The Confessions Of A Reformer
Frederic C. Howe
[Part 4 of 11]
CHAPTER 12 / A RUDE AWAKENING
TOM JOHNSON was elected mayor on the issue of municipal ownership
and a three-cent fare on the street-railways. Along with a number of
other men indorsed by the Municipal Association, I was returned to
the council, which had enough independent members to be organized on
a non-partisan basis. The beginning of the political renaissance had
come. Spoilsmen, bosses, grafters would be driven out. Cleveland was
to be America's pace-maker.
Mr. Johnson brought to the mayoralty extraordinary business talent
and technical ability. ...Elected by a large majority, he would put
his programme through, it seemed, with ease.[p.100]
...I had never made a sustained speech and did not know how to
begin. But I got to my feet and blazed out my feelings. I was
outraged, and assumed that everybody else was outraged. ...Here was
proof of how city business was carried on. And the astounding thing
was that bribery was not all done by paving contractors and ordinary
grafters, but by men of another class. ...That shocked me
most.[p.103]
I concluded:
"I have heard complaints about the so-called anarchists who
speak on the public square. Anarchy, as I understand it, means the
destruction of organized government. What is bribery but the
destruction of government? It means substituting money for honest
discussion. It means an end to democracy. The anarchists on the
public square, if such there be, merely talk about putting an end to
government. Here are men who have substituted corruption for
discussion, and ours," I said, "is a government by
discussion. The real enemies of the State, the most dangerous of
anarchists are the men who have plotted this thing, to subvert the
will of the elected representatives of the people."[pp.103-104]
On the vote the ordinance was adopted by a small majority. The
thirteen said nothing. Some of the reform councilmen
protested their honesty. Except my own, there was little
indignation.[p.104]
They had stuck to their friends, I had betrayed them. They had
been faithful to the only political ideals they recognized, which
was to keep your word no matter what it cost and to be loyal to
those who were loyal to you. From their point of view I had been
guilty of the one offense that could not be forgiven. I had
double-crossed the men who had put me in office and who had financed
my campaign.[p.106]
"I think you have converted me to public ownership. When a
private business can live only by bribery, then the logical
conclusion is that we can't have that kind of private business. We
can fight the spoils system, bad as it is, in the open; it is not
nearly so dangerous to democracy as is corruption. For corruption
... will destroy responsible government. ...[p.107]
...I grew to love the city and the big problems it presented. I
visited other cities to study police administration, methods of
street cleaning, the grouping of public buildings. The city appealed
to me as a social agency of great possibilities; at an insignificant
cost it could fill the lives of people with pleasure. It could
protect the poor by more intelligent use of the police force. It
could provide things at wholesale; could open playgrounds and public
baths. It could develop the lake front into a beautiful, long
esplanade. It could take over the charities and run them as public
agencies. I no longer believed in private charity. It seemed unfair
that men and women who had given their lives to industry should have
to rely upon private benevolence when in need. I saw endless
possibilities of beauty in Cleveland.[p.110]
I was conscious, as time went on, of increasing isolation. True,
it was partly of my own making, for I withdrew more and more into
myself. I shrank from old friends who disapproved of me. I kept away
from the clubs. What was the use, I said, of always inviting a row?
It confused me that my friends did not see things as I did; that
there was not generous approval of Tom Johnson when it became
apparent that he was giving the city a clean, businesslike
administration. ...[p.110]
I was caught between two herds. I had come to like the
politicians; I got on with them in the council, in ward meetings, in
political conferences. They were human, generous, kindly, and for
the most part did as Mr. Johnson told them to do. They were happy in
his leadership; many of them turned out to be highly efficient in
their jobs. But they were not my kind. With Mr. Johnson gone, they
would follow any other leader. I could not be permanently identified
with them anyway. And I missed friendliness, approval, a herd, that
satisfied my university picture of the role I should play.[p.111]
At the expiration of my term I was ready to run again as an
independent candidate. It was obvious that I could not be nominated
on the Republican ticket. ...I could not stand on the Republican
platform even if I were nominated, and I had alienated many friends
who had been responsible for my nomination. I declined a place on
the Democratic ticket that Mr. Johnson offered me, feeling confident
that I could be elected as an independent candidate. The district
was an intelligent one, the issues were clear, and the regular party
candidates were obviously unfit.[p.111]
But the ballots did not fall as I had expected. I was a bad third
in the race. People were not voting as my pattern of politics led me
to believe they would. I got scarcely any support from my own ward,
richest in the city. From that time on I was identified frankly with
Mr. Johnson and with the Democratic party. I was appointed chairman
of the finance commission of the city, and during the next six years
devoted most of my free time to politics, to speaking campaigns, to
daily conferences in the City Hall or with the mayor at his home,
which became the headquarters of a group of young men attracted, as
I had been attracted, by Tom Johnson's personality and
programme.[pp.111-112]
CHAPTER 13 / A TEN YEARS' WAR
Mr. Johnson called his ten years' fight against privilege a war
for A City on a Hill. To the young men in the movement, and
to tens of thousands of the poor who gave it their support, it was a
moral crusade rarely paralleled in American politics. The struggle
involved the banks, the press, the Chamber of Commerce, the clubs,
and the social life of the city. It divided families and destroyed
friendships. You were either for Tom Johnson or against him. If for
him, you were a disturber of business, a Socialist, to some an
anarchist. Had the term Red been in vogue, you would have
been called a communist in the pay of Soviet Russia. Every other
political issue and almost every topic of conversation was
subordinated to the struggle.[p.113]
The possibility of a free, orderly, and beautiful city became to
me an absorbing passion. Here were all of the elements necessary to
a great experiment in democracy. Here was a rapidly growing city
with great natural advantages and with few mistakes to correct, Here
was a wonderful hinterland for the building of homes, a ten-mile
water-front that could be developed for lake commerce, a population
that had showed itself willing to follow all ideal, and, most
important of all, a great leader.[p.113]
...Instinct held the propertied classes together no matter how
detached they might be from the interests that were directly
menaced. Before the expiration of the first two years of Mr.
Johnson's term of mayoralty the city was divided into two camps
along clearly defined economic lines. ...On the one side were men of
property and influence; on the other the politicians, immigrants,
workers, and persons of small means. This line of cleavage continued
to the end.[p.115]
As time went on the war widened out. Men were selected for office,
from city council to the supreme bench, about this issue [of public
ownership of the street railways]. President Roosevelt lent his aid
to defeat the enterprise by urging Congressman Theodore Burton to
run for mayor. Tom Johnson, he said, must be defeated, otherwise he
might become a national figure. ...[p.119]
But the fight was carried on for the most part in the courts, upon
which the opposition relied. ...To defeat the will of the community
the flimsiest of legal objections proved sufficient. The sovereignty
of a great city was far less important to the courts than that of
the most insignificant property-owner who urged some damage to
himself, or some failure by the city to observe an obscure provision
of the laws.[p.119]
Year after year passed, with the controversy still unsettled. Mr.
Johnson had to face the people in three separate elections.
...[p.122]
...There was always a campaign on; there were endless referendum
elections on ordinances or bond issues, as well as State campaigns,
in which the "Red Devil" and the tents were brought into
requisition for tours about the State. The opposition spared no
money or effort to block every measure sponsored by the mayor, or to
thwart him in the legislature and through the courts.[p.122]
The cost of the long struggle was exhausting, and might have worn
out a man less resourceful than Tom Johnson. At one time it looked
as though the whole enterprise might have to be abandoned for lack
of funds. ... Here was evidence that people believed in democracy,
that they would make sacrifices for it, once an issue was Presented
that appealed to their deeper convictions. The poor Ioved Tom
Johnson for the fight he was making, and his majorities were largest
when the attacks on him were most virulent.[p.123]
Our opponents at last, in 1908, put up the white flag. Many of
their franchises had expired. Stock that had been sold as high as
one hundred and fifteen dollars prior to 1901 had steadily fallen to
less than seventy dollars a share. Finally, after every conceivable
lawsuit had been exhausted, and bankers had become frightened over
the collapse of securities, a settlement was reached. The old
companies agreed to a valuation on their properties far below the
capitalized valuation. On this valuation they were to receive a
fixed return of six per cent: and no more. The street-railway
properties were to be leased to an operating company of five men,
trustees of the city, selected by the mayor, who bound themselves to
pay only operating costs and a six-per-cent return on the
outstanding capital stock. All earnings in excess of these sums were
to be used as the city might direct.[p.123]
The war over, we were ready to turn to the programme of
city-building which Mr. Johnson had in mind from the beginning. The
City on the Hill would now become a reality. ...[p.124]
With a brilliant executive and the community behind us, we would
make an experiment in democracy, in municipal ownership, in
town-planning, and the taxation of land values. We were free at last
to follow our ultimate ideals.[p.124]
But we leaned too confidently on our success. ...We did not
realize the sense of balked power, the latent hatred, or the
nation-wide hostility on the part of financiers and street-railway
owners to a three-cent-fare experiment, or to any advance toward
municipal ownership. Nor did we dream of the things that could be
done to make municipal ownership a failure.[p.125]
A new line of attack was now adopted. The credit of the operating
company was to be undermined. ...The industrial depression of 1907
and 1908 played havoc with our earnings. Thousands of men were out
of work and did not use the cars. A disagreement arose with the
employees. It was not very serious and might have been adjusted, but
it offered a further opportunity to embarrass us. A strike was
called. There was evidence that officers of the street-railway union
had been paid large sums of money to bring it about. Certainly they
received aid from the reactionary press that had never shown any
sympathy for organized labor. Dynamite was used on the tracks. Car
riders were terrified, employees assaulted. There were threats that
the power-houses would be blown up. ...Finally word was passed
around to the strikers to file referendum petitions against the
ordinance upon which the settlement was based. The opposition papers
supported the petitioners, and in a short time enough names to
require the ordinance to be voted on by the people had been filed
with the city clerk. We were in for another election. But for the
first time we were on the defensive. We had to explain our failures.
The community had stood by us when we were battling against an
unpopular corporation, but now we were fighting organized labor. The
forces of discontent were now against us. We received little support
from the press. Our friends were overconfident and remained away
from the polls. The evening of the election we followed the returns
at the City Hall with every expectation of victory, but the issue
hung in the balance all through the night, and in the morning it was
still uncertain. We lost out by a few hundred votes. [pp.125-126]
The verdict could not be reviewed. There was no appeal to another
test. The street-railway lines went back to the old companies. Their
victory was an empty one, for their dividends were limited to six
per cent and could not exceed a fixed amount, while the rate of fare
started at three cents and rose or fell as earnings might determine.
But the city had lost. A great movement was ended. The dream of
municipal ownership, of a free and sovereign city, was set back
indefinitely.[p.126]
This defeat was Tom Johnson's death-blow. For eight years he had
given every bit of intelligence, every ounce of energy he possessed
to the city. When victory was in his hand the people turned against
him. His health failed, his fortune was dissipated, and when he
died, within two years, he questioned not the truth of his great
economic vision but the value of his own effort, whether any good
had come out of it all.[p.126]
CHAPTER 14 / TOM JOHNSON
I HAD greater affection for Tom Johnson than for any man I have
ever known. He was as dependent upon those he loved as he was
indifferent to the hostility of his enemies. He had as much time for
affection as he had for work, and he was greedy for both. He
gathered his friends about him when developing plans working on an
invention, or at home in his big mansion on Euclid Avenue.[p.127]
The young men whom he drew about him always treated him as if he
were of their own age. There was no reserve or awe. The men who
formed this early group were Newton D. Baker, his law director, who
succeeded him as mayor and was later secretary of war under
President Wilson; Charles W. Stage, a brilliant young lawyer, who
was the centre of any group, and whose gaiety and courage made him a
universal favorite; John N. Stockwell, who took to any adventure
like a duck to water; and W. B. Colver, an able newspaper man, who
was later appointed chairman of the Federal Trade Commission by
President Wilson.[p.128]
...At most we were lieutenants, giving unstinted affection to a
leader who needed little else from us. He had the resourcefulness of
a Napoleon and unwearying courage. He gave us daily adventure, put
us in the places where we could do our best work, and we worked
under him like players in a football squad. Our friends at the east
end spoke sorrowfully of us; we had been hypnotized by Tom Johnson's
personality -- we would find him out as others had done and return
to our proper place in society. But there was nothing to find out in
Tom Johnson except his greatness. We were never disillusioned; there
were no disaffections, and for nearly ten years we worked and lived
together in this way.[p.128]
His home was a gathering-place for all sorts of men. He kept open
house like a Southerner. William Jennings Bryan stopped off to visit
him when passing through Cleveland. Henry George, Jr., lived with
him for months at a time, as his father had done. Devoted followers
from other parts of the State, especially Daniel Kiefer and Herbert
Bigelow, came to confer on local campaigns. Golden Rule Jones, Brand
Whitlock, Clarence Darrow, Lincoln Steffens were frequently there;
as were party leaders, political bosses, magazine writers, and
business men.[p.129]
...He knew the philosophy of Henry George in the same masterful
way. He had lived with Henry George, whom he loved; had talked every
phase of his philosophy through with him. He had its deeper social
significances at his finger-tips. The single tax had come to him
like Paul's vision on the road to Damascus, changing a monopolist
into the most dangerous enemy that monopoly could have -- an enemy
not of men but of institutions. He was not a sectarian. His mind
remained fertile. He had no pride about an idea proved to be false.
He was as eager for a new Point of view as most men are to retain an
old one. His mind was a garden rather than a safe deposit
vault.[p.129]
This particular dinner turned into a sparring-match between Mr.
Bryan and Mr. Johnson. Mr. Johnson led off.
"Suppose, Mr. Bryan," he said, "that you were
President and Congress and the Supreme Court rolled into one.
Suppose you had no one to consult but yourself and could put through
your entire programme for regulating trusts and monopolies, as fast
as your attorney-general could draft the bills. Tell us what laws
you would pass and I will tell you how monopolists would defeat
them."
Accepting the challenge, Mr. Bryan outlined the programme. He
said: "I would make it a crime for men to organize monopolies.
I would set the Department of Justice in motion and vigorously
enforce the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. I would create commissions and
give their members power to regulate business proceedings, fix
prices, rates, and charges. The trouble is that the government does
not use its power vigorously. It does not appoint the right kind of
district attorneys."
Monopoly under his programme was to be made good. Bad men were at
fault. They would either be led to see the evil of their ways or put
in jail.[p.132]
Mr. Johnson's eyes fairly sparkled at these proposals. He had been
a conscious monopolist, knowing all the practices of monopoly; it
had been an easy game for him. He had been cleverer than most of his
associates. And he was far cleverer than the government could
possibly be. Monopoly, he knew, could not be regulated. It was too
powerful. Also too intelligent. Monopoly was on the job all the
time. It employed the best attorneys. And it was in politics. Men
like himself could always secure the appointment of commissioners or
district attorneys or even judges favorable to the interests they
were expected to regulate.[pp.132-133]
He showed the futility of the Sherman Anti-Trust law and of any
attempt to put an end to monopoly by criminal proceedings. The
corporation had to win only one trick, while the government had to
win them all. ...[p.133]
Then he stated his own programme. It was economic, not moralistic.
It consisted in taking away the special law-made privileges on which
monopoly relied for power. Monopoly would collapse, he said, when
its supports were taken away. His programme was almost automatic in
its workings. Monopoly was born of a strangle-hold on natural
resources; it was connected with transportation privileges and
rebates, with the protective tariff, with patents. These were the
four props on which it rested. Tax land values to the full, at a
rate that would appropriate this unearned form of wealth, and
monopolies dependent on coal, iron ore, oil, gas, or other natural
resources would be forced to a competitive basis. Make
transportation a public function, and rebates and discrimination,
against which criminal proceedings were futile, would come to an
end. Establish absolute free trade, and monopolies depending on the
protective tariff would collapse. Abolish patent rights, by which
commonly neither inventors nor invention profited, and monopolies
based on patents would fall.[pp.133-134]
Mr. Johnson was in his favorite field the field in which he was
supremely competent. He had evaded regulation, escaped supervision,
come out triumphant from criminal proceedings. For a quarter of a
century he had been a conscious monopolist and he knew what it was
that gave monopoly its power.[p.134]
He was eager to share with Mr. Bryan his philosophy of freedom.
We ourselves have created monopoly by law. Take away special
privilege, and competition will reappear. It is more responsive,
more efficient, it will destroy monopoly and usher in a new society.
There will be an end of poverty. It was Henry George's economic
philosophy in a nutshell. Tom Johnson never wearied of restating it.
This time, I remember, it failed utterly of penetrating Mr. Bryan's
moralistic armor. He was left dissenting and unconvinced.[p.134]
...There was no limit, he used to say, to the wealth that would be
produced in a free society, in which law-made privileges were
abolished. It would be ample enough for all. The fear of poverty
would disappear and a new psychology of kindliness, generosity, and
justice would take its place.[pp.134-135]
He divided wealth into two categories: that which was created by
labor and that which was created by law. Wealth created by labor
should be sacred even from the State. Mines and other natural
resources, the ground-rent of cities and farms, the social values of
railways and public-utility corporations, belonged by right to those
that created them, to the people. This wealth was created by the
needs of men, increasing with every increase in population, added to
by every art and invention. All of these social values should be
taken by the State in taxation. The single tax was the passion of
his life -- a passion for freedom, for a world of equal opportunity
for all. For the promotion of this philosophy he had stopped making
money. To that end he had entered politics. He had a vision of a new
civilization free from poverty, free from fear, free from vice and
crime; of a new society that would be born when the strangle-hold of
special privilege was loosened.[p.135]
Mr. Johnson's political philosophy as clear and complete as
economic philosophy. He believed in a decentralized government.
Government was efficient, he said, when it was close to the people;
when the people knew their agents and selected them by the simplest
possible means. Like Jefferson, he believed that power should be
taken from the federal government and given to the States. Then he
would take it from the States and give it to cities, which he would
endow with full home rule. To secure highly decentralized
government, he believed in direct primaries, the short ballot, the
initiative and referendum, the recall and every political device
that would make the State as simple, as easily understood, and as
workable as a private corporation. He distrusted the courts and
protested against their assumption of the right to declare laws
unconstitutional.[pp.135-136]
I got the better part of my education from Tom Johnson. From him I
acquired a simple, vivid picture of life. He cleaned up prejudices,
swept away old habits of thought, old preconceptions. Political
economy became a matter of a few principles which could be applied
to any problem. The confusion of thinking which I had brought from
the university was cleared up by his penetrating understanding,
illustrated from his personal experience. My mind became receptive
and retentive. History took on new meanings. I found myself able to
make extemporaneous speeches on political questions with ease. My
old embarrassment passed away.[p.136]
Tom Johnson was, I think, one of the greatest statesmen America
has produced. He was an astute politician, but he never compromised
on important measures, even when they were far in advance of the
time. He attacked institutions, not men. When bribery or corruption
was disclosed he made no attempt to have men sent to jail. If
society hung great prizes in the form of franchises before men's
eyes, it must expect bribery. The thing to do was to stop tempting
people. He differed from most reformers, as he once said, in that
they would arrest the burglar and compel him to give up a part of
what he had stolen, while he would put a policeman in front of the
bank and prevent the burglar from entering.[p.145]
