Lincoln Steffens

“ Philadelphia and New York began about the same time, some thirty years ago, to reform their city governments. Philadelphia got “good government”—what the Philadelphians call good—from a corrupt ring and quit, satisfied to be a scandal to the nation and a disgrace to democracy. New York has gone on fighting, advancing and retreating, for thirty years, till now it has achieved the beginnings, under Mayor Low, of a government for the people. Do the New Yorkers know it? Do they care? They are Americans, mixed and typical; do we Americans really want good government? ”

“ Judge Lindsey’s Court of Probation is thus a Court of Approbation. It serves other purposes; indeed, it is everything to the boys of Denver. It is the State, the Law, and Justice; it is Home, School, Club, and Society; it is Friendship, Success, and the scene of Triumphs; it is the place also where Failure goes for Help and for Hope renewed. It is all that Judge Lindsey is; all that he means to the minds of the boys. For the Judge’s personality makes it, his and the boys’, and they made it up out of their own needs. ”

“ The corruption of St. Louis came from the top. The best citizens—the merchants and big financiers—used to rule the town, and they ruled it well. They set out to outstrip Chicago. The commercial and industrial war between these two cities was at one time a picturesque and dramatic spectacle such as is witnessed only in our country. Business men were not mere merchants and the politicians were not mere grafters; the two kinds of citizens got together and wielded the power of banks, railroads, factories, the prestige of the city, and the spirit of its citizens to gain business and population. ”

“ To let voters pledge their legislators to candidates for the United States Senate —that is to make the United States Senate represent the people. All the resources of the railroads, trolleys, and other public utilities, and of all the “protected” businesses of Jersey and of the United States will be called into play to defeat this kind of reform; for this is real reform. It is not a little tap at superficial evils; it is a stab at the source of all evil in all our politics. It aims at democracy, at the restoration of truly representative government. ”

“ All our municipal governments are more or less bad, and all our people are optimists. Philadelphia is simply the most corrupt and the most contented. Minneapolis has cleaned up, Pittsburg has tried to, New York fights every other election, Chicago fights all the time. Even St. Louis has begun to stir (since the elections are over) , and at the worst was only shameless. Philadelphia is proud; good people there defend corruption and boast of their machine. ”

“ But Colby didn’t want to run for boss of Essex; he wanted to make his appeal more to the people. This was an instinct, a democratic instinct which this rich railroad magnate’s son has well developed in him. He proposed running an older man for senator, but the older man wouldn’t run and the Newark, Bloomfield, and Orange men wanted Colby to lead their common fight. He was in doubt. He wanted to make the fight impersonal, and they adopted his principle to fight the boss, not Lentz; not the man, but the boss as an institution, as an agent of a corrupt oligarchy. ”

“ 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 ”

“ When the goal of such a man is the creation of a monopoly of all the
food or all the oil or all the steel in our world, we take him seriously — too late. I think that Rudolph Spreckels, capitalist, bank president, captain of industry, who, at thirty-five, has devoted his knowledge of men and business methods good and bad; his patient impatience; his talent for organization and his executive ability, to reform in the united cities of America — such a man is worth our study. ”

“ They speak pleasant words, smile friendly smiles, notice the baby, give picnics up the River or the Sound, or a slap on the back; find jobs, most of them at the city’s expense, but they have also news-stands, peddling privileges, railroad and other business places to dispense; they permit violations of the law, and, if a man has broken the law without permission, see him through the court. Though a blow in the face is as readily given as a shake of the hand, Tammany kindness is real kindness, and will go far, remember long, and take infinite trouble for a friend. ”

“ Colby’s class suffers from class consciousness, as much, if not more, than labour does. If he had gone forth as a rich man to the poor, or as a capitalist to labour, or as a business man offering a good business administration to a people incompetent for self-government, he would have had to buy votes or be beaten. ”

“ Not only must the city be paid, but public convenience and interest must be safeguarded. The boodlers boodled and the franchises went off; the protestation hurried the rotten business; but even that haste helped the cause. For the sight, week after week, of the boodle raids by rapacious capital fixed public opinion, and if the cry raised then for municipal ownership ever becomes a fact in Chicago, capital can go back to those days and blame itself. ”

“ It is time to fight the boss system itself, by which unscrupulous men get between the people and the public officials by control of the party machinery, betray the people, acquire riches for themselves, and attempt to drive out of public life all who will not take orders from the boss, and his real masters, the corporations.
“Mark M. Fagan.”
So the fight that fall, in Jersey City, as in Essex County and in New York, as in Toledo and Cincinnati, and Cleveland and Philadelphia, and in Ohio and in Pennsylvania, was a fight against the bosses. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And just as some boys want to be Napoleon, so young U'Ren dreamed that when he grew up he would be like Moses, the giver of laws that should lead the people out of Darkness into the land of Promise. But, of course, the Biblical hero-worship, taught him first by that pious woman, his good mother, made it a religious influence, as it still is, for when U'Ren, the blacksmith, is fashioning his legislative tools he works not alone with the affection of the true mechanic, but with the devotion of a faith that his laws will indeed deliver the people from bondage. ”

“ The Chicago way is but one way, however, and a new one, and it must be remembered that this plan has not yet produced a good administration. New York has that. Chicago, after seven years’ steady work, has a body of aldermen honest enough and competent to defend the city’s interests against boodle capital, but that is about all; it has a wretched administration. New York has stuck to the old way. Provincial and self-centered, it hardly knows there is any other. Chicago laughs and other cities wonder, but never mind, New York, by persistence, has at last achieved a good administration. ”

“ If the corporations do to Colby in Jersey what they have done to La Follette in Wisconsin, they will stir up envy and hatred against him; they will befool his followers with false arguments or buy them with money or office or “business”; and they will embitter his life, public and private, too, with misrepresentation and slander. If the fight is fought to a finish, every trick known to expert manipulators of legislatures and public opinion will be tried, but the rings didn’t believe it would be fought to a finish. ”

“ The people who were left to govern the city hated above all things strict laws. They were the loafers, saloon keepers, gamblers, criminals, and the thriftless poor of all nationalities. Resenting the sobriety of a staid, industrious community, and having no Irish to boss them, they delighted to follow the jovial pioneer doctor, Albert Alonzo Ames. He was the “good fellow”—a genial, generous reprobate. Devery, Tweed, and many more have exposed in vain this amiable type. “Doc” Ames, tall, straight, and cheerful, attracted men, and they gave him votes for his smiles. ”

“ The outside world couldn’t understand why the people of his state wanted the Judge of the Juvenile Court to run for Governor; nor why he was willing to take the nomination. The reason, as we shall see, was that Ben Lindsey is no mere philanthropist, but (in the true sense of the word) a politician; no mere saver of little victims of wrong, but a man leading men to destroy the opportunities for evil-doing, and to give all the children of men a “show” to “do good.” ”

“ 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. ”