportation was antiquated and altogether out of date; that ‘the railroads, with their large capital and scientific management, their durable roadbeds, powerful locomotives, larger cars, greater train loads, greater speed, and more certainty of delivery, will be able now or in the early future to reduce the cost of transportation below what is possible on the canals.’ If it should seem probable that the railroads could accomplish this, then it would be manifestly unwise and improper to expend any more public money upon the canals.
"From a consideration of all [the] facts we reached our first conclusion—which, like all the other portions of our report, was unanimously adopted—to wit, ‘That the canals connecting the Hudson river with Lakes Erie, Ontario and Champlain should not be abandoned, but should be maintained and enlarged.’
"The next point to be considered was, to what extent should they be enlarged, what size of vessel they should be adapted to carry, and what would be the estimated cost of construction.
"As to the proper size of the enlarged canal, widely different views were held by engineers and by economists. Some contended that the nine foot canal authorized in 1894 was sufficiently large; others brought forward the supposed advantages of a ship canal large enough to carry ocean-going steamers without breaking bulk from Duluth to Liverpool, or any other port; others contended that a canal of intermediate size would be found to be the most economical, would cost the least amount of money for the results produced, and would, in fact, produce a lower freight rate than either the small canal on the one hand, or the ship canal on the other.
"To these questions we gave the most careful study. The ship canal had many glittering attractions, and there was a large sentiment along the lakes which had found expression in Deep Waterways conventions, which had been held in recent years and had advocated a water route of either 21 or 28 feet depth from Lake Erie to the Atlantic ocean. … But a careful examination of the facts led us to the conclusion that while a ship canal of 21 or 28 feet depth would cost enormously more than a barge canal of say, 12 feet depth, it would not produce as low a freight rate. …
"Having rejected the ship canal project, we had then to consider what size of enlarged canal we should recommend. In any event, we were satisfied that the route of the canal should be changed so as to use the waterways of the Seneca and Oneida rivers, Oneida lake and the Mohawk river in place of the present route; but the question was whether the depth of the canal should be 9 feet, capable of carrying a boat with cargo capacity of 450 tons, or a depth of 12 feet, carrying a boat with a cargo capacity of about 1,000 tons. With such data as we could obtain in the short time at our disposal, and without adequate surveys, we estimated the cost of the smaller project at a little more than $21,000,000, and of the larger project at a little less than $59,000,000.
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"Our conclusion was in these words: ‘In our judgment, arrived at after long consideration, and with some reluctance, the State should undertake the larger project on the ground that the smaller one is at best a temporary makeshift, and that the larger project will permanently secure the commercial supremacy of New York, and that this can be assured by no other means.’ …
"We made a fourth recommendation in the following words:
"‘That the money for these improvements should be raised by the issue of eighteen-year bonds in the manner prescribed by the State Constitution, and that the interest and principal of these bonds should be paid out of taxes specifically levied, for benefits received, in the counties bordering in whole or in part on the canals, the Hudson river and Lake Champlain; such taxes to be levied in proportion to the assessed valuation of the real and personal estate in such counties. These taxes will amount to about 10 cents per $100 of assessed valuation annually during the period of eighteen years.’
"Our object in making this recommendation was to disarm the opposition of the non-canal counties. … We also submitted statistics in tabular and graphic form showing that the valuation of the river and canal counties was 90% of the entire valuation of the State. In any event, they would bear 90% of the expense, and it was thought wise to suggest that they bear the entire expense so as to remove every ground of alleged injustice in taxing the counties which claimed to derive no benefit.
"This recommendation was not adopted by the Legislature, nor submitted to the people. …
"At the election the non-canal counties voted against the project by large majorities, St. Lawrence county, for instance, being 12 to 1 against it, and Steuben county, 10 to 1 against it; but, on the other hand, the canal counties voted in favor of it by almost equally large majorities, New York being 9 to 1 in favor of it; Kings, 8 to 1; Queens, 5 to 1, and Erie, nearly 5 to 1. For some unexplained reason Monroe county, in which Rochester is situated, and Onondaga county, in which Syracuse is situated, voted against it. The overwhelming vote, however, in the counties at the two terminals, New York and Buffalo, made a majority of 245,312 in the entire State in favor of the project, and a total vote of 1,100,708.
"Our fifth and final recommendation was as follows:
"That the efficiency of the canals depends upon their management quite as much as upon their physical size, and that no money should be spent for further enlargement unless accompanied by measures which will accomplish the following results:
"(a) The removal of all restrictions as to the amount of capital of companies engaged in transportation on the canals, and the encouragement of large transportation lines for handling canal business, in place of hampering them, as has hitherto been the case.
"(b) The use of mechanical means of traction, either steam or electricity, in place of draft animals; and the use of mechanical power in place of hand power for operating the gates and valves, and moving boats in locks.
"(c) The organization of the force engaged on the public works of the State on a more permanent basis, so as to afford an attractive career to graduates of scientific institutions, with the assurance that their entry into the service, their tenure of office, and their promotion will depend solely on their fitness, as determined by proper and practical tests.
"(d) A revision of the laws in regard to the letting of public contracts by the State, so as to make impossible a repetition of the unfortunate results of the $9,000,000 appropriation.
"Legislation has already been adopted to carry into effect (a) and (c); the adopted plans for the canal are in accordance with (b); and the specific form of contract which we recommended in connection with (d) was not adopted, but another form of contract was adopted which will practically accomplish the same result.
"It only remains to speak of the cost of the project. With such data as we had available and with such surveys as were possible during the year 1899, we estimated the cost of the project we recommended at $58,894,668 for the Erie Canal and $2,642,120 for the Oswego and Champlain canals, making a total of $61,536,788. This contemplated a canal with 12 feet depth and suitable locks for carrying a barge of approximately 1,000 tons capacity from Buffalo to the Hudson river, but as to the Oswego and Champlain canals, it recommended only the completion of the work already undertaken to provide for boats of six feet draft. … It was ultimately determined to enlarge the Champlain and Oswego canals to the same size as the main canal between Buffalo and the Hudson river, and also to include the dredging of a 12 foot channel in the Hudson river, which we had anticipated would be done by the Federal Government. This enlargement of the project very materially increased the cost, and in the interval between the time of our report and the completion of the detailed report of the State Engineer, the prices of labor and materials had very largely advanced. In order to cover all possible contingencies, the State Engineer carried his estimate to $101,000,000, and this was the amount appropriated by the Legislature and ratified by the people at the election of 1903."
_Francis Vinton Greene, The Inception of the Barge Canal Project (Buffalo Historical Society Publications, Volume 13)._
The first six contracts for the construction of the Barge Canal were let in April, 1905. The state of the work at the end of the year 1909 was announced by Governor Hughes in his Message to the next Legislature as follows:
"The contracts in force for the Barge Canal improvement amount in total price to $48,229,467, and the contract value of the work performed to December 1, 1909, was $15,821,275. It is estimated by the State engineer and surveyor that during 1910 work will be completed amounting to $16,000,000, and it is expected that the work for the entire length of the Barge Canal system will be under contract by April 1, 1910. At the present rate of progress, it is said that it is not unreasonable to expect that the Barge Canal system will be completed by the end of the year 1914. It is further stated that the work is being carried on within the original estimates. This enterprise should be pushed to completion as speedily, as economically, and efficiently as possible."
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1901-1909. Legislation developing the Parole System of dealing with Convicts.
See (in this Volume) CRIME AND CRIMINOLOGY: INDETERMINATE SENTENCES.
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NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1905-1906. Legislative Investigation of Life Insurance Companies and the State Superintendency of them. Startling Disclosures. Remedial Legislation.
See (in this Volume) INSURANCE, LIFE.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1906-1910. The Epoch of Governor Hughes. The Special Significance of his Administration. His Exemplary Fidelity to Fundamental Political Principles. His Public Support against Hostile Party-Managers.
The election of 1906 is likely to be marked in the political history of New York as the introduction of an epoch,—the Epoch of Governor Hughes. The State has had a number of very notable Governors, in both early and late times,—Governors who left a deep and lasting impression of themselves on its history, and who have been large contributors to its prestige and influence as the Empire State of the American Union; but Governor Hughes is of a type so different from any of his predecessors, and his conduct of the Governor’s high office has been so distinctive in principle and method, that his administration can hardly fail, in the retrospect, to take on a special significance of its own.
As counsel to the Legislative Committee which investigated the scandals of life-insurance management in 1905-1906 (see, in this Volume, INSURANCE, LIFE), the conduct of the investigation by Mr. Charles Evans Hughes drew public attention, and made him known so favorably that when in the autumn of 1906 the Republican Party of the State had special need of a personally attractive candidate for Governor, an unmistakable expression of popular opinion directed the choice to him. The Independence League which Mr. William R. Hearst had rallied and organized, and which had served him the previous year in his candidacy for the mayoralty of New York (see, above, NEW YORK CITY: A. D. 1905), had been recruited so successfully throughout the State, and had absorbed so much of some elements of the Democratic Party, that the latter made terms of combination with it, and adopted Mr. Hearst as its gubernatorial nominee. The combination was one which the ordinary forces acting for the Republican Party could hardly hope to overcome; but the recent prestige of Mr. Hughes might call out reinforcements that would save the day. It was not willingly that the professional managers of the party consented to his nomination, and it was not willingly that he accepted it. He was heartily a Republican in politics, but never active in its affairs, being devoted to his profession and plainly reluctant to be turned aside at all from the career it had just fairly opened before him. But he yielded, as the party managers did, to a call from the public of the party, and the result of the election afforded proof of the reality and sincerity of the call. Hughes alone on the State ticket of the Republicans was elected; Hearst alone on the ticket of the Democratic-Independence-League combination was defeated. Governor Hughes was thus placed, on the 1st of January, 1907, at the head of an administration in which every other elective office was filled by his political opponents.
This political aloneness of Governor Hughes in his office would have mattered very little, however, if his own party surroundings in it had been friendly and sympathetic; but very quickly it was seen that he had conceptions of official duty which those who controlled the machine-like "organization" of the party, with consequent powers of influence over its representatives in the legislature and in other official places, could in no wise comprehend. With a degree of precision and decision hardly matched by another executive, this Governor had studied, constitutionally and ethically, and had defined to himself, the obligations and limitations of his office, and had resolved them into principles of action from which he never swerved. In one particular, especially, this held him to a course which some former governors had adhered to in the main, but none, perhaps, with a consistency as firm. In the use of two powers confided to the Governor, that of the veto in legislation and that of appointment to many State offices, there had always been more or less of giving and taking between the Executive, on one side, and the Legislature and the controlling leaders of party organization on the other. A Governor actuated by personal motives, of ambition or other self-interest, would use these powers freely, in bargaining for or enforcing his desires; and a Governor who cared for public interests alone would sometimes feel driven to secure measures needful to that end at some price of concession in appointments and in the approval of bills, or some coercive use of the veto whip. Governor Hughes would do neither, and his attitude in this matter stands out so conspicuously as to mark in itself an epoch of great example in the right exercise of executive power.
No Governor has ever interested himself more earnestly in the work of the Legislature, with a watchful eye to the needs, interests, and rights of the public and to the demands of good government on every side. No Governor has ever taken a more active and effective part in the production of important legislation, and none has ever put his stamp on more of such legislation within the same time. But all that he has done in that line of executive duty has been strictly by recommendation and by argument, addressed first to the Legislature and then to the public behind it; never by any other means. Legislatures have been coerced irresistibly into compliance with his recommendations, by public opinion, wakened by the Governor’s voice; never directly by him. There has been no departure from the principle of action which he stated once in these words: "I have not attempted, through the use of political patronage or political machinery to coerce anybody, and I don’t propose to do so. But under the constitution, it is my privilege and my duty to recommend legislation. If I mean what I say when I recommend, I ought to be able to tell why it is recommended, and my constituency is not the Legislature, and not any particular part of the people, but my constituency is the people of the State, and I propose, therefore, whenever I make a recommendation, and there is any question about it, to tell as forcibly, as fully and as frankly as possible why I stand for it. If it is wrong, you will know it all the sooner; if it is right, you will give it the support it deserves. I call that American government, and if we had a little less trading, a little less wirepulling and bulldozing, we would prosper to a far greater degree."
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The Legislature of New York has been honored by this highminded and respectful treatment of it, which the highminded among its members have appreciated; but these have been at most times a minority. The majority, obedient to resentful party "bosses," have acted sullenly with him when the lash of public opinion has driven them to his side, and defiantly against him when they dared. His obstinate antagonists have found a reflection hard to obtain.
The most signal showing of the attitude of the public toward antagonists of Governor Hughes in the Legislature occurred in connection with a bill, recommended by the Governor in 1907, for the amendment of a disgraceful existing law relative to race-track gambling. The State Constitution, as revised in 1894, prohibits all forms of gambling, and declares that "the Legislature shall pass appropriate laws to prevent offenses against any of the provisions of this section." In 1895 an Act (known as the Percy-Gray Law) was got through the Legislature, professedly in obedience to this mandate of the Constitution, which verbally prohibited betting on races, but penalized it only by providing that the loser of a race-track bet might sue the winner and recover twice the amount of his bet, while betting and gambling in other places were punished heavily by imprisonment and fine. This scandalous favor to the race-track interests carried a bribe at the same time to the farmers of the State, in the form of a cunning provision of the Act, which appropriated five per cent. of the gross receipts of racing associations to the benefit of agricultural societies. Repeated attempts to correct so contemptuous a violation of the Constitution had failed; but Governor Hughes renewed the attempt, with a feeling of reverence for Law and for the honor of the State which could not tolerate defeat. When the amending Bill that he recommended was put in suspense by a tie vote in the Senate, the Governor called a special session of the Legislature, and brought the question before the people in speeches which made a mighty stir. The racing interests in the State were so powerful that they almost defied defeat, and all their influence came into play. Meantime a special election to fill a vacancy in the Senate was pending in Western New York, and the issue on the race-track gambling bill was fought out there, with the Governor in the field, contending for an honest enforcement of the constitutional law of the State. The result of the election gave support to that contention, and when, at the special session, the Bill in question was again called up in the Senate, as it could be, it was passed by a majority of one. The Republican senators who voted against it were most of them retired to private life by their constituents at the senatorial elections of the ensuing fall.
Almost everything of importance in New York legislation since Governor Hughes entered office has had its origin in his recommendations, and has been carried by the weight of public backing which belief in him calls out, against resisting influences that would ordinarily have prevailed. This was notably the fact in the case of the Public Service Commissions Act of 1907 (See (in this Volume) PUBLIC UTILITIES), which established an effective supervision and regulation of corporations engaged in public services, by placing over them two commissions, appointed by the Governor, one with jurisdiction in New York City, the other in the remainder of the State, both armed with large powers. The services covered are those of railways, gas and electric light and power companies, and the authority established over them extends not only to their rates, but to their capitalization, their issues of stock and bonds, their franchises, the labor conditions under them, their equipment, and the sufficiency and quality of the service they render. The excellence of the Act has been proved by its working, in the hands of the commissions appointed by Governor Hughes.
In the checking of improper legislation by his vetoes, especially against encroachments on local rights of self-government, and against special enactments that intrude on general laws, Governor Hughes has been a teacher of political principles, as importantly as in the legislative advice which it is part of his constitutional duty to render. He taught a great lesson to every legislative body and every executive in the Union, when he disapproved a highly popular bill which prescribed a fixed rate of railway passenger fares at two cents per mile, on the ground that it was not a matter to be dealt with summarily,—without careful investigation and determination of the facts involved. So consistent, so forceful, so effective a teacher, in fact, by precept and high example, of the fundamentals of principle in political action, has rarely appeared in any country.
That Governor Hughes was renominated and reelected in 1908 for a second term was again by reason of a public insistence which neither he nor the hostile manipulators of caucus-work in his party could resist. If the election had not been coincident in time with a presidential election the "bosses" of the party would have refused the nomination to him at any cost. They were able to secure a convention of delegates that would eagerly have made that refusal; but when the Governor was persuaded to say that he would accept renomination, they dared not imperil the national interests of the party by flouting demands which came from every quarter of the land. He had become so national a figure that interest in his reelection was nation-wide.
On the powerful movement in New York to break down the practical exclusion of the people from the choosing of candidates for office, which Governor Hughes inspired.
See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: UNITED STATES: DIRECT PRIMARY NOMINATIONS.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1906-1909. Work of Reforestation.
See (in this Volume) CONSERVATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES: UNITED STATES.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1907. The Gift of Letchworth Park.
A noble gift to the State was made in January, 1907, by the Honorable William Pryor Letchworth, a gentleman of distinction in benevolent work, officially as president for many years of the State Board of Charities, and privately, at the same time, as a profound student of and writer on, some of the gravest of the problems of philanthropy, especially that of the treatment of the insane. The home of Mr. Letchworth for many years has been on a great estate which embraces the finest and most famous scenery of the Upper Genesee River, lying on both sides of the cañon [canyon] down which the river plunges in three successive falls. {457} The thousand acres of the estate enclose all three of the falls. This magnificent domain, preserved in all its natural beauty and improved with careful taste by half a century of Mr. Letchworth’s care, has been conveyed in trust to the State, under the future custody of The American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, to be forever, after the death of Mr. Letchworth, a Public Park. A generous citizen has thus saved from destructive uses a piece of scenery which has hardly its equal for picturesque and varied beauty in another part of the State.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1907. Enactment of the Public Utilities Law.
See (in this Volume) PUBLIC UTILITIES.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1907-1909. Creation of the Probation System.
See (in this Volume) CRIME AND CRIMINOLOGY: PROBATION.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1909. Gas Company’s Refund.
See (in this Volume) PUBLIC UTILITIES.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1909. Historical Commemorations. The Champlain and the Hudson-Fulton.
Three notable events of the far past were notably commemorated in New York during the summer and autumn of 1909. The tercentenary year of Champlain’s discovery, in July, 1609, of the Lake which bears his name, was signalized by a week of historical pageants, fêtes, and gatherings for speech and ceremony, on and around the lake, beginning on the 4th of July. France, England, Canada, and the United States were represented in the addresses and exercises of the occasion, by the British and French Ambassadors, the Postmaster-General of the Dominion, President Taft and ex-Secretary Root, Governor Hughes of New York and Governor Prouty of Vermont. A large number of Indians took part in the pageants, occupying a floating island constructed for the occasion on the lake, and representing scenes of Indian life and warfare, the story of Hiawatha, and other reminders of the time when men of their race were the lords of the region of Lake Champlain. The occasion was made one of great interest.
Still more of interest was given to the double commemoration, in September, of Hendrick Hudson’s exploration of Hudson River and of Robert Fulton’s first practically successful undertaking of steamboating, on that river. The celebration of the event first named was timed appropriately on its third centennial anniversary. That of the second was belated by two years; but the two were most fitly connected. The people of Holland joined heartily in the Hudson commemoration, building and sending over to New York an exact replica of Hudson’s little ship, the _Halve Maen_, or Half Moon, in which his voyage was made. Fulton’s steamboat, the _Clermont_, was also reproduced for the occasion, and the two small, quaint vessels, strikingly in contrast with the monster battle ships and ocean liners that surrounded them, lent a singular interest to the affair. Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Mexico, Cuba, and the Argentine Republic accepted invitations to take part in the naval parades which formed a grand feature of the celebration, and an imposing assembly of great ships of war was shown. Eight days, from Saturday, September 25th, until the following Saturday, were filled with church services, school exercises, historical exhibitions and processions, military and naval parades, aquatic sports, carnival doings, aeroplane flights, banquets to foreign guests, etc., at New York City, after which the _Half Moon_ and the _Clermont_ proceeded up the river and the celebration was continued in various towns.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1909. Defeat of the Direct Primary Bill.
See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: UNITED STATES: DIRECT PRIMARY NOMINATION.
NEW YORK STATE: A. D. 1909-1910. Munificent Gifts of Land on the Hudson for Park Purposes offered.
In his annual Message to the Legislature, January 5, 1910, Governor Hughes announced the details of a munificent project of gifts proffered to the State for the purpose of creating a noble State Park on and near the Hudson River. Mrs. Mary W. Harriman, widow of the late E. H. Harriman, offered to convey to the State a tract of about ten thousand acres of land in Orange and Rockland counties, to be held in perpetuity as a State park; offering further to give the State $1,000,000 in trust, to be used for the purchase of land lying between the tract mentioned and the Hudson River, so that the park may have the advantage of a river frontage. Other gifts for similar purposes amounting to $1,625,000 were announced as a result of the activity of the Palisades Park Commission, from residents of New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. John D. Rockefeller and J. Pierpont Morgan each subscribed $500,000; Margaret Olivia Sage, William K. Vanderbilt, George F. Baker, James Stillman, John D. Archbold, Frank A. Munsey, Henry Phipps, E. T. Stotesbury, E. H. Gary, and George W. Perkins gave $50,000 each: Helen M. Gould and V. Everit Macy contributed $25,000 each, and Ellen F. James and Arthur C. James jointly gave a similar amount. These subscriptions were secured upon conditions stipulating, among other things, that New York State shall appropriate $2,500,000 for the acquiring of land and the building of roads and general park purposes; that the State of New Jersey shall contribute a fair share, and that the State discontinue work on the new State prison at Great Bear Mountain in Rockland County, where preliminary work on the site for a new $2,000,000 structure has been under way for several months.
NEW ZEALAND: A. D. 1886-1893. Extension of the Suffrage to Women.
See (in this Volume) ELECTIVE FRANCHISE: WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
NEW ZEALAND: A. D. 1896-1908. Twelve Years of Local Option. The working of the Law. Warning to the Liquor Trade. The Vote of Women.
See (in this Volume) ALCOHOL PROBLEM: NEW ZEALAND.
NEW ZEALAND: A. D. 1902. Colonial Conference at London.
See (in this Volume) BRITISH EMPIRE.
NEW ZEALAND: A. D. 1903. The Maori King a Colonial Minister.
The old fierce conflict of the Maoris with the English colonists in New Zealand would seem to have been effectually ended, since the Maori King accepted a seat in the colonial Cabinet, as a responsible Minister, in 1903.
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NEW ZEALAND: A. D. 1905. Government Ownership and Long-leasing of Land. Its working. Government Loans to Farmers.
The land system of New Zealand, as it was in 1895, is described in Volume VI. of this work (see NEW ZEALAND). It has since been carried farther on social-paternalistic lines, by extensive expropriations or compulsory sales of large estates to the Government, and by the institution of public loans of capital to farmers at a moderate rate of interest. The operation and result are thus described in a recent work:
"So far the government has lent to the farmers about $20,000,000, but it has saved them $20,000,000 in interest, because as soon as it came into the field with its cheap loans, interest rates dropped everywhere. You see Shylock has fled from these shores and will not return. The government has never lost a cent in these loans. Reform proceeded next, with a land tax graduated to an ascending scale, to discourage land-grabbing, and land speculation; so that the more land a man owns the higher is the tax-rate upon it. Thus for farms of ordinary size the rate is two cents in every $5 of assessed valuation; but on estates of more than $25,000 the rate increases in regular ratio to the maximum of six cents for every $5, except for absentee owners. They must pay fifty per cent. more than residents. You can see that in New Zealand the chance for fine old families and landed gentry is slim. No doubt the theory of these things is extremely reprehensible, but the practice is excellent. What with seizing the big estates, and what with the graduated land tax, the size of holdings has been so reduced that of 115,713 landowners in 1905 only 22,778 came under the operations of the augmented land tax. The others, having small properties, paid the smallest rate. Under the land purchase act the government has seized 691,594 acres, mostly hunting fields and uncultivated family inheritances. These have been partitioned into small farms and are occupied by actual settlers. Under the operation of all the new land laws together, the produce of New Zealand has trebled, and the New Zealand farmer has become the most prosperous in the world."
_Charles E. Russell, The Uprising of the Many,