The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-05-16
MUNICIPAL POLITICS.

us in Honolulu. Inere are men In every
large town who live, or who propose to
live, by public plumber. Usually they
join the majority party and make much
of their alleged loyalty to the party
name, and, by the institution of ma
chine, undertake to coerce the average
lay member into a thick-or-thin support
of their candidates and measures. Nat
urally these men are severe upon dis
senters 1t is their rule that even if a
man Is corrupt he must be voted for If
regularly nominated; and whoever OBJ
jects is advertised as mugwump or
something worse. The whole scheme of
machine discipline in municipal poll
tics is to make public thieving safe.
At least that is the way it works out
in most American cities, and there is
no reason to suppose that the machine
patriots have a different object in any
of them, no matter how much they may
conceal it or how many good citizens
they may get to act with them under
the mistaken idea that the profession
of party virtue is the same as the pos
session of it.
The study of the Cover lmGnt Of Am
erican cities by spoils politicians
sometimes makes one despair os the Re-
public, or at least Of popular rule in
municipal affairs. Wherever the poll
ticians, of whatever party name, have
been given carte blanche to rule, they
have soon proceeded to ruin. By long
experience they have reduced thieving
to a fine art. In San Francisco, up to
the introduction Of a new charter, ST.
000, 900 per annum were stolen. At a
time when S5,000,000 were being annu-
ally spent, Boss Buchley, then in re-
tirement, said he could take a contract
at $4,000 0e to give San Francisco bet
ter government than it had ever en-
joyed, and have a fortune left for HIM
self Experts in civics said that the
boast was reasonable. Nevertheless, the
city had always been controlled by men
of widely advertised enthusiasm for the
most moral planks of their party plat
forms. They talked like preachers in
campaigns, but when on duty they had
no sentimental restraints in getting af-
ter their share of the $2,000,00O.
The way this money was abstracted
is an interesting chapter in the story OF
American public administration. Some
of the cash was stolen outright, and a
part of it used to induce juries to acQuit
The most, however, was stolen by in
direction. A Superintendent of Public
Works would be charged to pave streets
or repair or build sewers, lay out parks
and construct flood walls. Large APP
preparations would be made for the pur-
pose At once the Superintendent would
hire more men than could be used and
| pay them extra wages, from which he
would take percentage to be divided
| between himself and his official pals
Contracts for material would be let on
| the plan of rebates, making any given
| job cost 81 where it was worth, say,
seventy-five cents. This scheme OF
| thievery ran through all departments
of San Francisco administration. Drugs
could not be bought for dispensary
or desks and stationery for the schools,
or batons or uniforms for the police,
or instruments for the engineers, or
beds for the hospitals, without a COM
mission for the buyers. Naturally,
dealers put prices up, and everything
the city bought cost at least three times
more than it could be purchased for by
private hands in the open market.
new York has been Systematically
robbed by its governing forces, of what
the early seventies the thefts of tie
Tweed ring aggregated S6,000,000 in a
term of two years. Stealings were then
crude and were easily detected and
brought to book. Under modern Tam
many they have been and are more
adroit, less easy to detect and immense
ly more profitable. In what way may
be judged by the extracts from Har-
per's Weekly that follow:
There were some extraordinary pur-
chases made during the regime of Police
President Sheehan. One was a piece of
iron that looks as If it might be an iron
brace to shelf. One arm of it is about
foot long and the other arm is about
six inches long. The iron is about an
inch wide and a quarter of an inch thick.
There are four or five holes in the iron
for nails or screws. Sheehan paid SIS for
a dozen of these-S1.50 each. They are
worth II cents each. Some newspapers,
| in a spirit of raillery, called Sheehan,
after that, "Skeg-iron John" The pieces
| of iron were skeg-irons to be used on a
| boats keel. Some of the other purchases
were almost as extraordinary. For a
| gallon of muriatic acid 692 per cent was
| paid over the market price; for some rub
| Der bands the increase was go per cent
| for binding some morning returns" 66(
| per cent; for some oath books" SEQ pei
| cent; for some character blanks" as
| per cent. and so on.
| OF course, Sheehan got into a terrible
rage. He said something about lies and
! he called names. Everything had beer
| Of