Part 14
Fisher has carried the early practice of meeting politicians on their own ground to a very practical extreme. When tact and good humor failed, he applied force. Thus, when he set about preparing a year ahead for his fights in unpromising wards, he sent to the ward leaders on both sides for their lists of captains, lieutenants, and heelers. They refused, with expressions of astonishment at his “gall.” Mr. Chamberlain directed a most searching investigation of the wards, precinct by precinct, block by block, and not only gathered a rich fund of information, but so frightened the politicians who heard of the inquiries that many of them came around and gave up their lists. Whether these helped or not, however, the wards were studied, and it was by such information and undermining political work, combined with skill and a fearless appeal to the people of the ward, that Fisher beat out with Hubert W. Butler the notorious Henry Wulff, an ex-State Treasurer, in the ward convention of Wulff’s own party, and then defeated Wulff, who ran as an independent, at the polls.
Such experience won the respect of the politicians, as well as their fear, and in 1902 and 1903 the worst of them, or the best, came personally to Fisher to see what they could do. He was their equal in “the game of talk,” they found, and their superior in tactics, for when he could not persuade them to put up good men and “play fair,” he measured himself with them in strategy. Thus one day “Billy” Loeffler, the Democratic leader in the Democratic Ninth Ward, asked Mr. Fisher if the League did not want to name the Democratic candidate for alderman in his ward. Loeffler’s business partner, “Hot Stove” Brenner, was running on the Republican ticket and Fisher knew that the Democratic organization would pull for Brenner. But Fisher accepted what was a challenge to political play and suggested Michael J. Preib. Loeffler was dazed at the name; it was new to him, but he accepted the man and nominated him. The Ninth is a strong Hebrew ward. To draw off the Republican and Jewish vote from Brenner, Fisher procured the nomination as an independent of Jacob Diamond, a popular young Hebrew, and he backed him too, intending, as he told both Preib and Diamond, to prefer in the end the one that should develop the greater strength. Meanwhile the League watched Loeffler. He was quietly throwing his support from Preib to Brenner. Five days before election it was clear that, though Diamond had developed unexpected strength, Preib was stronger. Fisher went to Loeffler and accused him of not doing all he could for Preib. Loeffler declared he was. Fisher proposed a letter from Loeffler to his personal friends asking them to vote for Preib. Loeffler hesitated, but he signed one that Fisher dictated. Loeffler advised the publication of the statement in the Jewish papers, and, though he consented to have it mailed to voters, he thought it “an unnecessary expense.” When Fisher got back to the League headquarters, he rushed off copies of the letter through the mails to all the voters in the ward. By the time Loeffler heard of this it was too late to do anything; he tried, but he never caught up with those letters. His partner, Brenner, was defeated.
A politician? A boss. Chicago has in Walter L. Fisher a reform boss, and in the Nine of the Municipal Voters’ League, with their associated editors and able finance and advisory committees, a reform ring. They have no machine, no patronage, no power that they can abuse. They haven’t even a list of their voters. All they have is the confidence of the anonymous honest men of Chicago who care more for Chicago than for anything else. This they have won by a long record of good judgments, honest, obvious devotion to the public good, and a disinterestedness which has avoided even individual credit; not a hundred men in the city could name the Committee of Nine.
Working wide open at first, when it was necessary, they have withdrawn more and more ever since, and their policy now is one of dignified silence except when a plain statement of facts is required; then they speak as the League, simply, directly, but with human feeling, and leave their following of voters to act with or against them as they please. I have laid great stress on the technical, political skill of Fisher and the Nine, not because that is their chief reliance; it isn’t: the study and the enlightenment of public opinion is their great function and force. But other reform organizations have tried this way. These reformers have, with the newspapers and the aldermen, not only done it thoroughly and persistently; they have not only developed an educated citizenship; they have made it an effective force, effective in legislation and in practical politics. In short: political reform, politically conducted, has produced reform politicians working for the reform of the city with the methods of politics. They do everything that a politician does, except buy votes and sell them. They play politics in the interest of the city.
And what has the city got out of it? Many things, but at least one great spectacle to show the world, the political spectacle of the year, and it is still going on. The properly accredited representatives of two American city railway companies are meeting in the open with a regular committee of an American board of aldermen, and they are negotiating for the continuance of certain street railway franchises on terms fair both to the city and to the corporations, without a whisper of bribery, with composure, reasonableness, knowledge (on the aldermen’s part, long-studied information and almost expert knowledge); with an eye to the future, to the just profit of the railways, and the convenience of the people of the city. This in an American city—in Chicago!
Those franchises which Yerkes tried to “fix” expired on July 30. There was a dispute about that, and the railways were prepared to fight. One is a Chicago corporation held by Chicago capital, and the men in it knew the conditions. The other belongs to New York and Philadelphia capitalists, whom Yerkes got to hold it when he gave up and went away; they couldn’t understand. This “foreign” capital sent picked men out to Chicago to “fight.” One of the items said to have been put in their bill of appropriation was “For use in Chicago—$1,000,000.” Their local officers and directors and friends warned them to “go slow.”
“Do you mean to tell us,” said the Easterners, “that we can’t do in Chicago what we have done in Philadelphia, New York, and——”
“That’s exactly what we mean,” was the answer.
Incredulous, they did do some such “work.” They had the broken rings with them, and the “busted bosses,” and they had the city on the hip in one particular. Though the franchises expired, the city had no authority in law to take over the railways and had to get it from Springfield. The Republican ring, with some Democratic following, had organized the Legislature on an explicit arrangement that “no traction legislation should pass in 1903.” The railways knew they couldn’t get any; all they asked was that the city shouldn’t have any either. It was a political game, but Chicago was sure that two could play at it. Harrison was up for re-election; he was right on traction. The Republicans nominated a business man, Graeme Stewart, who also pledged himself. Then they all went to Springfield, and, with the whole city and State looking on, the city’s reform politicians beat the regulars. The city’s bill was buried in committee, but to make a showing for Stewart the Republican ring had to pass some sort of a bill. They offered a poor substitute. With the city against it, the Speaker “gaveled it through” amid a scene of the wildest excitement. He passed the bill, but he was driven from his chair, and the scandal compelled him and the ring to reconsider that bill and pass the city’s own enabling act.
Both the traction companies had been interested in this Springfield fiasco; they had been working together, but the local capitalists did not like the business. They soon offered to settle separately, and went into session with the city’s lawyers, Edwin Burritt Smith, of the League, and John C. Mathis. The Easterners’ representatives, headed by a “brilliant” New York lawyer, had to negotiate too. Their brilliant lawyer undertook to “talk sense” into the aldermanic committee. This committee had been out visiting all the large Eastern cities, studying the traction situations everywhere; on their own account they had had drawn for them one of the most complete reports ever made for a city by an expert. Moreover, they knew the law and the finances of the traction companies, better far than the New York lawyers. When, therefore, the brilliant legal light had made one of his smooth, elaborate speeches, some hard-headed alderman would get up and say that he “gathered and gleaned” thus and so from the last speaker; he wasn’t quite sure, but if thus and so was what the gentleman from New York had said, then it looked to him like tommy rot. Then the lawyer would spin another web, only to have some other commonplace-looking alderman tear it to pieces. Those lawyers were dumfounded. They were advised to see Fisher. They saw Fisher.
“You are welcome, if you wish,” he is said to have said, “to talk foolishness, but I advise you to stop it. I do not speak for the Council, but I think I know what it will say when it speaks for itself. Those aldermen know their business. They know sense and they know nonsense. They can’t be fooled. If you go at them with reason they will go a long way toward helping you. However, you shall do as you please about this. But let me burn this one thing in upon your consciousness: Don’t try money on them or anybody else. They will listen to your nonsense with patience, but if we hear of you trying to bribe anybody—an alderman or a politician or a newspaper or a reporter—all negotiations will cease instantly. And nobody will attempt to blackmail you, no one.”
This seems to me to be the highest peak of reform. Here is a gentleman, speaking with the authority of absolute faith and knowledge, assuring the representatives of a corporation that it can have all that is due it from a body of aldermen by the expenditure of nothing more than reason. I have heard many a business man say such a condition of things would be hailed by his kind with rejoicing. How do they like it in Chicago? They don’t like it at all. I spent one whole forenoon calling on the presidents of banks, great business men, and financiers interested in public utility companies. With all the evidence I had had in other places that these men are the chief sources of corruption, I was unprepared for the sensation of that day. Those financial leaders of Chicago were “mad.” All but one of them became so enraged as they talked that they could not behave decently. They rose up, purple in the face, and cursed reform. They said it had hurt business; it had hurt the town. “Anarchy,” they called it; “socialism.” They named corporations that had left the city; they named others that had planned to come there and had gone elsewhere. They offered me facts and figures to prove that the city was damaged.
“But isn’t the reform council honest?” I asked.
“Honest! Yes, but—oh, h—l!”
“And do you realize that all you say means that you regret the passing of boodle and would prefer to have back the old corrupt Council?”
That brought a curse, or a shrewd smile, or a cynical laugh, but that they regretted the passing of the boodle régime is the fact, bitter, astonishing,—but natural enough. We have seen those interests at their bribery in Philadelphia and St. Louis; we have seen them opposing reforms in every city. Here in Chicago we have them cursing reform triumphant, for, though reform may have been a benefit to the city as a community of freemen, it is really bad; it has hurt their business!
Chicago has paid dearly for its reform, and reformers elsewhere might as well realize that if they succeed, their city will pay, too, at first. Capital will boycott it and capital will give it a bad name. The bankers who offered me proof of their losses were offering me material to write down the city. And has Chicago had conspicuous credit for reform? No, it is in ill-repute, “anarchistic,” “socialistic” (a commercial term for municipal ownership); it is “unfriendly to capital.” But Chicago knows what it is after and it knows the cost. There are business men there who are willing to pay; they told me so. There are business men on the executive and finance committees of the League and others helping outside who are among the leaders of Chicago’s business and its bar. Moreover, there are promoters who expect to like an honest Council. One such told me that he meant to apply for franchises shortly, and he believed that, though it would take longer than bribery to negotiate fair terms with aldermen who were keen to safeguard the city’s interests, yet business could be done on that basis. “Those reform aldermen are slow, but they are fair,” he said.
The aldermen are fair. Exasperated as they have been by the trifling, the trickery, and past boodling of the street railways, inconvenienced by bad service, beset by corporation temptations, they are fairer to-day than the corporations. They have the street railways now in a corner. The negotiations are on, and they could squeeze them with a vengeance. What is the spirit of those aldermen? “Well,” said one to me, “I’ll tell you how we feel. We’ve got to get the city’s interests well protected. That’s first. But we’ve got more to do than that. They’re shy of us; these capitalists don’t know how to handle us. They are not up to the new, reform, on-the-level way of doing business. We’ve got to show capital that we will give them all that is coming to them, and just a little more—a little more, just to get them used to being honest.” This was said without a bit of humor, with some anxiety but no bitterness, and not a word about socialism or “confiscating municipal ownership”; that’s a “capitalistic” bugaboo. Again, one Saturday night a personal friend of mine who had lost a half-holiday at a conference with some of the leading aldermen, complained of their “preciseness.” “First,” he said, “they had to have every trivial interest of the city protected, then, when we seemed to be done, they turned around and argued like corporation lawyers for the protection of the corporation.”
Those Chicago aldermen are an honor to the country! Men like Jackson and Mavor, Herrmann and Werno, would be a credit to any legislative body in the land, but there is no such body in the land where they could do more good or win more honor. I believe capital will some day prefer to do business with them than with blackmailers and boodlers anywhere.
When that day comes the aldermen will share the credit with the Municipal Voters’ League, but all the character and all the ability of both Council and League will not explain the reform of Chicago. The citizens of that city will take most of the glory. They will have done it, as they have done it so far.
Some of my critics have declared they could not believe there was so much difference in the character of communities as I have described. How can they account, then, for Chicago? The people there have political parties, they are partisans. But they know how to vote. Before the League was started, the records show them shifting their vote to the confusion of well-laid political plans. So they have always had bosses, and they have them now, but these bosses admit that they “can’t boss Chicago.” I think this is partly their fault. William Lorimer, the dominant Republican boss, with whom I talked for an hour one day, certainly does not make the impression, either as a man or as a politician, that Croker makes, or Durham of Philadelphia. But an outsider may easily go wrong on a point like this, and we may leave the credit where they lay it, with the people of Chicago. Fisher is a more forceful man than any of the regulars, and, as a politician, compares with well-known leaders in any city; but Fisher’s power is the people’s. His leadership may have done much, but there is something else deeper and bigger behind him. At the last aldermanic election, when he discovered on the Saturday before election that the League was recommending, against a bad Democrat, a worse Republican, he advised the people of that ward to vote for the Socialist; and the people did vote for the Socialist, and they elected him. Again, there is the press, the best in any of our large cities. There are several newspapers in Chicago which have served always the public interest, and their advice is taken by their readers. These editors wield, as they wielded before the League came, that old-fashioned power of the press which is supposed to have passed away. Indeed, one of the finest exhibitions of disinterestedness in this whole reform story was that of these newspapers giving up the individual power and credit which their influence on public opinion gave them, to the League, behind which they stepped to get together and gain for the city what they lost themselves. But this paid them. They did not do it with that motive; they did it for the city, but the city has recognized the service, as another fact shows: There are bad papers in Chicago—papers that serve special interests—and these don’t pay.
The agents of reform have been many and efficient, but back of them all was an intelligent, determined people, and they have decided. The city of Chicago is ruled by the citizens of Chicago. Then why are the citizens of Chicago satisfied with half-reform? Why have they reformed the Council and left the administrative side of government so far behind? “One thing at a time,” they will tell you out there, and it is wonderful to see them patient after seven years of steadfast, fighting reform.
But that is not the reason. The administration has been improved. It is absurdly backward and uneven; the fire department is excellent, the police is a disgrace, the law department is expert, the health bureau is corrupt, and the street cleaning is hardly worth mention. All this is Carter H. Harrison. He is an honest man personally, but indolent; a shrewd politician, and a character with reserve power, but he has no initial energy. Without ideals, he does only what is demanded of him. He does not seem to know wrong is wrong, till he is taught; nor to care, till criticism arouses his political sense of popular requirement. That sense is keen, but think of it: Every time Chicago wants to go ahead a foot, it has first to push its mayor up inch by inch. In brief, Chicago is a city that wants to be led, and Carter Harrison, with all his political ambition, honest willingness, and obstinate independence, simply follows it. The League leads, and its leaders understand their people. Then why does the League submit to Harrison? Why doesn’t the League recommend mayors as well as aldermen? It may some day; but, setting out by accident to clean the Council, stop the boodling, and settle the city railway troubles, they have been content with Mayor Harrison because he had learned his lesson on that. And, I think, as they say the mayor thinks, that when the people of Chicago get the city railways running with enough cars and power; when they have put a stop to boodling forever; they will take up the administrative side of the government. A people who can support for seven years one movement toward reform, should be able to go on forever. With the big boodle beaten, petty political grafting can easily be stopped. All that will be needed then will be a mayor who understands and represents the city; he will be able to make Chicago as rare an example of good government as it is now of reform; which will be an advertisement; good business; it will _pay_.
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_Post Scriptum_, December, 1903.—Chicago has taken up since administrative graft. The Council is conducting an investigation which is showing the city government to have been a second Minneapolis. Mayor Harrison is helping, and the citizens are interested. There is little doubt that Chicago will be cleaned up.
NEW YORK: GOOD GOVERNMENT TO THE TEST
(_November, 1903_)
Just about the time this article will appear, Greater New York will be holding a local election on what has come to be a national question—good government. No doubt there will be other “issues.” At this writing (September 15) the candidates were not named nor the platforms written, but the regular politicians hate the main issue, and they have a pretty trick of confusing the honest mind and splitting the honest vote by raising “local issues” which would settle themselves under prolonged honest government. So, too, there will probably be some talk about the effect this election might have upon the next Presidential election; another clever fraud which seldom fails to work to the advantage of rings and grafters, and to the humiliation and despair of good citizenship. We have nothing to do with these deceptions. They may count in New York, they may determine the result, but let them. They are common moves in the corruptionist’s game, and, therefore, fair tests of citizenship, for honesty is not the sole qualification for an honest voter; intelligence has to play a part, too, and a little intelligence would defeat all such tricks. Anyhow, they cannot disturb us. I am writing too far ahead, and my readers, for the most part, will be reading too far away to know or care anything about them. We can grasp firmly the essential issues involved and then watch with equanimity the returns for the answer, plain yes or no, which New York will give to the only questions that concern us all:[6]
Footnote 6:
Tammany tried to introduce national issues, but failed, and “good government” was practically the only question raised.
Do we Americans really want good government? Do we know it when we see it? Are we capable of that sustained good citizenship which alone can make democracy a success? Or, to save our pride, one other: Is the New York way the right road to permanent reform?
For New York has good government, or, to be more precise, it has a good administration. It is not a question there of turning the rascals out and putting the honest men into their places. The honest men are in, and this election is to decide whether they are to be kept in, which is a very different matter. Any people is capable of rising in wrath to overthrow bad rulers. Philadelphia has done that in its day. New York has done it several times. With fresh and present outrages to avenge, particular villains to punish, and the mob sense of common anger to excite, it is an emotional gratification to go out with the crowd and “smash something.” This is nothing but revolt, and even monarchies have uprisings to the credit of their subjects. But revolt is not reform, and one revolutionary administration is not good government. That we free Americans are capable of such assertions of our sovereign power, we have proven; our lynchers are demonstrating it every day. That we can go forth singly also, and, without passion, with nothing but mild approval and dull duty to impel us, vote intelligently to sustain a fairly good municipal government, remains to be shown. And that is what New York has the chance to show; New York, the leading exponent of the great American anti-bad government movement for good government.