UC-NRLF J S 12.30 $B 27D ISfl m ■'i 1 i K. ii ic Betterment - All Times and Places Civic Lessons ro Mayor Mitchells Defeat Why every democratically governed people can find en- couragement rather than dis- couragement in New York City's vote against Fusion Reform in 1^17 By Eda Amberfy nnri Wmiarn IT Allfvi INSTITUTE for PUBLIC SERVICE New York City April 192 I Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/civiclessonsfromOOamberich ^ ' \ > 5 .1 5 > » J ' > '> J ' 1 > > ' » ', ^e CIVIC LESSONS from MAYOR MITCHEL'S DEFEAT Editorials, speeches, news items, letters, cartoons and private conversations already show that New York voters from April to November 1921 will be almost constantly asked to compare the Hylan administration of 1918-1921 with the Mitchel administration of 1914-1917. It is therefore im- portant that New York itself and the rest of the nation re- member the basic facts about the voting in of the Hylan ad- ministration and the voting out of the Mitchel administration. Did the 516,000— of 671,000— New Yorkers who voted for other candidates than Mayor Mitchel vote against reform itself and "deliberately turn their backs upon and ignore" the bene- ficial results accomplished by Fusion reform? If genuine reform at work becomes distasteful there is obviously little inducement for individuals or communities anywhere to work for reform in government. If, on the other hand. New York's public remained stead- fast in its ideals, if in 1917 it voted against rather than for evils and voted for rather than against reform, there is reason why individuals and communities everywhere else should keep up the fight for truly socially-minded, efficient, democratic government. h .464ffbi • • • • « • • • • » . • • / Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat The title, Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat in 1917, is used to express the conviction that every democratic- ally governed people in the world can find encouragement rather than discouragement in the reasons for New York City's vote against Fusion reform in 1917. Women voters especially can find both between-election and also polling-booth use for these civic lessons from a much advertised defeat that is too little understood. Since the motive of this reminder is to help voters and leaders of any place at any time remember what was clearly seen just aftef the election of 1917, the reasons for Fusio^n Reform's defeat are stated almost entirely in the words of headlines, news items and editorials that expressed and affect- ed public judgment in 1917. With few exceptions, further- more, the story is told by strongly pro-Fusion and pro-Mitchel speakers and organs. Because this attempt to draw civic lessons from Fusion Reform's defeat must necessarily deal with issues that were bitterly controversial in 1917, some readers and reviewers will ask for the attitude of the authors and the Institute for Public Service toward municipal reform. To meet such in- quiry without interrupting the story, Exhibit II tells briefly how the Institute for Public Service has worked for efficient, socially-minded government in city, state and nation. Suffice it here to say that we not only believe in reform but believe it is possible to get it and to keep adding tot it no matter who's elected, wherever voters are currently given essential facts about official acts and community needs. Cessation of Cooperative Criticism, page 59, was the major and chief reason for Mayor Mitchel's defeat. For a summary of civic lessons for future use by Ins, Outs, Independents, Teachers and Students see page 84. 2 Mayor Mitchells Pre-Election Record Fusion Elected in 1913 for Its Record The nearest approach to socially-minded, highly compe- tent government on a large scale that the world has ever known was the government for which Greater New York voted in November 1913. The winning plurality of 124,000 votes was not a vote in the dark. It was not a landslide for new phrase-makers, glad handers and promisers. On the contrary, this unprecedented plurality was a re-election foir the three officers elected at large, the mayor, comptroller and president of the board of aldermen. While it is true that the size of the plurality was due partly to a particularly weak Tammany ticket, New York accepted the vejdict as a call to Fusion officers to continue their service. John Purroy Mitchel, the new mayor, had been elected four years before as president of the board of aldermen after three other years as investigator and commissioner of ac- counts when he had seemed to the people a friend in need and in deed. With his work the public had identified an awakening of citizens, editors, officials and employees which had given the whole country new hope for municipal government. From his work had come the removal of first one, then a second, then a third borough president for incompetence. To him most of all the public credited the advertisement of the fol- lowing three useful truths about citizens' right to organize against incompetent government in New York iCity : 1. The recall of an inefficient officer can be started by an individual or a group without an election and with- out untold delays if the governor receives proof that there has been incompetence and waste. 2. It is not necessary to prove personal corruption in order to have a mayor, comptroller, borough presi- dent, sheriff or police commissioner removed for incompetence. 3. As Governor Hughes said in his message removing Manhattan's borough president, New York's governor can and should remove an incompetent elected officer, even if a voting majority wants to condone his mis- governing, because "a majority no matter how large 3 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat has no right to impose upon a minority no matter how small an incompetent and wasteful govern- ment." Because he had investigated more departments in more ways and more thoroughly than had elsewhere been done in America, and because of native abilities weighted by exper- ience in serving the public, he brought to the office of mayor greater capacity for helping New York City and all America take forward steps in municipal government than any other elected officer had ever brought to any big municipal or state post in this country. The most widely unpopular step he had ever taken — fur- thering an investigation of the Roman Catholic institutions then receiving public funds — had failed to defeat him in 1909 when he was elected president of the board of aldermen and in 1913 when be was elected mayor by 124,000 votes. The significance of Greater New York's returning a re- form administration for a second four years was the subject of editorials throughout the country. (The administration was called a reform administration in spite of the fact that Mayor Gaynor had been elected on the Democratic-Tammany ticket, chiefly because the majority in the board of estimate were Fusion officers, partly because for many months after Mayor Gaynor was shot Fusion furnished the acting mayor, but also partly because Mayor Gaynor wdrked with Fusion members for many reforms.) The mayor-elect himself interpreted Fusion's election, as follows : "This is not a personal triumph but a victory for the cause of good government, .. But the fight for good govern- ment has just begun and I ask for the militant cooperation of every citizen in its complete accomplishment." ''This is the first time," said George McAneny, newly elected president of the board of aldermen, ''in the history of the greater city that a non-partisan administration has succeeded itself. . We may now look forward to a steady improvement in the government of the city." Of the mayor's associates and their ability to help him "make New York City the best governed municipality in America" — which as a matter of fact it was already in 1913, certainly so far as large municipalities were concerned — still another pamphlet might be written. 4 Fusion's Own Opinion of Fusion Of 16 votes Fusion reform started with 14. There seemed no rift in the lute. Never had this or any other American city chosen officers with as reasonable expectations of continuing improvement in government and increasing public support. The opposition that voiced itself just after election had to do with party politics rather than with the city's chances for good govern- ment of the choicest brand. Fusion Reform's Platform of 1917 on Fusion Reform's Performance The Fusion reform platform of 1917, given in Exhibit I, shows what a committee of 250 promoters claimed for the four years 1913-1917 and what they and their candidates promised for the next four years. It is short. We hope you will read it now to see what Fusion reform felt were the strongest things it could say for its stewardship. If the purpose of this pamphlet were to discuss methods of reform rather than to recall the causes of Fusion reform's defeat in 1917, we should take time here to point out How deficient this platform was just as a platform In how many ways it failed to do justice to Fusion's best work How it evaded issues that were clearly in the public mind at the time with respect tO' the next four years, and par- ticulary How it mis-used its opportunity by relying on generali- zation and evasion where specific proof, specific admis- sion and specific pledge would have been vastly more ef- fective. How Bad the Defeat Was For the three Fusion officers elected at large 400,000 fewer votes were cast in 1917 than four years before. Fusion's mayor received 209,000 fewer votes for re-elec- tion than he received in 1913; 23% of the total vote in 1917 where four years before he received 57% ; a plurality of 158,500 against him where he was elected by a pluraHty of 124,000; 9600 fewer soldier votes than his winning competitor or a little more than one-fifth the total soldier vote. 5 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat Fusicn's comptroller received 96,000 fewer votes in 1917 than four years before; a plurality of 116,000 against him in place of a plurality of 45,000 for him. Fusion's candidate for president of the board of aldermen received almost 100,000 fewer votes than his winning Fusion predecessor in 1913; a plurality of 98,000 against him in place of a plurality of 72,000 for his predecesor. Although this candidate ran against the most popular vote-getter in Tam- many Hall, later Governor Alfred Smith, the plurality against him was 18,000 smaller than the plurality against Fusion's comptroller and 60,000 smaller than the plurality against Fusion's mayor. Fusion's President Marks of Manhattan borough was also snowed under. He gave his own record of opposition to the majority on the issues which defeated them no chance when he consented to run on their record instead of his own. Question : Was this shift of votes from large pro-Fusion pluralities in 1913 to losing pluralities in 1917 a mere shift of fickle affection or did it represent moral convictions? Did the people go back on Fusion Reform or did the people believe that Fusion Reform had gone back on them? What Voters Were Thinking and Feeling In letting these pages tell their story of what voters were thinking and feeling when Fusion was defeated in 1917 we have almost entirely omitted anti-Fusion charges that did not appear in pro^Fusion papers. At the same time we have al- most entirely omitted pro-Fusion arguments that do not ap- pear in the Fusion platform. ., If our readers wanted to learn the merit of the issues for and against Fusion in 1917 it would be necessary tO' give both sides of all contentions and to quote thoroughly from both friends and foes of all parties. But this time our readers are seeking civic lesscwis from the minds and votes that defeated Fusion. We have here no concern whatever with the votes for Fusion. That's another story altogether. Again, if we were trying to portray the campaign spirit true to life it would not be safe to let pro-Fusion spokesmen paint the picture of Fusion's defeat. But this is a case where explanations from friendly sources quite thoroughly cover the ground without risk of over-coloring or over-statement. 6 As Pro-Fusion Newspapers Reflected Sentiment No one can understand why so many recent friends of Fusion reform voted against its ticket in 1917 without realiz- ing how much anti-Fusion there was in the pro-Fusion papers. Therefore we let these friendly papers tell the story without trying to recall the extremes of language and cartoon used in anti-Fusion papers. Five Types of Thinking and Feeling among New York's Voters in 1917 It will help us get the civic lessons from Fusion's defeat in 1917 if we remember that there were five distinct types of mind under the influence of campaign news and appeal: 1. The partisan mind or the class or group mind — willy nilly, bitter ender, at any cost, under all cir- cumstances — that voted the anti-Tammany or pro- Tammany or Republican or Socialist ticket no matter what the issues or the candidates. 2. The venal or pliable or unthinking or alootf mind that acted without being influenced by news or issues or that stayed at home or went golfing o^ election day. 3. The open-to-influence mind that regularly read pro- Fusion newspapers, weeklies, monthlies and adver- tisements and that associated mainly with pro-Fusion talkers. 4. The open-to-influence mind that regularly read anti- Fusion attacks in five of the city's twenty odd daily papers having about half the total readers. 5. The international mind that wanted to vote against or for war, against or for Germany,against or for Britain, or for Ireland. The first and second minds did not swing the election. They were not new. They had existed in 1913 when Fusion reform was re-elected, except that in 1913 there was no straight Republican candidate to poll 50,000 votes. This dif- ference, while important, did not swing the election because if all the Republican votes had gone to the Fusion candidate he would still have lost by over •100,000 votes. The defeat was due to the three voters whose attitudes were influenced by the news they read and the talk they heard. 7 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat No attempt will be made to estimate the relative import- ance of the three impressionable types of mind. It is the total result which is explained by the following extracts mostly from pro-Fusion news and editorials. Before and After Election Diagnosis by Fusion's Own Strongest Supporters Ten days before the election of 1917 the editor of the Nation, who was also then the editor of the New York Even- ing Post, an unremitting reformer and for years an inde- fatigable supporter and booster of Mr. Mitchel, gave ten reasons why there was then "only a fighting chance for Mayor Mitchel to succeed himself:" 1. Failure to make the plain people feel that he is their friend although he has been. 2. No little tactlessness. 3. Inadequate supervision of real estate purchases. 4. The greatest tactical mistake. . . (assertions for and by . Mr. Mitchel) that a vote for anyone but Mitchel would be a pro-German vote. 5. Failure to build the court house for which a [$12,000,000] site was bought. 6. West Side plan.- 7. Overconfidence and inactivity among Mitchel's back- ers before Mitchel's primaries. 8. The almost unanimous support of financial interests is assiduously used against him. 9. Subway delays due to a state body [public service commission]. 10. Not a little hard luck. You will notice that among these ten reasons, given be- fore election by a pro-Fusion paper, no suggestion appears that the people of New York had wearied of reform, — of ser- vice, social-mindedness, honesty, despatch, forward look, ef- ficiency, pledge keeping. The day after election the New York Evening Post's editorial on the defeat of Mit;chel said : "It was a black eye for the city, a black eye for reform government. . .All the fine work done under the Mitchel administration during the four 8 After-Election Explanations by Friends years past seems to have 1)een trampled upon by the city." But that same editorial also said : ''Here we are praising and supporting him for his splendid work as the city executive. Yet he was behaving these weeks precisely as the head of an \ administration would who had been exposed as weak or cor- I rupt and who had raised patriotic cries in order to divert at- ' tention from his official acts."* ] Another supporter, the New Republic, which had un- i falteringly backed Fusion reform before election, said of the defeat : "The cause was lack of sympathetic understanding of j popular feelings of needs and little social vision... If the ; people turned against Mayor Mitchel so emphatically, the ; revolution must to a very considerable extent be the fault ; of Mayor Mitchel and his advisors." , The Woman's Municipal League which before election ; was given a great deal of newspaper space for its support of the administration — and which was headed by a member of : the Woman's Committee of 100 and the wife of the mayor's i chamberlain and most intimate advisor — wrote in a bulletin which the newspapers quoted : "The defeat of Fusion was al- ■ most fore-ordained during its four years by its failure to carry the public along... and by fatal class limitations." The pi ' ^sciit president of the borough of Manhattan,vD^^ Hen r y II . Curi ' a n, an influential member and committee chair- man and later president of the board of aldermen during the Fusion administration, stated at a board of estimate meeting ■ that "oppressive rules and ordinances. adopted by the boards j of aldermen and estimate in the previous administration \ [i. e., Fusion reform 1913-1917] are what made people vote [ the former administration out of office." \ Theodore Roosevelt, who by speech and pen fought hard for Fusion Reform's success, said before and after defeat that ; Fusion defeated itself by preventable missteps which we in- clude among the reasons that are noAv going to be cited, some as major reasons, others as minor reasons. ', Major Reason I "The Fusion Slush Fund" "Perfectly outrageous" is v/hat a member of the Fusion campaign committee and chairman of the winning Fusion 9 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat committee of 1913 called the 1917 campaign fund of about $2,000,000 five days after election. "Perfectly outrageous" was what the public was calling it for thirty days before election when there was no way of knowing its exact amount, but when newspaper and billboard advertising showed that it was costing at a rate which would take at least a million. Full pages, half pages, quarter pages of paid advertise- ments every day, plus expensive billboards, were cited to il- lustrate the widely published charges that so-called '^interests" were trying to confuse and swamp the public mind. The following after-election editorial comments in three of the strongest pro-Mitchel newspapers show what was in the public mind just before and when the ballots were cast: "The scale of expenditure was so vast and the waste of funds must have been so glaring as to really constitute a scandal," said the Evening Post. "A scandal such as that to which the Fusion managers are party must never again be possible in this state. No justification for the use of such a large sum can be offered however honestly in the interest of Fusion candidates," said the World. "To say that it was scandaloois tells only half the story. The amount is stupifying since it exceeds the sum spent by the presidential campaign committee Major Reason II The Stolen Republican Primary and "Going Back on the Primary" The admitted outrageous sum spent by the Fusion reform committee would have proved a frighful handicap even if it had stood alone as a breeder of fear, suspicion and re- sentment. But it did nor reform's self -collapse. Of this attitude ex-president Roosevelt, then fighting his hardest for Fusion, said before election : *'The so-called Gary school system has become a liability where properly handled it would have been an enormous asset. . .The parent has the right to be consulted on anything so vital as its child's school- ing. Instead, having agreed that the doctors had fixed up the medicine that would be good for the school patient, (Fusion) decided to let the doctor jam it down the patient's throat, whether the patient liked it or not. It's too late now, but we cannot blame the parents of the children on half time 15 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat if they are offended or if they resent what has been made— and by Gary school defenders — to appear as an effort to keep their children in the place of hewers of wood and carriers of water." The New Republic, the New York Evening Post and the Woman's Municipal League all — after election — assigned the way in which the Gary school plan was engineered as a chief cause for Fusion reform's defeat. The story is a long one and contains many civic lessons for practical politicians, reformers and other educators. As early as 1915 it was clear to outside observers and to the mayor himself that events were shaping to make the. public schools an issue in the next mayoralty campaign. All the post election diagnoses were made to the city officers time and again prior to the campaign in private, in public, and through incidents that pointed only one way. In 1917, schoolmen and wdmen were told by the Fusion comptroller from a public platform in a high school — and in press reports — that the Gary system would be "forced down your throats whether you want it or not." Re-enforcing such statements which the public read re- peatedly in the controversy that raged for nearly three years, were news items to the effect that one thousand pupils of a Gar3nzed school went on strike, smashed about 100 school windows, destroyed school books, tried to prevent other children from entering the buildings and stoned policemen who tried to disperse them; that mothers joined and helped them and shouted derision of the police ; that one night 5000 school children paraded, shouting disapproval of the Gary system as they marched through the streets and carry- ing banners which read "Dowii with the Gary System" and "Can the Gary System and Mitchel;" that a city wide com- mittee was circulating all of these charges including protests of parents. The fact that political opponents were acceler- ating the "popular uprisings" did not make stories about them less costly. All of this would have had a serious enough effect if the city officials had changed their tactics and admitted mistakes before or even during the campaign. Instead of admitting obvious mistakes, effort was made to "put over" the program 16 The Work-Study-Play Plan Was Crippled by paid advertising, paid press work, paid speaking, paid management of excursions, and official insistence. Two citizen committees with distinguished names and with much display of money called forth specific denials from both political and educational sources. The city superintendent who had repeatedly opposed the plan — wisely or unwisely is not the issue here — was quoted in the Democratic campaign pamphlet as follows: "There are in this plan features which, forced upon us as they have been without due consideration and without proper preparation, have worked incalculable injury to the schools and to the children of this city." Reports were published by committees of educators criti- cizing the Gary plan as unsuited to New York and as de- moralizing the schools where tried. The public was told that whereas the Gary plan was started for educational improvement it was ordered spread over the city as a means of cutting, down the budget before it had been tried out even in two schools. "For two different schools with the same number of pupils and the same Italian population and having even first cousins as principals, the Gary idea in 1914 meant an expenditure of $343,000 for play- ground, recitation rooms and equipment and the Gary idea in 1917 for the less favorably situated school means the ex- penditure of $16,000. The gap between $16,000 and $348,000 is the gap between what the Gary idea set out to do for New York's children and what it has finally boiled down to." Labor organizations issued public statements, made speeches and distributed hand bills which claimed that it was a scheme of the Rockefellers and other capitalists to keep the children of labor down. Two dramatic incidents furnished civic lessons for pub- licity agents everywhere : 1. "May a mother of eleven children be heard?" Every eye would turn no matter how excited both audience and speakers were at various "Gary mass meetings." For a mere mother of eleven children any American audience will answer that question with "I'll say you can." Imagine the city's amazement when it learned that this mere mother of eleven children was receiv- ing $25 a week for telling of her conversion to the 17 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat Gary idea and moreover had no children in the Gary " schools ! 2. In 1915 and 1916 a woman long known by her aggres- sive educational work for vocational guidance and industrial surveys conducted a school page in a New York newspaper. Twice a week this page carried eulogies of the Gary plan and later eulogies of the Gary specialist plus bitter criticism .of the board of education which was paying him $1000 a week each month for installing the Gary plan. Imagine the ef- fect upon the public mind of being told over and over again that this editor was also the specialist's private secretary ! School Politics Widely Advertised Mixed up with the mass meetings, joint debates and claims for and against the Gary system itself were widely pub- lished facts about the interference by the Fusion board of estimate with school management which under the New York City charter is supposed to be completely independent of the board of estimate after the mayor has once appointed the board. There was nothing new in these controversies except their being mixed up with the Gary fight. Steps which at other times would have attracted little attention were used to win votes away from Fusion. For example: 1. One of the principal contributors to the mayor's cam- paign fund of 1913, little known to New Yorkers was promptly placed on the board of education and within a year fotced into the presidency. 2. In eflPecting the reorganization of the board two em- ployees of the Rockefeller Foundation who had been appointed by Mayor Mitchel to the board of educa- tion were reported in the newspapers of J^anuary 16 — and over and over again during the campaign — as having lobbied, electioneered and actually buttonholed members on the floor of the board for the mayor's candidate. 3. Numerous activities by so-called Rockefeller agents which were specific as to place and time were given wide and continuous publicity for the sake of per- suading the public that the Gary plan was a scheme 18 Work-Study-Play Plan Not Understood of the Rockefellers and other money interests to keep down both the tax rate and the children of the poor. 4. When resigning from the board of education the chief Rockefeller agent, whose name and activities had fig- ured in practically every claim of school politics dur- ing the administration, publicly said that the main purpose of his going on the board had already been accomplished, namely, reorganization of the board and change of presidents. 5. All through the school year 1916-17 and all through the mayoralty campaign of 1917 when millions of dol- lars were at stake and the welfare of a million chiklren in New York City alone, the General Education Board withheld its report on the school system in Gary upon which it had spent $50,000 and the essentials of which could easily have been made available in June 1916 in time to influence New York's policy. The fact was repeatedly given to the public with the sug- gestion that the facts were being witheld by the fofundation officer now resigned from the board of education, for fear that their publication would sup- port the opposition to the Gary plan. 6. The state department of education started an investi- gation of the Gary system at work but did not make a report, which silence was publicly attributed to Fusion influences. 7. The. president of the board of education when in- structed by the board to appoint a committee which would impartially state the real situation to the public named a committee which was advertised by himself as "a small harmonious committee" and by others as "a partisan committee to conduct political propaganda." The committee never reported. This is not the place to go into the merits of the Gary plan in New York and elsewhere. The point as made by pro- Fusion workers like President Roosevelt, the Woman's Mu- nicipal League, the New Republic, the Evening Post and others — and as explained by the Post summary of what hap- pened in New York — is that the Gary plan was never given a chance to root itself in the understanding and needs of New York City. Detroit in its experiment with the work- 19 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat study-play plan has permitted no one to teach in a Gary school who did not volunteer and who did not wish to make it a success. New York used force. That this was a tragedy the Institute for Public Service has maintained from the first and with anti-Fusion and pro- Fusion fcTces alike. Major Reason V "The West Side Plan * The West Side plan before the voters in 1917 was an agreement which Fusion proposed to have the city and the New York Central railroad company make for removing the latter's railro'ad tracks from the surface along, the Hudson River above 59th Street and on the lower west side. This West Side plan was one of the ten reasons earlier quoted why the Nation's editor asserted ten days before election that there was only a fighting chance for Mayor Mitchel to succeed himself. The Citizens Union and the City Club, both actively pro- Fusion reform bodies, and the public service commission — state appointed but then headed and directed by men who were known to New York primarily for their part in reform movements including Oscar S. Straus, former ambassador to Turkey and former secretary of the U. S. department of com- merce and labor — not only disagreed with the majority Fusion officials' plan but opposed it with expert testimony and char- acterizations which when widely and repeatedly ' published were bound to make hundreds of thousands of voters think it was against the public interest. The Citizens Union took fourteen pages to list its reasons for changing the agreement together with questions which Fusion officials should answer in time to compare their an- swers with the agreement itself and its engineering plans before final action should be taken. The women of the upper west side, including many women actively and earnestly for Fusion, organized and held num- erous indoor and outdoor, daytime and night-time meetings of protest,— and after the plan was killed worl^ed, many of them, their very hardest for Fusion. Many other civic agencies in all boroughs the year before election, including specially organized committees, protested 20 The West Side Plan Lost Votes by speeches and resolutions at public gatherings, letters to officers and newspapers, printed documents and dodgers against the plan. Nine Vote Losing Admissions Official admissions made at public hearings and in other public statements — and widely published and reiterated in newspapers — were calculated to lose many votes. 1. No comphehensive plan for the port's commercial and terminal development and not even a plan for the pledged market terminals was included or had been considered. 2. The city was getting what a bargaining railroad would concede — not what the city needed for its fut- ure development. 3. The city's compelling po-wer, based on its ownership of street ends, had been ignored. 4. The city not only bargained at a disadvantage under legislation then existing, but opposed others' effort to procure greater bargaining power through legis- lation. 5. Two of the city's own expert engineers — Milo R. Maltbie and Delos F. Wilcox, two of the country's most noted authorities on permit and franchise prob- lems — had not even been consulted in preparing the plan although they were in the city's employ and could have been used for the asking. 6. A 16-page pamphlet, of which 8000 copies were issued by the comptroller, contained inaccurate and mis- stated facts concerning the proposed agreement. 7. A statement issued to newspapers included a photo- graph which misrepresented what the railroad under- took to do in restoring the river front, and after erasing $300,000 — the altogether too small amount stipulated — inserted the word ''enough ;" and this official statement, in the name of Fusion reform officers, was according to the comptroller prepared by someone not in the city's employ. 8. The two large oil paintings purpo'rting to illustrate the west side plan ''before and after taking," which were hung for weeks in the New York Central's pas- 21 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat senger terminal where thousands of persons would view them daily, and which were later admitted to misrepresent both present conditions and the changes which would result from the plan, were contributed and hung there by the mayor's dock commissioner who was also a member of the port and terminal com- mittee that framed the plan. 9. Favorable editorials which preceded publication of the plan itself were based upon editorial understand- ing that was gained at a luncheon and exhibition of a model of the new plan that cost $3000 of taxpayers' money and in several respects misrepresented the plan itself, — which model, 75 feet long, was later ex- hibited at the Grand Central Station. The candidate for comptroller who opposed the Fusion reform candidate was known to the general public almost exclusively for his opposition to the west side plan. He re- ceived a plurality of 116,000. What Were the Merits of the Plan? Any reader wishing details of both sides may obtain them upon application. Shorn of campaign bitterness, personalities and insinua- tions the essence of the opposition was: 1. That the city was paying five times as much for real estate as the railroad would accept in 1913. 2. That the plan would prevent the development of facilities for other railroads on the west side of Man- hattan, thus giving the New York Central exclusive control of the water front in perpetuity. 3. That it would cost the city many millions in leases, franchises, taxes, etc. 4. That the proposed elevated railroad down the whole west side below 59th was unnecessary and would be a civic crime. 5. That the plan contained no provision for the proper restoration of the park. 6. That the plan failed to provide for markets and proper terminal facilities. 22 The West Side Plan Evaded in Platform It was Fusion leaders themselves who three years earlier called the proposed elevated railroad for the lower west side "a. civic crime" which phrase was turned against Fusion in 1917. It was the mayor himself who said of the proposed land exchange by which in 1916 the city was to accept 35c. where three years before the railroad offered to pay $1.65 a square foot, that those figures themselves were enough to prevent the plan's going through. It was Governor Whitman who said when asked to veto a bill which had been unanimously passed over the mayor's veto and which took jurisdiction over the west side plan away from Fusion officers and gave part control to the state ap- pointed public service commission : "Rarely has a measure of large importance come before me with so little substance in the arguments against it, and with so slight a showing of popular spirit and numerical strength in the opposition." In the face of such opposition and almost continuous publicity running through two years the written and spoken defense of the plan lost many votes which it was intended to win : 1. The typical argument which pro-Fusion writers in national magazines employed was that the proposed agreement was **a bargain" which the mayor thought was ''commercially advantageous to the city and finan- cially advantageous to the city government." 2. The Fusion platform itself, instead of frankly admit- ting mistakes which had been made in the west side plan, never mentioned it, although it was an envelop- ing and pervading issue. The platform never reached it even indirectly until the 66th line and then gave 14 lines to promises to deal with the w.est side prob- lem as if no trouble had ever existed, no work had ever been done and no proposal had been in the public mind. 23 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat Major Reason VI The Catholic Charities Controversy For the first time in this narrative it becomes difficult to let this story tell itself briefly in the words of Fusion's own backers. Because this controversy involved a distinct and easily consolidated group, and because it concerned religious affiliations, opposition became so intense and personal as to amount almost to "religious frenzy." Within a few weeks the controversy developed phases like wire-tapping by police that aroused indignation and fears more primitive even than church feeling and affected persons with no church loyalty. The main undisputed facts are these : 1. In the first weeks of 1916 a special state examiner was appointed by Governor Whitman to conduct public hearings in New York on charges that had been preferred against the secretary of the state board of charities by Fusion reform officials acting in the name of the mayor but in his absence. 2. These charges were against a state officer for neglect of duty in connection with Catholic and other private charities and were distinctly not against the charities themselves. 3. In attempting to make out a case against the state officer certain allegations were made in respect to 14 non-Catholic and 12 Catholic child caring institutions which had been investigated nearly two years before by Fusion's charities commissioner to see how they were treating the children for whose care the city paid. 4. Among the first news items from these hearings was one variously headlined to the effect that in one Catholic institution ''orphans and pigs were fed out of the same utensils." 5. 7000 copies of a pamphlet that reproduced these and other disparaging headlines and stories were dis- tributed throughout the state, and newspapers repeat- ed and commented upon them. 6. 700,000 pamphlets of denial and resentment were is- sued from Catholic sources as an antidote to the alleged anti-Catholic pamphlet. 24 The Charities Controversy Lost Votes 7. In quick succession there followed testimony and newspaper items of assertion and denial that the Catholic charities were condoning mis-treatment of children and were spiriting witnesses out of town, were trying to keep the truth from the public, had tried to block the examination of institutions in 1914, etc, etc. 8. Final investigation was made to seem the personal affair of every citizen by printed reports and admis- sions that the Fusion police department under the direction of Fusion's charities commissioner had been for some time systematically "tapping the wires" or "listening in'* on private telephone talks of persons, Catholic and non-Catholic, religious officers and lay- men, who were concerned in proving or disproving charges against the state officer and related charges against Catholic institutions as they had been found in 1914. 'Without going farther the reviewer has seen that there were here all the elements necessary to create vast blocks of opposition and to create fear, regret and disapproval among many inveterate friends of reform who believed in- stinctively and by training that such wire tapping was a menace to personal and political liberty. The state of mind among groups of citizens non-Catholic as well as Catholic may easily be recalled from the following few facts : 1. The state Bar Association, without mentioning this wire 'tapping or another much advertised case of wire tapping not connected with the charities controversy, shortly after the public hearings closed and the fires of public controversy cooled, passed resolutions — which were almost universally commended in editor- ials that circulated widely — that both condemned wire-tapping and asked the legislature to pass laws which would permit it only where the courts had de- cided that public safety required it. 2. The anti-Fusion reform cartoonists, editors and speakers never let up on this issue, so that anyone who in mid-winter 1916 had taken sides against Fusion's 25 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat handling of this matter found himself militantly ir- ritated again at election time. 3. A smaller number recalled one Fusion employee's testimony at the hearings that the pamphlet which so enraged and wounded Catholics, both leaders and followers, was printed from private funds chiefly raised by the Fusion commissioner of charities, and was printed and distributed after those issuing it knew that the headline about oirphans and pigs eating from the same bowl was not only untrue but was without^ the slightest foundation. 4. Others in larger numbers remembered and kept re- stating the fact that the investigation which was made in 1916 in the hope of convicting a state officer of negligence had been finished over a year before and that homes found below par, both Catholic and non-Catholic 5. had permitted the investigation, 6. had answered all the questions asked them, 7. had accepted the city's conditions for future pay- ments, ' 8. had acted upon the city's recommendations and in- structions, 9. had through this year been under the constant super- vision of the city authorities and recognized as legally " and morally entitled to city confidence and payments. Although this issue was virulent and epidemic in the mid-summer of 1917 before election and called for justifica- tion or regret for official action according to the matured judgment of Fusion supporters in 1917 the Fusion platform did not mention it. The only reference was this : "Conditions in private charitable institutions have been greatly bettered with their cooperation." i:c The "Loyalty" Issue Lost Votes Major Reason VII "Hearst-Hylan-Hohenzollern" "Hearst-Hylan-Hohenzollern," as issue and slogan, ap- peared first in Mayor Mitchel's acceptance of the nomination tendered him for pro-Fusion by ex-president Roosevelt, ex- governor Hughes, ex-secretary of commerce and then public service commissioner Straus, et al, on the steps of the city hall October 1, 1917. "Anti-war horde or the straight American young stal- wart," said the Fusion Flashlight in its first issue. The same editorial said: "If the independent voter of New York blinks the issue ctf war and peace, if scavengers are let in to gnaw our sinews, if the anti-war vote determines the election, the city will have to answer for it to the country .. .The answer must be: We let the Hearst-Tammany Plunderbund and hy- phenated enemies within our city." "The Supreme Issue" which took the first 181 lines and later 21 lines or nearly one-third of Fusion's platform was said to be the loyalty issue. "Organized municipalities... must not be controlled or influenced by enemy sympathizers . . .The government of the great city of New York must be. . . abo»ve all intensely loyal and intensely American. . . [if Mitchel is re-elected] traitor and traitorous agitations cannot thrive within the city's boundaries. . .We call upon all true Ameri- cans to continue Mayor Mitchel and Fusion administratio»n." "A vote for Mayor Mitchel is a vote for the U. S. A." was the title of a Fusion pamphlet. "Germany will be encouraged and strengthened in her warfare; [if Mitchel is defeated] many of the young men whom we are sending across the Atlantic to fight for us will pay with their lives for that encouragement to our enemy/' wrote EHhu Root to James Sheffield as quoted in the Fusion Flashlight and the press. "Those who are for the United States. . .will vote for Mr. Mitchel. Those who favor a German victory will not," wrote Judge Alton B. Parker for quotation. Huge billboards were covered by a poster of a soldier asking for votes for Mitchel, with Hearst and Germany stand- 27 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat ing together in the background. So repugnant was this pos- ter even to many pro-Fusion voters that it was taken down after being up only one day, but not in time to prevent its losing votes. "Mayor Mitchel, our fighting mayor" (with Mitchel standing behind two American flags) "Keep him on the job," headed a full page advertisement on October 1. "Vote for the American who is pledged to all for which our men in Europe are dying," read a paid advertisement as late as November 5, the day before election. Posters of the civilian mayor in uniform were placarded in the city and in army camps, — a fact of which much was madfe in hostile papers, in camp talk and elsewhere. "The one and only real issue in this campaign," said the mayor himself to soldiers at Camp Upton, "is one of plain Americanism as against disloyalty, pro-Germanism and sur- render." The vote losing effect of this issue — ^four out of five voting soldiers voted against Mitchel — was freely asserted in after election comments by many who most actively supported the Fusion ticket before election : "Thousands who' voted against Mitchel sincerely believe that his defeat meant a victory for democracy and popular government. This was partly due to his inexcusable bigotry in claiming during the campaign that his particular brand of patriotism was the only kind and all who opposed him were miscreants- and traitors," said a widely circulated bulletin of the Womens Municipal League which worked hard for Fusion success, among whose members were also many members of the Women's Committee of 100 for Fusion, and whose presi- dent was wife of the mayor's former chamberlain and most intimate advisor. "Most of the Hylan [democratic candidate] and Hillquit [socialist candidate] support consisted of undiluted anti- Mitchel votes, cast by men who resented the attempt made by one whom they took to be a class candidate to set himself up as the only pure and undefiled embodiment of patriotism . . . He insisted on soliciting votes as a man who was a better patriot than the other candidates and never succeeded in mak- ing this issue plausible and popular," said an editorial in the pro-Fusion New Republic. 28 Loyalty'* Issue Lost Votes The New York World, one of the most important pro- Fusion papers, did not wait until after election to sooind its warning but said editorially before election: "We could think of nothing more mischievous than the American issue that some of our Fusion friends are trying to raise." The New York State Federation otf Labor sent a letter to the trade unionists of Greater New York before election which declared : "W^e must not allow the issues and many grievances of the wage earners against the administration of Mayor Mitchel and Comptroller Prendergast to be lost sight of by unfair attacks upon Our patriotism and loyalty." Nathan Straus, philanthropist, known to New York's millions for his twenty year campaign for compulsory pas- teurization to make milk safe for babies, wrote to the Demo- cratic candidate in an advertisement which appeared in both pro-Fusion and anti-Fusion papers the morning of the elec- tion: "There is nothing more unjust than the attacks upon your Americanism and your loyalty, and your friends know that and the people generally understand it." The Courier des Etats Unis had an editorial October 31, 1917, which was reproduced extensively in the anti-Fusion press: **We denounce to all clear thinking electors the con- temptible manoeuver The Fusion com- mittee must have been sadly lacking in arguments in favor of its candidate when it decided to play this vulgar farce which is offered to us daily. Mayor Mitchel was elected on a municipal program and it is on a municipal program that the election must be decided." Again the reader is reminded that the question in 1921 is not how the people of 'New York should have felt in 1917, but how considerable numbers of them did feel and talk with respect to the loyalty issue. As shown later the fact that newspapers outside of New York tried to make this the issue did not decrease disbelief in and regret for the issue within New York among many pro-Fusion and independent voters. One of the important things to be remembered is that this issue tended to solidify and galvanize against Fusion whatever votes would come under the head of pro-German and Irish-anti-British. 29 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat Major Reason VIII Budget Pledges and Budget Claims "We can reduce the cost of government by many millions a year. . .We would show a great saving the first year. . .1 do know that there is room for saving a good many millions of dollars a year for the city... If the mayor's departments had done as well [in 1913] as the borough presidents' the budget for last year would have been $15,000,000 lower than it was ... I shall not talk economy and boost the budget. I shall save the money of tax-payers and translate some of that sav- ing into service for the public." Such was one of the pre-election pledges made by (Candi- date Mitchel in 1913. It was kept on the front page and front seat by both Fusion and anti-Fusion four years later. Fusion claimed that its budget pledge had been kept beyond the letter. Anti-Fusion claimed that budget pledges had been broken in both letter and spirit. Perhaps it was this issue which the Evening Post's presi- dent had in mind when ten days before election he listed as one reason why there was only a fighting chance to re-elect Fusion "not a little hard luck." At any rate it was certainly hard luck fo>r Fusion that in face of its many actual economies so many of its budget claims were easily punctured. So far as were recorded by election time 1917 the Fusion official figures for 1914 and 1916 are repeated here for future reference. The budget fdr the departments whose heads were appointed by the mayor at his pleasure fell from $59,200,000 in 1914 to $57,180,000 in 1916, a diflference of $2,020,000. The total amounts spent by these departments, including budget appropriations, special revenue bonds and special funds, fell from $64,240,000 to $63,550,000 a decrease of $690,000. The budgets of the departments whose trustees were ap- pointed by the mayor for a term of ofiice greater thari his own and who were removable only upon charges — including Bellevue and allied hospitals, the public schools, the men's College of the City of New York and the women's Hunter College— increased from $40,610,000 to $41,870,000 or an in- crease of $1,260,000. Their total expenses from all funds increased from $40,690,000 to $42,050,000, a gain of $1,360,000. 30 Budget Increases Where Decreases Were Promised The total expenses for other boards and commissions named by the mayor, like the art commission, bo^ard of in- ebriety, board of child welfare (new), etc, grew from $137,000 in 1914 to $348,000 in 1916. Manhattan borough's total cost decreased from $2,750,000 to $2,620,000; Bronx decreased from $1,200,000 to $1,150,000; Brooklyn decreased from $2,118,000 to $2,057,000. A $3,000,000 saving- in administrative costs from 1914 to 1916 was the claim that figured most frequently in campaign discussions. Instead of a $3,000,000 decrease there was an actual increase of nearly $900,000. Had this small increase been called an increase and contrasted with both the claims of increased service rendered and previous money increases the opposition would have had a poor hearing. But to call an increase a decrease played into the hands of anti-Fusion even when the sums involved were small. For example, this particular claim was not only flatly denied but was held up by anti-Fusion as a deliberate fabrication, — was cited for ex- ample as one of the "real reasons why organized labor does not want Mitchel" by the State Federation of Labor. Instead of giving up a claim which only placed it at a disadvantage by focusing the budget talk on budget totals, Fusion's spokesmen kept on claiming a $3,000,000 saving where a $900,000 increase was easily proved. As a specific disproof of budget decrease was cited the following comparison of the promised $15,000,000 lowering with the actual budgets : $192,710,000 was the 1913 budget which fhe mayor said might have been reduced $15,000, 000 if his predecessor's departments had done as well as other divisions of city government. $192,990,000 was Fusion's 1914 budget, $198,990,000 was Fusion's 1915 budget, $212,960,000 was Fusion's 1916 budget, $211,110,000 was Fusion's 1917 budget, $816,050,000 was Fusion's four year budget, $204,010,000 was Fusion's average budget, $18,400,000 was the excess of Fusion's 1917 budget over its inherited budget. 31 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat "The Court House Muddle'* A spectacular item that ran through budget discontent was Fusion's failure to build the court house for which a $12,000,000 site had been bought. Being but a stone's throw from City Hall this spot became an eyesore and an almost daily visitor in the news columns. If action had been taken, if it had only been put to some use, the administration would have had some friends for its plan. As it was, however, the friends were disgruntled and the enemies had a spectacular talking point. Instead of trying to offset the loss of interest and in- action by exemplary and economic use of office buildings which were bought with the site, the Fusion majority took a three year lease in a private building at $110,000 per year for the public service commission, and after the public had been shown that in the city's own municipal building and office buildings bought with the court house site there were 164,000 square feet of floor space to meet a need of 80,000 square feet! Was the Lease Good Business? Again, it is not the abstract merit of the issue but the way in which it was presented in public news items that brings us civic lessons: 1. The Real Estate Board insisted that room for the public service commission might have been provided in city buildings without extra cost. 2. One of the public service commissioners said that space in the municipal building would be satisfactory for housing that commission. 3. Borough President Marks of Manhattan said at a board of estimate meeting that he would have been glad to move into the nearby vacant building owned by the city on the court house site had be but known • that the public service commission wanted quarters in the municipal building. 4. Although proof of available space was submitted to the mayor and the chamberlain they put off looking at the proof until too late. 32 Mis-Publicity Lost Votes Typical di the way this budget item and many other items were described to the public is the folloAving quotation from the Ne.w York Evening Post, February 1, 1917: "If I had known that the public service commission want- ed two entire' floors in the municipal building, and would be satisfied with nothing else, I would have moved my depart- ment to the Hallenbeck or other empty buildings, letting the commission have the two floors assigned to my department," said Mr. Marks. 'That would have saved the city $550,000 in five years." "I am sorry we did not know that you would have been willing to give up your suite," said the mayor, turning to smile at his ally, Comptroller Prendergast, in the game of baiting borough presidents. Major Reason IX Fusion Mis-Publicity "He gave us 59 milk stations," shouted advertisements in newspapers and other publicity. "The number of milk sta- tions has been largely increased," said the Fusion platform. Fusion's record showed that its administration inherited 56 milk stations and built only three. "He gave us 22 public baths," other paid advertisements and publicity claimed. Fusion's record showed that its admin- istration inherited 21 and built only one and that one from money appropriated by the preceding administration headed by a Tammany-elected mayor. "Has added more dockage than any other previous ad- ministration," said the Fusion platform. Fusion's records, however, showed that instead of adding more wharfage than previously it added 13,200 or 33% fewer feet that was added during Mayor Gaynor's four years and 75% fewer feet than during Mayor McClellan's second term; it widened one pier where its predecessor widened three and McClellan widened four; it built 3500 feet of bulkhead, 300 fewer than under Mayor Gaynor, and 14,400 feet fewer than under Mayor McClellan's second term ; it built eight fewer piers than did McClellan and 11 fewer platforms. "First to take systematic interest in public recreation," shrieked paid advertisements. Yet the preceding mayor had 33 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat appointed a commission of five headed by the head worker of Greenwich House which spent $12,000 in 1912 and $19,000 in 1913. In season and out of season Fusion speakers and other publicity claimed that Fusion's appointments "were of men who knew "no political boss or lackey, did not throw out officials who were making good to put in favorites, chose wherever he could find the men best qualified by reason of training and experience for the particular job to be filled." "New York is governed by men who serve no one, no party, but that of the city and nation." Yet all the while the opposi- tion was publicly citing case after case of political leaders and their heelers named for lucrative public office. The mayor's pre-election pledge that he would in no re- spect give a partisan or factional administration as the basis for any political appointment or official act, and his after election statement that he would "do the work of the whole citizenry of the cit^" and give a business administration with- out regard to politics, was ccntrasted with the facts and with the mayor's own chamberlain's statement in the National Municipal Review, January 1916, that "appointments were made deliberately to minor positions from the names of polit- ical Fusion or the anti-Tammany organizations." How such mis-publicity continues to menace in 1921 is shown by such quotations as the fodlowing from memorial services February 12, 1921: "Never otie instance where Mitchel's actions were governed by any political considera- tions. . .Mitchel knew no party affiliations in his official duty." How did such mis-publicity lose votes for Fusion? This is what happened: Night after night the anti-Fusion candi- dates when meeting audiences would hold up a half page or a page or quarter page advertisement and speak like this: "Here is an advertisement which appeared in all the news- papers today. The weeklies all over town will have this same advertisement this week, I don't know who is paying for it or why. I know and you know that it costs money, real money and a lot of it, at least a million dollars a month. That somebody has some strong reasons for spending this money seems clear when we compare the facts with these claims. For example, it says here that the present administration gave you, the public, 59 infant milk stations ; the truth is this adminis- 34 Endorsing Mistakes Lost Votes tration inherited 56 infant milk stations and in four years has built only three. Again, it says here that the Fusion ad- ministration gave you 22 public baths ; the truth is that it in- herited 21 and built just one, but with money voted in Mayor Gaynor's term. Now yo'u see why the West Side plan, etc, etc, etc." Would Fusion have gained if it had told the truth? We interject this question and a partial answer here be- cause many readers will perhaps shrug their shoulders and say that all's fair in love and war and politics except showing the cost of mis-publicity. Whether mis-publicity is justifiable wherever it succeeds is an ethical question. Right here we are less interested in the morals than in the effect of such tactics. The win-at-any-cost tactics adopted by Fusion pub- licity agents and campaigners did not work in 1917. It may Ue that the truth and nothing but the truth could not have won the election either. We believed then and we believe now that the truth and nothing but the truth would have tremendously strengthened the vote getting power of the Fusion program and candidates and would have tremen- dously decreased their vote losing force. It was not necessary for Fusion to claim perfection. Mr. Adoph Lewisohn a prominent member of the Fusion com- mittee writing in the Times August 25, 1917, said that only rogues and fools insist they cannot err and that Fusion had been peither all wise nor all perfect. Could he and the whole committee have safely admitted to the public wherein they believed Fusion had failed in wisdom and fallen short of per- fection? Supposing that fusion leaders instead of claiming that their mayor had given them 59 milk stations had said that Fusion members of the last administration headed by a Tam- many-elected mayor had secured 56 milk stations to which Fusion had added three; and supposing they had said that way back before Mayor Mitchel and President McAneny were members of the board of apportionment, they had helped get reorganization of the city health department and the borough of Manhattan and had continued their interest in milk sta- tions as members of the board of estimate. Such publicity- would have been telling the truth; would it have been far 35 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat more effective than untruth or exaggeration? Of 14 italicized reasons for re-election of Mitchel on page 1 of the first Fusion Flashlight we wrote at the time to Fusion backers and to newspapers: "Nine do more harm than good because they either flatly misrepresent or misrepresent by inference. The 14 paragraphs lay the mayor open to suc- cessful criticism, where 14 stronger points might have been listed that could not be challenged." Long before the campaign it seemed to us clear that fulsome eulogy and absence of criticism menaced not only the Fusion re-electidn but the cause of good government. Before it was too late in 1917 we appealed to all parties and factions, wrote the mayor, talked with his managers and publicity agents, wrote to and met with Fusion committee members, ministers and newspaper editors, always appealing for distinc- tion between the things they approved in the Fusion four years and the things they disapproved. We urged them to claim credit for commendable actions, admit or charge blame for uncommendable actions, and specifically pledge their can- didates and Fusion's backers to avoid a repetition of the un- commendable. Perhaps the wise men who opposed any confessions of error by Fusion were right. One of them, Theodore Roosevelt, wrote us in answer to an appeal to him, that in politics it would not win elections to back a man for his good works and at the same time confess mistakes. Was he right? We doubt it. AVe feel quite sure at any rate, however elections win out, that no great cause is weakened by frank confession that some of its leaders made a mistake last year which they or their successors and the promoters of the cause specifically promise will not be repeated next year. Fusion held votes by admitting error in the Cruger case. Did it lose votes by denying other equally clear errors? Major Reason X Division Among Fusion Officers The nine major reasons thus far mentioned would have lost many votes even if Fusion officers had been united. Naturally wherever arguments against Fusion proposals were made bv Fusion's own members of the board of estimate Division Among Fusion Officers Lost Votes and apportionment, both the intensity and costUness of op- position were increased. Repeatedly Borough President Marks of Manhattan and Borough President Mathewson of the Bronx delayed action and argued for modification of plans which the mayor, comp-. troller and president of the board of aldermen were urging. Few if any individuals or agencies in the city did more to bring to light deficiencies in the West Side plan than did Borough President Marks. In fact, his opposition was su consistent and constant in this matter and several other serious matters, that he was dropped from the inner Fusion circle. It was he who asked the spokesmen for the Chamber of Com- merce and the Merchants Association, after they had insisted that the city's welfare required the immediate passage of the West Side plan, if they personally had read the plan and thus brought out the admission that neither of them had read it. It was he who tried to secure courteous treatment and a full hearing of citizens who appeared before the board of estimate, in spite of the snubs which newspapers frequently printed. It was he, through his commissioner of public works, who in- sisted upon a hearing for the proposal which after being publicly ridiculed was adopted, that fire alarm boxes be provid- ed without digging sixteen thousand unnecessary holes, erect- ing sixteen thousand unnecessary poles and maintaining six- teen thousand unnecessary lights. Borough President Mathewson, too often for listing here, used his power of analysis and his knowledge oif financial methods to insist upon more complete reports and postpone- ment of action until more facts could be gathered for both board members and public. Had the minority in Fusion's board of estimate been out- voted after earnest effort to secure agreement in the light of all obtainable facts, this divided front might not have been so costly. When, however, the public was told repeatedly that the steam roller was being used by the majority against the minority of Fusion's own officers, and that Fusion officers who wanted more information or different action were scorn- fully treated in public, many votes were swung against Fusion. No one can be sure how many but certainly enough to rank this cause as a major cause for Fusion's defeat. 37 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat Minor Reason I TTie Cruger Case and Other Police News It may be that the Cruger case and .other police news were a major reason for Fusion's defeat. We call them a minor reason because, if they had stood alone, the corrective steps taken in July 1917 by Police Commissioner Woods, plus the general standing of the department under him in comparison with its previous record, would doubtless have enabled the administration as a whole and even the police department itself to fully recover ground lost by police in the Cruger case. In 1921 "police scandals" have kept the first page for many more than the allotted seven days. There is every present in- dication that efifort will be made during the municipal campaign of 1921 to extol the credit side of the police ledger under Fusion and Mayor Mitchel and to treat the debit side as if it never existed. Good government has much at stake here. Are the conditions which are shocking the public sense of decency and safety in 1921 a recent invention, re-inventioin or ''throw back," or did they have counterparts even under "police reform at its best?" The most serious of Fusion's police troubles which the public of 1921 cannot safely forget, was this, quoted principally from the New York Times. On February 14, 1917 a 17 year old high school girl, Ruth Cruger, was reported missing. When last seen she said she was going to call for a pair of skates she had left to be sharpened in a motorcycle shop near her home. The owner of the shop, Alfred Cocchi, left home the day the girl disappeared. During the week after the girl's disappear- •ance, the cellar of the motorcycle shop was examined by de- tectives who reported nothing suspicious and no further in- vestigation necessary. Thirteen days after Ruth Cruger was reported missing, having found no trace of her or her possible abductor, the police declared this case to be "no different from that of the 1000 or 1500 girls who disappear in this city yearly." Four months later, when the police wished to search the cellar of the motorcycle shop, they were stopped by the wife of the former owner. Finally, a few days later, due to the persistent efforts of a woman lawyer — the motorcycle shop 38 Admitting Police Blunders Helped Fusion had then been sold to auctioneers who gave permission for the search — the cellar was dug up and the body of Ruth Cruger was found there. This incident was not a light hidden under a bushel but a matter of national news day after day for months. Its har- rowing details were given pages upon pages in the papers read by New York voters. In the midst of all this publicity about the Cruger case several other facts about police work were given to the public in ways that left an impression which would have lasted until election even if campaign opponents had not reiterated them: 1. In July a policeman shot and killed a boy while run- ning away from a crap game in which he had taken no part, — an action regarding which the Society for the Prevention of Municipal Waste was given space in the newspapers to protest to the police commission- er against permitting members of the police force to use their revolvers in regulating the cotiduct of chil- dren. (The small number of members of the com- plaining society is a detail compared with the number of voters who read the complaint.) 2. 'V9 silk burglaries during the first half of 1917", re- ported the Times July 20, ''amounting to more than $200,000 and causing burglary insurance com- panies to raise rates, curtail risks and in some cases refuse to write insurance. , . In several cases the district attorney's assistants investigated these cases and publicly reported gross negligence on the part of the police." 3. "Silk House Robbed Under Police Guard — Detectives told that burglary was to take place — Fail to prevent $10,000 loft raid," was a headline in the New York Times of July 18, 1917. The story went on to say the silk dealer had notified the police department of a threatened burglary which he had, in fact, helped arrange in order to catch the burglars; had gotten additional notice to the police through the district attorney ; had been scored for being fearful : had then found that in spite of advance notice the burglary had taken place according to schedule. 4. "Find $5000 in loot on elevator boy. . .negro confesses 39 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel*s Defeat he systematically robbed apartment houses... his thefts total $25,000," is another headline in the same paper the same day. Other Fusion papers that reported these same incidents and caused much laughter by their stor/y of the appointment which the police failed to keep with silk burglars, also gave at length the report of the mayor's commissioner of accounts, Leonard Wallstein, that the police department's method of supervising detectives and patrolmen actually invited incom- petence, neglect and graft. When, therefore, during the campaign the ''house organ" of the police force and other city employees attacked Fusioli's police work, and w^hen the Tammany platform claimed that "crime has alarmingly increased, hundreds of disappearances have remained unaccounted for and scores of murderers un- detected," the public's memory repictured striking cases which newspapers had featured, especially the Cruger case. The opposition's thunder was largely stolen, so far as the Cruger case was concerned, by the police commissioner's ad- mission of colossal blundering by the detective bureau. This admission was capitalized for Fusion in the campaign book. Fusion's Record. The Tammany platform never even men- tioned the Cruger case — a lesson to reformers who wonder whether to deny and evade or to frankly admit mistakes ! An Insider's Judgment After Four Years The foregoing statement in its original form was sub- mitted to a member of the Mitchel adminstration who knew the facts intimately. This is his comment slightly abridged : My feeling is that on the whole the record of the police department made votes for Mayor Mitchel, that a very great majority of the people of the city were convinced that sub- stantial improvement had been made by the police in the effectiveness of their work, in their honesty, courtesy, and desire to" serve the public in all sorts of new ways. I be- lieve this feeling counteracted reports that appeared in the papers from time to time of individual failures to get results. With reference to the Cruger case the situation was dif- ferent. It was incredilDly bad detective work not to have found the body of the murdered girl. 40 An Insider on Police Merits Looking at the matter simply from the point of view yon bring up, that is, the effect upon the votes for Mitchel, I believe he undoubtedly lost votes because of this case, how many it would be difficult to state. These votes were lost, however, not because of the stu- pidity oi the detective work, bad as it was, but because of the impression driven in by the district attorney and by some newspapers that the police were not merely stupid but act- ually partners in the crime, that in some way policemen were protecting the murderer in white slavery operations, and that perhaps this lamentable case showed that in spite of the ifm- provement that had apparently been made in police work, the same old rotten, grafting, despicable System was still working, under cover but powerful. The fact that this impression was false was finally made clear to the public by the complete failure of the investiga- tions of the district attorney and the commissioner of ac- counts, with the support of the governor, to show up anything approaching such a situation. This was not, however, until after the election, so that when they voted a number of people unquestionably felt that there was something very rot- ten in the police department. New York voters have always been militant against police corruption. If the facts as to alleged corruption in connectioli with this case which were shown later had been shown before election, I believe that the record of the police department would have caused no one to vote against the administration. 41 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat Minor Reason II Civil Service Disappointments Part of the fireworks of every political campaign is the charge that mayor or governor or president has named favor- ites or incompetents tO office. It was to be expected that any mayor of New York would be charged with such misuse of power for party or faction or personal ends. Only what friends admitted or charged is quoted here. It is left to the reader's imagination to picture what campaign use opponents were making of conditions that occasioned such comments by friends. "The municipal civil service commission excepted from examination 47 examiners of charitable institutions and 10 of these persons appointed to these excepted positions were not eligible because they were engaged in private business," wrote Nelson S. Spencer, president of the City Club of New York and chairman of the executive committee of the Civil Service Reform Association in January 1916. "The report of the state civil service commission based its condemnation of [the Fusion civil service commission] in many cases on a misstatement of fact or trivialities, failed to take account of much valuable constructive wok on the part of the municipal commission, and recommended dismissal without adequate cause ; but it specified six matters in which the commission was justly open to criticism, one of which was the appointment of 47 examiners to charitable institutions," said the executive committee of the Civil Service Reform Association in its annual report May 7, 1915. Among acts for which Fusion's municipal civil service commission was open to criticism the executive committee of the local Civil Service Reform Association specified these in its report for 1915 : 42 Much Advertised Civil Service Troubles 1. "Irregular conduct of examination for finger print ex- pert, which was cancelled during the state investiga- tion ; 2. "Re-rating of a man who was marked qualified as a non-competitive provisional appointee for the position of secretary of the commission on markets after he had failed to pass the examination ; 3. "Appointment of another man as secretary to the com- mittee on port and terminal facilities, appointed as an expert without adequate qualifications ; 4. "Assignment of hospital helpers and monitors to per- form, clerical and investigative duties in violation of law." The mayor's own chamberlain writing in January 1916, after many months of hostile criticism erf Fusion's alleged violations of civil service and of its pledge to give a strictly non-partisan, non-political administration, wrote in the na- tional organ of municipal reform that Fusion had permitted different pro-Fusion party factions to name men for minor positions. What this backsliding in so-called minor matters meant was reiterated during the campaign, with the names of many avowedly political appointees from clerks up to judges. One judge so appointed, brother of Manhattan's Republican "boss" is figuring again in the discussions of 1921 as appointee to a state judgeship. Again the reader is reminded of three facts : 1. The issue here is not the merit of the Fusion admin- istration but the publicity given from 1914 through the election of 1917 to admitted acts which the public disapproved. 3. Kept pledges to further civil service reform were taken for granted ; unkept pledges stood out like a sore thumb. 3. Publics do not at election time strike a careful bal- lance between the liked and the disliked in judging officers, but take good things like redeemed pledges 43 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat for granted and give their special attention to dislikes for the past or to pledges for the future. Minor Reason III Broken Home Rule Pledges and Charter Revision A new charter was pledged in the Fusion platform of 1913. A new charter was demanded in a statement by Fusion's mayor in February 1916. As pre-campaign discussions in 1921 help us see, a new charter was sorely needed. "Consistent effort to obtain home rule with special refer- ence to the city's framing and adopting its own charter," was Fusion's statement in 1916 in Administrative Progress of 1914-1916 of what Fusion considered itself pledged to do. A charter revision committee was appointed 23 days after the new administration took office, January 23, 1914. It stopped work two years later. During the campaign of 1917 there was neither a new charter nor a report nor a committee. The abolition of the board of aldermen was specifically pledged before Fusion's election in 1913. Mayor Mitchel, shortly after he became president of the board of aldermen in 1910, had won much public acclaim by calling it a "vermiform appendix." When Fusion elected its board of estimate in 1913 it also elected a board of aldermen and president. From that time all talk about dropping the board of aldermen end- ed The before-election pledges simply disappeared. Fusion's review in 1916 of changes to be proposed did not include the abolition of the board of aldermen. Before the campaign of 1917 the Woman's Municipal League in a bulletin for Fusion declared : "The board of aldermen has not only been of the greatest assistance in financial matters but has also accom- plished the greatest volume of legislative work in years." / . 44 Unkept Pledges of Legislaton For campaign purposes it was not necessary to prove that what Fusion candidates and Fusion publicity had pledged before election ought to have been done. The point the oppo- sition made was that the pledge had not been kept and had apparently been forgotten and repudiated. It was openly charged that Fusion changed its mind about abolishing the board of aldermen after and because that board became Fusion. Minor Reason IV Broken Terminal Market Pledges "The Fusion candidates pledged themselves to undertake in a serious way the investigation of market conditions and the institution of some system whereby the producer and con- sumer can be brought into closer relations," said Fusion's re- port on administrative progress from 1914-1916. Yet when the 1914 legislature passed a bill to create a department of markets in New York City Fusion's mayor vetoed it on the ground that it was mandatory. Not until June 1917 was a department of public markets created. During the 1917 campaign which ended in Fusion's de- feat food was still being carried by the railroads through the Bronx to the lower end of Manhattan and trucked back again to the Bronx with the double result of adding to the cost of food and of increasing congestion both of Manhattan's road terminals and her streets. And all during this campaign food was being brought from Long Island to the Wallabout Market in Brooklyn by the round-about way of carrying it by train from Long Island to Manhattan and then trucking it back to Brooklyn. In the West Side plans which the public expected to settle the important problems of improving Manhattan's west side waterfront there was no provision for terminal markets. In fact, the testimony of the New York Central's own freight agent showed that the future handling of terminal markets would be hindered by those plans. 45 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel*s Defeat Under such circumstances with rapidly rising prices the attacks upon Fusion started with more than an even chance against a Fusion platform statement like "Fusion believes in the establishment of great public .wholesale terminal mar- kets" in the middle of a paragraph beginning with parks and ending with dependent children. "To complete the South Brooklyn teminal," was one of Fusion's pre-election pledges. In pro-Fusion papers, as well as in others, readers were told three days before election "In the time that elapsed between 1913 and 1917 Fusion treated the Brooklyn Marginal Railway as a real estate problem and not as a port problem..." When the public voted in 1917 the main fact stared it in the face that there was noi South Brooklyn terminal railway; that friends of the administration made over a million dol- lars on options taken ten days before the city decided to pur- chase certain real estate and purchased by the city at 100% profit — which profit was cited by the State Federation of Labor among "real reasons why organized labor does not want Mitchel ;" that these friends were indicted right at the height of pre-election excitement for conspiracy to defraud the city in several land deals. Minor Reason V The Garbage Invasion of Staten Island So far as Richmond County or Staten Island was con- cerned the foisting upon it of a garbage disposal plant was a major issue. Fusion's credit would have sufifered enough if the trans- fer of garbage disposal from Barren Island to Staten Island had originated with Fusion's own leaders. The real origina- tors, however, were indicted just before election for con- spiracy to defraud the city in real estate deals. They declared at a legislative hearing that they "had seen to it" that the garbage contract specifically excluded Barren Island from the places where a garbage plant might be built. In their own words "We own great properties in the Jamaica Bay 46 Unkept Terminal Market Pledges section. The Barren Island garbage impairs our property." Staten Island's distress and fury won no concessions from the city officials. Instead it won such treatment in open session that bitterness, threats and actual frontier methods of illegal resistance to law were resorted to, and published and re-published. Fusion's board of estimate held an unannounced session to authorize the proposition, which session was later advertised in pro-Fusion papers as well as others and without any Fusion apology, as a "snap session" to forestall a public hearing on Staten Island's protests. That want of room did not make it necessary to leave Barren Island was shown by engineers' drawings and evi- dence from city departments. The Evening Post readers, for example, May 12, 1916 saw these headlines: ''Barren Island Urged iohr Garbage Disposal Plant — Board of Estimate is Reminded of Fact that City Owns Eighty Acres of Barren Island, Including Water-Front on a Navigable Channel." Were Staten Islanders justified in taking so seriously a "modern sanitary garbage plant?" That question is not our problem here. The fact is that this garbage invasion of Staten Island helped cause Fusion's defeat. Minor Reason VI "No Little Tactlessness'* *'No little tactlessness" was the second of ten reasons given ten days before election by the editor of the Evening Post why there was only a fighting chance for Mayor Mitchel to suceed himself. Ex-president Roosevelt's version of how Fusion started out with no little tactlessness was this: "The weakness of Fusion is that it utterly failed to keep in touch with the people. It was putting too many people into office that they did not know and some that they did not like. It was not enough to give the peoiple a good impression. Fusion must not give the impression that it was aloof." "Too much Fifth Avenue, too little First Avenue," was another diagnosis by Mr. Roosevelt. By this he was thought 47 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat to mean rides about the country in the special car of this or that raih"oad magnate seeking city concessions ; widely ad- vertised week-end visits to this or that multi-millionaire ; selection of "Wall Street" and other representatives of so- called "interests" for committees to the exclusion of the people who felt that they had elected him, etc, etc. It is hard for persons who knew Fusion leaders and backers sokrially, and read about them in national magazines, to appreciate that the official representatives of this same group of prominent and cultured supporters actually did by their tactlessness create a vital minor issue. "Shall friends of honest and efficient government," wrote the Institute for Public Service, August 1, 1916 of official conduct at the board of estimate meeting, Thursday, July 27, "who see these conditions and know how fires of resentment, indictment and worry are fed by official mistreatment of citizens when doing their best for the city, express their friendship by continuing silence or by speaking up in meet- ing?" We ofifered $25 for the "best cartoon or best idea for a cartoon that will help elected officers throughout the country see that voters are entitled to the same courtesy after election as they are shown before election." A dialogue at that same hearing will help reproduce the atmosphere. The room was crowded with citizens requesting time to secure and study the city's proposed arrangement with the New York Central Railroad : Petitioner-lawyer: W^e appeal to you as the public's ser- vants and trustees . . . Comptroller Prendergast : Trustees! Mr. H! But not servants ! President Marks: I concede the "servant." Comptroller: Everyone for his own calling! A stock exchange member said: "Unless I had seen it with my own eyes I could not have believed it possible that New York citizens would endure such treatment." A distinguished lawyer said: "I want no legal business which would require my enduring such discourtesy." 48 Treatment of Citizens Lost Votes A school teacher wrote: "The attitude of the mayor and the comptroller toward the petitioners was one of ridicule, amusement, insolence, intolerance, condescension and thinly veiled contempt. At every opportunity the tactics of laugh- ing down the citizens was employed, and twice, at a plea for time to consider the plan, the mayor threw his head back on his chair as if wearied beyond endurance by importunity." An engineer wrote: "The comptroller ate candy and re- sorted to cuteness and cleverness in accent, motions and speech; the mayor cast slurs at speakers that convulsed the room with laughter, and listened to what was being spoken to him only when he felt like it. The president of the board of aldermen spoke only when there was some ridiculous point to emphasize. The president of Queens laughed in the face of the Queens resident who was talking to him. No citizen was safe against insults, belittling distortion of his words into jokes, or conversation by officials during his re- marks." (The two presidents were Tammanyites.) The Evening Post said: "Members of the board were in- clined to be jocular and scoffed. . ." The American said: "Comptroller Prendergast grinned and cracked jokes at the expense of the speakers." The Evening Sun, by the way, gave an interesting twist to our ofifer by asking if the purpose of our proposed contest could not be served quite as well if members of the Institute's staff would stand out on City Hall steps and make faces. As a matter of fact the Institute for Public Service had no per- sonal grievance whatever. Its agents were always treated at public hearings and in the offices of mayor and comptroller with complete courtesy. They were never "hazed" not even during the three hours when they appeared with facts about the West Side plan. Minor Reason VII "Real Reason Why Organized Labor Did Not Want Fusion Re-Elected'* The above caption was the title of an indictment which the New York State Federation of Labor sent out to trade 49 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat unions during the campaign by mail, by press items, by pub- lic address and private conversation. ''Real reasons" included these: 1. Fusion advocacy of the great grab by the New York Central of the western water-front of the city. 2. Fusion officials' open submission to the domination of the Rockefeller interests in their attempts to con- trol the charities of the city. 3. Failure of Fusion to carry out campaign pledges to bring about an era of economy. 4. Failure of Fusion to relieve the great burden of taxa- tion imposed upon real estate in the city and indirect- ly upon every wage earner. 5. Failure of Fusion to reduce the high cost of living by prosecuting the milk, fuel and food pirates. 6. The attempt of Fusion to make it appear that the city expenses had been reduced whereas there was an actual increase. The pamphlet's introduction was: "This will probably be one of the most spectacular municipal campaigns in the city's history, one in which we must not allow the issues and many grievances of the wage-earners against the administration of Mayor Mitchel and Comptroller Prendergast to be lost sight of by unfair attacks upon our patriotism and loyalty." Fusion's work on unemployment and on conditions of dock employment was turned against its candidates in spite of all the advertising of interest in the laborer during the hard times of 1914-1915. So completely did the great labor program fizzle that when the mayor's committee on unemployment and its sub- committees made their reports almost no mention was made of them and the committee failed to retain a working co- operation with labor. Although Fusion in 1914 and 1915 had set forth the great importance to the commerce of New York 50 Labor Opposition — Out of Town Support and the country of correcting longshoremen's labor conditions, the Fusion platform left it to the anti-Fusion platform to pledge correction of labor conditions in the port. It never mentioned Fusion's employment bureau or unemployment studies. Thus, right up to the election itself the mayor's own committee's report on longshoremen employment was quoted to describe current conditions: "Longshoremen have to wait hours on the streets and piers in 90 above or 10 below zero, in order to be on hand when hiring starts due to the un- fcertainty as to the arrival of ships and the amcmnt of cargo they carry. A longshoremen may have to go from pier to pier collecting the different earnings from different employers for whom he has worked during the week. As there was only one rest room in all of Manhattan longshoremen had to use the saloons as shelters while waiting between jobs." Minor Reason VIII Misguided Out of Town Support In Texas the election betting in 1917 was 11 to 1 for Fusion. In Boston it was 4 tot 1. The odds for Fusion in out-of-town editorials and newspapers, including statements in national magazines with nation-wide audiences, were more overwhelming than the betting odds, — were in fact almost unanimous. Perhaps because they did not carry anti-Fusion news as did pro-Fusion home papers. This almost unanimous out-of-town support provoked the Tammany leader to a witticism that he did not care how large a majority out-of-town non-voters would give to Fusion. ''A really national campaign" to re-elect Mayor Mitchel was urged by the Boston Transcript which declared that "the interest of the nation in his re-election is at this moment as great as that of the city of New York." "The cause of non-partisan good government is at stake in America's greatest city," said the Galveston News. "Practically every important newspaper in the country regardless of party lines. . .demanded the retention of what 51 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat they considered the best administration in the city's history and the re-election of a mayor whom they held up as a con- spicuously patriotic and zealous war time official," was the Literary Digest's picture of the out-of-town attitude. *' How generally the out-of-town vision was beclouded be- cause of the preparedness issue, which many of Fusion's in- town supporters insisted in advance would prove a boomer- ang, it is hard to teld cases where packing houses paid fines of $25 or had sentences suspended by Fusion's appointed judges, including the mayor's own former partner. 2. Failure to complete the accounting reforms which were pledged. 3. Brutality, perjury and pilfering at the city's farm re- formatory reported by the mayor's commissioner of accounts. 4. Two girls at the hospital for feeble minded who had 52 Divers Minor Reasons — Platforms become pregnant after being in the department's charge six and three years. 5. A superintendent put in charge of over 2000 defec- tives, among w^hom the use of drugs was a persisting evil, but a few months after he had been discharged from state prison for having illegally sold drugs. 6. A widely advertised Americanization program for all foreign born or born of foreign parentage in a city whose leaders in art, literature, education, banking and business included many persons in these two cate- gories. 7. Systematic salary splitting in the health department. 8. A widely published proposal to- permit alcohol and dancing in city parks, etc. Decidedly minor the reader will probably say of these items. Minor is what Fusion backers called them in 1917. Perhaps they would have been negligible if they had been frankly admitted. Being denied or palliated or evaded, like scores of a similar kind, they furnished kindling wood for big fires of opposition. Minor Reason X Pro-Fusion and Anti-Fusion Platforms That Fusion reform was at a disadvantage in discussing a number of specific issues raised by the opposition, has al- ready been made clear. It was on the defensive. Had the Fusion platfornii frankly recognized the issues which the public was discussing, which the opposition platforms dis- cussed clearly and sensationally — like ''realty favors," "bend- ing knee to Rockefeller money in schools," "private chanty trust to dominate our public charities" — we believed then and we believe now that Fusion would have greatly weakened the opposition. Such heroic treatment, of course, called for belief in the proposition that it is better, even as a matter of vote getting, for a cause to admit mistakes and promise to correct and avoid others like them than to deny or evade mistakes. 53 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat If our purpose here were not solely to explain the op- position vote, it would be profitable to point out several strik- ing weaknesses in the Democratic platform upon which a party that admitted its own mistakes might have conducted an attacking campaign; e. g., these Democratic pledges: 1. To break up the health department into five separate departments ; 2. To banish the Gary system as un-American, undemo- cratic, and an insidious distinction between rich and poor. Minor Reason XI Fusion's Managers and Most Advertised Backers "Almost unanimous support of financial interests is as- siduously used against him/' was the seventh of Editor Vil- lad's ten reasons why Fusion ten days before election had only a fighting chance. Three weeks before election the New Republic, also strongly pro-Fusion, said that for a year past irresponsible agitation against the Rockefeller Foundation had been carried oin throughout the city and that the animus of the anti-Gary plan was now revealed, namely, "as a careful cultivation of popular prejudices against the one point where the Mitchel administration could be made to seem vulnerable.'' Fusion candidates were "unfortunately confined in their ideas and sympathies by fatal class limitations," was the New Republic after election diagnosis. "The claim of Fusion's being the tool of the interests," said the Woman's Municipal League, actively pro-Fusion, "could not have persisted had the city administrators not been confined in their ideas and sympathies by fatal class limitations and lack of popular understanding and needs. There was too much benevolent autocracy about the method by which reforms were instituted." "Perfectly outrageous" in its use of money and autocratic was the management of Fusion's campaign, according to one 54 Votes Lost by Platform Evasions and Managers of its committee members, Joseph M. Price, who' was Fusion's successful manager in 1913. Speaking five days after election Mr. Price said : "Fusion managers absolutely failed to under- stand the popular mind of the town, with the most deplorable result. . .The Fusion Committee rented offices that would have been fit for an advertising agency. Unfortunately political campaigns cannot be conducted like a selling campaign for soap. A ticket cannot be advertised into office through paid columns of the newspapers." "Too much Fifth Avenue, too little First Avenue," was ex-President Roosevelt's way of putting it. Where closest friends could speak this way publicly it is not hard to imagine how political opponents were talking and how thousands of honest believers in reform were feeling; Moneybund and Plunderbund were features of opposing cartoon, editorial and mass meeting. Here readers must not forget that in the newspaper line-up it was only in numbers that newspapers stood 5 to 1 for Fusion. The circulation of the few papers that came out bitterly against Fusion was two thirds the circulation of the seventeen papers for Fusion so that whether right or wrong their featuring of Moneybund and Plunderbund created an issue in no oine knows how many thousand minds. The widely published letter of the New York State Fed- eration of Labor which called upon labor to defeat Fusion candidates called them "cowards and traitors who will betray the interests and future welfare of our people to [certain Fusioin backers] and similar exploiters of the people." Other charges in this same letter included "Fusion officials' open submission to the domination of the Rockefeller interests in their attempt to control the charities of the city." "The Money Power Behind Fusion" was the title of a four-page pamphlet widely distributed during the campaign. This dealt with 38 of the Fusion committee of 250. "These men and their satellites," began the folder, "control the com- mittee of 350 which seeks to fasten money government on the people of New York City." That this folder came from the private pen of a newspaper reporter and investigator rather 55 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat than from a citizen's committee or a political party does not change the effect of its specific allegations upon voters who read it or newspaper extracts from it. Of Fusion's chairman appeared the statement that he was director of a bank with $600,000,000 deposits, an exploiter of labor, indicted, charged with conspiracy, profiteer out of the sale of war munitions, director in thirty corporations and banks whose combined assets exceed two billion. Of the executive committee's chairman were expres- sions like these : controlled by Standard Oil-Rockefeller in- terests ; director in corporations which with subsidiaries and affiliated cdncerns have drawn several hundred thousand dol- lars a year out of the city treasury, largely because specifica- tions were drawn to admit only their product of paving material; makes trust products. Other Fusion committee members were featured as con- nected with the New York Central Railroad whose interests were involved in the West Side plan, personal counsel to Rockefeller, attorneys for big concerns having financial re- lations with the city, real estate experts, milk trust directors, etc, etc. The Woman's Committee of 100 for Non-Partisan Gov- ernment started alphabetically as follows : 1. wife of a commissioner also a Fusion candidate: 2. officer of a national civic agency ; 3. an employee of the Fusion committee; 4. wife of a iCity College professor; 5. wife of a subway financier; 6. officer and representative of a Rockefeller foundation ; 7. wife of the Fusion city chamberlain recently resigned ; 8. sister of the Fusion chamberlain recently resigned; 9. sister-in-law of the city chamberlain recently re- signed. In fact, nearly half of this woman's committee were paid or unpaid appointees of the mayor, wives of appointees or 56 Publis hed Criticisms of Fusion Backers officers, or wives of railroad or foundation officers, or other- wise known chiefly for connection with person, business agency or institution that was riot considered a free agent in this campaign. The delegation whose names were printed in the news- paper as having come to the mayor in the name of non-partisan womanhood to ask him to run consisted of the wife, sister and sister-in-law and two former employees of the mayor's city chamberlain and principal advisor, one of them being chair- man of the woman's committee and the other recently made president of the Woman's Municipal League. No question whatever is here raised as to the hundred percent devotion and capacity of any member of any com- mittee. Historical records are being quoted to explain how Fusion backers lent themselves to political opposition in 1917. "Rockefellerism" ran through all this hostile publicity as an irritating fugue. The State Federation of Labor used it. The winning candidate and the anti-Fusion papers were con- stantly using it. In the "pedigree" pamphlet of Fusion cam- paign committees 1. Rockefeller appeared twice in the first three lines about Fusion committee's chairman ; four times about the second name ; in the headline as the name of eight other of 38; twice against the twelfth and thirteenth and once against 11 others or 22 in all. 2. The commissioner of corrections, active in the woman's committee, was taken from a Rockefeller agency. 3. Two other Rockefeller Foundation employees acting as the mayor's special representatives succeeded in re- organizing the board of education. 4. Rockefeller contributions were published as a large percentage of the amounts used by civic agencies that were aggressively backing the West Side plan, the Gary plan and Fusion candidates. 5. When the Fusion board of estimate voted for the board of education an executive manager which the 57 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat latter had not requested it was a Rockefeller repre- sentative in the board of education who jumped to the defense. 6. In 1914 at the request of two Rockefeller board mem- bers and officers, the Bureau of Municipal Research which for eight years had impartially and unremit- tingly published and studied impersonal facts about official acts and city needs no matter who was elected^ discontinued its non-partisanship and abandoned its outside criticism. By 1916 and in a national con- vention it had declared the policy of witholding criticism of friends in office and had officially en- dorsed the West Side plan which its then director helped to draw. 7. In 1915 one Rockefeller employee, after failing to secure a favorable vote in the board of education for a small school board, indignantly announced that if the boiard would not vote it the board of estimate committee on charter revision would introduce a bill at Albany. The next day the fiscal board announced that this matter had not come up before it and they knew nothing of it. The next day however a bill was sent to Albany to establish the threatened small board, a fact which the opposition did not fail to state and re-state. 8. Before his appointment to the school board the more active Rockefeller agent, while a representative of the Carnegie Foundation, circulated petitions against the re-appointment of the president of the board of education who had been unanimously re- elected the year before. That petition was headed by the executive officers of several different foundations and foundation beneficiaries. When this agent re- signed he stated publicly that he had only gone on the board to change the presidency and the organization, — the point of this reminder being that those facts were published in 1917 and played an im- portant part in the pre-election discussions. 58 The Chief Reason for Fusion's Defeat 9. Finally, from 1916 through 1917, as stated in the chapter on school politics, the General Education Board was publicly charged with holding back infor- mation which it had gathered about the Gary plan in Gary in order not to embarrass the Fusion political campaign. Do€s It Hurt Reform Causes to Have Rich Backers? So far as the civic lessons from Fusion's defeat are con- cerned, one might safely concede that the oipposition on per- sonal grounds was 100% ill founded. There still would remain the fact that Fusion's own spokesmen, both before and after election, admitted and declared that the way in which personal connections and backing had been publicly discussed lost Fusion votes. Major Reason XI and Qiief Reason Cessation of Co-Operative Criticism After his election in. 1913, Mayor-elect Mitchel wrote a letter, to be used in raising funds for citizen research and pub- licity, in which he said that he could not look forward hopefully to a successful four years as mayor unless assured in advance of frank, ■ outspoken, specific criticism by the public he aimed to serve. Never before had any city elected a mayor who had ob- served and utilized the outside private citizen co-operation of fact-seeking, fact-telling agencies for so long or in as many ways as had the Fusion mayor-elect df New York in 1913. Pitiless publicity of demonstrable facts had been the basis of his reputation. From 1906 when detailed by the corpora- tion counsel as special investigator for Mayor McClellan to study the borough of Manhattan — thro>ugh his official in- 59 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat quiries as president of the board of aldermen, his re-organiza- tion studies as federal port collector, his campaign speeches, and even his first days as mayor — he continuously, progres- sively and openly used the outside cooperation of citizen in- vestigators who were working for better government, no matter who was elected. Yet instead of obtaining the help he was so unusually equipped to use, it is doubtful if any mayor of any American city has ever been more completely insulated from outside criticism, which means more completely denied the help of the public he represented. The striking contrast already shown between friends' pre-election praises of the Fusion adminis- tration and the same friends' post-election diagnoses of its defeat is symptomatic of the four-year gap between what civic agencies were privately saying to one aAother about the ad- ministration and what they were saying about it publicly. Ex-president Roosevelt has already been quoted as saying after election that Fusion made its first mistake in picking appointees whom the people did not know or did not like, and made the continuing mistake of "too much Fifth Avenue and too little First Avenue." Pro-Fusion newspapers, pro-Fusion officers, pro-Fusion Women's Municipal League and others have been quoted as having said after election when too late, what could hardly have failed to help had it been said in the early days and years of the administration. Instead of the ''forces of righteousness" serving notice in December 1913 and January 1914 that they would not follow a non-partisan administration in a factional or partisan dis- tribution of patronage, the policy of hush and whisper and applause was almost universally adopted by them. One reason for this conspiracy of silent criticism and public applause cannot be too baldly stated or too vividly remembered, namely, almost every agency of outside criti- cism "had its feet in the trooigh," — to use a conventionalized term for sharing in political patronage. The thoroughness with which civic agencies lost their outside perspective and impersonal relation to government — and consequently their ability to help it when it most needed 60 The Chief Reason for Fusion's Defeat their help — was put as follows by a pro-Fusion writer in the World's Work: "Under Mayor Mitchel's administration these agencies — private civic agencies and municipal leagues — have ceased to be mere critics — ^they have directly taken charge of public affairs. Hitherto Tammany politicians or politicians nearly as practical have managed this city with the uplifters sta- tioned outside constantly turning the finger of scorn. Now the uplifters themselves are holding down nearly all the good jobs with the hungry Tammany-ites peering through the win- dow from without. Mayor Mitchel's administration is a gov- ernment by the uplifters." What agencies had this writer in mind? 1. The 47 civil service appointees which included 10 which the Civil Service Reform League later called illegal, and which were the subject of a state investi- gation and hostile criticism for weeks and of hostile echoes for years, came from the Charity Organization Society and the School of Philanthropy and included one of the most widely known leaders in social work. 2. The fire prevention chief whose work was the subject of so much resentment and bitter hostility came from the directorship of the Citizens' Union. 3. The secretary of the organization committee during the campaign was the secretary of the City Club. 4. The chairman of the civil service commission whose work provoked state investigation and much local protest and criticism was a prominent East Side civic worker. 5. The charities commissioner who directed the wire- tapping in the charities controversies and also raised the money for the pamphlet which contained the un- true statement about pigs and orphans eating from the same bowl — and which was printed and issued after the falsity of the statement was known — ^was general agent of the Association for Improving the 61 Civic Lessons from Mayo r Mitchells Defeat Condition of the Poor. 6. The corrections commissioner was from the Rocke- feller Bureau of Social Hygiene. 7. The corporation counsel was treasurer of the Bureau of Municipal Research, as was also the chief advisor and efficiency engineer for the first two and a half years of the administration. 8. The executive of the civil service commission was from the Civil Service Reform League. 9. ^nrj iio^ ithiMtaai^laQttf^i^nafiUrer uno taliui I.P31 llie TM iie idiint ef th e t\onl Ili e latc. Boor d i 10. The executive of the child welfare board was from the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. 11. One of the mayor's aids was executive of the Honest Ballot Association. Other "entangling alliances" might be cited that were cemented by the payroll in the early days of the administra- tion before any serious controversies had arisen. Not only in the critical days when policies were being shaped and first mistakes being made, but also in the critical days of the cam- paign for re-election, these entangling alliances raised a bar- rier between civic agencies and the public and between civic agencies and the Fusion government, which had the double effect of paralyzing desire and capacity for independent criti- cism of the part of civic agencies, and of taking away from city officers the stitch in time that saves nine, namely, the unprejudiced and informed advice and protest in time which they needed from non-political friends of good government. How completely the critical faculty had atrophied under Fusion was shown at the time of the primary frauds. The reader remembers that nearly one hundred election officers served terms in the penitentiary for the attempt to steal the Republican primary for the Fusion candidate. Although the Honest Ballot Association had for four years been vociferous in its appeal for an honest ballot, it was as silent and as in- effective as a mouse in hiding after the greatest election fraud 62 Civic Agencies Represented On Payroll which has ever been proved in New York City. The Anti-Vice Committee of Fourteen presented before election a solid front of applause for reform police managing, but after election its annual report foi^ the period that the public was discussing just before election showed that it had been in possession of knowledge which proved Fusion's failure to correct flagrant evils. Evidence came, (in the very first week of the Fusion ad- ministration) that outside civic criticism would be needed even by a Fusion administration incomparably equipped to redeem pledges. After promises which had been heralded and be- lieved throughout the nation of an eye single to the public welfare, the Fusion board at its first meeting voted an emer- gency appointment. The post was for the reform adminis- tration's central efficiency division. It was not maintained that the emergency employee was qualified to be chief effic- iency examiner. As a newspaper reporter he had been es- pecially interested in the Irish drama. When the Bureau of Municipal Research published the facts about this appoint- ment as it had been in the habit of reporting such appoint- ments for eight years, it suggested that only by such outspok- en, friendly truth telling could those who wanted efficient government do their part in helping elected officers get it. Was this publicity welcomed by the Fusion officers? Three different members of the new administration protested. The mayor did not. When the comptroller told the present director of the Institute for Public Service that "if the Bureau of Municipal Research is going to make that kind of publicity about little things, I'll not cooperate with it," he was answered : "We shall continue to make that kind of publicity whenever occasion arises and, Mr. Comptroller, when it ceases to be necessary to criticize such little things there will be little reason for criticizing the big things." By a curious turn of fate's wheel, the efficiency examiner for whom public pledges were waived, later became the chief critic of vote-losing real estate deals. The assertion that the Bureau of Municipal Research would continue the policy which it had followed since 1906 63 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat proved incorrect. This agency which in the campaigns of 1909 and 1913 had issued many bulletins headed "No matter who's elected" — and which had from 1906 through 1913, as no one knew and admired more than the mayor himself, insisted upon getting for the public the whole truth no matter who was in office — had so changed by 1916 that at a national convention of governmental research bureaus and municipal reformers, its director said : ''When its friends are in power, a citizen research agency should not publish unfavorable information." So repugnant was this position to the whole spirit of ndn-partisan citizen attention to government that a formal protest, signed by civic cooperators from Dayton, Akron, De- troit, Minneapolis, Toronto, Milwaukee, etc, was issued to the public in order that these out of New York citizen agencies should not be charged with the destructive philosophy that hy this time obsessed New York civic agencies. The resolu- tion read: "That citizen agencies for public efficiency cannot consistently make the publicatioin of facts contingent upon relationship with public officials or upon expediency." The beginning of the end of municipal research cooperation with the Fusion administration was when the Rockefeller Foundation, through Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Mr. Starr J. Murphy, requested that in return for a money gift the Bureau of Municipal Research should discontinue its bulletin publicity, discontinue its out of town surveying, and divorce its field training school for public service. From that time in April 1914 to the end of the Fusion administration, that agency might as well have been on Betelgeuse, 150 light- years away, so far as concerned helping the public help the Fusion administration. Its post card publicity stopped ; its bulletin and news release publicity let the old cat die. It issued no more statements to the public entitled "No matter who's elected." Instead, no matter how serious the mistake which Fusion proposed or made, this agency that had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars — to and for which the Fusion mayor had written that he could not hope for success without outside criticism, and with which he had worked continuously since 1906 — first stepped helping the public and later stopped helping city officials. 64 Outside Publicity Chloroformed When the Fusion administration published proposed leases of places in the city parks with permits for dancing and sale of liquor, this agency was silent. When the civil service law was violated, when citizens were treated discourteously at public hearings, when serious mistakes were made in real estate deals, through all the other mistakes which Fusion chroniclers listed after election, this agency was silent. Yet it had started this four year term with an enviable recdrd and a nation-wide reputation for truth seeking and truth telling, and it had a large staff of trained investigators, a score of men in field training for public service plus incalculably val- uable knowledge of city departments. When the West Side plan came before the public, this ageacy had as director a former city engineer who had helped draw the plan and who of course answered inquiries by saying that the plan was in the city's interest. When crises arose under two Tammany mayors and one Tammany-Democratic comptroller this agency while much weaker in numbers, in experience, in knowledge and in pres- tige than it was in 1914, nevertheless secured official coopera- tion by publicity or by imminence of publicity. Yet it made itself helpless with a reform administration to prevent similar evils and secure similar benefits. Because it has been so many years since continuing in- dependent citizen research has made itself felt in New York, one or twd instances are recalled to help explain why the cessation of cooperative criticism is called the chief cause of Fusion defeat: 1. When the plans for a new accounting system were almost adopted by the city, a story appeared in a financial paper listing several absurdities in this plan which had been worked out by several civic agencies and iComptroller Metz. An officer of the Bureau of Municipal Research called up the editor of this paper and gave proof that the story was seriously incorrect. The editor expressed surprise and said that one of his 65 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat very best reporters had gotten that story the day be- fore from an officer high in the department of finance. This officer was called up and the story's contents summarized for him. He was amazed when told what it contained and asked what could be done about it. It was suggested that the most effective answer would be one by himself; he asked for a draft to be submitted to him, and the next day the same paper ran his emphatic and specific denial, over his own sig- nature, of the statements which he had given privately the day before. 2. x\fter the first meeting of the Fusioii board of esti- mate and Tammany-elected Mayor in 1910, news- papers gave great headlines and much space to the new business tike type of meeting. Instead of the newly elected officers appearing dazed and flippant "they acted like the board of directors of a great business." They passed a half dozen resolutions one of which re- scinded twenty five million dollars of corporate stock issued for permanent improvements but already found to be unnecessary. One fact the newspapers did not report, namely, that these newly elected officers had met several times between election and this first board of estimate meeting — had listened to facts which a civic agency had spent years in gathering ; had agreed upon policy making resolutions; but had been so busy that even the actual typing of the resolutions was done by the civic agency. 3. When in 1910 Fusion's borough president, George McAneny, was being criticized by newspapers for holes in Manhattan's streets, the Bureau of Muni- cipal Research, of which he had been a trustee before elected to office, had not yet adopted its policy of silence or applause. On the contrary it studied the street situation to the point of actually finding out that city engineers were instructing private contrac- tors to repair larger areas than the disrepair called for and were allowing payment for still larger areas. 66 Types of Citizen Cooperation Under Fusion Many other grave defects were printed in detail. But this truth telHng pointed the way to changes of method and result so that bad streets were not cited when President McAneny came up for election to the board of aldermen. 4. In the face of opposition from many sources, some apparent and some under cover, the Bureau of Muni- cipal Research by spending $8,000 had shown the need for changes in water collection, which resulted in an increase in water revenues of $2,500,000 a year. The report on water revenue collection was printed twice, once in the present tense and once in the past tense. When the report in the present tense, e. g. '*75% of water meters are not registering" was shown to the water commissioner, he first protested and then asked: "How long will you give me to put this in the past tense?" He made the changes neces- sary, the statement was put in the past tense, e. g. '75% of water meters used to fail to register," and the commissioner was given pages by newspapers to tell how he had increased water collections. 5. AVhen attempt was made to force the so-called Gaynor charter upon the city in 1910, the Bureau of Municipal Research issued statement after statement showing dangers to the city, misstatements in arguments for the charter and safe-guards that were needed. It interested the Chamber of Commerce in calling a mid- summer meeting to be addressed by Lyman Abbott, Seth Low and others against the charter. 6. After Mayor Gaynor had publicly criticised the Bureau of Municipal Research, he accepted and called for cooperation at several critical points because it helped him. Just because it was free from entangling alliances it could help. As he once said to the present director of the Institute for Public Service when with the Bureau of Municipal Research : "Your Bureau has helped save other weak city officers. Won't you help me save Blank?" 67 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat 7. Tammany Hall's head once said to an officer in the department of finance : ''What do you mean by co- operating with the Bureau of Municipal Research?" The answer was used for years by the Bureau for Municipal Research in raising money for research work in New York and other cities, namely: "Well, chief, it's just like this. Those people have a right to the fact. They know a fact from a guess when they see it. They apparently have money enough to keep them alive until they get the facts. If I ob- struct them and they find something, they'll think I was in it. If I give them the glad hand and they find something, they may think I wasn't in it." Isn't it extreme to say that had one agency continued through the reform administration the method of independent investigation and publicity which with nation-wide acclaim it had employed through three Tammany Hall administra- tions. Fusion would have made fewer mistakes? It is not ex- treme to say that fact based outspoken criticism in time would have prevented other mistakes as it prevented the adoption of the West Side plan. It is not because of the personnel of the Bureau of Muni- cipal Research that this sweeping statement is made. It is because of the method for which it had earlier stood, namely, the method of wanting the whole truth, of going after it, getting it, trying to use it constructively, and giving the public the facts, — after officials had used them if possible, but if neces- sary in spite of official dislike for them! Had the Bureau of Municipal Research or any other agency done with Fusion officers what that agency did with Mayor McClellan and Comptroller Metz and with Mayor Gaynor and Comptroller Metz, other agencies could not easily enough have failed to use a similar method of impartial search for and impartial publication of facts. The charmed circle of applause and silence would have broken. 68 Fusion's Platform of 1917 EXHIBIT I FUSION'S PLATFORM A Promise, Backed by Achievements, That Will Be Fulfilled The Supreme Issue The municipal election of 1917 occurs during a national crisis to which all other concerns, public and private, are necessarily subor- dinate. Our country is at war with Germany. Every conception of justice and liberty for which our forefathers fought, and which brought our foreign born citizens to our shores, is at issue in the struggle. Our country must win. Organized municipalities must do their part. They can do so only under governments of the highest capa- city, greatest strength and energy, and fearless outspoken loyalty. They must not be controlled or influenced by enemy sympathiz- ers, or by discontented elements nor must they be administered by the untried, the incompetent or by those whose hesitation and evasion leave doubt of complete devotion to the cause for which the great body of our citizens, native and foreign born, are making supreme sacrifices. To maintain order within, to co-operate with the Federal Government against the menace from without, to detect intrigue, to suppress violence, to hold together the social and economic services of its citizens, the government of the great City of New York must be strong, capable, alert and above all intensely loyal and intensely American. The city government under Mayor Mitchel and the Fusion ad- ministration now measures up to this high standard. "It is not best," said Lincoln, "to swap horses while crossing the river." The patriotic record of the present Fusion administration is without parallel in the contemporaneous municipal history of the country. We refer to the incisive leadership of Mayor Mitchel in the field of national preparedness, to his action in organizing the con- vention of American cities at St. Louis in 1916 to crystalize sentiment in favor of universal training and a strong navy; his organization of the Mayor's Defense Committee and its long record of national service, including an aggressive campaign of recruiting for the Army and Navy: to his appointment of the Food Supply Committee to fight exhorbitant war prices for the necessities of life; to his co-operation Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat with Commissioner Hoover; to his appointment of the Public Works Mobilization Board; to his organization of the Home Defense League; and to the exceptionally capable work of the regular police in main- taining order, protecting persons and property, and preventing a disturbance of the processes of national and local government through- out a period of great crisis and unparalled stress. At the direction of the Mayor piers have been placed at the disposition of the Army and Navy for the period of the war, and suitable sites in public parks have been furnished to the Navy Department for the establishment of bar- racks, training and aviation stations. Throughout the entire city and borough governments every agency has been employed, every step has been taken to enable the city to meet and solve our internal problems occasioned by the war and to put the full force of the officers and citizens of New York at the disposal of the National Government. This record is proof that with the re-election of Mayor Mitchel every agency in the City will be turned to the service of the nation throughout the war, that traitors and traitorous agitations cannot thrive within the City's boundaries, that by example, precept and, when necessary, by force, New York shall be kept tranquil loyal and secure. committal or the hesitant. Great as our purely municipal problems are, we declare the supreme issue to be the unqualified support of our country in its time of need. Not only is this a war for demooraey as we know it, but a call and an opportunity for more rapid progress toward the democracy that ought to be. In the soldiers and sailors insurance bill, actively sup- ported by Mayor Mitchel and other Fusion officials, the national ad- ministration has recognized the problem of the family behind the change of the tried and experienced for the untried and the non- soldier. Much remains to be done by local authority. We call upon all true Americans to continue Mayor Mitchel and the Fusion administration in power because of loyalty to our common country in her new struggle for freedom. We protest against any Fusion proposes to bend every resource toward helping its citizens through their personal difficulties caused by the war. It is essential that the young shall be neither starved nor stunted, neither less well fed nor less well educated than in time of peace. Extra attention will be paid to child welfare work. Fusion will bend every effort toward insuring reasonable prices. Inspection of labor con- ditions will be increased in order that unscrupulous war-time con- tractors shall not make their profits by exploiting labor in the name of patriotism. Fusion plainly sees the high duty and privilege of protecting the social and economic life of our people from every avoidable harm and danger. In using every expedient to this end it will not concern itself with fear of radical measures. To the fullest extent of the public and private resources of the City, Fusion will do everything 70 Fusion's Platform of 1917 to see that the people of this city in their personal, their family^ and their community lives emerge stronger, better and more united both socially and economically. This is Fusion's conception of the City's duty in the international struggle not only to conserve but also to advance democracy. We declare that the present Fusion administration is entitled to re-election upon its administrative ability and record of accomplish- ment in municipal service, as well as upon its record of patriotism and loyalty to the national cause. The Public Schools The aim of Fusion has been to democratize the public schools. Fusion has sought to bring to the children of all the people the same facilities, advantages and opportunities that heretofore have been enjoy- ed exclusively by the children of the rich in the expensive private school. The Fusion administration found the schools in an unsound con- dition. An educational plant which since consolidation had cost $156,000,000 was being operated in such a manner as to utilize but sixty- five per cent, of its capacity. The part-time evil was increasing. The schools were over-crowded. Classes were too large for maximum effic- iency in teaching. Annual appropriations for increasing the plant had been liberal but with the low percentage of utilization, the increased demand for accomodations outran the appropriations and the new facili- ties. Moreover, the facilities available even to full-time pupils were in many respects deficient when compared with advantages offered by private institutions to the few who can afford to pay. A fundamental American principle is equality of opportunities, especially the oppor- tunities of youth. The problem faced by the Mitchel administration was to solve these difficulties. Through intelligent study and the adaptation of our conditions of modern and progressive methods, a solution was found. The new system adopted and now in operation in thirty schools has in these schools solved the part-time evil, increased the utilization of the educational plant to 100 per cent, capacity, provided better facilities and an enriched course of study for the pupils and at the same time made important provisions for the annual increase of school population. These results are clearly forecast for the entire school system of the City. Before reorganization, the thirty schools had 82,430 pupils on register, but 47,452 of these were on part-time or double session. The classes were overcrowded. By the new system, part-time and double session have been completely abolished in these schools, and the number of pupils in classes has been reduced from an average of 43.48 to an average of 40.5. Moreover, the capacity of these schools has been in- creased by the new system so that many new pupils can be accommo- dated in them without additional buildings or facilities as the growth 71 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat of school population demands. The total coot of this reorganization in the thirty schools has been but $750,000. Under the old system, to make such a provision for the present and future would have cost several million dollars, and the facilities and educational advantages would have been less. In the new type of schools, children spend half the day doing academic work in regular class rooms and half in shops, auditoriums, playgrounds, gymnasiums, music and drawing rooms, libraries and science laboratories. While one-half the pupils are in class rooms doing academic work, the other half are engaged in other activities in other parts of the building. They change places in the middle of the fore- noon and afternoon, so that every child enjoys all the advantages furnished by the school and every part of the school plant is kept in continuous operation. Enrichment of curriculum and economy in expenditures are thus effected simultaneously. By lengthening the school day from five to six hours, as much time for academic work is provided as under the old plan, and time which would otherwise be spent under the evil influences of the street is devoted to supervised play and other special activities in wholesome surroundings under competent instructors. To date the Board of Estimate and Apportionment has appro- priated $12,400,000, for the reorganization of 137 elementary schools on the work, study and play plan. $9,000,000 of this amount will provide for fourteen new buildings and additions to eighteen old ones. $1,400,000 will provide additional playgrounds and gardens for existing buildings. The remaining $2,000,000 will be spent for modernizing 123 existing school buildings. When the reorganization was started three years ago there were 117,000 children on part-time and double session. When the funds already appropriated are expended, 100,000 children will have been taken off part-time and double session and given full and complete school accomodations. An additional appropri- ation of approximately $5,000,000 will be required to take care of the remaining 17,000 children and complete the elimination of part-time instrudtion. The changes required have not been unattended with difficulty. Administrative details have been by no means perfect. Errors have developed which are being corrected. Public confidence in innovations is naturally of slow growth, and the new plans have met full public approval only where best administered and most thoroughly developed, and conseqently most fully understood. Yet public confidence in school matters, intimately related as they are to the home life of families, is essential to the success of any educational system. With these considerations in mind and with constant effort to improve details of administration, the work will go on. We urge all citizens to inform themselves in respect to this great matter, to reject characterizations of the system which, on ex- amination, are found to result from misinformation or misrepresenta- tion industriously soread and capitalized by Tammany for political 72 Fusion's Platform of 1917 purposes, and to continue the Fusion administration in authority, in order that better educational facilities, with equality of opportunity for all our youth, shall thus be afforded. Public Service Corporations The Fusion administi-ation has pursued a vigorous policy with respect to Public Service Corporations. For the first time in the city's history the city government has represented the people before the public service commission in all important cases involving rates or service. Important reductions of lighting rates have been secured, better service insisted upon and proposed rate increases resisted. This work will be maintained and extended. Businesslike Administration The Fusion administration has redeemed its pledges to give an economical and businesslike administration. The budget for 1917 for all of the administrative departments under Mayor Mitohel was a million and one-half less than in 1914 for these same departments. On a decreasing cost the great administrative departments have done more and better work. No city administration since consolidation has shown any similar capacity. For increased expenditures due to widows' pensions and education and appropriations for private charitable in- stitutions, the Fusion administration accepts full responsibility. Pay-As- You-Go Policy The Fusion administration, through the adoption of the "pay- as-you-go" plan has, for the first time in the city's history, put a check to the ever growing city debt. Under this policy debt for non-pro- ductive improvements will be gradually wiped out and a substantial fund for the improvements of the future will be gradually created. For the first time in its history the city is financially upon a sound basis. Charities The Department of Public Charities has been rebuilt. The re- organization of Randall's Island, where the city cares for its mentally defective children, is a great constructive humanitarian work. Con- ditions in private charitable institutions have been greatly bettered with their co-operation and the hospitals of the department have been modernized and extended. Social Service Pensions have been granted to widows with dependent children. The number of milk stations has been largely increased. The medical examination of school children has been extended. The work of the bureau of child hygiene has reduced the death rate of babies under one year from 102 per thousand to 95 per thousand. Streets have been roped off for children's play. School houses have been made available 73 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat for neighborhood activities. Sunlight and fresh air for the homes and factories of the future have been protected by the Zoning law. No administration since consolidation has done so much to make the city a better place in which to live and work for all its citizens. Police Under the Fusion administration the police force has been di- vorced from politics. By a strong, straightforward policy the work of purging the department of its dishonest and inefficient minority has gone steadily forward with the co-operation of the honest and hardworking majority of the force. Lawlessness has been curbed, the gangs have disappeared, gunmen have fled the city or gone to jail, bomb outrages have stopped, public prostitution and gambling have been reduced, corrupt partnership of the police with crime and the levying of tribute upon legitimate business has been destroyed and ended. If Mayor Mitchel is re-elected Commissioner Woods will be re- tained in oflace. If Tammany is returned to power, police debauchery and incompetence will again disgrace New York. Civil Service The Fusion administration has sustained and extended the merit system in the Civil Service. Salaries of the lowest paid employees have been increased. Differences in pay for equal work have been wiped out. Wider opportunities for advancement have been opened. The Future Under Fusion Upon such a record the Fusion administration rests its claim for public confidence in its promises for the future. The development of the city's educational facilities will go for- ward with increased effectiveness. Fusion believes in more parks and playgrounds; in increasing milk stations and public health works; in the establishment of great public wholesale terminal markets; in the maintenance of public em- ployment bureaus and of pensions for widows with dependent children. Fusion has so improved the administrative capacity and con- served the financial resources of the city government as to lay the foundation for a great expansion in the serices of the government to the people. It sought from the Legislature the power to buy and sell food at cost during the war. It favors the adoption of the Torrens system of registering land titles, as proposed by County Register Hopper, with public insurance of such titles. Fusion proposes an expansion of municipal ownership by elim- inating the private water companies and by the progressive acquisi- tion of electrical conduits. 74 Fusion's Platform of 1917 If a satisfactory contract for the private operation of the Brook- lyn Marginal Railway cannot in the immediate future be reached Fusion favors its municipal operation without further delay. It will not hesitate to take similar steps in other cases wherever municipal ownership or operation is in the public interest and within the financial resources of the city. The narrow borrowing margin which today is the chief bar to the municipalization of public services is the result of the Tammany dishonesty, profligacy and extravagance in the past, which dissipated the borrowing power of the city. Fusion has had the courage to con- serve this borrowing power even at the cost of temporarily higher budgets. The longest stride towards municipal ownership was taken by the present city administration when it adopted the pay-as-you-go policy, which, by putting an end to borrowing for non-productive im- provements, will gradually produce a margin of credit sufficient to allow the oity to acquire the most vital of its public utilities. Fusion stands for complete municipal home rule. Fusion believes that the people of New York City should have the right to make and amend their city charter, that legislative interferences with local affairs should end, that the city should have justice equally with the rest of the state at the hands of the state legislature in the matter of taxation and in the expenditure of state funds. Fusion will con- tinue to press the state to assume the support of the state functions now unjustly made city charges. Fusion will continue co-operation with the other municipalities of the state through the State Conference of Mayors, to the end that home rule may be secured by cities and unjust burdens lifted. Fusion is comonitted to the comprehensive development of the Port of New York. In the past four years it has added more dockage than any other previous administration. An essential detail of such development is the relocation of the New York Central Railroad along the West Side of the Borough of Manhattan. For the sake of the city's food supply, for the sake of its manufacturing supremacy, and for the protection of its citizens on the public highways, a solution must be found and found without delay. Fusion will co-operate with the Public Service Commission to find such a solution, and failing, to exercise effective compulsion on the company. Fusion believes in the most liberal degree of borough autonomy consistent with effective organization and serviceable government. Most of the city departments should have in each borough capable representatives with sufficient authority to deal with local questions for the convenience of the citizens of the borough. In determining questions of economy adequate weight should be given to any expense or inconvenience caused to citizens of other boroughs by being com- pelled to visit or commuunicate with officers located only in the Bor- ough of Manhattan. 75 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat The Alternative Is Tammany The alternative offered to the voters is a return to Tammany misrule. Against this we vehemently protest. Tammany in succes- sive administrations brought the city to the verge of financial ruin, debauched the police force, permitted and even exploited vice and crime, neglected the welfare and comfort of citizens, substituted favor- itism for service and, in an abandon of greed and evil practices, so outraged the public conscience that it was driven from power, in a normally Democratic city. It is now eight years since Tammany has been permitted unrestricted rule. Two present examples give proof that a quick relapse to former conditions would follow Tammany's return to power. For twelve years the voters of New York City refused to entrust the office of District Attorney to a Tammany candidate, but two years ago a Tammany District Attorney was elected. During his short encum- bency the office has been prostituted. Partisanship has run rampant. The office of prosecutor has been turned to political uses. Tammany wrongdoers have been protected from prosecution. Coercion of the most despicable character has been practised upon the weak and un- fortunate. On a number of occasions the Governor of the State has been compelled to take important prosecutions out of the District Attorney's hands. The efficiency and moral tone of the office is now undeniably at its lowest ebb and constitutes a warning of what would inevitably follow the restoration of Tammany to the administration of the city. Another example is Tammany's present campaign. At a time when the national welfare requires that we should emphasize all of those obligations and aims which we have in common, Tammany seeks to array the poor against the rich; to excite class hatred; and, in hope of retaining the vote of the disaffected, to avoid any discussion of the relation of the municipal election to the prosecution of the great war. It is increasingly plain, that every element, every faction, every individual in the City of New York who is opposed to the vigorous prosecution of the war — opposed to the maintenance of strong, ener- getic, alert government in the city during the war, is sought by Tammany as an ally. With the record of the Fusion administration as the test of our promises for future service and progress, and with the record of Tammany as a warning to voters we commit with confidence the Fusion candidates to the common sense and patriotism of the people of New York. 76 Institute for Public Service on Government Reform EXHIBIT II Attitude Toward Reform of the Institute for Public Service The first two purposes of the Institute for PubHc Service as mentioned in the special act creating it are to conduct training- for public service through assign- ments of practical fi^ld work that needs to be done and to study methods of securing efficient citizenship that will provide cumulative, non-political, non-partisan, imperson- al attention to the methods, acts, results and needs of public business, higher education, and benevolent foun- dations. The chairman of the Institute for Public Service, Julius H. Barnes of Duluth and New York, was president of U. S. Grain Corporation from 1917 to 1919 and wheat director from 1919 to 1920, and has never had any other relations with government except those of an individual citizen and member of chamber of commerce committees working for wider citi- zen cooperation with governing agencies through more defi- nite knowledge of government acts and community needs. Eda Amberg, as part of field training for public service, helped collect and marshall the information contained in this pamphlet. Associated with the Institute as supervisory members are officers of civic agencies in Detroit, Dayton, Toronto, Minne- apolis, Akron, Kansas City, Philadelphia, Richmond, Grand Rapids, etc which exist only for the promotion of that type of non-political reform .which w^orks for efficient, socially- minded government no matter who's elected. For information about successful efforts in these other cities to increase citizen attention to government address Dr. H. L. Brittain, Citizens Research Institute, Toronto, Canada ; Walter Matscheck, Bureau of Public Service, Kansas City, Mo ; F. L. Olson, Municipal Research Committee of the Civic and Commerce Association, Minneapolis, Minn ; Dr. D. C. Sowers, Bureau of Municipal Research, Akron, Ohio'; Dr. L. D. Upson, director 77 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat of the Governmental Research Bureau and C. E. Rightor, former director of the Dayton Bureau of Research, 542 Gris- wold Street, Detroit, Michigan; Albert Cross, 120 West 15, Philadelphia ; Col. Le Roy Hodges, State House, Richmond, Va; A. N. Farmer, Perkins Building, Grand Rapids, Michi- gan ; Dr. Jesse D. Burks, University of California ; Clarence B. Greene, Dayton, Ohio; Harry Freeman, City Manager, Kalamazoo, Mich ; Frank S. Staley, Foreign Trading Finance Corporation, New York ; C. N. Hitchcock, Barnes-Ames Co, New Yor; Arch Mandel, 542 Griswold St., Detroit. Not formally connected with tlie Institute, but able to speak in detail of successful governmental research are F. P. Gruenberg, Bureau of Municipal Research, Philadelphia; James W. Routh, Bureau of Municipal Research, Rochester, New York; Rufus E. Miles, Ohio Institute for Public Effici- ency, Columbus; H. S. Keeler, Chicago Bureau of Public Efficiency. Gaylord C. Cummin, consultant on municipal problems, was a reform but non-political city engineer in Dayton, Ohio, before and during the city manager plan's first try-out; was a reform but non-political city manager of Jackson and Grand Rapids, Michigan, with results in service that proved it pos- sible to secure public support for non-political management of city business. Since 1919 he has made studies for Ohio's joint legislative committee on administrative reorganization, for Michigan's community council commission on after-war needs and opportunities and for a committee of business men to promote public understclnding of this Institute's reports on Michigan's governmental organization, governmental needs and opportunities; for Columbus, Portsmouth, Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, chambers of commerce on fire, sewers, charter and other city needs; for Mr. John H. Patterson on the limitation of canal transpor- tation, etc — always as a reformer in the sense of ahvays being for truth no matter who the officials were. William H. Allen, director of the Institute for Public Service, has worked for different kinds of reform in govern- ment since 1900; as first secretary of the National Municipal League's committee on instruction in municipal government; as secretary of the New Jersey State Charities Aid and Prison 78 Institute for Public Service on Government Reform Reform Association ; as general agent of the New York Asso- ciation for Improving the Condition of the Poor; as secretary of the Child Welfare Committee, the first milk conference and New York Milk Committee, and the Committee on Hospital Needs and Hospital Finances; as one outliner and money raiser for the Bureau of City Betterment and the Bureau of Municipal Research from 1905-1914; as unsuccessful protestor in 1914 against the abandonment by the Bureau of Municipal Research of its program for enlisting the public in work for better government by giving it information about govern- ment no matter who's elected ; as organizer of government re- search bureaus in other cities; as surveyor of cities and state governments and special agencies of government like rural and city schools, normal schools, universities; as director of the Institute for Public Service from 1915 on; as promoter of citizen interest in government through books like Efficient Democracy, Woman's Part in Government, Modern Philan- thropy, Universal Training for Citizenship, Self Surveys by Colleges and Universities, etc, and through addresses; as worker for reform by whatever party and whatever officer was in position to take forward steps without regard to party or faction, and as almost constant collaborator with Fusion re- form leaders, — as well as with so-called Tammany officers — of New York City from 1903 to 1914 and again through two years of Fusion Reform, 1916-1917. During the campaign of 1917 Fusion Reform's publicity director asked the director of the Institute for Public Service if we wanted Mitchel or Hylan to win. The answer was that we were not interested in which man won. When pressed for yes or no we answered that w^e had been schooling our- selves for ten years to seek results for the public no matter who was elected. When still further pressed for an answer we replied that we would vastly rather see Mitchel lose while standing for the truth than win by publicity and campaigning that did not tell the truth. This conversation was immediately repeated in person to Mayor Mitchel. who turned to one of his aids and said : "Allen is right. I can make no headway with an audience unless I face the music." Repeatedly from December 1915 to November 1917 the Institute took up with Mayor Mitchel the questions treated in Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat. At numerous times these interviews 79 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat led to constructive action. The trouble was that too few people were trying to help the mayor help the whole city and see things as the general public saw them. When Fusion lost the election of 1917 it was clear that it would be easier for the new administration to take forward steps if non-partisan governmental research and publicity could be assured. We wrote to the Bureau of Municipal Research that we considered it of extreme importance for New York to have such a program during the next four years, that if that or- ganization planned to cover the field we would keep out of it but if that organization did not plan to cover the field the Institute for Public Service group of governmental researchers here and in other cities would attempt to raise the funds for this work. We were answered that the Bureau had *'a com- prehensive program and ample funds." We therefore planned our work in other directions. However ample its funds and comprehensive its pro- gram the Bureau of Municipal Research has given no sign of even seeing the field in New York iCity, not to mention cover- ing it. The breakdown of its program has cost New York and the country incalculably. Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat in 1917 is issued before the municipal campaign of 1921 formally opens to help New York remember in 1921 its earlier conviction that in addition to all that is done by citizens within parties there is urgent need for non-partisan, non-factional, impersonal citizen attention to government acts no matter who's elected. 80 A National Propaganda Needed EXHIBIT III 12 Governmental Researchers Outside New York to the Director of the Institute for PubHc Service. I -28- 1 921 For a number of years the growth of effective government in this country has been retarded by the absence of aggressive propaganda pointing out the results that can be obtained thru continuous citizen participation. Although many of the Bureaus of Governmental Research and other civic agencies have been able to influence the character of government in their immediate vicinities, none of them has been in the finan- cial and strategic position to mould public opinion over the whole country. For five years the Governmental Research Conference has considered this question and attempted to devise some means of nation-wide activity. So far these efforts have been without material results. Yet with the growling complexity of govern- ment — municipal, county and state — and the increasing re- sponsibilities thrown upon governments, it seems almost im- perative that the interest and aid of some group of leading men be enlisted in this effort. Now, you were the founder of the movement for getting good government thru directed and applied citizen interest in supporting effective government; you were the first to utilize the machinery of government as a means of training men for civic leadership ; the men trained under your direction have been important agents in the progress of the past de- cade, and you have been a consistent and aggressive advocate of sound government throughout the country. It now seems opportune to urge again the advantages that will accrue from active citizen participation in public affairs and for training men, by practical experience, for professional participation in public affairs. Under these circumstances it is but natural that we ask that you assume the leadership of an extensive group of men engaged in governmental research, and that you undertake an aggressive program of work both in and out of New York City; and to make possible this end, that you use your best efforts to enlist the interest and aid of broad-minded citizens in this program. 81 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat EXHIBIT IV A Real Loyalty Test for New York Voters That it was not a test of any New Yorker's loyalty to his country whether he voted for Fusion, against Fusion, or for some other program in 1917, friends of Fusion have already testified. In another sense every voter is giving a test of his loyalty to the highest ideals of America whenever he casts a vote. Almost always, however, that loyalty test depends not upon the person for whom, but upon the reason for which, he votes. Loyalty to the country's expectation of Greater New York is at stake in the attitude of civic agencies toward government. Whether it wants it or not, for good or for evil, every country's metropolis, just because of its bigness, exercises an influence upon the rest of the country. If cooperative citizen criticism of government breaks down in New York City, it makes it harder for every other locality to have cooperative citizen criti- cism. More strikingly true is it that if cooperative criticism is alive in New York City, it becomes contagious through all parts of the country, as proved true for ten years prior to Fusion's election. How leaders in civic reform work in several other cities regard New York's opportunity to help or harm is stated in the following extracts from letters just received from men who did not know that we were even planning such a report as Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat in 1917: 1. "The absence of governmental research in New York City since 1913 has made it difficult for the movement to spread as it did in former years. If New York had continued at the old pace, by now there would have been citizen agencies of research in every city in the country." 2. "Since the demise of an active research program in New York, the governmental research idea has al- most sunk into a state of innocuous desuetude. In spite of the fact that the provinces dislike to recognize 82 New York Voting Affects The Natiion in any way the leadership of New York City, yet a good job done in New York in the government field finds followers in the rest of the country." 3. "Successful citizen research in New York would be a continual stimulus to other cities." 4. "We never hear now-a-days of any direct applications of constructive ideas being offered to the city officials in New York City, nor of much-needed publicity to the citizens about their government. If these services were reinstated upon the broad and effective lines followed for some years prior to 1915 the effect upon the entire country would be magnetic." 5. "It makes a great difference to other cities in the country whether New York has a strong government- al research program, for the reason that we are natur- ally inclined to look to the metropolis for inspiration and example. New York City is the place where the greatest amount of harm is done by failure to gather facts, to inform the public about them, and to conduct social laboratory tests; and as a corollary the great- est opportunity for service to our civilization and to mankind is there possible. Research agencies in the interior town gain or lose in prestige and influence in accordance with the extent to which governmental research is conducted on a continual, extensive, thorough basis in New York." 6. "There is no more pressing need in the country at this time than for current, independent, critical com- ment on what government is doing. Such a program in New York would bring to bear on these problems spotlight publicity that would reach the whole country. By all means, let us have it for New York's sake and for the sake of the rest of the country." S3 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat EXHIBIT V Civic Lessons for Future Use by Ins, Outs, Independents, Teachers and Students Wherever and whatever they are, American citizens may learn civic lessons from Fusion reform's auto-collapse in Greater New York from 1914 to 1917. These lessons will help during campaigns, on election day, just after election and all-the-way between elections. Party committees, classes, clubs or individuals wishing further information with respect to the auto-collapse of Fusion reform in Greater New York may secure it by apply- ing to the Institute for Public Service, 1123 Amsterdam Ave., at 115th St., William H. Allen, director. Because different people have different reasons for seek- ing civic lessons, and because the same people have different interests at different times, the civic lessons from Mayor Mitchel's defeat in 1917 are addressed to five different points of view: 1. The party that is in, II. The party that is out, III. Independent, open-to-influence voters, IV. Teachers of citizenship, V. Students and promoters of public service. I. The Party That Is In Power Should Remember 1. It is poor politics to assume that any preventable cause of voters' dissatisfaction will prove of minor consequence at election time. Fusion made the mis- take of believing that the public would forget^ specific grounds for complaint. 2. Because the Ins are always on the defensive any mis- takes they make are fair game for the Outs. Tammany Hall ceased to be the issue when Fusion got control of New York City's government. 3. Voters do not put off liking and disliking until elec- tion time. On the contrary their liking and disliking 84 Civic Lessons for the Ins begin when the administration begins and work full time every day of the administration. Fusion started preventable dislikes in its first weeks which kept growing and losing votes until election. 4. Voters do not change their ideals when they put a new crowd in, but keep right on disliking broken pledges, profiteering, dishonesty, bluffing, evasion and waste wherever these can be proved. All of the hatred which New York voters had earlier felt toward Tam- many swung its hardest against widely published Fusion acts which seemed first cousins to' hated Tam- many acts. Voters may set aside many issues of im- portance because of an overshadowing issue like a 5c. fare in New York City, but will not with an open eye vote for broken pledges, graft, waste or misrepresenta- tion. 5. It is safer — as well as honester — to admit than to evade any mistakes the public is talking about. Fusion platform makers lost votes by advertising unwilling- ness to meet squarely several issues which voters considered of first importance. 6. It is bad politics to mis-state facts if the other side can easily turn to proof of mis-statement. Fusion lost heavily by making" the people feel that advertisers were willing to mis-state. 7. The best way to divert attention from weaknesses is to admit any weaknesses that can be proved, pledge to avoid them in the future, and play up the strong points. The proposed "chamber of delights" which it is said the Hylan administration will exhibit is good tactics if there goes with it a frank admission of whatever "horrors" the work-chamber contains. Fusion might have diverted attention from several of its weak points to its strong points if it had con- fessed the weak ones and promised to correct them or avoid repeating them. A broken pledge is a weak spot that will keep on attracting attention and losing votes until it is frankly admitted, explained so' far as 85 J ( VIC Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat possible and made again with more binding assur- ances that it will be kept. In 1921 the Outs have al- ready begun listing unkept pledges of the Hylan ad- ministration. For Ins to claim that unkept pledges were kept will lose, not win, votes. 8. The Ins' best friends are critics that keep the spot- light on mistakes and their worst enemies are would- be friends that try to cover up mistakes. The present mayor of New York with all but one or two news- papers picking on him is safer than he would have been with all the newspapers applauding him. At the same time, he is more in danger from the papers who support him right or wrong than from papers who criticize him right or wrong. Mayor Mitchel would have been re-elected if his editorial and other friends had criticized him after his first election the way they did after his defeat. 9. The civic ledger has two sides, debits and credits, and each of its sides is distinct in the voter's mind. At election time voters focus attention on strong likes or dislikes. They do not strike a balance. The Dem- ocratic Party's defeat in 1918 and 1920 is a striking illustration. Had voters put likes and dislikes in the balance, achievements and failures, they could hardly have voted the Democratic Party out so over- whelmingly. 10. Voters have a right to take good points for granted and to remember and loud-pedal the evils. Fusion never ought to have allowed evils to accumulate. 11. News has more influence than editorials. Fusion for- got this and kept on fooling itself into the mis-belief that readers of pro-Fusion papers were more influenc- ed by pro-Fusion editorials than by anti-Fusion news. 12. For editorial friends of the Ins to focus attention on editorial comment when this is different from the news which is being given to the public only hurts the Ins. Fusion editors only weakened their cause by urging 86 Civic Lessons for the Ins citizens to disbelieve what their own news coiumns were printing. 13. In most American localities news gets to the public in spite of editorial bias. While the political attitude of the pro-Fusion newspaper management often af- fected" the amount of news unfavorable to Fusion it did not keep the shutters down and the light out. 14. It is a great mistake to under-estimate the strength of opposing papers or to assume that readers of papers which favor are unanimous. Fusion officers, like Tammany officers before them, were fond of saying publicly that they never even read certain apposing papers. Enough readers to swing elections choose their newspapers for other reasons than political bias. 15. Publicity depends upon the truth's getting out rather than upon the number or circulation of the papers which print it. 16. Ins are quite often in because independents have want- ed to vote or keep someone else out, rather than for love of Ins. In New York in 1913 both motives work- ed; the people wanted to keep out the Tammany candidate and wanted to try further the Fusion can- didates. In 1917 voters wanted first of all to vote out Fusion. 17. The school issue always favors the Outs if schools are under-supported. New York's Ins in 1921 cannot get voters excited over Fusion's earlier failure to provide seats if just before election more children are without seats in 1921 than in 1917. 18. Exaggeration, unfairness and mis-statement while sometimes helpful to Outs, are almost certain to hurt the Ins. 19. It is the size and vividness of the public's impres- sion, not the size of a disliked act that determines the importance of the broken or evaded pledge. 20. Minor issues are sometimes the appetizer or opening wedge necessary to make major issues understood. 87 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat 21. Pettiness and hypocrisy are hated by voters more than is profiteering or political grafting on a large scale. 22. Vague statements, unspecific pledges, wordy and in- definite platforms will lose votes for the Ins if the Outs make specific charges and pledges. ' . 23. Minor officers who refuse to be party to the anti-social acts by the main candidates will be carried down in most elections because the public will think of the main candidates. In voting against the Fusion mayor and comptroller voters snowed under Borough President Marks in spite of his own opposition to those same disapproved acts. 24. Voters hold in mind not merely the past but the future and will often continue in power a party whose main acts they thoroughly disapprove because they believe this party safer with all its faults than the party out of power. No arguments about broken pledges or minor wastefulness and incompetence will be effec- tive in New York City in 1921 if the final line-up is Fusion for an 8c. fare and anti-Fusion for a 5c. fare unless new evidence is given that an 8c. fare will be better for the public. 25. Every party that is in needs the help of a non-par- tisan, outside citizen agency that will tell the truth even if it is unpleasant, for this enables the party to reduce its mistakes, to keep its pledges and to render new service. II. The Party TTiat Is Out of Power Should Remember 1. . The weak points of the administration are its own bad record not the former good record of the Outs. 2. The public's dislike for waste, broken pledges, or graft by the Ins will not be weakened by admission that some former candidates of the Outs made mis- takes, but will be weakened by a denial of well-re- membered mistakes. It will only lose votes for the 88 Civic Lessons for the Outs Outs in 1921 if they try to put a halo over their own administration of 1914-1917. If the public is asked to compare Hylan performance with Hylan pledges it will do so, but if it is asked to compare Hylan pledges with Mitchel successes it will only bring back unkept Mitchel pledges and renew the resentment of 1917. 3. The Ins' unkept pledges are good talking points for the Outs so far as it can be proved that pledges have not been kept and could reasonably have been kept in spite of any limiting war time priority rules. 4. Few majorities can be agitated over evidence that a candidate has lacked certain kinds of book education or society manners. Elections are won by voters, not by academic degrees. To try to stir up antagonism to the present mayor by quoting "art artists" will prove a boomerang. It will be just as futile to urge the class or highbrow argument against the present administration as it was to press it in behalf of the Fusion administration. 5. Vague charges, unspecified pledges, wordy and in^ definite platforms are poor tactics for Outs, especially in a municipal campaign where issues are clear. If a' 5c. fare is at stake in 1921 New York voters will not be mesmerized by general talk about either past or future. 6. By admitting mistakes made when last in power the Outs can win large blocks of votes against conditions that the Ins have failed to- correct. Those who voted against the Ins in 1917 because of overcrowded schools, police errors and unsolved West Side plan are far more apt to vote against the present Ins on the same grounds if the Outs do not claim that their own record was perfect. 7. The Outs will only injure their cause if they atttack the Ins for failures which can be shown to be entire- ly or chiefly or even largely due to war conditions and their consequences. The public's sense of fair play is keen. For that very reason it will help the Outs if they catch the Ins dodging behind or pretending war difficulties. 89 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat 8. Revival of issues which caused defeat in earlier elec- tions, will hurt the Outs unless they first remove legitimate objections to* those issues. For example, the New York work-study-play .plan must be shown as a method of freeing not hampering the working man's child before Outs can win votes for it. This means admitting mistakes made in furthering it from 1914 to 1917. 9. Old prejudices against the Ins can best be fanned into flame by specific proof or believable assertion of specific wrong doing or under-doing. "Tammany" does not damn anything in New York after the pop- ular conceptions of Mayor Gaynor and Governor Al Smith. The foremost present Ins in New York are not Tammany men. ''Oust Tammany" will prove a child's slogan in 1921 unless specific evils are cited of luridness and size which will revive old pictures of Tammany at its worst. 10. The leaders and backers of Outs are fair game for criticism. It will hurt any reform co»mmittee to put i t in charge of persons who have pecuniary interests at stake in an election or who are widely suspected of being influenced by those who have such interests. In New York an undemocratically organized reform committee will be a source of weakness in 1921. Can- didates, managers or backers who in 1917 defended the mistakes of the Mitchel administration will Avin confidence in 1921 only by first confessing the earlier mistakes and promising not to repeat them. 11. It is secrecy not size of campaign disbursements that threatens the Outs. The slushiness of the 1917 Slush Fund was due not to its hugeness but to its uses and to the secrecy of its sources and uses. It would be very unfair to reform causes if public senti- ment or law were to prevent large campaign funds being given and spent in the open. The sources of its moral backing hurt Fusion more in 1917 than the sources of its financial backing. Had $65 paid to a preacher been reported as ''rent of hall and cab hire" 90 Civic Lessons for the Outs both law and decency would have been just as clearly- violated as when $6500 paid to a preacher was charged to rent of hall and cab hire. 12. Faked non-partisanship is seldom stronger than avow- ed partisanship. If Fusion is to be actually a combine for giving the Republican party control in New York it will be weaker in 1921 than a straight Republican fight. 13. The campaigning period is too short for citizens or even political parties as now organized to get facts unless citizen agencies have been busy getting and publishing them between elections and getting public officials to find and publish them. Fusion is at a great disadvantage in New York in 1921 because it has failed during the last four years to get and to give the pubHc impartial facts and to help city officers use them. 14. So far as Outs are non-partisan an absolutely open warfare will pay best. Side shows, faked revolts among the Ins, "smart" tactics and "trick publicity" may occasionally help political parties but almost always hurt reformers and reform. III. Independent Voters Should Remember 1. It is independents or open-to-influence party members who swing elections. The municipalities where nom- ination means election are few. 2. It is while they are undecided that independents have influence. Fusion's distribution di patronage in 1914 was due to pre-election promises not to post-election gratitude. The public to whom non-political, non- partisan appointments were promised was not as good a collector as were politicians to whom positions were, promised; or the public was satisfied with a less spe- cific pledge than was given the politicians. The in- dependent voter should make his terms with candi- dates before election, in the open, and specifically. 91 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchel's Defeat 3. Independents should be on the lookout for party managers who think they can "deliver" voters and that voters will forget preventable mistakes, — and vote the other way. 4. Few elected officers will keep their pledges and faith- fully represent the public unless unofficial civic agen- cies insist upon truth finding and truth telling be- tween elections. It is only by between-election attention that citizens can be sure that through the play of personalities and parties at election time the public will keep on benefiting no matter who is elec- ted. 5. Every city needs a continuing inspection or audit of operation results. If this cannot be secured by civic agencies alone, the charter should provide for agen- cies to be named by the city comptroller with power and duty to inspect administrative departments and to report gains made and corrections needed to the public. 6. Only by non-partisanship and independence of criticism can civic agencies earn the respect of officials which is the basis for cooperation with officials. One night in 1913, a Bureau of Municipal Research director, wrote to one of his trustees that the last two things he had done were to draft a tentative outline of a speech to be made by the chairman of the Fusion or anti-Tam- many mass meeting that was to open the campaign, and to draft a tentative outline of a platform and program for a Tammany candidate. Both sides knew that this agency was willing to render that service to both sides and would attempt to interest both in a pro- gram which would benefit all the people. 7. The vast majority of voters will not vote against their ideals or without using ideals. 8. Independents cannot afford to use their votes as re- wards for keeping pledges. Why not tip our grocer for giving us correct weights? Why should we vote for a public officer because he kept a pledge except as 92 Civic Lessons for Independent Voters the keeping of old pledges carries assurance that new pledges will be kept? The only reward which officers deserve for keeping pledges is protection from being successfully misrepresented by claims that they have not kept pledges. 9. Independents gain and hold influence by keeping a double entry memory of promises and performances and by exacting specific pledges for the future. To forget or condone preventable mistakes is to victimize independents and public. Keep asking *'For instance," "Please specify," "Will you do this?" Politicians have greatest respect for the voter who thinks double entry with debits and credits clearly listed and neither erased. 10. Causes can better afford to admit that their leaders made mistakes than to sponsor those mistakes. Friends of reform who deny or hide reformers' mis- takes do more harm than outspoken enemies can do. IV. Suggestions for Teachers of Citizenship 1. Look for applications to yourself as individual voter and teacher in the lessons for Outs, Ins, and Indepen- dents. 2. Before your classes refuse to take a party position. 3. Interest students in the adventure and exhilaration of suspending judgment until assertions are traced back to incontrovertible facts or statements. 4. Interest classes in the tactics of campaigning within and upon the truth. 5. Refuse to accept statements for or against any party or any policy that are not based upon concrete, prov- able facts. 6. Help students feel for the dramatic opportunity which Fusion reform had, used, lost, and may have again in New York. 93 Civic Lessons from Mayor Mitchells Defeat 7. Be sure that every student sees that where informa- tion about official acts and community needs is con- stantly given to the public, the public is bound to w^in better and better government, no matter which party or candidate wins or loses elections. 8. Let no child leave your class who does not see that his loyalty to American ideals is at stake not only in the way he votes but in the way he seeks and uses in- formation about government. 9. Show why voters in the largest city of a county, a state, or a nation are under special obligation to work for socially minded and competent government. 10. Have enough discussion, oral and written, prepared and extempore, to bring to light every student who thinks "All's fair in politics" or who believes that it is not safe to tell the public the whole truth or to ad- mit mistakes to the public. 11. Show without fail how important a part of each citizen's life work is his membership in volunteer civic organizations, and how vital it is to democracy that such agencies shall not sign false oT ill considered statements or otherwise permit themselves to be used to assert untruth, to deny or evade truth, to suppress discussion or to work against the public interests. 12. Use current home town problems to illustrate mis- takes which civic agencies or public officers are apt to make in dealing with the whole public. V. Lessons for Students and Promoters of Public Service 1. The highest goal for reformers is public understanding of official acts and community needs, and is not win- ning elections or securing temporary legislative gains. 2. "No matter who's elected" is the only sound slogan for the civic worker. 94 Civic Lessons for Students and Promoters 3. The friendliest thing the civic worker can do for a personal or party friend in office is to tell that friend first, and then the whole public, the truth about official acts gone wrong and community needs not met. 4. "The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth" is infinitely safer than "As much of the truth as it is safe to let the public know." 5. Newspapers need public confidence in themselves more than fact-based reform needs newspapers. 6. Mitchel was killed politically by his friends, not by his enemies. 7 . Fusion reform was killed by its friends, not by its enemies. 8. Civic agencies in New York weakened themselves tre- mendously by withholding from the public important facts about reform's mistakes. 9. Civic agencies lost both abiliity and desire to do' big work when they took public officers as their clients instead of the general public. 10. Progress comes from remembering and punishing mis- takes of officers and parties, plus taking benefits and kept pledges for granted, plus rewarding past benefits and kept pledges by a greater measure of confidence in future pledges, plus exacting specific pledges for the future. 11. Once having started to have no secrets from the public, even political opponents will applaud and help maintain that policy. 12. Municipal progress throughout our country requires that civic leaders show their publics that under Mayor Mitchel reform was believed to have gone back on New York and that New York did not goi back on reform. 95 Educational Studies axd Reports BY Institute fob Public Service Include Self-surveying and teacher recruiting Who's Who and Why in After War Education Rainbow Promises of Progress in Education Teacher Benefits from School Surveys' Self Surveys by Teacher Training Schools Self Surveys by Colleges and Universities Record Aids in College Management Pick Your Prof or Getting By in College Personalitycullture by College Faculties War civics Liberty the Giant Killer Stories of Americans in the World War War Pact Tests Civic Lessons from War Pacts Unconditional Surrender Civic Teachable Pacts about Bolshevism and Sovdetism Universal Trainig for American Citizenship Field studies High Spots in New York Schools Budget studies for Virginia Reorganization studies fOr Ohio Reconstruction studies for Michigan Latin America How Latin America Affects our Daily Life How We Affect Latin America's Daily Life Teacher recruiting bulletins Barbara Tries Teaching The Rewards of Teaching Teachers Salaries a National Peril Why not Teach? Why I Like Teaching Career Boundaries for American Girls Boys, After High School What? University Presidents on Teacher Recruiting Cartoonist Ireland on Cartooning Teachers Colossal Growth of Higher Education Copyright, 1921 by Institute for Public Service, New York City 96 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, BERKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned on time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. Books not in demand may be renewed if application is made before expiration of loan period. JUL l^i ■ ^Ai""60PC REC'D Lu • OCT 25 1988 FEB 6^9^5 11 ^ STACKS AUG ^ IR STACKS DEC 7 'N STACKS OKll ^ [RK, era. APR "> 'ts INTERLIBRAR viom FEB 04 1992 UNIV.OFCAL F.,BERK i5m.l2,'24 YB 08839 4G 1901 J'5/230 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY .v.?5-'-' ^ r ^' ?,: Vt AMERICA'S WOMEN VOTERS QCAN LEARN INVALUABLE LESSONS FROM THE AUTO-COLLAPSE OF FUSION REFORM IN NSW YORK CITY FROM 1914 TO 1917 qW I L L R E D E E 1,1 THE PROMISE OF "VOTES FOR WOMEN" ONLY SO FAR* AS THEY SECURE FOR PUBLICS AND ELECTED OFFICERS THE BENEFIT OF CONTINU- OUS BETWEEN - ELECTION PUBLICITY FOR OFFICIAL ACTS AND COMMUNITY NEEDS NOT-YET-MET