Pierre weekly free press. (Pierre, S.D.) 1889-19??, 1916-01-06
TO Our Representative
Citizen and CITY Boss"
Meredith Nicholson In Atlantic Monthly.

The moral of the following whim;,
steal tale Is plain to the most CASUAL
OF readers. Meredith Nicholson.s
%ironical conception might easily have
been inspired by the example OF mn-
nicipal mismanagement with which
many cities are most familiar. The ex-
tract Is from the Atlantic Monthly for
December.
In the primaries the following spring
Barton got himself nominated for city
councilman. No one knew just how he
mad accomplished this. OF course, as
things go in our American cities, no one
qualified for membership in a university
club Is eligible for any municipal office,
and no man of our acquaintance had ever
before offered himself for a position soiled
through many years by ignoble use. Even
more amazing than Barton's nomination
was Barton's election.
We joked him a good deaf about his cleo
ton to an office that promised nothing to
q man of his character but annoyance
and humiliation. His associates on the
council were machine men, who nae no
knowledge whatever of enlightened meth
DDS of conducting cities. The very termln-
ology in which municipal government is
discussed by the informed was as strange
to them as Sanskrit. His republican col
leagues cheerfully ignored him, and shut
MN out OF their ~caucusss; the democrats
resented his appearance In the council
as an unwarranted intrusion
almost an ~indelicacy,' to use Barton's own
phrase.
The biggest joke Of all was Barton's ap-
pointment to the Craftsmanship of the
committee on municipal art. That this
was the only recognition his associates
accorded to the keenest lawyer in the
state,-a man possessing a broad klowl-
edge OF municipal methods, gathered in
every part of the world,-wa ludicrous. 1t
must be confessed: but Barton was not IN
the least disturbed. and continued to suf-
fer our chaff with his usual good humor.
Barton Is a secretive person, but we
learned later that he had meekly asked
the president Of the council to give him
this appointment. n 1t was conferred
upon him chiefly because no one else
wanted 1t, there being, obviously, nothing
In municipal art discernible to the bleared
eye OF the average councilman.
About that time old Sam Follonsby died,
bequeathing half a million dollars-twice
as much as anybody knew he had-to be
spent on fountains and statues in the city
parks and along the boulevards.
The many attempts Of the administra-
ZION to divert the money to other uses;
the efforts Of the mayor to throw the es-
tate into the hands of a hungry trust
company in which he had friends,-these
matters need not be recited here. Suffice
1t to say that Barton was equal to all the
mand made upon his legal genius.
When the estate was settled at the end
OF a year, Barton had won every point.
~Follonsby.s money was definitely set aside
BY the court as a special fund for the OBJ
tects specified by the testator. and Barton,
Us the chairman of the committee on mu-
hicipal art, had so tied 1t up in a legal
mesh OF his own ingenious contriving that
1t was, to all intents and purposes, sub
ject only to his personal check.
1t was now that Barton, long irritated
by the Indifference of our people to the i'm
peratiye need Of municipal reform, devised
a plan for %arousing the apathetic %elector-
ate. A philosopher, as well as a connois-
seur in the fine arts, he a concluded
that our whole idea of erecting statues to
the good and noble serves no purpose in
STEERING patriotic impulses in the bosoms
of beholders. There were plenty of stat
Yes and not a few. tablets In our town,
nmmemorating great-souled men, but
hey suffered sadly from public neglect.
n 1t must be confessed that the aver
| age statue, nc matter how splendid the
achievement of its subject, is little re-
garded and serves only passively as a re-
hinder of public duty. With what has
! seemed to me a sublime cynicism, Barton
proceeded to spend Follonsby's money In
q manner at once mover ana arreStlnS.
He commissioned one Of the most distin-
guished sculptors in the country to design
a statue: and at the end of his second year
In the council Che had been elected for
four years., it was set up on the new
boulevard that parallels the river.
His choice of a subject had never been
made known. so that curiosity was greatly
excited on the day Of the unwilling. Bar
ton had brought the governor of an ad.
Joining state, who was just then much IN
The public eye as a fighter of grafters, to
deliver the Grafton. 1t was a speech with
\ sting to 1t, but our people had long been
aareened to such lashings. The mayor
| spoke in praise of the civic spirit which
lad impelled Follonsby to make so large
4 bequest to the public: and then. before