The Washington herald., 1913-06-08
Efforts for Honest Government and Social and Industrial
Justice Colonel and His Friends Had Limited Wis
ion, but Plenty Of Courage.

| fact that the courts were not necessarily
the best judges Of what should be done
to better social and Industrial conditions
The judges who rendered this decision
were well-meaning men. They knew
nothing whatever Of tenement-house con-
ditions; they knew nothing whatever of
the needs or of the life and labor, Of
three-fourths Of their fellow citizens in
great cities. They knew legalism, but
not life. Their choice of the words
''hallowed" and hope" as applicable to
! the revolving conditions attending the
manufacture of cigars in tenement
houses, showed that they had no idea
what II was that they were deciding.
| Imagine the 'hallowed' associations Of
home" consisting of one room where
two families. one of them with a board
| er, live, eat. and work, This decision
completely blocked tenement-house re-
form legislation in New York for a score
OF years, and hampers ii to this day.
1t was one of the most serious set
backs which the cause OF industrial and
social progress and reform ever re-
ceived
: l had been brought up TO hold the
courts in especial reverence. The people
! with whom l was most intimate were apt
! TO praise the courts for just such de-
| cisiCns as this, and to speak of them as
against demagogic legislation. These
were the same people with whom the
judges who rendered these decisions were
apt to foreGather at social clubs, or din
ners, or in private life. Very naturally
| they all tended to look at things from the
same standpoint. OF course, II took more
than one experience such as this tene-
ment cigar case to shake me out OF the
attitude in which l was brought up. But
nnlN Of tha
York court, but of certain other State
courts and even of the United State Su-
preme Court, during the quarter of a
century following the passage of this
tenement house legislation, did at last
thoroughly wake me to the actual fact.
grew to realize all that Abraham Lincoln
had said about the bred Scott decision
could be said with equal truth and JUS
tice about the numerous decisions which
in our own day were erected as bars
across the path of social reform, and
which brought TO naught so much Of the
effort to secure justice and fair dealing
for workingmen and workingwomen and
for plain citizens generally.
Investigating New York City.
Some of the wickedness and inefi-
cheney in public life was then displayed in
simpler fashion than would probably now
be the case. Once or twice / was a mem
Der of committees which looked into gross
and widely ramifying governmental
abuses. On the whole. the most impor-
tant part played was in the third Legis-
lature in which 1 served. when l acted
as chairman of a committee which in
vestigated various phases OF New York
City official life.
The most important Of the reform
measures our committee recommended
was the bill taking away from the al
dermen their power of confirmation
over the Mayors appointments We
found that it was possible to get citi-
zens interested in the character and ca
pacity of the head of the city. so that
they would exercise some intelligent in
terest in his conduct and qualifications
But We found that, as matter of
fact that it was impossible to get them
interested in the aldermen and other
subordinate officers. In actual prac-
tice the aldermen were merely the Gre
atures of the local ward bosses or of
the big municipal bosses, and where
they controlled the appointments the
citizens at large had no chance what
ever to make their will felt. Accord
ingly, We fought for the principle
which ] believe to be of universal ap-
plication, that what is needed in our
popular government is to give plenty
Of power to a few officials. and to make
'hcSe lev oilISldiS Stnuulely ana read
lily responsible to the people for the ex-
ercise Of that power. Taking away the
confirming power of the board of al
dermen did not give the citizens Of
New York good government We knew
that II they chose 10 elect the wrong
kind of Mayor they would have bad
government, no matter what the form
of the law was. But we did secure to
them the chance to get good govern
md
possible as long as the old system re-
manned. The change was fought in the
way in which all similar changes al
ways are fought The corrupt and in
terested politicians were against IT,
and the battle cries they used. which
rallied to them most of the unthinking
conservatives. were that we were
changing the old Constitutional system.
that We were defacing the monuments
of the wisdom of the founders of the
government, that We were dstroying
that distinction between legislative and
executive power which was the bulwark
of our liberties, and that We were vio-
lent and interruptions radicals, with
no reverence for the past.
OF course the Investigations. discIos-
ures. and proceedings of the investigat-
ing committee of which I was chair
man brought me into bitter personal
Il,
very powerful politicians, and with. GER
tain newspapers which these financiers
and politicians controlled. number of
able and INSCRIPTIONS men were fight
ing, some for their financial lives, and
others to keep out of unpleasantIy close
neighborhood to States prison. This
meant that there were blows to be taken
as well as given. In such political strug-
giles. those who went in for the kind of
thing that I did speedily excited ami
mosities among strong and cunning men
who would stop at little to crafty their
Any man engaged in this
particular type of militant and practical
reform movement was soon made to feel
that he had better not undertake to
push matters home unless his own char
acter was unassailable. On one of the
investigating committees on which II
served there was a countryman. very
able man, who. when he reached New
York City, felt as certain Americans do
when they go to Paris-that the moral
restraints Of his native place no longer
applied. With all his ability, he was
not shrewd enough to realize that the
Police Department was having him as
well as the rest of US carefully shad-
owed. He was caught red-handed by a
plainclothesman doing what he had no
business to do; and from that time on
he dared not act save as those who
held his secret permitted him to act.
Thenceforth those officials who stood
behind the Police Department had one
man on the committee on whom they
could count. l never saw terror more
CHASTITY on strong mans face than
on the face, Of this man on one or two