Golden Rule Jones 
 Mayor "/Toledo 
 
 By ERNEST CROSBY 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 Mayor of Toledo 
 
 By 
 
 ERNEST CROSBY 
 
 Author of 
 
 GARRISON THE NON-RESISTANT," "PLAIN TALK IN 
 PSALM AND PARABLE," 'CAPTAIN JINKS, HERO," 
 "SWORDS AND PLOUGHSHARES," "TOLSTOY 
 AND HIS MESSAGE," "TOLSTOY AS 
 A SCHOOLMASTER," "BROAD- 
 CAST," ETC. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 THE PUBLIC PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 FIRST NATIONAL BANK BUILDING 
 
-T7 
 
 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 
 DEC 5 '906 
 
 c. Copyright Entry 
 OLAS* A Wfc., No. 
 COPY B. 
 
 Copyright, 1906, 
 
 by 
 
 The Public Publishing Company 
 
Publishers' Note 
 
 This sketch of Golden Rule Jones 
 appeared originally in The Craftsman of 
 Syracuse, New York, and is now reprinted, 
 after revision, with the consent of the Editor 
 of that magazine. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Page 
 
 I In Business 7 
 
 II In Politics - 19 
 
 III On the Bench - - 25 
 
 IV Letters of Love and Labor - 37 
 V His Economics - - 43 
 
 VI Poetry - 49 
 
 VII His Death - - 56 
 
I 
 
 IN BUSINESS 
 
 It was in Chicago in the winter of 1895- 
 1896 that I made the acquaintance of Samuel 
 Milton Jones. We had both been invited to 
 some kind of a conference and were enter- 
 tained at one of the "settlements" of the 
 city. His fame had not reached me at that 
 time, for he had not yet entered politics and 
 the reports of his strange doings in the 
 field of business had not traveled as far as 
 New York, but I was attracted at once by 
 the open and childlike way in which he 
 expressed his extreme democratic views to 
 everyone. There was in the house in which 
 we stayed a crippled man of unprepossessing 
 appearance who looked after the furnace 
 and did other odd jobs in the cellar. He 
 was, if I am not mistaken, a reclaimed tramp, 
 one of the fruits of the good work of the 
 residents. It was not long before Jones 
 had discovered him, and they were soon old 
 friends. By a certain instinct he carried his 
 brotherly feeling where it was most needed 
 and where it would be most valued. And 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 I remarked then, as I often did afterward, 
 that Jones, while frequently engrossed in his 
 own experiences and in the problems aris- 
 ing from them, even to the exclusion of 
 external suggestions, was, notwithstanding, 
 entirely free from conceit, and acted without 
 the slightest reference to appearances or to 
 the opinion of the gallery. He followed out 
 his own impulses as simply as a child. 
 
 I became naturally curious about this 
 interesting man, and I heard some stories 
 at this time from his own lips which I have 
 never forgotten. But perhaps before I tell 
 them it would be best to give a brief out- 
 line of his life. He was born on August 3, 
 1846, in a laborer's stone cottage in the 
 village of Bedd Gelert, North Wales. When 
 he was three years old his parents emi- 
 grated to America with their family, first 
 taking up a collection among their friends to 
 raise the necessary" fare. They made the 
 voyage in the steerage of a sailing vessel, 
 and from New York they went by canal- 
 boat up the Hudson and the Erie Canal to 
 Utica and thence by wagon into Lewis 
 County, New York, where his father found 
 familiar work in the stone quarries, and 
 still later became a tenant farmer. Sam 
 went to the village school, and thirty months' 
 attendance there constituted his entire for- 
 mal education. He had a great dislike for 
 
 8 
 
In Business 
 
 farm work, but he was obliged to take part 
 in it as a lad. At ten years of age he worked 
 for a farmer who routed him out of bed at 
 four o'clock in the morning, and his day's 
 work did not end till sundown, for all of 
 which he received three dollars a month. 
 At fourteen he was employed in a sawmill 
 and his natural taste for mechanical work 
 began to show itself. He had been con- 
 sidered lazy on the farm, but he assures us 
 that he never had a lazy hair in his head, 
 and he makes his own case the text for a 
 sermon on the importance of finding con- 
 genial work for boys and men. From the 
 sawmill he passed on to the post of "wiper 
 and greaser" in the engine room of a steam- 
 boat on the Black River and learned a good 
 deal about the management of engines. An 
 engineer advised him to go to the oil regions 
 of Pennsylvania, and soon after he arrived 
 alone at Titusville, the center of that dis- 
 trict, with fifteen cents in his pocket. For 
 a short time he knew what it was to search 
 for work and not find it, and all the rest of 
 his life he felt the deepest sympathy with 
 men in that sad condition. He had the greatest 
 confidence in himself, however, and, as he 
 often pointed out, it was much easier to get 
 work then and there than it is now any- 
 where. On arriving he had registered in a 
 good hotel, trusting to luck to earn money 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 to pay his bill, and in a short time the bill 
 was paid. Meanwhile he wrote a letter 
 home to his mother, but did not have a cent 
 to buy a stamp with. Seeing a gentleman 
 on the way to the postomce, he asked him 
 to post his letter, and then pretended to 
 examine his pockets for the necessary three 
 cents, whereupon the man offered to pay 
 for it himself, which was just what young 
 Jones had hoped he would do. Afterward Jones 
 condemned this deception of his, and cited 
 it as proof of the evil effect of conditions 
 which deny the right of work to anyone. 
 During his weary tramp in quest of a place 
 one employer whom he accosted spoke 
 kindly to him and encouraged him, giving 
 him a letter to a friend of his who had oil 
 wells twelve miles away. These kind words 
 Jones never forgot, and he always had at 
 least a friendly smile for the "man out of 
 a job." At last he found work and remu- 
 nerative work, too, in managing an engine 
 which pumped the oil from a well. He liked 
 the work and advanced quickly, till, with 
 occasional periods of hard times, and after 
 doing all kinds of labor connected with bor- 
 ing for oil, he had saved a few hundred dol- 
 lars. Then he started digging for himself, 
 and became an employer. In 1875 he mar- 
 ried and after a very happy married life of 
 ten years his wife died, as did also his little 
 
 10 
 
In Business 
 
 daughter. These blows were almost too 
 great for Jones's strength, and he followed 
 the advice of his friends and removed with 
 his two boys to the oil regions of Ohio, in 
 order to divert his mind by change of scene. 
 Here he was very successful, as these oil 
 fields were just opened and developed very 
 rapidly. "I have simply taken advantage," 
 he says, "of opportunities offered by an 
 unfair social system and gained what the 
 world calls success." 
 
 In 1892 Jones married again, and about 
 the same time he invented several improve- 
 ments in oil well appliances, which he 
 offered to the "trust," but they refused 
 to touch them. His experience is evidence 
 of the fact that our "trust" system does not 
 encourage invention, being often satisfied to 
 let well enough alone, the managers some- 
 times buying up patents for the express pur- 
 pose of suppressing them, and of thus sav- 
 ing the money already expended in old- 
 fashioned plants. Jones was sure that his 
 inventions were valuable, and hence he 
 founded the "Acme Sucker-Rod Company" 
 and began manufacturing at Toledo on his 
 own account, and made that city his home. 
 He had never lived in a city before, and 
 Toledo, with its 150,000 inhabitants, proved 
 to be a new world to him. City life was 
 very different from the life he had hitherto 
 
 11 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 known. In the oil fields society was simple 
 and there was no great gulf between 
 employer and employe, but in town it was 
 altogether different. In the factories which 
 he visited the men were mere "hands," and 
 were not considered as human beings, and 
 in each shop there was posted a long list 
 of precise rules, invariably ending with the 
 warning that immediate discharge would 
 follow any infraction of them. This made 
 Jones's blood boil and he determined to man- 
 age things otherwise in his factory. The 
 idea occurred to him to put up the Golden 
 Rule instead of a placard of regulations, but 
 he fought against it in his mind, knowing 
 that it might seem peculiar and that it 
 would be misunderstood, but the thought 
 took possession of him and finally up it 
 went, "Whatsoever ye would that men should 
 do to you, do ye even so to them," or, as 
 he was wont to translate it in conversation, 
 "Do unto others as if you were the others." 
 When, on opening his shop, he sat down 
 with his foreman to make out the payroll, 
 the latter took from his pocket a statement 
 of the wages paid by other companies. "Put 
 that away," cried Jones. "What has that 
 got to do with it? What can we afford to 
 pay?" And the result of this novel plan 
 was that he always paid the highest wages 
 for the shortest hours of any employer in 
 
 12 
 
In Business 
 
 Toledo. One of those kindly critics who 
 invariably find fault with honest efforts to 
 do good, blamed him once for paying high 
 wages when so many men were out of 
 employment. 
 
 "You might employ twice as many if you 
 cut down their wages one-half," he said. 
 
 "If there is to be any cutting down," was 
 the answer, "it seems to me it ought to 
 come out of my share, and not from men 
 who are getting much less than I am." 
 
 Once when he was visiting the factory 
 of a neighbor the latter said to him: "See 
 here, Jones, here is a case that troubles me. 
 How would you treat it according to your 
 new ideas? I have a man here who has 
 spoiled three sets of castings in a week and 
 that means a loss of so much. What would 
 you do with him?" 
 
 "The first thing I would do," Jones 
 replied, "would be to imagine myself in his 
 place. How long have you employed him?" 
 
 "Two years, isn't it?" answered the pro- 
 prietor, turning to his bookkeeper. 
 
 "Yes, sir, two years and three months." 
 
 "Has he ever spoiled a casting before?" 
 asked Jones. 
 
 "No." 
 
 "How much vacation has he had since 
 he came?" 
 
 J3 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 "Look at the books and see," said the 
 employer to the clerk. 
 
 "Let me see," answered the latter, taking 
 down a blank book and turning over the 
 pages, "two, three — just five days in all." 
 
 "Why, I understand it very well," said 
 Jones with a smile. "His nerves have got 
 out of order with continual wear and tear. 
 If I were you I would give him a fort- 
 night's vacation!" And in his own shop 
 every employe had a week's holiday each 
 summer with full pay, an unheard-of luxury 
 until he introduced it. 
 
 On one occasion one of Jones's workmen 
 got drunk and injured a horse belonging to 
 the company by driving it into a telegraph 
 pole. The next day the foreman came into 
 the office and said, "Of course Brown must 
 be discharged to-day." 
 
 "Why?" asked Jones. "He was dead drunk, 
 wasn't he, with no more sense than a stick 
 or a stone? Now, suppose we could take 
 a stick or a stone and make a good citizen 
 for the State of Ohio out of it, don't you 
 think it would be even better than making 
 sucker rods? Send Brown to me when he 
 comes in." And when at last Brown came, 
 shamefaced and repentant, into the private 
 office, Jones said nothing, but took down 
 his Testament from the shelf and read the 
 story of the woman who was accused before 
 
 14 
 
In Business . 
 
 Jesus, ending with the words, "Neither do 
 I condemn thee; go and sin no more." And 
 that was all the reproof the man received. 
 He was often blamed for keeping intem- 
 perate men in his employ, but his object was 
 to reclaim them. "It would be an easy mat- 
 ter to 'fire out' every drinking man in the 
 shop and fill their places with sober men," 
 he says. "That would be easy. Any 'good 
 business man' could do that. But to make 
 conditions in and about a shop that will 
 make life so attractive and beautiful to men 
 as to lead them to live beautiful lives for 
 their own sake and for the sake of the world 
 about them, this is a task calling for quali- 
 fications not usually required of the 'suc- 
 cessful business manager.' " 
 
 Such were the anecdotes which I heard 
 with regard to Jones when I first met him 
 at Chicago. And the strange thing was 
 that his business methods were completely 
 successful. He turned the vacant land next 
 to his factory — space which was sorely 
 needed for his increasing business — into a 
 park and playground and named it Golden 
 Rule Park. He established an eight-hour 
 day, although none of his competitors fol- 
 lowed his example, and yet his business 
 and his income grew. "If I don't look out," 
 he said to me once, "I'll become a millionaire, 
 and what should I do with a million? It's 
 
 15 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 a curious fact that while I never thought 
 of such a thing, this Golden Rule business 
 has helped the company. People give me 
 four hundred dollars for engines which they 
 won't pay over three hundred and fifty dol- 
 lars for to other manufacturers. I don't 
 understand it at all." I was present once 
 at his office in Toledo while he and two of 
 his managers were discussing what to do 
 with a recalcitrant debtor. They had deliv- 
 ered a machine to this man a year before, 
 and, although he was amply able to pay, 
 he had never sent the money. The two men 
 were trying to persuade Jones to bring suit 
 against him, but he would not look at the 
 case in that light. He did not like the idea 
 of going to law, and would only promise 
 to think it over. One thing which troubled 
 him was the handsome house in which he 
 lived, and which he had built or bought 
 before his democratic nature had fully 
 matured. The "settlement" idea impressed 
 him at Chicago. "If I had only known of this 
 before," he said, "I would have built my 
 house down among the homes of our work- 
 men." He felt like an exile in the fashion- 
 able quarter of Toledo, and he made it a 
 point to take his midday meal with the men 
 in "Golden Rule Hall," over the factory, 
 where he organized a common dining-room 
 for them at cost. 
 
 16 
 
In Business 
 
 Jones actually loved his fellowmen, not 
 in theory only, but by instinct, and it is 
 interesting to watch a man who acts upon 
 such unusual principles, for you are always 
 wondering what he will do next. What 
 would a lover of his kind do under such and 
 such circumstances? It is as interesting as 
 a chess problem, "white to play and check 
 in three moves." He dropped in upon a 
 co-operative restaurant once in New York 
 and found the young men and women 
 employed there with two or three hours of 
 leisure on their hands. He solved the prob- 
 lem on the spot by taking all hands off to 
 a baseball match, and a merry and uncon- 
 ventional party they must have been. 
 
 In his "Autobiography," which forms an 
 introduction to his book, "The New Right," 
 published in 1899, Jones gives us his first 
 impressions of business life in Toledo. "I 
 think," he says, "the first real shock to 
 my social consciousness came when the 
 swarms of men swooped down upon us 
 begging for work, soon after signs of life 
 began to manifest themselves around the 
 abandoned factory which we rented for our 
 new enterprise. I never had seen anything 
 like it; their piteous appeals and the very 
 pathos of the looks of many of them stirred 
 the deepest sentiments of compassion within 
 me. I felt keenly the degradation and 
 
 17 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 shame of the situation; without knowing 
 why or how, I began to ask myself why I 
 had a right to be comfortable and happy in 
 a world in which other men, by nature 
 quite as good as I, and willing to work, will- 
 ing to give their service to society, were 
 denied the right even to the meanest kind 
 of existence. ... I soon discovered that I 
 was making the acquaintance of a new kind 
 of man. Always a believer in the equality 
 of the Declaration of Independence, I now 
 for the first time came into contact with 
 workingmen who seemed to have a sense 
 of social inferiority, wholly incapable of any 
 conception of equality, and this feeling I 
 believed it was my duty to destroy. With- 
 out any organized plan, and hardly know- 
 ing what I was doing, I determined that 
 this groveling conception must be over- 
 come; so we began to take steps to 
 break down this feeling of class distinction 
 and social inequality." He arranged for an 
 occasional picnic or excursion, to which the 
 men came with their families, and he invited 
 them to his fine house at receptions to which 
 his wealthier friends were also bidden. 
 
 18 
 
II 
 
 IN POLITICS 
 
 It was these experiments of Jones which 
 attracted public attention in Toledo to him. 
 In the spring of 1897 a convention of the 
 Republican party in that city was held to 
 select a candidate for mayor, and it so hap- 
 pened that there was a deadlock between 
 the supporters of three contending candi- 
 dates, no one of whom could secure a major- 
 ity. It was necessary to compromise upon 
 a new man, and the belief that the name 
 of Jones would appeal to the labor vote 
 caused the selection to fall upon him. He 
 had always been a Republican and a church 
 member and was supposed to be entirely 
 conservative and respectable — a little eccen- 
 tric perhaps, but with eccentricities which 
 might prove good vote getters. Toledo was 
 a Republican town and Jones was elected 
 by a majority of over five hundred. If 
 his nomination was a surprise to the 
 party managers, his course in office was still 
 more so, for he refused absolutely to listen 
 to partisan advice of any kind, and devoted 
 
 19 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 himself to the task of applying the Golden 
 Rule to the administration of the city gov- 
 ernment. He tells us that he thought that 
 the great need of municipalities was the 
 formation of ideals. Looking upon us as 
 "a nation of Mammon worshipers, with 
 gold as our god," he endeavored to "lift 
 the public mind in some measure into the 
 domain of art and idealism." "I believe," he 
 adds, "that it is the artistic idea of life that 
 helps us to see the possibility of a social order 
 in which all life, e<very life, may be made 
 beautiful." In this way he took up the ideal 
 of social justice, and advocated an eight- 
 hour workday for municipal employes, and 
 succeeded in establishing it in the police 
 department and the waterworks. He induced 
 the police commissioners to adopt the merit 
 system of appointment to the force. In his 
 second annual message to the common coun- 
 cil he made many recommendations, includ- 
 ing the ownership by the city of its own 
 gas and electric light plants, a larger share 
 of home rule to be obtained from the Leg- 
 islature, the referendum upon all extensions 
 of public franchises, the abandonment of 
 the contract system of public work, the addi- 
 tion of kindergartens to the school system, 
 larger appropriations for public parks and 
 for music in the parks and for playgrounds 
 and baths. But it was not so much the 
 
 20 
 
In Politics 
 
 specific measures advocated in it as the 
 spirit of brotherhood breathing through 
 the whole message, which drew wide 
 attention to this unusual document, and 
 brought letters of approval from Count 
 Tolstoy and W. D. Howells. When the 
 Mayor's two years' term of office drew near 
 its end, the Republican convention met again 
 to name his successor. The supporters of 
 Mayor Jones were almost numerous enough 
 to nominate him, but by underhand means 
 they were prevented from securing the nec- 
 essary votes and the choice fell upon 
 another. Jones at once announced himself 
 as an independent candidate, believing that 
 the people approved of his administration, 
 and the liveliest campaign ensued that 
 Toledo had ever seen. The Democrats 
 nominated a third candidate also, and all 
 the power of both "machines" was exerted 
 to put down this political upstart. He was 
 actively opposed by all the newspapers of 
 the city. The clergy turned against him 
 because he was considered too friendly to 
 the saloonkeepers, the fact being that he 
 could not help being friendly to everybody, 
 while he believed that the Sunday laws 
 should be enforced "according to the stand- 
 ard of existing public sentiment." One of 
 the reforms which he had instituted was 
 the substitution of light canes for clubs in 
 
 21 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 the hands of the police. "I have sought to 
 itnpress upon the patrolmen that they are 
 the public servants and not the public 
 bosses," he says in a letter of defense of 
 his mayoralty during this campaign; "I have 
 told them individually and collectively, and 
 especially impressed upon the new men, 
 that the duty of a patrolman is to do all in 
 his power to make it easy for the people to 
 do right and hard for them to do wrong, 
 and I have added, 'An officer can often ren- 
 der better service by saving the city the ne- 
 cessity of arresting one of her citizens, by 
 helping a prospective offender to do right in- 
 stead of waiting for him to be caught in a 
 fault in order that he may be dragged a cul- 
 prit to prison.'" And he pointed with pleasure 
 to the fact that the number of arrests had 
 fallen off about twenty-five per cent., or a 
 thousand cases in a year, and that the city 
 was more orderly than ever notwithstand- 
 ing. The real issue of the local campaign 
 was, however, the grant of a franchise 
 for practically no consideration to an elec- 
 tric light and street railway company, and 
 the false issues of the saloons and the police 
 were brought in to becloud the mind of the 
 public. The labor unions promptly rallied 
 to the support of Mayor Jones, and his own 
 employes organized a band and glee club, 
 which accompanied him wherever he 
 
 22 
 
In Politics 
 
 addressed the people, singing labor songs 
 written by himself. The enthusiasm cf his 
 meetings was unlimited, and a blinding 
 snowstorm was not sufficient to prevent 
 a grand procession of his supporters, their 
 energy being only stimulated by "two or 
 three inches of snow" on their umbrellas. 
 The newspapers on the eve of election pre- 
 dicted the overwhelming success of their 
 candidates, but when the votes were counted 
 Jones had received 16,773,0^ of a total of 
 24,187, while his opponents divided the 
 remaining votes pretty evenly between them. 
 He had received sixty per cent, of the vote, 
 against the united and determined opposi- 
 tion of all the parties and the entire press. It 
 was a personal triumph such as is rarely 
 experienced in popular elections, and not 
 only a personal triumph but a demonstration 
 of the power of the spirit of the Golden Rule 
 over the multitude when it is frankly expressed 
 in the life of a man. Mayor Jones was re- 
 elected in the "spring of 1901, and again in 
 1903, and held the office at the time of his 
 death. His knowledge of political parties 
 gained in office led him to doubt the value 
 of these institutions, and soon after his sec- 
 ond election he announced his conviction 
 that parties were evils, and occasionally he 
 signed his name as "a man without a party." 
 In the autumn of 1899 he was a candidate 
 
 23 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 for governor of Ohio upon a no-party plat- 
 form, and received 125,000 votes, the cam- 
 paign giving him an excellent opportunity 
 to preach his views in all parts of the State. 
 He might have gone to Congress the follow- 
 ing year, but he declined the nomination. 
 The last time he was a candidate for mayor, 
 in 1903, the animosity of the press was so 
 great against him that the editors of Toledo 
 agreed not to mention his name, referring 
 to him, when it was unavoidable, as "the 
 present incumbent of the mayor's office," 
 but still he was elected by a plurality of 
 3,000 votes. 
 
 24 
 
Ill 
 
 ON THE BENCH 
 
 The most picturesque portion of the offi- 
 cial life of Mayor Jones was that which he 
 passed as a police magistrate. If it is hard 
 for an employer to express love for a neighbor 
 in his life, how much more so is it for a 
 magistrate and chief of police! As mayor, 
 he had to fulfil the functions of both, and 
 the result was sometimes amusing and in- 
 structive. The charter of Toledo provided 
 that in the absence of the police justice the 
 mayor could occupy his place, and on sev- 
 eral occasions he did so. He had formed the 
 opinion that our police courts are "largely 
 conducted as institutions that take away 
 the liberties of the people who are poor," and 
 he resolved that they should never be so 
 used in his hands. On the first day that he 
 sat there was only one prisoner, a beggar 
 who pleaded guilty, but besought the Mayor 
 to let him leave town. "This man has a 
 divine right to beg," said the Mayor. The 
 policeman informed him that the prisoner had 
 been arrested for drunkenness the preceding 
 
 25 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 Friday. "Only the poor are arrested for drunk- 
 enness," replied Jones. "You would not 
 arrest a rich man for drunkenness. You 
 would send him home in a hack." The 
 beggar asked again to be allowed to leave 
 Toledo. "I do not see what good that 
 would do," said the Mayor. "You would 
 only go somewhere else and would not be 
 any better off. We cannot drive a man off 
 the earth, and the worst thing that can 
 happen to any man is to be out of work. 
 Under the circumstances I think we shall 
 have to let you go; but you must keep out 
 of the way of the officers. You are dis- 
 missed." 
 
 On the next court day three men were 
 brought before him on charges of burglary 
 and petty larceny, and two of them pleaded 
 guilty. The newspapers report that the 
 Mayor watched the men during their 
 arraignment with a "peculiar expression of 
 face." Then he began to philosophize: 
 "I do not know how it would benefit you," 
 he said, "to send you to the workhouse. 
 If I thought it would do any good to send 
 you to the penitentiary, I would send you 
 there for five or ten years, but I never heard 
 of any person being benefited by serving 
 time in that institution. I would not send 
 a son of mine to the penitentiary, although 
 it is not a matter of sentiment with me. If 
 
 26 
 
On the Bench 
 
 I thought it would do him any good, I 
 might send him there. . . . Now take the 
 case of this young man," and he pointed to 
 one of the prisoners, "he is suffering from 
 a loathsome disease — crime is a disease, you 
 know — and imprisonment would not to my 
 mind effect a cure for him. I will continue 
 the case for decision." 
 
 On the following morning before going 
 to the court room the Mayor went to the 
 turnkey's office, and calling the three men 
 before him he gave them a good talk. "He 
 reminded the Wilsons/' says the newspaper 
 reporter, "it was a crime to steal from 
 the poor, at least that was the way 
 his argument sounded" (but perhaps the 
 reporter missed its full effect). "He spoke 
 to the men at length, and then, shaking 
 hands all round, told them to go home and 
 be good citizens." No announcement of 
 any decision was made in court, but on the 
 docket the Mayor entered the words, "dis- 
 missed, sentence reserved," the meaning of 
 which is perhaps a little hazy. 
 
 On this day another case came before him 
 involving the misdemeanor of using a gam- 
 bling device in the form of a "penny-in-the- 
 slot" machine. The Mayor was very impa- 
 tient of the time consumed by the lawyers, 
 and apparently was not much shocked by 
 the transgression. "The best way to dispose 
 
 27 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 of this case in my opinion," he said in con- 
 clusion, "is to turn the machine over to 
 the owner and let him stand it face to the 
 wall. . . . The defendant is dismissed." 
 
 Two months later the Mayor again held 
 court in place of the regular magistrate. 
 Five men were brought before him on the 
 charge of begging. The Mayor addressed 
 them paternally. "It was like a parent 
 threatening to chastise wayward children, 
 but withholding the rod in view of their 
 promises to be good," said the Toledo Bee. 
 They were discharged. Then came the case 
 of a tramp, found drunk with a loaded pistol 
 on his person. The Mayor held the pistol 
 up so that everyone could see it and declared 
 that it was a devilish weapon, intended 
 solely to kill human beings. It was worse 
 than useless; it was hellish, and worse than 
 whiskey a thousand times. The prisoner 
 was sentenced to smash the revolver to 
 pieces with a sledge hammer, and the court 
 adjourned to another room to see the sen- 
 tence carried out. As they left the court 
 room "the Mayor laid his arm affectionately 
 over the shoulder of the prisoner, who 
 grasped his hand with a sudden pressure 
 that indicated how little he had expected 
 the unusual sentence." So runs the news- 
 paper report. A policeman put the pistol 
 in a vise, the prisoner was given a sledge 
 
 28 
 
On the Bench 
 
 hammer, and in an instant he had smashed 
 the weapon to fragments and was a free 
 man again. The last case which came before 
 Mayor Jones was that of three young men 
 who had indulged in a free fight over a game 
 of ball and whose appearance testified to the 
 fact. 
 
 "You stand up where I can see you!" 
 cried the Mayor. "There you have it with- 
 out saying a word — brute force," and after 
 a stern lecture he let them go. 
 
 The Legislature of Ohio soon got wind 
 of the fact that a man with a heart was 
 holding court in Toledo and they promptly 
 repealed the law allowing the mayor to 
 take the magistrate's place. At his last 
 appearance on the bench Jones made a little 
 farewell address which explains his course. 
 He said: "The Legislature is greater than 
 the people and it has seen fit to take the 
 power of appointing temporary police judges 
 from the hands of the mayor. I have no 
 fault to find with the arrangement. I have 
 no unkind feeling toward anyone connected 
 with this police court, and I have made 
 friends down here who will last as long as 
 life. It is a comfort to reflect that in all 
 my experience as acting police judge I have 
 done nothing either as judge or as a mayor 
 that I would not do as a man. I have done 
 by the unfortunate men and women who have 
 
 29 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 come before me in this court everything in 
 my power to help them to live better lives 
 and nothing to hinder them. I have sent no 
 one to prison, nor imposed fines upon people 
 for their being poor. In short, I have done 
 by them just as I would have another judge 
 do by my son if he were a drunkard or a 
 thief, or by my sister or daughter, if she were 
 a prostitute. I am aware of the fact that 
 many people believe in the virtue of brute 
 force, but I do not. For my part, I would 
 be glad to see every revolver and every club 
 in the world go over Niagara Falls, or bet- 
 ter still, over the brink of hell." In a letter 
 to the Toledo press he further explains that 
 his actions in court were based upon the 
 Golden Rule. "There are two methods," he 
 says, "of dealing with people whose liberty 
 makes them a menace to society — on the 
 one hand, prisons, penalties, punishment, 
 hatred and hopeless despair; and on the 
 other, asylums, sympathy, love, help and 
 hope." 
 
 In case Mayor Jones had been obliged by 
 the law to do violence to his own senti- 
 ments in sentencing a prisoner, he would 
 promptly have refused to apply the law and 
 have handed in his resignation. He told me 
 this in a letter dated February 26, 1902. "I 
 have been somewhat perplexed," he says, 
 "to know just what to do if I should meet 
 
 30 
 
On the Bench 
 
 a 'bad case,' and the prosecutor should 
 inform me that the law says so and so, pre- 
 scribing something that I did not want to 
 do. For that reason I have been somewhat 
 shy about going on the bench; but this last 
 trip I went four days in succession during 
 the absence of the judge, thoroughly pre- 
 pared to meet any case. I knew just what 
 I would do if the prosecutor should instruct 
 me that the law prescribed something that 
 I felt would be an insult to my soul — some- 
 thing that I could do as a judge, that I 
 could not do as a man. I thought it would 
 be a splendid occasion for declaring myself 
 and saying that I would not do either as 
 mayor or judge that which I could not do 
 as a man, and therefore the necessity was 
 upon me to resign both offices, for I could 
 not hold the office of mayor and appoint 
 some other man as judge and ask him to do 
 that which I myself refused to do; but no 
 such opportunity presented itself. There 
 was nothing more desperate than a 'com- 
 mon thief,' 'drunk,' 'disturbance,' and on one 
 occasion a 'common prostitute,' and of course 
 I found no difficulty in disposing of these 
 cases by the application of the law of love, 
 even in the poor way that it could be dis- 
 pensed from the police bench." And it was 
 Mayor Jones who told me of one manly 
 precedent for resigning a public office when 
 
 3i 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 the occupant is called upon to offend his 
 conscience. It was Mr. Darby, warden of 
 the Ohio penitentiary, who, during Mayor 
 Jones's term of office, resigned his post 
 rather than take part in the "electrocution" 
 of a convict. "Not for the whole State of 
 Ohio," said he, "would I turn on the electric 
 current to kill a human being!" That is 
 the right kind of talk. Let us never forget 
 the individual in the official; and let us pro- 
 duce more men who, not for the State of 
 Ohio, nor for the whole world, would blow 
 up battleships full of their fellows, or run 
 bayonets into their eyes or slice their faces 
 with sabers. This does not seem to be an 
 utterly unattainable degree of gentility as 
 I write it down. A friend of mine not long 
 ago told me a story which bears upon this 
 matter of doing wrong in office. He was 
 many years ago the correspondent of a 
 New York journal in one of our Indian 
 wars. General Crook was engaged in his 
 final campaign against Geronimo, the Apache 
 chief, I think. One night our troops en- 
 camped near a town and my friend entered the 
 tent of the General to obtain news. He found 
 Crook, a gray "and grizzled veteran, lying 
 on his back in the sand with an expression 
 of worry upon his face. "Why don't you 
 get a place to sleep in town, General?" said 
 my friend. "There is no reason why you 
 
 3* 
 
On the Bench 
 
 should be uncomfortable here." "Oh, no," 
 answered General Crook. "I must not fare 
 better than my men. And a little roughing- 
 it does not trouble me. What troubles 
 me is that I have got to wipe out this band 
 of Indians and kill and capture them, and 
 I know perfectly well that they are en- 
 tirely in the right and that we are alto- 
 gether in the wrong." It never occurred 
 to General Crook that he might have 
 avoided the commission of this crime, which 
 he so clearly understood, by resigning his 
 commission. But Mayor Jones and Warden 
 Darby had fortunately made the discovery. 
 The last time I saw Golden Rule Jones 
 (for by this name he was known), only a 
 month or two before his death, he showed 
 me a letter from a condemned murderer in 
 the Toledo jail, a man who has probably 
 since then been executed. It was dated, "Lucas 
 County Jail, April 14, 1904," and contained 
 the following paragraphs: "During my 
 confinement at the Central Station and the 
 County Jail, and of all the large number of 
 men who have come and gons, I have never 
 heard one word of anything except praise 
 and admiration for you. And this is not 
 caused by a false conception of your the- 
 ories — far from it! They all understand 
 how thoroughly and unreservedly you con- 
 demn crime. But the theories of punish- 
 
 33 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 ment advanced by you are what call forth 
 their admiration. And the majority of these 
 men do not fear corporal punishment, for 
 they constitute a class who can never 
 safely be driven, but they can be easily led, 
 providing the leader strikes the proper note." 
 That there is truth in what this man says 
 is shown by the reduced number of arrests 
 in Toledo during Mayor Jones's incumbency, 
 and the improved order of the city, while 
 the number of drinking places under his 
 liberal policy was actually diminished. 
 
 Opinions will doubtless differ as to the 
 value of Mayor Jones's contribution to the 
 science of penology, but I am sorry for the 
 man who does not appreciate his spirit. 
 His attitude on the bench and his comments 
 are the natural outgrowth of the heart of 
 a man who takes his place as judge with 
 a deep love of mankind within him. His 
 position was necessarily tentative. The prec- 
 edents of hatred, fear and retribution are 
 piled up in our law libraries, but the prece- 
 dents of love and sympathy have yet to be 
 established, and Mayor Jones was a pioneer 
 in this department. The day may yet come 
 when his example on the bench will be 
 cited with greater respect than many a 
 learned decision which is now regarded as 
 impregnable. 
 
 The Legislature not only removed Mayor 
 
 34 
 
On the Bench 
 
 Jones from the police court, but from time 
 to time curtailed his power in various 
 ways, taking away the right of appointment 
 to office, and building up hostile forces in 
 the city government. The common council 
 was always opposed to him, and outside of 
 the Mayor's office the franchise-grabbers had 
 it all their own way. "Still he succeeded in 
 accomplishing a few practical things, which 
 his friend Brand Whitlock has summarized 
 in an article in the ''World's Work." He 
 humanized the police, introduced kindergar- 
 tens, public playgrounds and free concerts, 
 established the eight-hour day for city em- 
 ployes and a minimum day's wages of $1.50 
 for common labor. He used the carriages of 
 the Park Department to give the children 
 sleigh rides in winter; devised a system of 
 lodging-houses for tramps; laid out public 
 golf links in the parks, and organized a 
 policemen's band. He gave away all his 
 Mayer's salary to the poor, and his office 
 looked like a charity bureau, so many were 
 the applicants for relief who besieged it. Nor 
 did he turn away from anyone. A thorough 
 
 ♦Mayor Finch, who succeeded Mayor Jones in office, in his 
 first message refers to him as "our late and much beloved Mayor, 
 a man who enjoyed the esteem, respect, love and confidence of 
 all classes of our citizenship more than any chief executive per- 
 haps that Toledo ever had;" and he said that he was "instru- 
 mental in bringing about many reforms in the conduct of public 
 affairs," and he go<=-s on to enumerate them much as Mr. Whit- 
 lock does. Mr. Whitlock was elected Mayor of Toledo in 1905, 
 and is carrying out the policy of Mayor Jones with success. 
 
 35 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 democrat in feeling, he never was conscious 
 of any inequality when he met the great and 
 rich, or when he dropped in at the jail to 
 talk with the prisoners. In an invitation to 
 me to come and spend a week at his house 
 he enumerates the attractions as follows: "I 
 believe that you would thoroughly enjoy it, 
 and perhaps it would be a help to come in 
 contact with some of my friends of the lower 
 classes — the 'bum' element around market 
 space" (and he names one or two). "Then 
 Blank's saloon is a real curiosity shop. Be- 
 sides, the workhouse, prison and the jail are 
 fine places." 
 
 36 
 
IV 
 LETTERS OF LOVE AND LABOR 
 
 Mayor Jones was a born orator in the best 
 sense of the word, that is, he could think out 
 loud before an audience in such a way as to 
 reveal to all his love for them and his earnest 
 desire to follow the right as he saw it. He 
 drew crowds, and those who came from 
 curiosity stayed to hear and learn. Mr. 
 Whitlock gives an example of the way in 
 which he reached the hearts of his hearers. 
 
 "What's the Polish word for liberty?" he 
 asks of an audience of Polish workmen. 
 They shout a word in reply. "Say it again," 
 cries Jones, turning his head to listen. They 
 shout it again still louder. He tries to pro- 
 nounce it and fails, and they all laugh to- 
 gether. "Well, I can't say it," he says, "but 
 it sounds good to me," and he proceeds to 
 speak at length on freedom. And his frank- 
 ness ensured him a good reception from all 
 kinds of audiences. "I was at Cornell College 
 yesterday," he wrote to me, "and made two 
 speeches, spreading as much heresy as I 
 could in the short space of time, and it was 
 enthusiastically received." 
 
 37 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 Mayor Jones was an author as well as a 
 public speaker. His book, "The New Right" 
 (namely, the right to labor), contains his 
 autobiography, a work which for strength 
 and simplicity of style is worthy of ranking 
 with that of Benjamin Franklin. Jones had 
 a natural taste for literature and as a youth 
 was a leader in literary societies formed 
 among his fellow workers, and his style was 
 unconsciously modeled by his familiar use 
 of the Bible and the English classics. He 
 published two other volumes called "Letters 
 of Love and Labor," containing letters which 
 he wrote from week to week to his own 
 employes, and handed to them with their pay 
 envelopes. It is safe to say that no such 
 communications have ever before been made 
 from the hirer to the hired. One letter, for 
 instance, is entitled "The Slavery of the 
 Wages System." 
 
 "Dear friends," he writes, ". . . it is true 
 that the present system of relation among men 
 and women whereby some work for or serve 
 others for hire is a system of modified slav- 
 ery, the degree of slavery varying somewhat 
 according to the master or mistress. . . . 
 The most conspicuous evil of the present 
 system is found in the fact that it gives some 
 men arbitrary power over others, and this 
 sort of power of one man over his fellow- 
 men is in reality tyranny, no matter by what 
 
 38 
 
Letters of Love and Labor 
 
 other name it may be called ; and because it 
 is tyranny, it is damaging alike to the ruler 
 and the ruled. . . . Because I believe in 
 equality — believe that you spring from the 
 same divine source that I do — because of 
 that, I believe that the natural impulse for 
 you and for all men is to desire to do the 
 right thing because it is right. Therefore we 
 have been trying to direct the business of 
 the Acme Sucker Rod Company from that 
 standpoint. ..." 
 
 Another letter is on the subject of "Love 
 and Reason or Hate and Force," and was 
 called forth by the adoption of strict rules by 
 the men to govern their insurance society, in 
 fear of each other's dishonesty. "We have 
 the authority of the greatest teacher the 
 world ever knew," he writes, "for saying that 
 the way to overcome evil is with good. The 
 gospel of force and hatred as represented by 
 laws, policemen's clubs, constables, sheriffs, 
 jails, prisons, armies, navies and legalized 
 murder in many forms, has had its inning; 
 and crime, wretchedness, misery and war 
 still curse this beautiful earth. Let us try 
 the other plan. Let us try, in a small way, 
 to overcome evil with good — that is, to put 
 out fire with water rather than with kero- 
 sene oil. Let us manifest our faith in God 
 by our faith in the God (the good) in our 
 fellow-men, by our faith in humanity. Be- 
 
 39 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 lieve me, dear friends, there is good in every 
 soul that breathes. All the rule that you 
 really need is just enough to provide for 
 Equality, that all shall be served alike, and 
 I am sure that by trusting your fellow-men, 
 trusting to the rule of love and reason and 
 appealing to the manhood and honesty in 
 them, you will be far more likely to succeed 
 than by imitating lawmakers and rulers in an 
 effort to 'force' men to be honest." 
 
 The object of these letters was "to lead to 
 a more perfect understanding" between him 
 and his employes, and he placed a box in 
 the office in which letters of criticism, 
 anonymous or signed, could be dropped by 
 the men, a privilege which was sometimes 
 availed of. These letters of Jones's treat of 
 a great variety of topics. In them he advo- 
 cates trade-unionism, although he declares 
 that he is "far beyond" it. "I want a condi- 
 tion where there will be no war nor need of 
 war measures." He deprecates the caste- 
 feeling which exists among workmen, and 
 the contempt which skilled labor exhibits 
 toward that which is unskilled. He points 
 out what he has been able to accomplish in 
 the factory, to wit, a minimum wage of $2 a 
 day for every man who had been in the service 
 of the company for a year, no child labor, 
 men being paid to do "children's work," no 
 "piece-work," no work "contracted out," no 
 
 40 
 
Letters of Love and Labor 
 
 overtime, no timekeeper, each man reporting 
 his own time, and a cash dividend of five per 
 cent, on the year's wages at Christmas. In 
 the oil-fields he was allowing full pay for an 
 eight-hour day, while all other employers re- 
 quired twelve hours' work. In one letter he 
 urges the claims of co-operative insurance 
 upon the men. If the men agreed to leave one 
 per cent, of their wages on deposit for this pur- 
 pose, the company contributed a like amount 
 for the same end, to be paid out as insurance 
 in case of sickness or injuries. Still later a 
 system by which the men could receive stock 
 in the company was devised and put in 
 operation. But he did not pretend to be 
 satisfied with the relations which he had 
 established with his men, and he longed ever 
 for greater equality and democracy in busi- 
 ness. He was only feeling his way. In 1902 
 he wrote to me as follows: "I am really 
 beginning to see a way out of ownership 
 through business. ... I simply want to 
 get things fixed so that I don't have to own 
 it, and of course I want to do this intelli- 
 gently — by that I mean in such a way that it 
 will minister most largely to the common 
 life." He did not live long enough to ma- 
 ture these plans. 
 
 His Christmas letters to the men perhaps 
 go the deepest. One of them is on the 
 "Christ principle" of love to enemies, doing 
 
 4i 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 good to those that hate you and overcoming 
 evil with good. Another is devoted to "peace 
 on earth and good will toward men." "My 
 meaning will be made clearer," he says, 
 "when I say that I am addressing Jones as 
 much — perhaps more — than I am addressing 
 anybody else. My very intimate acquaint- 
 ance with Jones leads me to say that he has 
 not yet come into that realization of 'peace 
 on earth and good will toward men' that is 
 his privilege, and the privilege of all who 
 listen to and obey the promptings of the 
 voice within. . . . The practical applica- 
 tion of it is: You must live the Christ spirit, 
 you must refuse to fight, you must refuse to 
 kill, you must reject force, you must deny 
 that under any condition a big man has a 
 right to force a little man or a child, you 
 must stand for love as the only arbiter of 
 right, and you must stand for it at any cost. 
 . . . I am hopeful to the last degree, for I 
 can see that just as soon as the people 
 awaken to the idea of oneness and unity, of 
 brotherhood, the common soldiers will throw 
 down their guns, and, refusing to fight, will 
 fall into each other's arms and laugh at their 
 masters, and thus all war will end just as 
 soon as the common workingmen determine 
 that they will not kill each other. This is the 
 promise that the Christmas bells annually 
 renew in our ears — 'Peace on earth, good 
 will toward men.' " 
 
 42 
 
HIS ECONOMICS 
 
 It is easy to collect many passages from 
 the writings of Jones to show what his 
 economic ideas were. They started out from 
 his firm belief in the people. To an oppo- 
 nent he writes: "I believe in you though 
 you do not believe in me. I believe in all of 
 the people and I believe in them all of the 
 time — that is, I believe in the good, the God, 
 the Divine, the Love principle that is at the 
 heart of humanity. My hope for the nation 
 and the race is in the patriotism, the love 
 of the Whole, that is an outgrowth of this 
 divine principle." Again he says, "I believe 
 that we are all people — just people — made 
 of the same common kind of clay, inspired 
 largely by the same hopes, the same long- 
 ings, and having a common destiny. . . . 
 Holding these beliefs, one can easily see that 
 the idea of governing by force another man, 
 whom I believe to be my equal in the sight 
 of God, is repugnant to me. I do not want 
 to do it. I cannot do it. I do not want any- 
 one to govern me by any kind of force. I 
 
 43 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 am a reasoning being, and I only need to be 
 shown what is best for me, when I will take 
 that course or do that thing simply because 
 it is best, and so will you. I do not believe 
 that a soul was ever forced toward anything 
 except toward ruin." And unlike many re- 
 formers he included the rich and powerful in 
 his love. He had no patience with class feel- 
 ing of any kind. "The poor are not poor 
 from choice. They deserve little or no credit 
 for their safety from the dangers that prop- 
 erty-owning brings. With scarcely an excep- 
 tion every one of them would be a million- 
 aire if he had a chance. The disease of own- 
 ership infects us all." But he pitied from 
 the bottom of his heart the idle rich, who 
 are "just as pitiable" as the poor man who 
 cannot find work. "These rich men's sons 
 and daughters have a right to work, to have 
 a share in the creative work going on 
 around them." But this belief in the heart 
 of all the people did not involve a belief in 
 the wisdom of majorities. "There is really 
 no foundation in fact," he tells his men, "for 
 the great confidence that we have in majori- 
 ties. . . . Indeed they have been oftener 
 wrong in the great events of history than 
 they have been right." And he cites the case 
 of Jesus, of Luther at Worms, of Servetus, 
 and Huss and Latimer and Ridley and Garri- 
 son and Lovejoy and John Brown. His 
 
 44 
 
His Economics 
 
 political and social ideal was a "nation of 
 friends," and he saw clearly how monopoly 
 stood in the way of its realization. "It is 
 simply an inhuman cruelty," he writes, "to 
 teach a child how to be useful in the world, 
 and then to turn it out to find every door of 
 opportunity closed against it." "Could you 
 maintain your self-respect while denied the 
 right to a place to stand on the earth, as 
 thousands of American citizens are to-day?" 
 He contends that the right to work is "an 
 inherent right, like the right to breathe, like 
 the right to be." The problem is how to 
 secure for everyone "the right to labor and to 
 receive the full, fair value of what we pro- 
 duce." "A day's wage will never be fair so 
 long as an employer subtracts profit from it." 
 And we see in Jones a tendency to regard 
 physical labor as more strictly "labor" than 
 mental labor. "The people are coming to 
 realize," he says, "that the source of their 
 wealth is through labor— hard, sweating la- 
 bor — and with this realization comes a revela- 
 tion of the truth that those who do not labor 
 do not produce wealth, all the fine-spun 
 theories about brain-work and capital to the 
 contrary notwithstanding." His immediate 
 plan for improving conditions was to shorten 
 the hours of labor and thus give the unem- 
 ployed a chance to share in the work. "Di- 
 vide the day," was his cry, and he wrote a 
 
 45 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 song with this refrain. Then he preached the 
 doctrine of public ownership, looking forward 
 to the day when all industries should be 
 owned and managed by the state, and he 
 believed that the gathering of industries into 
 trusts was a forerunner of the "co-operative 
 commonwealth." But Mayor Jones was no 
 economist, and in a chapter on the "Trusts" 
 he makes no mention of the protective tariff, 
 nor does he consider the various monopolies 
 upon which they are based. He condemns 
 competition root and branch, failing to dis- 
 tinguish the difference between competition 
 under monopoly — the struggle of fifty men to 
 get into a life-boat which will only hold 
 thirty — and the natural competition of healthy 
 industry under free conditions. In all this 
 he followed the "scientific socialists," but they 
 would have none of him on account of his 
 hatred of classes and parties, and one of the 
 leading socialists in Toledo, a doctor of high 
 standing, was expelled from the party be- 
 cause he accepted an office from the Mayor. 
 Although Mayor Jones repudiated all force, 
 he still saw in the state "the only instrument 
 through which the people may. express their 
 love for one another." His ideal was un- 
 doubtedly a state free from all imputation of 
 force. He was delighted with the sign which 
 he saw in the parks of Glasgow, "Citizens, 
 protect your property" — "it was in such strik- 
 
 4 5 
 
His Economics 
 
 ing contrast to the 'boss' idea expressed in 
 the order, 'Keep off the Grass.' " He always 
 had the family idea of the state and munici- 
 pality before his eyes. Each citizen was to 
 be "a member of a family which owns 
 its own streets, which owns its own 
 bridges . . . waterworks . . . electric lighting 
 plants . . . telephone and express and mes- 
 senger service; a member of a family which 
 owns and does everything for the family that 
 can by any possibility be better done by 
 collective than by private effort." He finds 
 this family feeling showing itself imperfectly 
 already in asylums, hospitals and various 
 similar institutions, and he anticipates a won- 
 derful advance of the social conscience in the 
 same direction in the near future. It is the 
 first ray of the rising sun that he feels in his 
 own heart, and it has already arisen. "Elec- 
 tricity has always been in the world," he 
 says, "but its power was never utilized until 
 the last few years." And so brotherhood is 
 already here. Let us use it and apply it to 
 our institutions. Charity is only a makeshift. 
 "I want to knock the props," he writes, "clear 
 out from under every person who is harbor- 
 ing the delusion that our charity institutions 
 are evidences of civilization. They may be 
 evidences that we are tending toward civiliza- 
 tion; the very need of them is evidence that 
 we are not civilized. The way to help the 
 
 47 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 poor is to abandon a social system that is 
 making them poor." He was always appalled 
 in New York by the long row of wretched 
 men who waited in line every night at twelve 
 o'clock for the distribution of bread at a 
 bakery opposite the hotel at which he usually 
 stopped. Back of all external reforms, how- 
 ever, he looked for a reform of the heart. 
 "We cannot do better," he said, "until we are 
 better." "Love is the only regenerative force. 
 To teach love to individuals by personal kind- 
 ness and helpfulness, is to do well; and to 
 mold love into law and thus uplift and en- 
 lighten a whole city, is to do better." It was 
 his hope that America would first undertake 
 the practical application of his dreams. It 
 was to be the "land of comrades," sung by 
 Whitman, "the land of large thoughts, large 
 hearts, and large conceptions of the value of 
 every human soul." "America's task is to 
 teach larger views of life and duty. We are 
 to interpret that great word, Humanity, to 
 the world." But he loved all nations, and his 
 journeys in Mexico and Europe— extended as 
 far as the oil-fields of Bulgaria — opened his 
 heart to the foreigner. 
 
 48 
 
VI 
 
 POETRY 
 
 It is quite likely that. Mayor Jones's idea of 
 America's leadership was learned from Walt 
 Whitman, whose works, during the last years 
 of his life, had great influence over him. He 
 had many favorite authors, and his books are 
 full of quotations from the Bible, William 
 Morris, Edward Carpenter, Tolstoy, Lamen- 
 nais, Mazzini, Victor Hugo, Bellamy, Mrs. 
 Gilman, Herron, Longfellow, Browning and 
 Lowell. But his special fondness was for 
 poetry, and of all the poets Whitman was for 
 him the chief. A volume of "Leaves of 
 Grass" lay beside a Bible on his desk, and 
 both books were well worn and penciled. 
 On the walls of his office were the portraits 
 of most of these authors, but of Whitman 
 there were two. I take a little credit to my- 
 self for Jones's acquaintance with Whitman, 
 although I acted as a mere instrument. In 
 the summer of 1897 Mr. B. Fay Mills invited 
 a few kindred spirits to a beautiful spot on 
 Lake George known as Crosbyside, and 
 Mayor Jones was one of the party. Mills told 
 
 49 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 me that he wished to persuade Jones to like 
 Whitman, and we both agreed that the Mayor 
 was about as nearly Whitman's ideal com- 
 rade-man as could be found, and that it was 
 a shame that he was not fond of "Leaves of 
 Grass." So Mills contrived a plot according 
 to which a dozen of us went up the funicular 
 railway to the top of the mountain at the 
 south end of the lake, and there in the 
 midst of the most beautiful scenery and 
 looking out on a glorious view, he made me 
 read selections from Whitman for a half-hour, 
 ostensibly for the general benefit, but really 
 with a solitary eye to Jones. When I finished 
 the Mayor remarked dryly that he didn't call 
 that poetry, and that the kind of poetry that 
 he liked was of the order of the lines: 
 
 Full many a flower is born to blush unseen 
 And waste its fragrance on the desert air. 
 
 And of such poetry he could recite pages 
 from memory. The experiment seemed to be 
 a total failure, but you never can tell, and 
 soon I was delighted to learn that Mayor 
 Jones was quoting Whitman on all occasions, 
 and referring to him as the best-beloved of 
 his teachers. I understand that Mills had 
 followed up the first attack, undaunted by its 
 lack of results; but I claim an humble place 
 beside him as the introducer of Mayor Jones 
 to Walt Whitman. He had a sentiment 
 
 50 
 
Poetry 
 
 adapted from Whitman stamped on all the 
 envelopes which he used in his correspond- 
 ence, namely this : "I claim' no privilege for 
 myself or for my children that I am not 
 doing my utmost to secure for all others on 
 equal terms." I find him again quoting Whit- 
 man, for example, at the funeral of a tramp 
 in February, 1902, in the back room of an 
 undertaker's. The man was an old sailor 
 who finished his course in the lodging house 
 of the Toledo Humane Society. "When 
 Mayor Jones arrived," says the Toledo Bee, 
 "the dozen comrades, most of them feeble, 
 shuffled into the room. It was a peculiar 
 assemblage." Mayor Jones made the funeral 
 address. He spoke of the recent death of 
 his own brother, and said that he regarded 
 this man as his brother, too. "I am quite 
 sure," said he, "that he did the best he could, 
 considering the limitations that surrounded 
 him. . . . Death comes daily, hourly, every- 
 where. Yet it is nothing to be alarmed at. 
 Sixty years is not the limit of life, nor sixty 
 millions of years, but it goes on, and on, and 
 on, through all the ceaseless ages — our life 
 
 to be a part of all life I want to read 
 
 you a few lines on what a grand old man, 
 but lately passed beyond, Walt Whitman, has 
 to say on death: 
 
 "Come lovely and soothing death, 
 Undulate round the world serenely, 
 
 51 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 Arriving, arriving, 
 
 In the day, in the night, to all, to each, 
 
 Sooner or later, delicate death! 
 
 "He looks very restful there in his coffin, 
 doesn't he? It was Tolstoy who said that 
 the dead are always beautiful — that there's 
 not an expression of pain or fear upon the 
 face, but rather that of astonishment. I can't 
 say, I will not say he is dead — he is only 
 away. Good-bye, my brother, good-bye." A 
 few days later the Mayor was invited by a 
 delegation from the Sailors' Union to "do the 
 funeral" for another old salt. 
 
 Devoted to poetry, like a true Kelt, Jones 
 had something of the bard about him. He 
 wrote many songs for his men to sing, and 
 there is a simple power in some of his verses 
 which gives them value. Here is a stanza 
 from one of his songs: 
 
 We speak the word patriotic, 
 
 We sing the song of the free, 
 And tell the tale of a new time, 
 
 Of a world that surely will be, 
 When men will live comrades and lovers, 
 
 All rancor and hate under ban, 
 And the highest and holiest title, 
 
 Will be that you're known as a man. 
 
 Chorus. 
 
 No title is higher than man, 
 No title is higher than man, 
 And the highest and holiest title 
 Will be that you're known as a man. 
 
 52 
 
Poetry 
 
 Another song is entitled "Freedom Day" : 
 
 Haste, oh, haste, delightful morning 
 
 Of that glorious freedom day, 
 When from earth's remotest border 
 
 Tyranny has passed away. 
 
 Refrain. 
 Ever growing, 
 
 Swiftly flowing, 
 
 Like a mighty river, 
 Sweeping on from shore to shore, 
 Love will rule the wide world o'er. 
 
 The prose style of Mayor Jones, however, 
 was far superior to his poetry, and he often 
 uttered epigrams which summed up his 
 thought tersely, vigorously and with humor. 
 I cite a few of these aphorisms, collected 
 here and there: 
 
 If there were to be improvements in sucker-rods, Why 
 may we not reasonably expect that there is room for 
 improvement in social relations? 
 
 It would pay us a thousand times better to provide 
 work for our own people than to purchase insurrections 
 from Spain. 
 
 I was at a workhouse recently, and while there saw 
 one-third of the men confined in the prison working at 
 the brick-machines for the revolting and blood-curdling 
 crime of jumping on freight trains. 
 
 The ideal robber— the lowest bidder. 
 
 Chaiity is twice cursed,— it curses him that gives and 
 him that takes. 
 
 It is better to lift your whole city up an inch than to 
 pull yourself up to the skies. 
 
 53 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 After the fight is over we have to settle the difficulty. 
 Let us learn to settle it first. 
 
 What heresy can be more fallacious than the prevail- 
 ing one that superior ability entitles one to the right to 
 live at the expense of his fellows? 
 
 We tie a balloon to one man and a saw-log to another, 
 and then declare that they have an equal chance to rise 
 in the world. 
 
 If millionaires were three miles high, if they were a 
 class of higher beings upon whom we depended for our 
 cleverest inventions .... then the tremendous dispar- 
 ities in matters of wealth might be overlooked. 
 
 The best way to secure your own rights is to be dili- 
 gent in securing the rights of others. 
 
 The rich man has no neighbors— only rivals and para- 
 sites. 
 
 It is only a lower-natured man who can be dazzled by 
 the bauble, gold. Men who have discovered the true 
 wealth of mind and character care little for the wam- 
 pum of commerce. 
 
 I was born on foreign soil, but born an American. 
 There are a lot of people born on American soil that are 
 not yet half-way over from Europe. 
 
 It was a strange destiny which brought 
 this man of Keltic, dreamy temperament into 
 the business world and made him successful 
 there. He was a machinist and an inventor, 
 and yet he saw clearly the drawbacks of 
 machinery and longed for a world of artistic 
 craftsmanship. "Machinery," he says, "has 
 added speed and intensity and discomfort to 
 production, so that many a factory worker's 
 life is almost equivalent to imprisonment at 
 hard labor. Consider what a machinist's 
 
 54 
 
Poetry 
 
 work is like during the hot summer months. 
 In spite of the intense heat, the murky, im- 
 pure air, the deafening roar of machinery, the 
 grime and sweat and dust, when every sec- 
 ond seems a minute and every minute seems 
 an hour, he is expected, for ten long, weary 
 hours every day, to be as accurate as a jew- 
 eler and as energetic as a blacksmith. . . . 
 A mechanic's work is not physical only. It 
 is brain work quite as much as the labor of 
 many a professional man. . . . Machinery 
 is almost driving some branches of art out of 
 existence. It is leading us to lay stress on 
 quantity, not quality. No nation could ever 
 manufacture so many poor articles in so 
 short a time as we can. The combination of 
 machinery and long hours has worked 
 against all that is artistic and original." 
 
 S* 
 
VII 
 
 HIS DEATH 
 
 For the last few years of his life Mayor 
 Jones was a sufferer from asthma, and he 
 had one or two bad attacks of illness which 
 were nearly fatal and left him a shadow of 
 his former self. In search of health he 
 adopted a system of physical culture and 
 diet from which he undoubtedly obtained 
 benefit. He fondly believed that he had 
 cured himself, but no one who knew him 
 could share this belief. He also began to 
 sleep in the open air, putting a bed upon his 
 veranda in Toledo, and there he passed 
 every night until a short time before his 
 death, when he was obliged to retreat to his 
 room and accept the devoted attentions of 
 his wife. He died on July 12, 1904. The last 
 time that I saw him was on a Sunday in the 
 April or May before his death. He had come 
 to New York with a delegation of city 
 officials to study a municipal question of 
 waterworks or something of the kind, and he 
 stopped over for half a day at my country 
 home to see me. He thought he was in per- 
 
 56 
 
His Death 
 
 feet health and performed some difficult ath- 
 letic feats in the garden (among others that 
 of standing comfortably upon his head), for 
 he had great muscular strength. But illness 
 was written upon his face, and going to his 
 room for a half hour's nap, he slept heavily 
 for three hours, and I had to rouse him so 
 that he could catch his train. Not many 
 weeks later came the telegram announcing 
 his death. 
 
 His funeral, which I was unable to attend, 
 was a wonderful sight. As his friend, Graham 
 Taylor, said: "His spirit had been abroad 
 before, strangely permeating and uniting his 
 fellow-men, but never as upon that day." All 
 places of business were closed and the houses 
 were generally draped in black. His photo- 
 graph, quotations from his speeches and 
 songs, were displayed in shop windows. 
 Some of the mottoes were taken from the 
 Mayor's office, where he had hung his favo- 
 rite quotations on the wall, including the 
 text, "Judge not, that ye be not judged," 
 burnt in wood by his own hand. His body 
 lay in state in Memorial Hall, where he had 
 often addressed the people. Flowers came 
 from all classes of citizens, from all nation- 
 alities and trades and associations. It was 
 estimated that 55,000 men, women and chil- 
 dren filed past the coffin to look on his face 
 for the last time. A great procession of 
 
 -57 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 people followed the body to his home, and 
 there 15,000 were gathered in the streets to 
 await the funeral ceremony. In the proces- 
 sion were the labor unions, the policemen and 
 firemen, the postmen, and officials of several 
 cities, musical and fraternal and benevolent 
 societies, and a great throng of private citi- 
 zens of both sexes and all ages, but as Mr. 
 Taylor remarks, there was no military com- 
 pany or implement of war to mar the scene. 
 The newsboys turned out to the number of 
 600, and their band played "Nearer, My God, 
 to Thee." At the funeral St. Paul's chapter 
 on love was read from his own Bible, and 
 this was followed by his best-loved passages 
 from his copy of "Leaves of Grass." There 
 were several addresses, and songs were sung 
 by his workmen. In the cemetery thousands 
 more were waiting at the grave, and as the 
 earth fell upon his coffin a German singing 
 society broke out into a farewell hymn. The 
 crowd in the streets stood for hours bare- 
 headed in the hot sunshine, the tears rolling 
 down the faces of many of them. So ended 
 the life of Golden Rule Jones, and after tak- 
 ing part in the funeral and seeing the won- 
 derful outburst of popular sympathy for the 
 man who had tried to live as a brother to all 
 men, Mr. Whitlock says suggestively: "It 
 began to look as if there might be something 
 in it after all." 
 
 58 
 
His Death 
 
 And there was something in it. No one 
 who has felt the thrill of brotherhood as 
 expressed by such a man can doubt the 
 reality of the force, any more than a man 
 who has come into contact with a "live" 
 wire can have doubts about the power of 
 electricity. What are we to think of Mayor 
 Jones? He made no claims to consistency. 
 He only felt his way and from day to day 
 did the best thing that he saw was prac- 
 ticable. He admitted that his conduct was 
 far from perfect. "Your labor has made 
 these things possible," he wrote to his men, 
 "and I do not claim that a just distribution 
 has been made even yet — indeed, I am sure 
 that a just distribution cannot be made un- 
 der existing conditions, and the little I am 
 doing is simply an earnest of my belief in the 
 coming of a better day— a day when democ- 
 racy, liberty, equality and brotherhood will 
 no longer be a dream, but an actuality." He 
 disapproved of the patent laws under which 
 he manufactured his machines and appliances, 
 and declared that he v/ould abolish these 
 rights and all special privileges if he could. 
 He had the utmost contempt for mere 
 "things," as he called property, and his per- 
 sonal tastes were those of an anchorite. 
 "With respect to the private property that I 
 seem to be under the necessity of 'owning,' I 
 have this to say," he writes, "I am doing the 
 
 59 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 very best that I know to manage it for the 
 best interest of all of the people — not the best 
 that you know or that any other person may 
 know, simply the best that I know;" and 
 he , invites suggestions from his political 
 opponents. He is said to have left an estate 
 of two or three hundred thousand dollars, 
 and, although I understand that his schemes 
 for betterment are to be carried out in his 
 business by his widow and heirs, he would 
 have been the first to acknowledge that his 
 relations to men and things were not ideal, 
 from his own point of view. He was called 
 insincere and dishonest and a demagogue 
 and a charlatan, as well as a lunatic, an anar- 
 chist and a crank. But he was, nevertheless, 
 the very soul of sincerity. His political posi- 
 tion was equally anomalous. Condemning 
 force absolutely, he was still the head of the 
 police department and a magistrate. I recall 
 advising him to give up an office which 
 seemed to conflict with his principles, but 
 I am glad now that he did not follow my 
 advice. He had to live his own life in his own 
 way, and it taught a lesson which could not 
 have been taught otherwise. He might have 
 kept out of office. He might have turned 
 over his shop to the men, who would have 
 certainly failed. He might have relinquished 
 his monopoly business and washed his hands 
 of the dirt of trade. He might have given 
 
 60 
 
His Death 
 
 away his savings without the consent of his 
 family. Perhaps in this way his conscience 
 might have been clearer (although I doubt 
 it), but he would have ceased to be a unique 
 example of the attempt to apply the Golden 
 Rule to an established order founded on 
 what he called the Rule of Gold. I look upon 
 him as a sort of visitor from some other 
 planet where brotherhood and harmony have 
 been realized in the common life, dropped 
 down here in a semi-barbarous world and 
 calmly taking his place in the midst of its 
 crude and cruel institutions. And he had 
 the manners of another planet, too, for of 
 all the reformers I have ever seen or heard 
 of, he is almost the only one who never 
 uttered a harsh word against anyone, and he 
 gently expostulated with me for being too 
 inconsiderate. "Draw the sting," was his 
 counsel to his political speakers. It was a 
 quaint and moving spectacle, that of this 
 childlike man making his way among men 
 of the world and astounding them by his 
 disingenuousness. Day by day he pointed 
 out the iniquities of our organized social life 
 and showed how impossible it was to realize 
 our highest ideals and yet leave our social 
 and industrial system unchanged. For a 
 dozen years he was sowing the seed of a new 
 harvest, and we may be sure that it is silently 
 ripening in many a heart. His was the ever- 
 
 61 
 
Golden Rule Jones 
 
 lasting effort to make the outer world fit the 
 inner vision — that effort after the impossible 
 which is the essence of life itself. "I have 
 done nothing as I believe," he said, "other 
 than is the common practice of all who try 
 to be at peace with themselves." But no 
 individual can win that peace in a world full 
 of ugliness and injustice; he can only strive 
 and suffer and strive again. But while that 
 peace may ever remain a vision, it is none 
 the less continually reshaping the world more 
 and more in its own image. And Mayor 
 Jones had laid hold of the creative force 
 itself. "Equal and exact justice can only 
 come through perfect love," he says at the 
 end of a Christmas letter to his men. "This 
 is the force that is yet to rule and govern 
 the world." And his life was a foretaste of 
 the event. 
 
 h^H 
 
 62 
 
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