Part 15

A very large stock company. I will leave the precise arithmetic to you. I wish merely to indicate the variegated composition of the average political constituency, and to let you perceive that the piece which is being performed is no parlor comedy. It is written in dead earnest, and it seems to me that the twenty leading villains, though smooth and in some instances aristocratic appearing individuals, are among the most dangerous characters in the history of this or any other stage. But before I refer to them more particularly I will make you acquainted with our twelve low comedians—the Board of Aldermen.

It is probably a surprise to you and to Josephine that the Aldermen are not the villains. Everything is comparative in this world, and, though I might have made them villains without injustice to such virtues as they possess, I should have been at a loss how to stigmatize the real promoters of the villainy. And after all there is an element of grotesque comedy about the character of Aldermen in a large American city. The indecency of the situation is so unblushing, and the public is so helpless, that the performers remind one in their good-natured antics of the thieves in "Fra Diavolo;" they get bolder and bolder and now barely take the trouble to wear the mask of respectability.

Have I written "thieves?" Patriotic Americans look askance at such full-blooded expressions. They prefer ambiguity, and a less harsh phraseology—"slight irregularities," "business misfortunes," "commercial usages," "professional services," "campaign expenses," "lack of fine sensibilities," "unauthenticated rumors." There are fifty ways of letting one's fellow-citizens down easily in the public prints and in private conversation. This is a charitable age, and the word thief has become unfamiliar, except as applied to rogues who enter houses as a trade. The community and the newspapers are chary of applying it to folk who steal covertly but steadily and largely as an increment of municipal office. It is inconvenient to hurt the feelings of public servants, especially when one may have voted for them from carelessness or ignorance.

Here is a list of the twelve low comedians for your inspection:

Peter Lynch, no occupation, James Griffin, stevedore, William H. Bird, real estate, John S. Maloney, saloon-keeper, David H. Barker, carpenter, Jeremiah Dolan, no occupation, Patrick K. Higgins, junk dealer, Joseph Heffernan, liquors, William T. Moore, apothecary, James O. Frost, paints and oils, Michael O'Rourke, tailor, John P. Driscoll, lawyer.

You will be surprised by my first statement regarding them, I dare say. Four of them, Peter Lynch, James Griffin, Jeremiah Dolan, and Michael O'Rourke neither drink nor smoke. Jeremiah Dolan chews, but the three others do not use tobacco in any form. They are patterns of Sunday-school virtue in these respects. This was a very surprising discovery to one of the minor characters in our drama—to two of them in fact—Mr. Arthur Langdon Waterhouse and his father, James Langdon Waterhouse, Esq. The young man, who had just returned from Europe with the idea of becoming United States Senator and who expressed a willingness to serve as a Reform Alderman while waiting, announced the discovery to his parent shortly before election with a mystified air.

"Do you know," said he to the old gentleman, who, by the way, though he has denounced every person and every measure in connection with our politics for forty years, was secretly pleased at his son's senatorial aspirations, "do you know that someone told me to-day that four of the very worst of those fellows have never drunk a drop of liquor, nor smoked a pipe of tobacco in their lives. Isn't it a curious circumstance? I supposed they were intoxicated most of the time."

You will notice also that Peter Lynch and Jeremiah Dolan have no occupation. Each of them has been connected in some capacity with the City Government for nearly twenty years, and they are persons of great experience. They have more than once near election time been amiably referred to in the press as "valuable public servants," and it must be admitted that they are efficient in their way. Certainly, they know the red tape of City Hall from A to Z, and understand how to block or forward any measure. The salary of Alderman is not large—certainly not large enough to satisfy indefinitely such capable men as they, and yet they continue to appear year after year at the same old stand. Moreover, they resist vigorously every effort to dislodge them, whether proceeding from political opponents or envious rivals of their own party. A philosopher like myself, who is, politically speaking, a worm, is expected to believe that valuable public servants retain office for the honor of the thing; but even a philosopher becomes suspicious of a patriot who has no occupation.

Next in importance are Hon. William H. Bird and Hon. John P. Driscoll. It is a well-known axiom of popular government that citizens are called from the plough or counting-room to public office by the urgent request of their friends and neighbors. As a fact, this takes place two or three times in a century. Most aspirants for office go through the form of having a letter from their friends and neighbors published in the newspapers, but only the very guileless portion of the public do not understand that the candidates in these cases suggest themselves. It is sometimes done, delicately, as, for instance, in the case of young Arthur Langdon Waterhouse, of whom I was writing just now. He let a close friend intimate to the ward committee that he would like to run for Alderman, and that in consideration thereof his father would be willing to subscribe $2,000 to the party campaign fund. It seems to a philosopher that a patriotic people should either re-edit its political axioms or live up to them.

Now Hon. William H. Bird and Hon. John P. Driscoll never go through the ceremony of being called from the plough—in their case the ward bar-room. They announce six months in advance that they wish something, and they state clearly what. They are perpetual candidates for, or incumbents of, office, and to be elected or defeated annually costs each of them from two to four thousand dollars, according to circumstances. One of them has been in the Assembly, the Governor's Council, and in both branches of the City Government; the other a member of the Assembly, a State Senator, and an Alderman, and both of them are now glad to be Aldermen once more after a desperate Kilkenny contest for the nomination. They are called Honorable by the reporters; and philosophers and other students of newspapers are constantly informed that Hon. William H. Bird has done this, and Hon. John P. Driscoll said that.

These four are the big men of the Board. The others are smaller fry; ambitious and imitative, but less experienced and smooth and audacious. Yet the four have their virtues, too. It is safe to state that no one of them would take anything beyond his reach. Moreover, if you, a patriot, or I, a philosopher, were to find himself alone in a room with one of them and had five thousand dollars in bills in his pocket and the fact were known to him, he would make no effort to possess himself of the money. We should be absolutely safe from assault or sleight of hand. Whoever would maintain the opposite does not appreciate the honesty of the American people. If, on the other hand, under similar circumstances, the right man were to place an envelope containing one thousand dollars in bills on the table and saunter to the window to admire the view, the packet would disappear before he returned to his seat and neither party would be able to remember that it ever was there. I do not intend to intimate that this is the precise method of procedure; I am merely explaining that our comedians have not the harsh habits of old-fashioned highwaymen.

Then again, there are people so fatuous as to believe that Aldermen are accustomed to help themselves out of the city treasury. That is a foolish fiction, for no Alderman could. The City Hall is too bulky to remove, and all appropriations of the public money are made by draft and have to be accounted for. If any member of the Board were to make a descent on the funds in the safe, he would be arrested as a lunatic and sent to an insane asylum.

As for the other eight low comedians, it happens in this particular drama that I would be unwilling to make an affidavit as to the absolute integrity of any one of them. But there are apt to be two or even three completely honest members of these august bodies, and two or three more who are pretty honest. A pretty honest Alderman is like a pretty good egg. A pretty honest Alderman would be incapable of touching an envelope containing $1,000, or charging one hundred in return for his support to a petition for a bay-window; but if he were in the paint and oil business or the lumber trade, or interested in hay and oats, it would be safe to assume that any department of the City Government which did not give his firm directly or indirectly a part of its trade would receive no aldermanic favors at his hands. Then again, a pretty honest Alderman would allow a friend to sell a spavined horse to the city.

II

Having hinted gently at the leading characteristics of the twelve low comedians, I am ready now to make you acquainted with the twenty leading villains. There is something grimly humorous in the spectacle of a dozen genial, able-bodied, non-alcoholic ruffians levying tribute on a community too self-absorbed or too easy-going or too indifferent to rid itself of them. I find, on the other hand, something somewhat pathetic in the spectacle of twenty otherwise reputable citizens and capitalists driven to villainy by the force of circumstances. To be a villain against one's will is an unnatural and pitiable situation.

That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain!

Here is the list:

Thomas Barnstable, President of the People's Heat and Power Company.

William B. Wilcox, General Manager of the North Circuit Traction Company.

David J. Prendergast, Treasurer of the Underground Steam Company.

Porter King, President of the South Valley Railroad Company.

James Plugh, Treasurer of the Star Brewing Concern.

Ex-State Treasurer George Delaney Johnson, Manager of the United Gas Company.

Willis O. Golightly, Treasurer of the Consolidated Electric Works.

Hon. Samuel Phipps, President of the Sparkling Reservoir Company.

P. Ashton Hall, President of the Rapid Despatch Company.

Ex-Congressman Henry B. Pullen, Manager of the Maguinnis Engine Works. And so on. I will not weary you with a complete category. It would contain the names of twelve other gentlemen no less prominent in connection with quasi-public and large private business corporations. With them should be associated one thousand easy-going second-class villains, whose names are not requisite to my argument, but who from one year to another are obliged, by the exigencies of business or enterprise, to ask for licenses from the non-alcoholic, genial comedians, for permission to build a stable, to erect a bay-window, to peddle goods in the streets, to maintain a coal-hole, to drain into a sewer, to lay wires underground; in short, to do one or another of the many everyday things which can be done only by permission of the City Government. And the pity of it is that they all would rather not be villains.

(_Note._—At the suggestion of Josephine I here enter a caveat for my and her protection. While I was enumerating the list of low comedians she interrupted me to ask if I did not fear lest one of them might sand-bag me some dark night on account of wounded sensibilities. She laughed, but I saw she was a little nervous.

"I have mentioned no real names," said I.

"That is true," she said, "but somehow I feel that the real ones might be suspicious that they were meant."

I told her that this was their lookout, and that, besides, they were much too secure in the successful performance of their comedy to go out of their way to assassinate a philosopher. "They would say, Josephine, that a philosopher cuts no ice, which is true, and is moreover a serious stigma to fasten on any patriotic man or woman." But now again she has brought me to book on the score of the feelings of the leading villains. She appreciates that we are on terms of considerable friendliness with some Presidents of corporations, and that though my list contains no real names, I may give offence. Perhaps she fears a sort of social boycott. Let me satisfy her scruples and do justice at the same time by admitting that not every President of a quasi-public corporation is a leading villain. Nor every Alderman a low comedian. That will let out all my friends. But, on the other hand, I ask the attention even of my friends to the predicament of Thomas Barnstable, President of the People's Heat and Power Company.)

Thomas Barnstable, the leading villain whose case I select for detailed presentation, has none of the coarser proclivities of David J. Prendergast, Treasurer of the Underground Steam Company. As regards David J. Prendergast, I could almost retract my allegation of pity and assert that he is a villain by premeditation and without compunction. That is, his method of dealing with the twelve low comedians is, I am told, conducted on a cold utilitarian basis without struggle of conscience or effort at self-justification. He says to the modern highwaymen, "Fix your price and let my bill pass. My time is valuable and so is yours, and the quicker we come to terms, the better for us both." What he says behind their backs is not fit for publication; but he recognizes the existence of the tax just as he recognizes the existence of the tariff, and he has no time to waste in considering the effect of either on the higher destinies of the nation.

Thomas Barnstable belongs to another school. He is a successful business man. In the ordinary meaning of the phrase, he is also a gentleman and a scholar. His word in private and in business life is as good as his bond; he respects the rights of the fatherless and the widow, and he is known favorably in philanthropic and religious circles. Having recognized the value of certain patents, he has become a large owner of the stock of the People's Heat and Power Company, and is the President of the corporation. Hitherto he has had plain sailing, municipally speaking. That is, the original franchise of the company was obtained from the city before he became President, and only this year for the first time has the necessity of asking for further privileges arisen. Moreover, he finds his corporation confronted by a rival, the Underground Steam Company.

Now here is a portion of the dialogue which took place five weeks before election between this highly respectable gentleman and his right-hand man, Mr. John Dowling, the efficient practical manager of the People's Company.

"Peter Lynch was here to-day," said Mr. Dowling.

"And who may Peter Lynch be?" was the dignified but unconcerned answer.

"Peter Lynch is Peter Lynch. Don't you know Peter? He's the Alderman from the fifth district. He has been Alderman for ten years, and so far as I can see, he is likely to continue to be Alderman for ten more."

"Ah."

"Peter was in good-humor. He was smiling all over."

Mr. Dowling paused, so his superior said, "Oh!" Then realizing that the manager was still silent, as though expecting a question, he said, "What did he come for?"

"He wishes us to help him mend his fences. Some of them need repairing. The wear and tear of political life is severe."

"I see—I see," responded Mr. Barnstable, reflectively, putting his finger-tips together. "What sort of a man is Peter?"

Mr. Dowling hesitated a moment, merely because he was uncertain how to deal with such innocence. Having concluded that frankness was the most businesslike course, he answered, bluffly, "He's an infernal thief. He's out for the stuff."

"The stuff? I see—I see. Very bad, very bad. It's an outrage that under our free form of government such men should get a foothold in our cities. I hope, Dowling, you gave him the cold shoulder, and let him understand that under no consideration whatever would we contribute one dollar to his support."

"On the contrary, I gave him a cigar and pumped him."

"Pumped him?"

"I wanted to find out what he knows."

"Dear me. And—er—what does he know?"

"He knows all about our bill, and he says he'd like to support it."

This was a shock, for the bill was supposed to be a secret.

"How did he find out about it?"

"Dreamt it in his sleep, I guess."

"I don't care for his support, I won't have it," said Mr. Barnstable, bringing his hand down forcibly on his desk to show his earnestness and indignation. "I wish very much, Mr. Dowling, that you had told him to leave the office and never show his impudent face here again."

There was a brief silence, during which Mr. Dowling fingered his watch-chain; then he said, in a quiet tone, "He says that the Underground Steam Company is going to move heaven and earth to elect men who will vote to give them a location."

"I trust you let him know that the Underground Steam Company is a stock jobbing, disreputable concern with no financial status."

"It wasn't necessary for me to tell him that. He knows it. He said he would prefer to side with us and keep them out of the streets, which meant of course that he knew we were able to pay the most if we chose. It seems Prendergast has been at him already."

"Disgusting! They both ought to be in jail."

"Amen. He says he gave Prendergast an evasive answer, and is to see him again next Tuesday. There's the situation, Mr. Barnstable. I tell you frankly that Lynch is an important man to keep friendly to our interests. He is very smart and well posted, and if we allow him to oppose us, we shall have no end of trouble. He is ready to take the ground that the streets ought not be dug up, and that a respectable corporation like ours should not be interfered with. Only he expects to be looked after in return. I deplore the condition of affairs as much as you do, but I tell you frankly that he is certain to go over to the other side and oppose us tooth and nail unless we show ourselves what he calls friendly to his 'interests.'"

"Then we'll prevent his election. I would subscribe money toward that myself."

The Manager coughed, by way perhaps of concealing a smile. "That would not be easy," he said. "And if it could be done, how should we be better off? Peter Lynch is only one of fifteen or twenty, many of whom are worse than he. By worse I mean equally unscrupulous and less efficient. Here, Mr. Barnstable, is a list of the candidates for Aldermen on both sides. I have been carefully over it and checked off the names of those most likely to be chosen, and I find that it comprises twelve out-and-out thieves, five sneak-thieves, as I call them, because they pilfer only in a small way and pass as pretty honest; four easy-going, broken-winded incapables, and three perfectly honest men, one of them thoroughly stupid. Now, if we have to deal with thieves, it is desirable to deal with those most likely to be of real service. There are four men on this list who can, if they choose, help us or hurt us materially. If we get them, they will be able to swing enough votes to control the situation; if they're against us, our bill will be side-tracked or defeated and the Underground Steam Company will get its franchise. That means, as you know, serious injury to our stockholders. There's the case in a nut-shell."

"What are their names?" asked Mr. Barnstable, faintly.

"Peter Lynch, Jeremiah Dolan, William H. Bird, and John P. Driscoll, popularly known in the inner circles of City Hall politics as 'the big four.' And they are—four of the biggest thieves in the community."

"Dear me," said Mr. Barnstable. "And what is it you advise doing?"

"Like the coon in the tree, I should say, 'Don't shoot and I'll come down.' It's best to have a clear understanding from the start."

"What I meant to ask was—er—what is it that this Peter Lynch wishes?"

"He uttered nothing but glittering generalities; that he desired to know who his friends were, and whether, in case he were elected, he could be of any service to our corporation. The English of that is, he expects in the first place a liberal subscription for campaign expenses—and after that retaining fees from time to time as our attorney or agent, which will vary in size according to the value of the services rendered."

A faint gleam of cunning hope appeared in Mr. Barnstable's eyes.

"Then anything we—er—contributed could properly be charged to attorney's fees?" he said by way of thinking aloud.

"Certainly—attorney's fees, services as agent, profit and loss, extraordinary expenses, machinery account, bad debts—there are a dozen ways of explaining the outlay. And no outlay may be necessary. A tip on the stock will do just as well."

"Dear, dear," reiterated Mr. Barnstable. "It's a deplorable situation; deplorable and very awkward."

"And the awkward part is, that we're a dead cock in the pit if we incline to virtue's side."

Mr. Barnstable sighed deeply and drummed on his desk. Then he began to walk up and down. After a few moments he stopped short and said:

"I shall have to lay it before my directors, Dowling."

"Certainly, sir. But in general terms, I hope. A single—er—impractical man might block the situation until it was too late. Then the expense of remedying the blunder might be much greater."

Mr. Barnstable inclined his head gravely. "I shall consult some of the wisest heads on the Board, and if in their opinion it is advisable to conciliate these blackmailers, a formal expression of approval will scarcely be necessary."

A few days later the President sent for the Manager and waved him to a chair. His expression was grave—almost sad, yet resolute. His manner was dignified and cold.

"We have considered," said he, "the matter of which we were speaking recently, and under the peculiar circumstances in which we are placed, and in view of the fact that the success of our bill and the defeat of the Underground Steam Company is necessary for the protection of the best interests of the public and the facilitation of honest corporate business enterprise, I am empowered to authorize you to take such steps, Mr. Dowling, as seem to you desirable and requisite for the proper protection of our interests."

"Very good, sir. That is all that is necessary."

There was a brief silence, during which Mr. Barnstable joined his finger-tips together and looked at the fire. Then he rose augustly, and putting out his hand with a repellant gesture said, "There is one thing I insist on, which is that I shall know nothing of the details of this disagreeable business. I leave the matter wholly in your hands, Dowling."

"Oh, certainly, sir. And you may rely on my giving the cold shoulder to the rascals wherever it is possible for me to do so."