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SCI LIBRARY

The Confessions Of A Reformer

Frederic C. Howe



[Part 3 of 11]


CHAPTER 9 / UPLIFTING


...I was invited to become one of the trustees of the Charity Organization Society, an institution of which its members were infinitely proud. It was putting charity on a new basis. It had scoured the country for an efficient secretary and was organized like a business corporation. Through it questionable private charities were being frozen out. Without credentials they found it difficult to collect funds; periodical accountings were demanded from them.[p.76]

...I began to have a dislike for our complacent reports and statistics of unworthy cases. Investigations into men's habits irritated me. I knew quite well that if I put in twelve hours in the rolling-mills I should more likely than not drop into a saloon afterward. If I were down and out, I should live as other men had to live in the tumble-down shacks and lodgin-houses under the hill, where the beds were kept warm twenty- four hours in the day by the turnover in the steel-mills on the flats.[p.79]

...I could not forget [Doctor Tuckerman's] suggestion that organized charity was designed to get the poor out of sight, and that there would be no need of charity if the men who supported the society paid better wages and protected the workers by safety devices in the mills.[p.79]

CHAPTER 10 / BEER AND SKITTLES


...when I was in the city council, I introduced the legislation that committed the city to the project, and Cleveland has since carried through a monumentai planning enterprise. It purchased a great stretch of land, running from the business centre to the lake front. The land was planned by an expert commission with sunken gardens and parking, with a wide mall running down the centre. Flanking the mall a city hall, county court-house, federal building, public library, and convention auditorium have been erected, with a Federal Reserve bank building not far distant. A uniform style of architecture and a uniform sky line insured harmony and unity of effect in this splendid attempt at city-building.[p.82]

CHAPTER 11 / I ENTER POLITICS


The [Cleveland] Municipal Association had stuck to the fight against the [street-railway] franchise although some of the members were uncomfortable in doing so. It seemed to identify them with radicals and with the rather primitive methods that radicals employed, such as the spectacular "petitions in boots" which the people organized. Every Monday evening the petitioners came early to the council-chamber with clothes-lines in their hands, and taking front seats in the galleries they hung nooses over the heads of the councilmen under suspicion. They gathered round them as they left the council-chamber; even children were taught to cry shame at the children of suspected fathers and call them grafters.[p.86]

I had written a pamphlet analyzing the proposed franchise and condemning its terms, which was printed and distributed broadcast by the association. It showed that the street-railway earnings were increasing at the rate of ten per cent a year and that in twenty-five years the franchise grant would be worth twenty million dollars. The pamphlet made a sensation when it appeared. ...[p.86]

The pamphlet helped to arouse public sentiment; the petitions in boots frightened the councilmen. And the franchise was temporarily defeated.[p.87]

That was the political situation in Cleveland in the spring of 1901, when rumors began to circulate that Tom L. Johnson planned to return to Cleveland from New York to run for mayor on the Democratic ticket. I had heard about Tom Johnson ever since I had been in the city. He was a dramatic personality; every one had a story about him. I knew about his life what every one knew: that he had come to Cleveland as a young man with no capital and had bought out an old horse-car line of no particular value on the west side, thereby coming into conflict with Mark Hanna, who looked upon the west side of the city as his own. He and his brother Albert had driven their own cars and collected fares. When he wanted to extend his car-line into the public square, he went before a Republican council and promised to carry passengers over his entire system for a single fare. The extension was granted in the teeth of Mark Hanna's opposition. In time he was recognized by other street-railway magnates; and he induced them to form a consolidation, capitalized far in excess of the capitalization of the constituent companies. Then he sold out his holdings and went to Brooklyn, where he repeated the operation. He repeated it again in Detroit and Philadelphia. He acquired steel-mills in Johnstown, Pa., and Lorain, Ohio, and sold them out to the Steel Trust. He had made most of his money by stock manipulations of this kind and was reputed to be many times a millionaire. He had a palatial home on Euclid Avenue, where he entertained generously.[p.87]

AIthough he was an intimate friend of many of the rich people of Cleveland, he was distrusted because of his unusual opinions and the apparent discrepancy between his social position and the things he advocated. He was a Democrat and an absolute free-trader. He had been elected to Congress by advocating free trade in a city in the heart of the iron and steel district. He had advocated it in Congress, protesting against a protective tariff on iron and steel, which he said would at-id new millions to his wealth for which others would have to pay. He advocated the public ownership of street railways, although he had made most of his fortune out of them. ...[p.88]

Odd among other oddities was the fact that Henry George had Iived with him in Washington. Protection and Free Trade had been written by Henry George as a series of speeches which Mr. Johnson delivered in Congress. They were then reprinted in pamphlet form by the Government Printing Office, and a million copies distributed by Mr. Johnson under his congressional frank.[p.88]

When I heard one day that this puzzling, contradictory, much-talked-of Tom Johnson had arrived and would announce his candidacy that evening at the Hollenden House, I freed myself from engagements and was there at eight o'clock. ...[p.88]

...He had permanently given up the making of money, he said, and had come back from New York to run for mayor. He had sold out all his railways and his iron and steel plants, and intended to devote the rest of his life to politics. He talked about the city. The steam railroads had gotten possession of the lake front and held it illegally. The lake-front land was worth millions of dollars. The city was contesting the railroad occupancy in the United States courts, where the case had lain for a dozen years. Mayor Farley was attempting to Jam legislation through the council to validate these illegal holdings. In addition, he was doing everything he could to give the street railways a very valuable franchise; a franchise, Mr. Johnson said, worth many millions of dollars. He knew how much it was worth, because he had been in the street-railway business and had made millions out of just such franchise grants. He told how he had gone before the city council when seeking a grant for his company, and had said to the council that it was foolish for the city to give away such franchises. He had urged that the public should own the street railways and operate them, Just as the water-works were operated, but if the city insisted on being foolish, he hoped it would be foolish to him. As a business man he had made money out of the city's stupidity.[pp.89-90]

...I could see why my friends distrusted him. Was he as candid and honest as he seemed, or was he using his frankness merely as a political blind? I was at sea. Everybody said that the city needed a business man's administration, and Mr. Johnson was certainly an eminent business man. But he was not going at it the way I felt he should. He did not seem to be a reformer. He was not indignant enough. He said nothing about waste and extravagance; about bad men; about poiiticians; about the spoils system. He made no personal attacks on any one. He seemed not to have a high opinion of the kind of men on whom I counted to save democracy. He held a cigar in his hand while he spoke and went away with a crowd of riotous politicians. He was not at all like my picture of the business man who was to redeem politics.[p.90]

...[A] few days later something happened to divert my attention from [Tom Johnson] and centre it on my own affairs. One evening a group of men called on me at the University Club. Some of them I knew by name; they were residents of the brownstone ward in which the club was situated, the same ward that had sent [my friend] Morris Black to the council. They came to ask me to run as Republican candidate for the council. They promised me support, management of my campaign, funds, everything needful. They spoke of the disclosures of corruption in the city government ... They reminded me that as secretary of the Municipal Association I had been appealing to other men to organize, to clean up the city, and hinted that there was a moral obligation on me not to refuse the candidacy offered. The situation, they implied, was one that demanded sacrifices.[pp.90-91]

I put them off for a day, talked to my law partners, reflected that I could not afford the expense or the distraction of campaigning, but waited eagerly for the gentlemen to reappear the next evening, and, when they came, consented to run. I liked being called from my law practice as Cincinnatus was called from the fields by the old Romans, liked being thought "a good citizen." And I was eager again to take part in the renaissance of politics which I felt was coming; the renaissance started by Morris Black and myself.[p.91]

I plunged into the campaign whole-heartedly. ...I was out every night, making speeches in the saloons, visiting from house to house, as Black and I had done in his campaign. I spent more money than I could afford, but much more was being spent by some one else for my election. The other candidate spent more than we did, and that was comforting; moreover, I argued that one must beat the devil with his own tools. I had my photograph taken in a frock coat, and liked to see it on telegraph-poles, in shops, and in the windows of private homes. I looked thoroughly the good citizen. To my surprise, I found that many of the ward politicians were working for me. ...[pp.91-92]

...The risk of being dirtied by politics had to be taken; the sacrifice involved in running for office had to be made. And I was proud to have been selected by my friends, by the good people of my district, to make the sacrifice.[p.93]

But the riddle of Tom Johnson remained. When I could spare time from my own campaigning, I went to his meetings. He would go to a Republican meeting and ask permission to talk from the same platform with the Republican candidate for mayor. When permission was denied him, the crowd followed him out into the street, almost emptying the hall. One night he talked about poverty, about how to be rid of it. He said that society should be changed not by getting good men into office, but by making it possible for all men to be good. He said that most men would be reasonably good if they had a chance. We had evil in the world because people were poor. The trouble was not with people it was with poverty. Poverty was the cause of vice and crime. It was social conditions that were bad rather than people. These conditions could be changed only through politics.[p.93]

This bothered me, as did most of his speeches. Surely some people were good, while others were bad. My classifications were simple. Roughly, the members of the University Club and the Chamber of Commerce were good; McKisson, Bernstein, and the politician were bad. The bad were commonly in power; they held offices and controlled elections. They did not do their work well and were paid very much more than they should receive. ...[p.93]

...The way to change this vicious circle, I thought, was to get the good people to form committees in each ward as had been done in my own. If these committees nominated men who would go out and fight the politicians, if we gave enough thought to politics -- as we were under a moral obligation to do -- we should drive out the spoilsmen. It was all quite clear to me and very simple. It was the choice between the good and the bad.[p.94]

But here was a man [Tom L. Johnson] who said that bad people were not bad; they were merely poor and had to fight for a living. They got an easier living out of politics than they did working twelve hours a day in the steel-mills. So they went into politics. And being in the majority, they won out.[p.94]

I resented what Mr. Johnson said resented too the issues he ignored. ...He was an enemy of my opinions, of my education, of my superior position. It hurt my ego, my self-respect, to be told that I was really not much better than the politician and that my class was not as important as I thought it was.[p.94]

He often referred to Progress and Poverty, which I had read at the university. I had laid it aside, saying to myself: That is the most interesting book on political economy I have ever read. What Henry George says seems to be true. But it must be false. Such a simple explanation of the wrongs of society and the way to correct them cannot be right. If it were, every one would have accepted the reform as soon as the book was published and we should have had the single tax long ago.[p.95]

I finally called on Mr. Johnson at his office. I wanted to be assured of his sincerity. We talked a long time. Among other things, I told him about reading Progress and Poverty, of how I had been unable to answer the arguments but was convinced that it must be wrong.

He smiled and told me his own story.

"Years ago," he said, "when I was a young man Just getting started in the street-railway business, I was coming up from Indianapolis to Cleveland on the Big Four Railroad. The "butcher" -- as they called the man who sold books on the train -- came along with a bundle of books on his arm. The conductor passed at the same moment, and taking a book from the pile, he said: 'Mr. Johnson, I think you would like this book. It: is called Social Problems, by Henry George."

"I looked at the book and returned it. Thinking it was a treatise on prostitution, I said I was not interested in social problems.

"'It isn't that kind of book,' the conductor said. 'It deals with your kind of business -- with street-railroads, steam-railroads, adn the land question.'[p.95]

"I bought the book and read it. I read it a second time. Then I took it to Arthur Moxham, my partner in the steel business, and asked him to read it. I said: 'Arthur, you know more about books than I do. I haven't read much. But if this book is right, then your business and mine are all wrong.'

"Some weeks after this, he told me he had read the book; it was interesting but quite wrong. He had marked the passages that were faulty. A short time afterward, I asked again about it. He said he had been rereading the book; it was wrong, but he had rubbed out some of his objections. Finally he came to me and said: 'Tom, I have read that book four times. I have had to rub out every one of my objections. The book is sound. Henry George is right.'

"In the meantime, I had read Progress and Poverty. I said to myself: If this book is really true, I shall have to give up business. It isn't right for me to make money out of protected industries, out of street-railway franchises, out of land speculation. I must get out of the business, or prove that this book is wrong. I went to L. A. Russell, my attorney, and said to him:

Here, Russell, is a retainer of five hundred dollars. I want you to read this book and give me your honest opinion on it, as you would on a legal question. Treat this retainer as you would a fee.

A few weeks later I got a memorandum from Mr. Russell pointing out the errors of Henry George. I was starting for New York on a business errand and asked Mr. Russell to go with me.

We will talk this thing over in New York, I said.[p.96]

In New York we met Mr. Du Pont, of Delaware, and Arthur Moxham. In the evening we all went to my rooms in the hotel. We took up Russell's objections one by one. We spent the whole night on them. One question after another was disposed of, and finally Russell threw up his hands and said:

I have to admit that I was wrong. The book is sound. This man Henry George, whoever he is, is a wonderful philosopher.

All four of us were content with the decision. We were converted to an unnamed philosophy, by an unknown prophet, an obscure man of whom we had never before heard.

The next day I began a search for Henry George. I learned that he lived in Brooklyn, where I finally found him in his study. I told him who I was and how I had come to read his book, how I had proved it to myself and to my friends. Then I said:

Mr. George, I see that no one has a right to make money the way I have out of special privilege. But making money is the easiest thing in the world for me. I can make millions, but I can't write and I can't make a speech. What am I to do do?

Mr. George said: You go on and make money, but you can learn to speak. You can speak if you have something to say that you believe in. You can go into politics. The land question is politics. Only through politics can we bring the single tax to pass.[p.97]

Now you know, said Mr. Johnson, why I am running for mayor. I have been in Congress, but there isn't much to be done there. The place to begin is the city. If one city should adopt the single tax, other cities would have to follow suit. If we are the first to take taxes off houses, factories, and machinery, we will have a tremendous advantage. Factories will be attracted to Cleveland; it will be a cheap city to do business in, cheap to live in. Untaxing the things people use will cheapen them, it will encourage production. And if we tax the land heavily enough, we will discourage speculation. With cheap land on the one hand and cheap houses, factories, and goods on the other Cleveland will be the most attractive city in America.[p.98]

...I had never thought of ending poverty through politics. We should always have poverty. I did not believe in working with spoilsmen. I saw that Tom Johnson was fighting his friends, men of his own class, that he took pleasure in the companionship of common people. The people whom I trusted he found untrustworthy.[p.98]

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