CHAPTER IV.

THE LEXOW SEARCHLIGHT.

Mr. Lowell good-humouredly chaffed John Bull when he declared that

He detests the same faults in himself he neglected, When he sees them again in his child’s glass reflected,

and we only need to glance at current English criticisms upon American affairs to justify the poet’s remark. Especially is this the case with a vice which of all others is regarded as distinctively English. John Bull has plenty of faults, but of those which render him odious to his neighbours there is none which is quite so loathsome as his “unctuous rectitude.” That phrase, coined by Mr. Rhodes to express the contempt which he and every one who knew the facts felt on contemplating the hypocrisy and Pharisaism displayed in connection with the Jameson Raid, is likely to live long after Mr. Rhodes has vanished from this mortal scene. This tendency to Pharisaism and self-righteous complacency, which thanks God that it is not as other men are, is one of those vices which John Bull’s children seem to have inherited in full measure. We are pretty good at Pharisaism in the Old Country, but we are “not a circumstance,” to use the familiar slang, when we compare ourselves to some of the Pharisees reared across the Atlantic. This has nowhere been brought into such strong relief as when on the very eve of the exposure and discomfiture of Tammany their spokesmen took the stump and talked like very Pecksniffs concerning the immaculate purity of Tammany Hall.

The same characteristic is observable in all of them. Whether it is Boss Tweed, appealing confidently to the verdict of honest men upon a career of colossal theft and almost inconceivable fraud; or Mr. Croker, who, after surveying his whole life, declares that he has not discovered a single action which he has reason to regret, for he has not done anything but good all his life; or Bourke Cochran, who was at one time the Apollo and the Demosthenes of Tammany, the same unctuous rectitude oozes out of every pore. When Tammany was at its heyday of prosperity and power in 1889, it assembled in its thousands to cheer enthusiastically the impassioned oratory of Mr. Cochran, who declared, as among the self-evident truths which found an echo in every breast, that “if corruption prevails among the people, liberty will become a blighting curse, subversive of order. Corruption once begun, decay is inevitable and irresistible; the destruction of the Republic is immediate, immeasurable, irredeemable; since history does not record a case of a popular government which has been arrested in its downward course.” Tammany listened to this with ecstatic admiration, cheered to the echo their eloquent oracle, and then went on using the proceeds of a system of blackmail for the perfecting of an engine of corruption to which it is difficult to discover a parallel in the annals of mankind.

In Mr. Croker’s case, his calm consciousness of incorruptible virtue seems to be based upon a curious inversion of a belief in a Divine Providence. Tammany is not strong in theology, but Mr. Croker, in talking to me, based his argument in favour of the excellence of Tammany on the postulate that the government of the universe was founded on the law of righteousness. This being the case, it was only possible to reconcile the continued existence of Tammany on one of two hypotheses. Either the domination of evil was permitted for a season for some sufficient cause hidden in the inscrutable mysteries of the Divine councils, or we must boldly assert that, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, Tammany rule was in accordance with the eternal law, _Credo quia impossibile_, rather than admit that so great an anomaly as a terrestrial Inferno could be permitted to exist by the good government of God. Mr. Croker, of course, adopted the latter hypothesis. There is much in it, no doubt, especially to those in Mr. Croker’s position. It is, however, open to the fatal objection that the same process of logic would _à fortiori_ secure a certificate of good conduct for the Great Assassin of Stamboul himself. The Ottoman Empire has lasted even longer than Tammany Hall, but even Mr. Croker would shrink from maintaining that Abdul Hamid was on that account the exemplary vicegerent of the Almighty.

This Pharisaic panoply in which Tammany was clad, as in a coat of mail, was no small element of its strength. The consciousness of wrong-doing is always an element of weakness. Not until a man can do evil and persuade himself that he is doing good can he silence that conscience which makes cowards of us all. Probably this unctuous rectitude on the part of Tammany and its Boss should be estimated as one of the chief obstacles in the way of the scattered and despairing band of reformers who, five or six years ago, confronted the stronghold of iniquity entrenched in their midst.

Its position, indeed, appeared almost impregnable. Tammany Hall commanded an annual revenue large enough to equip and maintain a small army. It had under its orders the whole of the executive force in its police--a body of men practically above the law, armed with powers hardly inferior to those of the police of St. Petersburg. Besides the police, all the persons on the pay-rolls of the City and County were under the thumb of the Boss. There was hardly a city official, from the highest to the lowest, who did not hold office by the sovereign will and pleasure of Tammany. As there are 27,000 names on those pay-rolls, all of whom were voters and were taxable to an almost unlimited extent whenever the Tammany exchequer needed to be replenished, it is obvious how enormous were the odds against the assailants of Tammany.

But the unctuous rectitude of its leaders, the prompt obedience of the police Janissaries, and the discipline of the standing army of the twenty-seven thousand Pretorians on the city pay-rolls, were by no means the only difficulties which had to be overcome. Tammany Hall itself might be compared to a central citadel or keep of a Norman fortress. The outworks consisted of all the saloons, gaming hells, and houses of ill-fame in the City of New York. Some of these, no doubt, were by no means enthusiastic in support of the powers that be, but they resembled tribes which, having been subdued by force of arms, are compelled to pay tribute and use their weapons in support of their conquerors. In New York, just before the revolt against Tammany, the number of licences for the sale of intoxicants in New York City was over 6,000. The number of unlicensed drinking places was estimated at from 2,000 to 3,000. Each of these saloons might be regarded as a detached outwork, holding a position in advance of the main citadel, and covering it from the attack of its foes.

In those days it used to be said that licences were granted by the Excise Board to anybody who had not served a term in a penitentiary. One indignant divine declared that it was perfectly safe to say that, if the Devil himself should apply to the Excise Board for a licence to set up a branch establishment on the children’s playground in the Central Park, it would be granted. As to the other establishments of even worse fame than the saloon, there was an unwritten contract by which, in return for tribute paid directly or indirectly, they were shielded by the strong arm of Tammany from the enforcement of the law. It was calculated that if all the saloons in New York were placed side by side, averaging them at only twenty feet frontage each, they would form a line of circumvallation twenty miles long. To put it in another way, there was on an average one saloon for every thirty voters.

In addition to its control of the saloon, Tammany had two extremely important financial resources which have not yet been mentioned. The first was the control of the city contracts. A great city like New York, with an expenditure that exceeded that of the whole Federal Government of the United States fifty years ago, had an enormous means of influence at its disposal in the mere granting of contracts. But even this was a comparatively trivial element in the financial strength of Tammany. There existed in New York, as in almost every city, great corporations representing enormous capital, and dividing gigantic dividends, which, in the Tammany scheme of the universe, might have been created for the express purpose of furnishing an unfailing supply of revenue to the party chest. The corporations which enjoyed franchises from the city, giving them control of the streets, whether for the purpose of traction, of lighting, or of electrical communication, were Tammany’s milch cows. They all possess monopolies, granted to them in the first instance either by corruption or by negligence, which enable them to plunder the public. These monopolies can only be terminated or modified by the Legislature, and the Legislature can only act in obedience to the party machine. All that needs to be done when the campaign fund runs low is for the Boss to intimate to the various corporations that milking time has come, and that if they do not contribute liberally of their substance to the party treasury, Tammany will no longer be able to give them protection when the usual attack is made next session upon their monopoly or their franchise. Money is the sinews of war, and as the Tammany war chest was always full, Tammany snapped its fingers at all its enemies, and contemptuously declared that the reformers did not amount to a row of pins.

The outlook undoubtedly was very gloomy. From the point of view of practical politics it was simply hopeless; nevertheless, in a couple of years the fortress was stormed, and the government of New York placed in the hands of the Reformers. The story of the way in which this was brought about should never be forgotten by all those who are called upon to lead forlorn hopes against immense odds. As long as the world lasts, such narratives are among the most precious cordials which in times of danger and distress restore the courage and revive the faith of man. Dr. Parkhurst’s attack on Tammany is one of the latest of a long series of victories achieved by the leader of an outnumbered handful. When Gideon went forth against the hosts of Midian with only three hundred followers, he left a leading case on record for the encouragement of all who should come after. How many reformers and revolutionists who have helped the world forward in the path of progress have been cheered by the dream in which the Midianitish soldier saw a cake of barley bread smite and overturn the multitudinous camp of the conqueror, history does not record! But if ever a man needed the inspiration of that barley cake it was Dr. Parkhurst, when in 1892 he set himself to the desperate task of wresting New York City from the grasp of Tammany.

Dr. Parkhurst was a Massachusetts minister of Puritan ancestry, who, in 1880, at the age of thirty-eight, had been called to Madison Square Church, in New York. For ten years he went in and out among the people, quietly building up his church, ministering to his congregation, and learning at first-hand the real difficulties which offered almost insuperable obstacles to right living in New York. In 1890, on the eve of the November election, he preached a sermon on municipal politics, which, although it failed in influencing the polls, nevertheless marked Dr. Parkhurst out as the man to succeed Dr. Howard Crosby as President of the Society for the Prevention of Crime. He took office in 1891. In less than twelve months he began the campaign from which he never withdrew his hand until the government of the city was wrested from the control of Tammany.

Nothing is more characteristic, both of the state of things in New York and the uncompromising directness of Dr. Parkhurst, than the fact that he had no sooner assumed the control of the Society for the Prevention of Crime than he adopted as his motto the significant watchword, “Down with the Police!” That fact alone speaks volumes as to how utterly New York City had fallen under the control of the Evil One. For a society for the prevention of crime to adopt “Down with the Police!” as its watchword, seems to us of the Old World absolutely inconceivable. The police exist for the prevention of crime, yet here was a society of leading citizens, presided over by a doctor of divinity, putting in the forefront of its programme the formula “Down with the Police!”

Strange though it may seem to us, the best people of New York understood and appreciated what Dr. Parkhurst was after. But it was not till the 14th of February, 1892, that he put the trumpet to his lips and blew a blast the echoes of which are still sounding through the world. His sermon was an impeachment of the Government of New York, the like of which had seldom been heard before in a Christian pulpit. If any one questions the justice of the title of this volume, let him read what Dr. Parkhurst said in the sermon, of which the following sentence is a fair sample:--

There is not a form under which the Devil disguises himself that so perplexes us in our efforts, or so bewilders us in the devising of our schemes, as the polluted harpies that, under the pretext of governing this city, are feeding day and night on its quivering vitals. They are a lying, perjured, rum-soaked and libidinous lot.

That was plain speaking in honest, ringing Saxon, for Dr. Parkhurst knew that there was no better way of spoiling the trump card of the Devil’s game than to refuse to let him keep things mixed. He maintained that the district attorney, or, as we should say, the public prosecutor, was guilty of complicity with vice and crime: that “every effort to make men respectable, honest, temperate, and sexually clean was a direct blow between the eyes of the mayor and his whole gang of drunken and lecherous subordinates, who shielded and patronised iniquity.” Criminals and officials, he declared, were hand-and-glove, and he summed up the whole matter in the following concise exposition of the _status quo_ in “Satan’s Invisible World” in New York, 1892:--“It is simply one solid gang of rascals, half of the gang in office and the other half out, and the two halves steadily catering to each other across the official line.”

Of course there was a great outcry. Some good people were scandalised, while as for the bad ones, they were simply outraged at such “violent and intemperate utterances in the pulpit.” One of the police captains declared “it was a shame for a minister of the Gospel to disgrace the pulpit by such utterances.” Dr. Parkhurst was summoned before the Grand Jury, and solemnly reproved for making statements which he could not for the moment substantiate with chapter and verse. When the Grand Jury condemned him and the judge rebuked him, Tammany was in high glee; but Dr. Parkhurst bided his time. He was not a man to be “downed” by censure. Finding that his general statements were scouted because he could not produce first hand evidence as to the literal accuracy of each particular instance on which he built up his general finding, he took the bold and courageous step of going himself through the houses of ill-fame, gaming hells, and other resorts which were running open under the protection of the police. He was accompanied in his pilgrimage by a detective and a lawyer, and for three weeks every night Dr. Parkhurst, to use his own phrase, “traversed the avenues of our municipal hell.” They entered into no houses not easy of access, went into no places which were not recognised as notorious, and were perfectly well known by the constable on the beat. In one case they succeeded in proving police collusion by getting the policeman on beat to stand guard while they visited the house, ostensibly for an immoral purpose, in order to warn them against any signs of a possible raid.

Having thus mastered his facts and obtained incontrovertible evidence at first hand as to the fact of police complicity in the wholesale violation of the law, Dr. Parkhurst stood up in his pulpit on the morning of March 13th, 1892, and once more arraigned the city authorities. This time, however, he was armed with a mass of facts ascertained at first hand, and supported by unimpeachable, independent testimony. He brought forward no fewer than two hundred and eighty-four cases in which the law was flagrantly violated under the noses of the police, who, he maintained, were guilty of corrupt complicity in the violation of the law they were appointed to enforce.

It was a great sermon, and one that shook the city to its centre. Some idea of its drift and spirit may be gained from this extract:--

There is little advantage in preaching the Gospel to a young fellow on Sunday, if he is going to be sitting on the edge of a Tammany-maintained hell the rest of the week. Don’t tell me that I don’t know what I am talking about. Many a long, dismal, heart-sickening night, in company with two trusted friends, have I spent since I spoke on this matter before, going down into the disgusting depths of this Tammany-debauched town; and it is rotten with a rottenness that is unspeakable and indescribable, and a rottenness that would be absolutely impossible except by the connivance, not to say the purchased sympathy, of the men whose one obligation before God, men, their own consciences, is to shield virtue and make vice difficult. Now, that I stand by, because before Almighty God I know it, and I will stand by it though buried beneath presentments as thick as autumn leaves in Vallombrosa, or snowflakes in a March blizzard.

And stand by it Dr. Parkhurst did. He was promptly summoned again before the Grand Jury, and this time he had his facts at command. Instead of being rebuked, the Grand Jury reported emphatically that it was impossible to reconcile the facts presented by Dr. Parkhurst with any other theory than that of wholesale police corruption.

The following month various keepers of disreputable houses were prosecuted upon Dr. Parkhurst’s evidence, when every effort was made to damage Dr. Parkhurst by representing him as the vicious criminal who was responsible for the very evils which he had brought to light.

It is the old, old story. As long as you sit still and say nothing you are all right, but the moment you call attention to a hideous wrong or a shameful crime, all those whose iniquities you have disclosed combine with your enemies in order to make a busy public believe that it is you who have exposed the crime who is the real criminal, while they, poor innocents, are the injured parties, for whom a respectable public should have nothing but sympathy, and commiseration.

The ferocity of the attacks upon Dr. Parkhurst provoked a reaction in his favour. The City Vigilance Society was formed by the association of forty religious and secular societies of the city. The work of sapping and mining went steadily on. In order to bring odium upon Dr. Parkhurst, the police suddenly decided to close up several houses of ill-fame, so as to turn their unfortunate occupants into the streets on one of the coldest nights of the winter of 1892. Dr. Parkhurst met this by promptly providing homes for all the dispossessed women. Foiled in this cruel manœuvre, the police prosecuted Dr. Parkhurst’s detective for an alleged attempt to levy blackmail. This was Satan reproving sin with a vengeance, and for the moment it had a temporary success. The detective was convicted, in the first instance, but on appeal the verdict was set aside. Undaunted, however, by this reverse, Dr. Parkhurst began to carry the war into the enemy’s camp. He got up cases against forty-five of the sixty-four gambling and disorderly houses which were allowed to run by the police captain of a single precinct. The trials followed with varying results. It was evident that the difficulties in the way of obtaining a full disclosure of police corruption could only be overcome by special measures. Public opinion was now deeply stirred, and the Chamber of Commerce memorialised the Senate of New York City to hold an inquiry into the Police Department of New York.

The Senate appointed a Committee of Investigation, and passed a bill providing for the payment of its expenses. This bill was vetoed by Governor Flower, himself a Democrat, whose veto elicited another illustration, if it were wanted, of the marvellous Pharisaism of Tammany and its friends.

Where party feeling runs high, anything that one party proposes the other one opposes, and Governor Flower, finding the Republican majority of the Senate in favour of the investigation into the misdeeds of the New York police, could only see in it a Republican plot for the manufacture of political capital in the division of political patronage. So he took special objection to any investigation of the Police Department of New York. The following passage from the veto message deserves to stand on record as one of the most extraordinary eulogies ever pronounced upon a rotten system on the very eve of its exposure. Speaking of New York, Governor Flower said:--

Except for political objects, there is no good reason why that city should be singled out for legislative scrutiny. The same men who do the investigating in public will admit in private what every well-informed person knows is true--that no city in the State is so well governed as New York. No city in the State has a lower tax rate; no city has a better police regulation; no city has a lower ratio of crime; no city has better streets; no city has a better fire department; no city has better parks; no city has better schools; no city has a better health department; no city has a better credit; no city is so comfortable a place to live in. That bad men sometimes get in office there is true. That frauds upon the city treasury sometimes occur is true; that mal-administration sometimes happens is true; that ideal municipal government has not yet been attained there is true; but these things are as equally true of every city in the world, they are truer of other cities of our State than they are of New York.--Lexow Commission, vol. i., p. 10.

In order to get round the Governor’s veto, prominent members of the Chamber of Commerce guaranteed to the Committee counsel’s fees to an amount necessary to enable them to prosecute the investigation. Thereupon the Committee was appointed and set to work. All its members were Senators of the State of New York. It was presided over by Mr. Clarence Lexow. The names of the other members were Edmund O’Connor, George W. Robertson, Cuthbert W. Pound, Charles T. Saxton, Jacob A. Cantor, Daniel Bradley, with William A. Sutherland and John W. Goff as counsel. The only member of the Committee representing New York City was Mr. Cantor, who presented the minority Report, which maintained that the Republicans were as bad as the Democrats, and that most of the officials in the Police Department implicated in blackmail, fraud and corruption were Republicans.

The Committee held its first meeting on the 9th of March, 1894. At the earlier sittings the Police Department was represented by counsel, but after a while he was withdrawn, and the Committee was left to conduct its inquiries as best it could. It was fortunate in securing the services of a famous lawyer, Mr. John W. Goff, who is now Recorder of New York, “succeeding a man who fined him for contempt because he insisted upon his rights as counsel in protecting one of Dr. Parkhurst’s agents.” As even the one dissentient member of the Committee reported, “No more tireless, industrious or effective counsel was ever employed by a Committee charged with the responsibility of its character.” As I read over the voluminous reports of the evidence taken by the Lexow Committee, I could not repress a sigh: would that we had enjoyed the privilege of having such an examiner as John W. Goff on the South Africa Committee! But, of course, there was one great difference: the Lexow Committee was appointed for the purpose of finding out the facts and exposing scandal, whereas the South Africa Committee seems to have accepted the theory that it was appointed for exactly the opposite purpose of hushing them up, and of screening Mr. Chamberlain at any cost.

The members of the Lexow Committee when they undertook their duties had no idea as to how far it would lead them. They thought that two days a week for three weeks would complete the investigation. No sooner, however, had they begun to apply the probe than they came upon evidence of such rottenness that even the laziest of them felt they had no option but to go on. Go on they did day after day, taking evidence from morning till night, but it was not until the end of the year that they were able to finish their Provisional Report. This was dated January 16th, 1895. In the Report they thus summarise the evidence which they took:--

The record shows a total of 10,576 pages of proceedings. This does not include a mass of documentary exhibits which were read and considered in evidence, for the purpose of information. Of this testimony, 1,077 pages embrace the subject-matter of police interference at the polls, and the balance, or almost 9,500 pages, refer to the subject-matter of blackmail, extortion and corruption. In all, 678 witnesses were examined, of whom 81 were examined on the first and 597 on the second branch of the inquiry. In all, about 3,000 subpœnas were served, of which upwards of 2,750 were with reference to the second branch of the inquiry.--_Ib._, vol. i., p. 4.

It is upon this immense body of evidence taken on oath, under cross-examination in public audiences, that I have based this volume. “Satan’s Invisible World” is thus displayed, not by a stranger or a casual observer, or an amateur investigator. The revelation has been made by American subjects testifying on oath before an American tribunal as to the state of things that actually existed in the City of New York. As the result of the investigation the old system of Tammany rule was overthrown, and the police thoroughly reorganised. They have now as Chief Commissioner Mr. Moss, who, after Mr. Goff, was the chief instrument in exposing the corruption of the old system. If any one doubts the accuracy of the picture of what actually existed down to 1894, which is set forth in this and the following pages, I can only refer him to the volumes of evidence to which reference is made throughout in the passages quoted.

It is not surprising that men who have lived in the midst of such a city should sometimes burst out like Dr. Parkhurst with the despairing cry:--

You can love your country and work for it, pray and plead for it, but there is a stage of rottenness which once reached, the country is damned beyond the power of the Holy Ghost to do anything for it.

That such a state of rottenness has been reached in any part of the English-speaking world we must all be loath to admit. The great popular uprising which swept Tammany from power in 1894 was a healthy sign that the rottenness had not eaten to the vitals of the community. But the Charter of Greater New York proves only too well how deeply distrust has sapped the faith of the citizens in the possibility of governing their city by the ordinary democratic machinery of an elective assembly.