Chapter LV: Section 4: provides that ‘Any difficulty or disagreement (6)

"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.

{436}

"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.
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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.

{439}

"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.’

{441}