General Washington’s Negro Body Servant

Mark Twain

Galaxy/February, 1868

The stirring part of this celebrated colored man’s life properly began with his death–that is to say, the notable features of his biography began with the first time he died. He had been little heard of up to that time, but since then we have never ceased to hear of him; we have never ceased to hear of him at stated, unfailing intervals. His was a most remarkable career, and I have thought that its history would make a valuable addition to our biographical literature. Therefore, I have carefully collated the materials for such a work, from authentic sources, and here present them to the public. I have rigidly excluded from these pages everything of a doubtful character, with the object in view of introducing my work into the schools for the instruction of the youth of my country.

The name of the famous body-servant of General Washington was George. After serving his illustrious master faithfully for half a century, and enjoying throughout his long term his high regard and confidence, it became his sorrowful duty at last to lay that beloved master to rest in his peaceful grave by the Potomac. Ten years afterward—in 1809—full of years and honors, he died himself, mourned by all who knew him. The Boston GAZETTE of that date thus refers to the event:

George, the favorite body-servant of the lamented Washington, died in Richmond, Va., last Tuesday, at the ripe age of 95 years. His intellect was unimpaired, and his memory tenacious, up to within a few minutes of his decease. He was present at the second installation of Washington as President, and also at his funeral, and distinctly remembered all the prominent incidents connected with those noted events.

From this period we hear no more of the favorite body-servant of General Washington until May, 1825, at which time he died again. A Philadelphia paper thus speaks of the sad occurrence:

At Macon, Ga., last week, a colored man named George, who was the favorite body-servant of General Washington, died at the advanced age of 95 years. Up to within a few hours of his dissolution he was in full possession of all his faculties, and could distinctly recollect the second installation of Washington, his death and burial, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battle of Trenton, the griefs and hardships of Valley Forge, etc. Deceased was followed to the grave by the entire population of Macon.

On the Fourth of July, 1830, and also of 1834 and 1836, the subject of this sketch was exhibited in great state upon the rostrum of the orator of the day, and in November of 1840 he died again. The St. Louis REPUBLICAN of the 25th of that month spoke as follows:

ANOTHER RELIC OF THE REVOLUTION GONE.

George, once the favorite body-servant of General Washington, died yesterday at the house of Mr. John Leavenworth in this city, at the venerable age of 95 years. He was in the full possession of his faculties up to the hour of his death, and distinctly recollected the first and second installations and death of President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, the sufferings of the patriot army at Valley Forge, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, the speech of Patrick Henry in the Virginia House of Delegates, and many other old-time reminiscences of stirring interest. Few white men die lamented as was this aged negro. The funeral was very largely attended.

During the next ten or eleven years the subject of this sketch appeared at intervals at Fourth-of-July celebrations in various parts of the country, and was exhibited upon the rostrum with flattering success. But in the fall of 1855 he died again. The California papers thus speak of the event:

ANOTHER OLD HERO GONE

Died, at Dutch Flat, on the 7th of March, George (once the confidential body-servant of General Washington), at the great age of 95 years. His memory, which did not fail him till the last, was a wonderful storehouse of interesting reminiscences. He could distinctly recollect the first and second installations and death of President Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, and Braddock’s defeat. George was greatly respected in Dutch Flat, and it is estimated that there were 10,000 people present at his funeral.

The last time the subject of this sketch died was in June, 1864; and until we learn the contrary, it is just to presume that he died permanently this time. The Michigan papers thus refer to the sorrowful event:

ANOTHER CHERISHED REMNANT OF THE REVOLUTION GONE

George, a colored man, and once the favorite body-servant of George Washington, died in Detroit last week, at the patriarchal age of 95 years. To the moment of his death his intellect was unclouded, and he could distinctly remember the first and second installations and death of Washington, the surrender of Cornwallis, the battles of Trenton and Monmouth, and Bunker Hill, the proclamation of the Declaration of Independence, Braddock’s defeat, the throwing over of the tea in Boston harbor, and the landing of the Pilgrims. He died greatly respected, and was followed to the grave by a vast concourse of people.

The faithful old servant is gone! We shall never see him more until he turns up again. He has closed his long and splendid career of dissolution, for the present, and sleeps peacefully, as only they sleep who have earned their rest. He was in all respects a remarkable man. He held his age better than any celebrity that has figured in history; and the longer he lived the stronger and longer his memory grew. If he lives to die again, he will distinctly recollect the discovery of America.

The above resume of his biography I believe to be substantially correct, although it is possible that he may have died once or twice in obscure places where the event failed of newspaper notoriety. One fault I find in all the notices of his death I have quoted, and this ought to be correct. In them he uniformly and impartially died at the age of 95. This could not have been. He might have done that once, or maybe twice, but he could not have continued it indefinitely. Allowing that when he first died, he died at the age of 95, he was 151 years old when he died last, in 1864. But his age did not keep pace with his recollections. When he died the last time, he distinctly remembered the landing of the Pilgrims, which took place in 1620. He must have been about twenty years old when he witnessed that event, wherefore it is safe to assert that the body-servant of General Washington was in the neighborhood of two hundred and sixty or seventy years old when he departed this life finally.

Having waited a proper length of time, to see if the subject of his sketch had gone from us reliably and irrevocably, I now publish his biography with confidence, and respectfully offer it to a mourning nation.

P.S.–I see by the papers that this infamous old fraud has just died again, in Arkansas. This makes six times that he is known to have died, and always in a new place. The death of Washington’s body-servant has ceased to be a novelty; its charm is gone; the people are tired of it; let it cease. This well-meaning but misguided negro has not put six different communities to the expense of burying him in state, and has swindled tens of thousands of people into following him to the grave under the delusion that a select and peculiar distinction was being conferred upon them. Let him stay buried for good now; and let that newspaper suffer the severest censure that shall ever, in all the future time, publish to the world that General Washington’s favorite colored body-servant has died again.

Johann Strauss Centenery

H.L. Mencken

The Morning Union/December 13, 1925

The centenary of Johann Strauss the Younger, which fell on Oct. 25, seems to have passed almost unnoticed in the Republic. In Berlin and in Vienna it was celebrated with imposing ceremonies, and all the German radio stations put “Wein, Weib und Gesang” and “Rosen aus dem Suden” on the air. Why wasn’t it done in the United States? Was the pestilence of jazz to blame—or the scarcity of sound beer? I incline to answer No. 2. Any music is difficult on well water, but the waltz is a sheer impossibility. “Man Lebt Nur Einmal” would be as dreadful in a dry town as a Sousa march at a hanging.

For the essence of a Viennese waltz, and especially of a Strauss waltz, is merriment, good humor, happiness, Gemutlichkeit. It reflects brilliantly the spirits of a people who are eternally gay, war or no war. Sad music, to be sure, has been written in Vienna—but chiefly by foreigners: Haydn, who was a Croat; Beethoven, whose pap had been a sour Rhine wine; Brahms, who came from the bleak Baltic coast. I come up on Schubert—but all rules go to pot when he appears. As for Strauss, he was a 100 per cent Viennese, and could no more be sad than he could be indignant. The waltz wandered into the minor keys in Paris, in the hands of the Alsatian Jew, Waldteufel. At home old Johann kept it in golden major, and so did young Johann after him.

The two, taking it from Schubert and the folk, lifted it to imperial splendor. No other dance form, not even minuet, has ever brought forth more gaudy and lovely music. And none other has preserved so perfectly the divine beeriness of the peasant dance. The best of for the Strauss waltzes were written in the most stilted and ceremonious court in Europe. But in every one of them, great and little, there remains the beery, expansive flavor of the village green. Even the stately “Kaiser” waltz, with its preliminary heel clicks and saber rattling, is soon swinging jocosely to the measures of the rustic Springtanz.

II.

It is a curious, melancholy and gruesome fact that Johann Strauss II. was brought up to the banking business. His father planned that he should be what in our time is called a bond salesman. What asses fathers are! This one was himself a great master of the waltz, and yet he believed he could save all three of his sons from its lascivious allurements. Young Johann was dedicated to investment banking, Josef to architecture, and Eduard, the baby, to the law. The old man, died on Sept. 25, 1849. On Sept. 26 all three were writing waltzes.

Johann was the best of the trio. In fact, he was the best composer who ever wrote waltzes for dancing, and one of the really first-rate musicians of his time. He took the waltz as his father left it, and gradually built it up into a form almost symphonic. He developed the introduction, which had been little more than an opening fanfare, into a complex and beautiful thing, and he elaborated the coda until it began to demand every resource of the composer’s art, including even counterpoint. And into the waltz itself he threw such superb melodic riches, so vast a rhythmic inventiveness and so adept as mastery of instrumentation that the effect was often downright overwhelming.

The Strauss waltzes, indeed, have not been sufficiently studied. That other Strauss, Richard, knows what is them, you may be sure, for the first act of “Der Rosenkavalier” proves it, but the musical pendants and pedagogues have kept aloof. What they miss! Consider, for example, the astonishing skill with which Johann manages his procession of keys—the inevitable air which he always gets into his choice. And the immense ingenuity with which he gets variety into his bass—so monotonous in Waldteufel, and even in Lanner and Gung’l. And the endless resourcefulness which marks his orchestration—never formal and obvious for an instant, but always with some new quirk in it, some fresh and charming beauty. And his codas—how simple they are, and yet how ravishing!

III.

Johann certainly did not blush unseen. He was an important figure at the Austrian court, and when he passed necks were craned as if at an ambassador. He travelled widely and was received with honor everywhere. His waltzes swept the world. His operettas, following them, offered formidable rivalry to the pieces of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was plastered with orders like an Otto Kahn. He took in, in his time, a great deal of money, and left his wives well provided for.

More, he had the respect and a little of the envy of all his musical contemporaries. Wagner delighted in his waltzes, and so did Brahms. Brahms once gave the score of one of them to a fair admirer with the inscription, “Leider nicht von Johannes Brahms” –unfortunately not by Johannes Brahms. Coming from so reserved a man, it was a compliment indeed; nor was it mere politeness, for Brahms had written plenty of waltzes himself, and knew that it was not so easy as it looked. The lesser fish followed the whales. There was never any clash of debate over Strauss. It was unanimously agreed that he was first-rate. His field was not wide, but within that field he was the unchallenged master.

He became, in the end, the dean of a sort of college of waltz writers, centering at Vienna. The waltz, as he had brought it up to perfection, became the standard ballroom dance of the civilized world, and though it had to meet rivals constantly, it held its own for two generations, and even now, despite the murrain of jazz, it threatens to come back once more. Disciples of great skill began to appear in the Straussian wake—Ziehrer, with the beautiful “Weaner Mad’e, “ Linoke with “Ach, Fruhiling, Wie Bist Du So Schon,” and many another. But old Johann never lost his primacy. Down to the day of his death in 1899 he was primus inter omnes. Vienna wept oceans of beery tears into his grave. A great Viennese—perhaps the ultimate flower of old Vienna—was gone.

IV.

Strauss wrote nearly 400 waltzes, with not a bad one among them. He wrote, too, a multitude of gallops, polkas, schottisches, mazurkas, and other such dances of his time. His “Pizzicato Polka,” when I was a boy, was banged out upon every piano in Christendom. He also wrote ballets, marches, and even a couple of tone poems for orchestra. But next to his waltzes his most important compositions were his operettas. The jazz bilge has engulfed them, but how pleasantly they remain in memory: “Die Fledermaus,” “The Gipsy Baron,” “The Merry War,” “The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief.” They began in 1871 and ran on until 1899, a whole generation.

Into these operettas the man threw all of his genius, and so they remain unrivalled to this day. For example, “The Queen’s Lace Handkerchief.” All that remains of it now is the waltz, “Roses from the South”—and what a waltz!—but it is really a work of immense merit—dramatic, full of humor, and stuffed to the brim with enchanting tunes. And so with “Die Feldermaus,” which also survives mainly as a waltz: the imcomparable “Du and Du.” And so, again, with “The Gipsy Baron.” It was the father of “The Merry Widow”—by a mother, I fear, of an inferior house. Lehar, Leo Fall, Oscar Strauss—they were all the pupils of old Johann. And Sullivan, too, learned something from him. And Victor Herbert learned a great deal more.

Now he is dead a hundred years. But surely not forgotten, despite shadows over the moon here and there. The man who makes lovely tunes has the laugh on Father Time. Oblivion never quite fetches him. He goes out of fashion now and then, but he always returns. There was a time when even Bach seemed to be forgotten. What a joke! Bach will last as long as human beings are born with ears; in the end, perhaps, he will be all that the world remembers of the 18^th century. And Strauss, I suspect, will keep on bobbing up in the memory of the race so long as men have legs and can leap in 3-4 time—at all events, so long as there is good malt liquor anywhere on earth. Prohibition, it is conceivable, may eventually kill him; in a dry universe he would be contra bonosmores. But jazz can do him no more permanent damage than a dog visiting his grave.

Looming War Clouds

H.L. Mencken

Springfield News-Leader/February 24, 1929

Those who read the newspapers attentively have no doubt noticed of late a great efflorescence of articles on the possibility (or probability) of war between the United States and England. Such articles began to appear in England three or four years ago, usually in the form of violent denunciations of the Yankee Shylock. For a while there was no response from this side, but now the matter begins to be discussed very widely, here as well as in England, and some of the Liberal weeklies have got into a powerful sweat about it, and are demanding that all good men come to the aid of peace.

How much sense is there in this pother? In my judgment, not much. That the English dislike us intensely. I grant you freely, and that they dream of a day when they’ll be able to pull us down, loot our strongbox and regain their old primacy in the world—that may be granted also. But they are a realistic people, and the plain facts do not escape them. Those facts are numerous and complicated, but they may be precipitated into the bald proposition that beating the United States, at the present writing, is a sheer physical impossibility. It simply can’t be done.

That England couldn’t do it alone is admitted by everyone, including even Englishmen. That she couldn’t do it with the usual allies is less obvious, but none the less true. Two things make it so. One is the extraordinary capacity of the United States for long and desperate defense—the vast advantage that lies in our peculiar geographical situation and our economic invulnerability. The other lies in our accompanying capacity to inflict endless and irreparable injury upon British trade and the whole British imperial system. Within six months after such a war started England would suffer greater loss than she suffered in the World War, and most of it would be loss that she could never make up.

As everyone knows, the English never tackle a first-rate foe without the aid of great hordes of allies. Their skill at rounding up such allies, in fact, is two-thirds of their skill at war, and they have seldom, in history, launched their actual attack without making sure of odds of at least two to one in their favor. Where would they get help today? From Japan? Perhaps. But where in Europe?

Where would the cannon-fodder come from for a long war? And where the needed aid, in ships and men, on the sea?

It seems to me highly unlikely that they’re able to do any effective business on the continent. The French, true enough, now incline to them more or less, but the instant the French took any chances the Italians would probably be upon them, not to mention the Germans. It is almost impossible to imagine the Germans helping France and England against the United States. They would have too much to gain by remaining out of it—too much to gain, in the wiping out of their war debt, after France and England had been beaten. The United States could well afford to offer them anything they wanted in that direction. What’s more, it could undoubtedly deliver what it promised—if they stayed out, and so kept France nervous and ineffective.

The Russians would keep out of an Anglo-American war, if only because they couldn’t make up their minds which side they hated the more. Moreover, their help would be of little value if they came in; even in the World War, once the battle of Tannenberg had been fought, they were a liability to the allies rather than an asset. This leaves the smaller countries—Holland, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Belgium. All of them save one stuck to neutrality in the World War, and that one was horribly mauled. Is it possible to imagine them coming into a war that might last twice as long, and be five times as costly? I think not.

III

There remains Japan. That godless and immoral country has long served as a bugaboo for timid Americans, but there is every reason for believing that its prowess has been vastly overrated. Only twice in their history have the Japs ever faced civilized foes, and both times they made frightful exhibitions of themselves, though in each case they won. The first time was in 1904, when the enemy was Russia. The Russians were 7,000 miles from their base, and had only a single-track railroad to bring up supplies; the Japs were but a few hundred miles from their base and had the open sea behind them. Yet it took them more than a year to capture Mukden, and when the job was done at last they were so exhausted that the ensuing peace treaty ran in Russia’s favor almost as much as it ran in their own.

Their second venture against white men was in the autumn of 1914. The job before them then was to capture Tsingtao, on the Chinese coast. It was defended on the sea by a few small boats, most of them converted merchantmen, and on the land by a few thousand men, mainly middle-aged territorials. Against this puny force of Germans the Japs brought up a fleet of cruisers and battleships and a whole division. Yet it took them three months to take the town, and they did so even then only because the Germans had run out of ammunition.

The siege was marked by almost unbelievable grotesquerie. Half a dozen Germans put out of from the port in a small motor boat, fastened a mine to a pile of Japanese cruisers, and blew it up. On the third side small parties beat off the attack of whole Japanese regiments. When, in the end, the town was taken by assault, the Jap soldiers were so exhausted that they fell in their tracks, and many of them had to be carried to hospitals by their defeated enemies. The march-in was marked by a painful episode. A small force of British that had come up refused to salute the Japanese flag! No wonder!

The prowess of the Japs has been persistently exaggerated by American advocates of a large navy. It has served to scare silly opponents, and so get them what they wanted. But it has very little reality. There is not the slightest reason for believing that a Japanese fleet, meeting an American fleet of anything like its strength, could beat it. Or that the Japs, beating a weaker fleet, could land and maintain an army on the Pacific coast.

True enough, it might be easy for them, joining England against us, to seize the Philippines. But could they hold them? It seems highly improbable in the long run we’d be able to dislodge them, and to punish them dreadfully in the process. Moreover, we’d have complete control of Canada three months after the war started, and there would be no way for England to run us out. In the end we could take the Philippines back as a very small return for getting out, or for getting out of one province, or even one city.

For all these reasons—and there are many more—it seems to me highly improbable that the English are seriously contemplating making war on the United States. The French, in their position, might think of it, but the French are full of folly, but the English are very cautions and calculating, especially in war. When the odds are plainly against them, they are for peace. It would be impossible to imagine them taking such chances as the Germans took in 1914. Such gambling in the grand manner is simply not in their nature. They play close to the board.

Why, then, do they rattle the sword now? Why are their papers full of dark hints? Mainly, I believe, because they know how easy it is to scare Americans. They want to keep their control of the sea. They want to make it appear that challenging that control will be very dangerous, not to say fatal. So they talk lugubriously of the war ahead, and their dupes and sycophants on this side of the ocean swallow it all with sad faces. Their aim is to make it appear that any step the United States may take for its proper defense is an act of wanton aggression, almost an act of open war. That aim is beautifully supported by the pacifists and the Anglomaniacs —not infrequently the same persons.

So far, congress refuses to succumb. It has passed the cruiser bill. If it continues along that line there will be no easy Anglo-American war. There will never be such a war so long as the United States can put up a dangerous resistance. It will come when we are weak, and not before.

Clergymen as Garbage Collectors

Ray Stannard Baker

Outlook/August 17, 1895

Following the example of Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, who has a Garbage Inspector’s genius for originating practical reforms and putting them into operation without any preliminary fuss and feathers, three Chicago clergymen have been recently appointed garbage inspectors. As is well known, Miss Addams applied last spring for the position of garbage contractor in the Nineteenth Ward, where Hull House is located. When she was unsuccessful she immediately sought and secured the appointment of garbage inspector. Following closely in her footsteps, the Rev. Herman F. Hegner, who is at the head of another social settlement, was given the corresponding office in the Seventeenth Ward, one of the worst in the city. Then the Rev. D. S. Kennedy, also engaged in settlement work, received the appointment of inspector in the Thirty-Fourth Ward, and the Rev. C. W. Barnes, pastor of the Sedgwick Street Congregational Church and formerly connected with Hull House, was given the place in the Thirty-Second Ward. They have taken hold of the work with so much energy that the wards under their care are now among the cleanest in the city. In their positions as inspectors they have general supervision of the cleaning work in their territory, and if it is not thoroughly done by the contractor they have the power of calling in additional men and teams and charging the expense to the contractors’ accounts. They make daily reports to the city superintendent of streets and alleys, and investigate all cases of complaint. This involves continual watchfulness and a thorough acquaintance with every nook and every alley of the ward. The contractors have been held so closely to their agreements that most of them are losing money where formerly, under a lax administration, their income was large. The new inspectors have not only been doing the routine work, but, with the full sympathy of the superintendent of streets and alleys, they are advocating the cleaning of alleys every day instead of three times a week, the substitution of metallic garbage boxes for the present filth-soaked wooden ones, and other needful improvements. This new departure not only testifies to the increasing disposition of clergymen to do the drudgery necessary to secure better municipal conditions, but also to the strength of the reform sentiment in the Chicago city government. The position of garbage inspector carries with it a salary of $1,000, which under former conditions would have been used to pay for political services past and future.

The Civic Federation of Chicago

Ray Stannard Baker

Outlook/July 27, 1895

Four race-tracks with pool-selling and other gambling adjuncts were in full operation in or near Chicago, and thousands of persons made a business of “playing the races.”

The city government was given over completely to the spoils system, and the payrolls contained, not only the names of known thieves, gamblers, and saloon-keepers, but, as recent investigations have shown, there were many ward politicians and “heelers” who illegally drew pay from the city. Some of them have been recently indicted. A number of notoriously corrupt men were on the police force, and the City Council was busy selling franchises.

Most of the streets were wretchedly filthy, especially in the outlying portions of the city. And yet an immense amount of money was expended by the department having in charge the work of cleaning them.

Massage “parlors,” with women attendants, and other places of unmentionable bestiality were running unrestricted.

The Health Department was so lax in its inspections that many of the smaller bakeries and milke depots were allowed to do business in foul basements.

At the November elections of last year there were riots in many precincts; voters were illegally arrested; one man was killed and about a hundred injured, mostly by gangs of city employees assisted by the semi-criminal elements. The police did not raise a hand to prevent disturbances.

A general demoralization prevailed among the charity organizations of the city. The various societies overlapped one another in their work, and there were constant jealous bickerings. Thus it happened that some of the needy were not helped at all, and some received more than their share. Doubtless, this condition of affairs prevented many persons from contributing as much as they otherwise would.

It was when these civil and social abuses were at their worst that the Civic Federation, which had been perfecting and strengthening the organization for months, began its crusades. Its accomplishments since then have been simply wonderful.

It is now safe to say, for the first time in many years, that there is not a gambling-house in the city of Chicago. Even “boarding-house games” have been raided and the players fined. This result was only attained by a desperate fight in which, not only the gamblers, but the police force, the City Hall administration, and the justices of the peace were arrayed against the Civic Federation. After the Committee on Gambling, headed by the Rev. W. R. Clarke, had accumulated all the evidence through special detectives, it had to have its own special constables and deputy sheriffs appointed, and it kept up the raiding, week after week, pursuing the gamblers from place to place until they finally gave up. In the course of the campaign more than three hundred of them were arrested, and much property was destroyed. All of this work was enthusiastically indorsed in several great mass-meetings of citizens.

The four race-tracks were all closed this spring after a lively conflict, and for some time there was not an open race-track nearer to Chicago than St. Louis. Recently, however, the horsemen have opened a course in Milwaukee. A strong Federation lobby in the Legislature, last winter, defeated the gamblers’ lobby and prevented the passage of a law legalizing pool-selling.

The spoils system in the city government and in the government of Cook County has given place to a business-like civil service. The bill providing for the merit system in making appointments was forced through the Legislature by the Political Committee of the Civic Federation, aided by delegations from fifteen of the principal clubs of the city, and the question was then submitted to the people at the April election and carried by more than 50,000 majority. The Federation had watchers at many of the worst precincts, and not only were riots prevented, but such perfect order prevailed that there were complaints from only three precincts out of 945. Doubtless, this peaceful condition of affairs was due largely to the fact that the sum of $50,000 was raised by popular subscription for the punishment of the rioters at the previous election. Seventy-seven men were indicted through the efforts of the Civic Federation attorneys; one was sent to the penitentiary, and many others pleaded guilty and were fined. This had a salutary effect in preventing disturbances at the polls in the April election.

Previous to this election, the Civic Federation conducted a vigorous campaign for reform, held many meetings, and billed the city with posters; it succeeded so well that number of the most notorious boodlers in the City Council were retired, and a Mayor was elected who has so far evinced a determination to further the best interests of the city. Investigations of the bakeries, the milk depots, and the meat supply were made by a committee, and the Health Department was compelled to abate some of the worst abuses.

The downtown district is cleaner today than it ever was before in the history of the city. Not long ago the Civic Federation organized a street-cleaning brigade, consisting of about seventy-five men and ten wagons. The men were all uniformed and kept at work constantly in a small district in the heart of the city. Heavy iron receptacles for waste paper were also placed on the lamp-posts—all at the expense of the Civic Federation. The object of this movement is to show that the streets can be kept clean, if the work is properly conducted. Much popular enthusiasm in the enterprise has been awakened, and some of the foremost men and women in the city are interested in seeing it succeed. Outside of the business portions of the city, the Civic Federation employs a small army of inspectors to watch the streets and alleys, and insists that the city contractors do their duty. In the Nineteenth Ward, one of the foulest in the city, Miss Jane Addams, of Hull House, has recently been appointed City Inspector; and she has already worked a marvelous transformation in the condition of the streets and alleys in her territory. It is worthy of note that, since these things have come to pass, several contractors have thrown up their contracts in disgust. When they were forced to do what they agreed to do, there was no money in the business. The Civic Federation works in complete harmony with the Street-cleaning Department of the city. Recently 200,000 copies of the abbreviated sanitary laws of Illinois have been printed, and they will be placed in every kitchen in the city for the enlightenment of careless servant-girls.

Many massage “parlors” have been raided and closed up, and several dealers in vile books have been arrested and prosecuted. Other places of shame have been driven out of business.

The charity work of the city has been completely reorganized, and the various societies united in a bureau conducted by the Civic Federation. Comprehensive lists of the needy families of the city are kep, with the name of the society which attends to each, thus preventing duplicating and the conflicts which are its necessary attendant. This bureau was the outgrowth of the extensive work of relief carried on by the philanthropic department of the Civic Federation, when the army of the unemployed besieged Chicago in the winter of 1893-94. About $135,000 was raised and expended at that time.

The Civic Federation held a Congress of Arbitration and Conciliation last November. Miss Jane Addams was the Secretary. Some of the ablest thinkers and writers of the day took part. A bill, similar in provisions to the Massachusetts law, was prepared and presented to the legislature. It was shelved after passing one House, but the Governor insists on its reconsideration at a special meeting of the Legislature recently called.

The Civic Federation was able to accomplish these astonishing results in so short a time because it carried with it the power and influence of the entire reform element of the city. Instead of a dozen or more organizations more or less at war with one another, and no one of them strong enough to command the respect and assistance of the citizens at large, there is one commanding center, from which every effort is directed.

The Civic Federation was, in a measure, a spontaneous manifestation of a general desire for better things which had been slowly growing for a long time. Varius things helped to precipitate its organization. Among these, the critical admiration of the city by thousands of visitors during the World’s Fair played an important part. It made the citizens feel the responsibility of making Chicago something more than a great money-making machine. The various congresses, the Parliament of Religions, and later the speeches of the ubiquitous Mr. Stead, of London, all played a part in the work. Mr. Ralph M. Easley, present Secretary of the Civic Federation, had been working for some time on a scheme for a union of reforms and this scheme, slightly modified, was adopted at the mass-meeting in which the organization was born. There can be no doubt, although the present members of the Civic Federation are loth to admit it, that Mr. Stead’s speeches did much toward giving the new enterprise a start. The name “Civic Federation” was a revised form of “Civic Church,” a London organization much lauded by Mr. Stead. A committee of five was appointed in November, 1893; and almost before any one knew it, the organization was complete, and it had behind it the most influential citizens in every walk of life.

It is remarkable that from the start the purpose and extent of the work were clearly conceived. The following is an extract from the minutes of the meeting of November 23, 1893, showing the plan of the organization:

“The object of this organization is the concentration in one potential, non-political, non-sectarian center, all the forces that are now laboring to advance our municipal, philanthropic, industrial, and moral interests, and to accomplish all that is possible towards energizing the public conscience of Chicago.”

The term “clearinghouse for reforms” was frequently used in the early days of the movement. A business judiciousness was determined upon. Only such reforms were to be advocated as would receive the unqualified support of the majority of the good citizens of Chicago, and not too much was to be undertaken at one time. There were those hot-headed reformers who advocated an immediate attack on the saloon and the social evil, but the wiser leaders of the Civic Federation resolved first to try its strength on lesser evils, perfecting its organization and educating the people at the same time. Each department, with its own specialties, had its own work to do, and no positive step could be taken without consulting the General Council.

The Civic Federation is organized on a simple but very effective plan. It consists, first, of the Central Council, made up of one hundred men and women, representing all shades of religious and political belief, organizations as wide apart as Boards of Trade and trades-unions, and all nationalities that go to make up the city. All new members of this Central Council, except the presidents of the Ward Councils, are selected by the Council itself. In each ward there is also a Ward Council, the president of which is a member of the Central Council, and in each precinct there is or will be a Precinct Council, the president of which is a member of the Ward Council. In this way the Civic Federation is distinctly representative. The total number of its members is now about ten thousand, and they are all selected. Some of the Ward Councils have headquarters and paid inspectors of their own. Each Council is divided into six departments—political, municipal, industrial, philanthropic, moral, and educational; and the work of these departments is in charge of separate committees.

All the money used by the organization is raised by popular subscription. Double or triple the amount now used could be secured with the greatest east.

Naturally, one of the first rocks on which the Civic Federation struck, as an organization designed to clean the rascals from the City Hall, was the charge of political favoritism. The “gang” accused its officers of having “mayoralty bees in their bonnets,” but this difficulty was surmounted by taking a rather unique stand on political questions. In the first place, it passed a rule that no persons holding an office of any kind, or running for an office of any kind, should remain a member of the Civic Federation; then it asserted that it was making no attempt to proselyte men to any particular party. It urged the members of each party to attend the caucuses of that party and insist on the nomination of good men to office. It favored a non-partisan city government.

The Civic Federation has only fairly begun its work. The boodle element still dominates in the City Council, and at next spring’s election an attempt will be made to get better aldermen elected. The Philanthropic Department is now engaged in the work of driving beggars from the street and in making extensive investigations of tenement house life and conditions. A committee composed of some of the members of the Moral Department is arranging a conference with the Chief of Police, the matrons of the police stations, and other people who have knowledge of the questions to consider methods and devise plans for abating the social evil. Another committee is investigating public school expenditures and methods. Other committees have other work in hand.

So great has already been the success of the Civic Federation that other Civic Federations have sprung up in a score or more of Western cities, notably Detroit, San Francisco and Kansas City. There is now a plan on foot for establishing a National Federation of Civic Federations, which will have a nation-wide influence.

Police Reform in Chicago

Ray Stannard Baker

The Outlook/January 5, 1895

THE Lexow Committee finished its hearings, at least for the present, last Saturday night, after a week crowded with interest—indeed, altogether too crowded as regards the number and importance of the witnesses to make their examination as thorough as might be desired. Inspector Williams listened to the rehearsal of his brutal and corrupt conduct for many years with a stolidity gained in many previous trials. He made no confessions; brazenly denounced all his accusers (including grand juries, mayors, and citizens) as liars; declined to explain why he had not closed infamous resorts except because they were “fashionable;” admitted that he had in unexplained ways acquired a fortune out of a small salary; admitted that a man interested in a brand of whisky which Williams has been accused of “booming” by his influence on liquor-dealers had given him $6,000 without any apparent cause; claimed ignorance of pretty much everything that as an efficient officer he ought to know; offered no explanation as to the direct charges of bribery brought by Captain Schmittberger and others; and finally retired from the stand to receive the warm congratulations of his friends that he had not said anything which would aid in sending him to jail!

Inspector McLaughlin’s testimony and the impression made by his conduct on the stand were much like those of Williams. Commissioner Martin’s evidence was of little importance, the most significant thing being his admission that appointments and promotions were made mainly through political favoritism. This was confirmed by Superintendent Byrnes, who declared that political jobbery was the curse of the Department and the obstacle against which he had struggled in vain in attempting to enforce discipline and prevent corruption among the captains and inspectors. Mr. Byrnes claimed efficiency for the police in many ways, and declared that the patrolmen were a splendid body of men, who needed only to be well officered to be the best force in the world. He warmly advocated the abolition of the “bi-partisan system.” He frankly admitted that he was worth $350,000, and said that his services in a semi-official capacity to Jay Gould and other rich men had led them to aid him in fortunate investments. Superintendent Byrnes caused a sensation by reading a letter he had sent to Mayor Strong, authorizing the latter to send the Superintendent’s resignation to the Board of Commissioners at any time after the first of the year.

Thus ends the investigation into the facts; it is for the Legislature to say whether it is to be resumed, and to determine upon the best plan of reorganization and reform. That reform and reorganization are necessary is now questioned by none. With the new year a complete system of civil service rules governing the police force of Chicago will go into effect. This reform, emphasized by the public clamor for a police investigation, will, it is hoped, release the department permanently from the domination of political machines. The primary cause for the change was the same that gave birth to the Lexow Committee—an aroused public opinion. The agitation began more than a year ago with the formation of the Civic Federation. All the machinery of reform was in place, and it required but the unrestrained outrages committed under the eyes of the police during the recent election to set it in motion. Public indignation reached a high pitch. Two or three powerful organizations took up the work of prosecution, and the City Council, overwhelmingly Republican, and bitterly opposed to the domination of the Democratic City Hall machine, threatened an investigation. To forestall an attack on the administration, Mayor Hopkins realized that something must be done, and done promptly. On November 19, thirteen days after the election, he appointed a Police Reform Commission, and gave it power to place the force under civil service rules. The members of the Commission, John W. Ela, John H. Hamline, and Harry Reubens, are all prominent lawyers of undoubted integrity. Two of them are Democrats, and one, John H. Hamline, a Republican. Encouraged by a hearty public sympathy, the Commission took up its work with enthusiasm, and on December 11 a report was made to the Mayor, and promptly approved by him and Chief of Police Brennan.

The new rules of this Commission not only apply to future applicants for positions, but provide for placing the whole force at once on a reform basis. An examination is ordered for all patrolmen and officers who have not seen ten years of service—about 3,000 out of a total of 3,500. In order to pass, the applicant must have an average of sixty-five per cent, but officers now on the force will be credited five points for each year of experience—thus placing a premium on length of service. Tests, both mental and physical, are to be applied to all applicants, and strict rules for promotions established. The Chief of Police is the only appointive officer and the only one who is not subject to the examination system. All charges against policemen will be tried before a non-partisan trial-board of citizens, to be selected at will by the Commission and changed at will by the Commission. Appeals may be taken from the trial-board to the Commission in cases dealing with political interference in appointments. The strictest rules are laid down against the use of political influence by police officers in any way. The present Commission has been fully empowered to put its plans in operation, and Mayor Hopkins expresses confidence that the rules will be in such thorough working order by the next municipal election that a new administration will not dare to go back to the old system. But, to provide against even this possibility, the Commission is now engaged in drafting a bill, to be presented to the Legislature at its next session, which covers the main features of the new plan and makes it a permanent institution. In the meantime the question of In the meantime the question of a thorough police investigation has been vigorously agitated, and this, no doubt, has had much to do in spurring Mayor Hopkins to getting his Commission into working order as promptly as possible. Alderman Kerr succeeded Alderman Kerr succeeded in having a special committee appointed by the City Council to conduct an investigation, and he then came to New York to look into the workings of the Lexow Committee. When he returned, however, the opposition in the Council had grown strong enough to refuse an appropriation for carrying on the work. But the necessary money may be raised by popular subscription and the investigation pushed forward.

The Trust’s New Tool: The Labor Boss

Ray Stannard Baker

McClure’s Magazine/November, 1903

AFTER four months of struggle, costing untold millions of dollars, the building strike in New York has at last worn itself out. Sam Parks, the union leader, broken down by an incurable disease, convicted of blackmail, is awaiting sure return to State’s Prison at Sing Sing. The men are at work again; the employers are counting their losses; the public draws a long breath of relief,—the public really believes that something has been settled.

Sam Parks, indeed, has been settled; he will ride his white horse at the head of no more labor parades; he will “pull out” no more “jobs.” Nine-tenths of the people of New York fully and earnestly believe that Sam Parks and his friends were the chief cause of the strike. Many of the employing builders and not a few of the union workmen themselves, closely familiar with all the conditions, will assert the same conviction.

Well, if Sam Parks has really blocked for months the building industry of the greatest American city in the time of its most spectacular growth—and that at a time when there was no dispute between employer and employee as to wages, or hours, or recognition of the union; when the workmen were never better paid, never so thoroughly organized, never more independent—then this man Parks is surely worth knowing. It is an irresistible conclusion that he must either be a genius of extraordinary force or else he must have represented some vital basic condition or principle, which, in the inevitable expression of itself forced upward from the mass the strong man who best represented it. Is Parks the god in the machine or is he the tool in some mightier hand?

Who is Sam Parks?

Who is this Parks? Last May his name, now grown to such resounding importance, had never been heard outside of a limited circle of the building industries in New York City. He is one of the four walking delegates or business agents of the Housesmiths’ and Bridgemen’s Union. For many terms now he has been duly elected by his 4,500 fellow workmen to conduct their collective business with their employers in New York. All unions have such an officer—a paid agent receiving, usually, the wages of an ordinary workman in the trade—a necessary, useful, important officer, recognized and favored by employers as well as by workmen. The walking delegate is supposed to be strictly accountable to his union, to make full reports at each meeting, and to receive instructions as to what he shall do in the intervals between meeting days of the union. I say he is “supposed to be accountable,” and in the best unions he really is accountable; in the Housesmiths’, however, Sam Parks was delegate.

As one of the representatives of his union Sam Parks had a seat and a vote in the Board of Building Trades, a central body composed of walking delegates from each of thirty-nine trades connected with the New York building industry. This body was supposed to discuss questions looking to the betterment of conditions among all employees on buildings, to settle disputes between unions, and, on occasion, to enforce the demand of any one union there represented by a sympathetic strike of all the other unions; it was also supposed to be wholly under the direction of the great body of unionists which it represented.

The Walking Delegate in Theory and in Fact

In short, this organization was built upon the lines of our political system. Here was the delegate elected to represent the wishes of his constituents, here was the congress composed of these representatives. A visitor from Mars, examining the wise constitutions and by-laws of these unions and this central body, might conclude that we had reached the millennium of perfection in the self-government of our workingmen. When Mr. Steffens went to Philadelphia they showed him with pride their magnificent city charter, perfect in every regulation, a model for the nations; but Philadelphia, none the less, is the worst governed city in America if not in the civilized world. The difficulty with constitutions and by-laws is that they regulate everything except human nature.

According to all the rules, Sam Parks, the faithful servant of his constituents, was worrying along on the wages of an ironworker, reporting regularly to his union, taking his instructions with earnest meekness, meeting the employers in the quiet, dignified manner of a businessman, and never calling strikes when there was any other way out.

In reality, however, Sam Parks was riding about in his cab, wearing diamonds, appearing on the street with his blooded bulldog, supporting his fast horses, “treating” his friends. How this reminds one of the familiar, affluent aldermen or police captains of our cities building $50,000 residences on salaries of $1,500 or less and living happily ever after!

Stuff the Boss is Made Of

In other ways, qualities of manner and method, our Parks may claim kinship with the Deverys of New York, the Bath-House Johns of Chicago, the Ed. Butlers of St. Louis. A striking and impressive figure: A County Down Irishman, forty years old, all his life long he has done the roughest, hardest work, river-driver and lumberman in the North Woods, coal-heaver on the Lake docks, roustabout-sailor, railroad brakeman, bridge-builder; time was when, unerringly balanced on a steel beam, two hundred feet in blue space, he could drive more rivets to the hour than any other man in the trade. A rough, tough nut of a man who loves to fight, he says, better than to eat. Ignorant, a bully, a swaggerer, a criminal in his instincts, inarticulate except in abuse and blasphemy, with no argument but his proficient and rocky fists, he yet possesses those curious Irish faculties of leadership, that strange force of personality, that certain loyalty to his immediate henchmen familiar among ward politicians,—so that he could hold his union with a hand of iron. No, it is not strange: Tweed ruled and robbed New York for years; only yesterday Croker was our king; Quay bosses Pennsylvania. They are all of a stripe, all bosses: Parks a little ruder and rougher, perhaps, but the same sort.

Robbing His Union

And this man, elected to carry out the instructions of his union, actually reversed the process and bossed the union. His four thousand iron-workers obeyed like children. He called strikes when and where he pleased, often deigning to give the men no reason why they were called out; he spent the money of the union lavishly and made no accounting. Once, when an overbold member ventured to inquire in open meeting what had become of a certain sum of money, Parks replied by hurling a table at him. Several others who opposed him were “beaten up” in near-by saloons. Others mysteriously lost their jobs. When a man disagreed with him, he “gave him a belt on the jaw,” as he has said, “and that cleared his mind.” Of $60,000 received in fees and dues by the union in 1901, over $40,000 disappeared without detailed accounting, mostly under Parks’ direction. Of $75,000 received in 1902, some $60,000 was spent practically without accounting. What these great sums went for (strikes. Parks said, vaguely), no one but Parks really knew, and he wouldn’t tell. Every member of the union knew the exact character of Parks, that he was a “grafter”—and yet he could not be displaced. Even after being arrested for blackmail, he was reelected by his union; when he went to State’s Prison his salary as walking delegate was continued, and when he was released under Court orders he marched at the head of the Labor Day parade, cheered by his followers.

Blackmailing Employers

But the money he received from the union treasury probably did not equal the amount he got from the employers. Behold the extraordinary spectacle of builders and manufacturers of large interests summoned by this former coal-heaver to come to his house or to the saloon of his appointment and pay him two hundred or nine hundred or two thousand dollars for his personal use to secure permission to go on with their business! This happened not once, but many times, as the evidence presented to District Attorney Jerome has abundantly shown. And if a builder was recalcitrant his jobs were “struck” and the men kept out until he “settled.”

I am not entering here into the question of the justice of these strikes; some of them may have been warranted; I suspect they were; but the point is that Sam Parks and other men of his type called them without consulting anything but their own personal pleasure, with no instructions from their unions, often without giving any reasons to the men who were thus compelled to lie idle, and, worse still, strikes were often accompanied by a demand for money or to enforce the payment of money. Did this money go to the men who struck and lost their wages? Not a bit of it; they won the battle. Parks pocketed the spoils, though he sometimes spent it liberally “setting up” for his friends at near-by bars. I heard a housesmith say:

“Sam Parks is good-hearted all right; if he takes graft he spends it with the boys.”

A curious conception, surely, of good-heartedness, but one that is already familiar in political circles: robbing his constituents of their rights and perhaps of their wages, he is “good-hearted” because he treats some of them to beer!

How the Graft was Worked

We find Parks approaching the superintendent of the Hecla Iron Works, of Brooklyn, by appointment in a saloon.

“You’ve never done anything for the walking delegates,” he remarked. “Ain’t it about time?”

He accused the company of violating certain union rules, but said he “would leave them alone for $1,000.” They gave him two minutes to get out, and he used the time; then he called strikes which cost the company some $50,000 and threw 1,200 men out of work for weeks. President Poulsen finally tried to make terms, meeting Parks by appointment:

“I’m it; you pay me,” said Parks. “You can go to work when you pay Sam Parks.”

“What about the men who are striking?” asked Mr. Poulsen.

“To hell with those ______” responded this leader, concerning his constituents.

Without entering into the many complications of the case, which have no real bearing on the attitude of our hero, the Hecla people finally paid Parks $2,000 and the men were allowed to go back to work. I am not saying that this money was blackmail, nor a bribe, nor that it was not a just payment for “waiting time.” Confusion here exists in definitions that must be settled in the courts. But of one thing we are certain: Parks got the money; the check endorsed by him is now in the hands of District Attorney Jerome. Owing, however, to the publicity given the case, the union is reported really to have received some of this money—after Parks had been provided with a diamond ring bearing the legend “Victory, Strike Hecla Iron Works.”

Boss Parks’ Opinion of the Law

Parks’ attitude toward things in general and his peculiar method of expression are displayed in a remark which he made to F. D. Jackson, secretary of the Hecla Iron Works, during the negotiations (reported in the sworn testimony before Justice Mayer):

“I don’t care a damn for the law or for any damn man on the face of the earth. I’m going to get square with the Hecla Iron Works if it takes me to the end of my days, and I’ll settle this strike when I get good and ready.”

But in most of the cases the money passed quietly from the pocket of the employer to the pocket of Parks, and nothing more was ever heard about it.

How did Sam Parks do it? How was it possible for such a man to control absolutely his thousands of ironworkers, most of whom were intelligent, high-class workmen, respectable and patriotic American citizens? Why were rich employers ready to pay him money almost on request?

An able labor leader answered me thus: “If you will explain how Croker bossed the Democratic party in New York—a party full of honest men—when everyone knew he was grafting; how he collected money from the wealthy owners of the street railway companies and gas companies, and from other prominent business men, I will explain how Parks gets his hold on the building trades in New York.”

The Croker of the Building Trades

And, truly, the more closely one examines the situation the more striking the parallel between the government of the trade unions and our politics. We have to-day the Labor Boss and the Industrial Machine in many unions (the germs of them in all) with much the power and founded on exactly the same basic defects that we find in our political organizations. Why not? The union is a voluntary elective association and its offices are prized places. We find it, therefore, subject to all the approved American electioneering methods. Sam Parks is the Croker of the building trades. Other bosses there are in other trades: Carvill of the derrick-men, for instance, who was second only to Parks in his appetite for the money of the employers, and Murphy of the stone-cutters, who stole $27,000 of the union’s money and is now in Sing Sing. There was a ring in most of the unions and a ring in the Board of Delegates, just as there are little political bosses in the election districts and a big boss in Tammany.

In the first place the union is composed of the same elements as the political party—of American citizens, the majority of whom, perhaps, are honest, intelligent, conservative and well-to-do, but also too often criminally selfish, stupid, willing to be led by the nose so long as their business is not disturbed. This majority in politics does not go to the party primary, often does not vote; in the union it does not attend the meetings, takes no interest. Of 4,500 members of the Housesmiths’ Union there were rarely 500 in attendance at a meeting, and never, even at important elections, anywhere near the full number. Mannerchor Hall, where the union met, does not seat comfortably 600 men. As a result the business was conducted by a very small minority, composed largely, as in the political organization, of the young, unattached fellows, the out-of-work, and those who would rather play politics than drive rivets. The other men, the workers, some of whom lived twenty-five miles from the meeting hall, were tired at night and wanted to go home and play with their babies. Oh, it is the old familiar American story, bragging that we can govern ourselves, and then not governing.

An Honest Labor Leader Helpless

The real quality of the majority of the housesmiths finds expression in the election and reelection of a thoroughly honest and able president, Robert Neidig, who, in the face of threats of personal injury and loss of work, has marshaled a steady opposition to Parks. Neidig has taken high grounds of civic patriotism.

“I have got to be a union man,” he says. “Should I let the union run itself, and not attend meetings because I do not like its methods, or should I turn in and do my best to help change the methods?”

And Neidig really has done his best, working patiently without a cent of salary, though he has not succeeded in arousing the honest majority to overthrow the Boss. So our political parties elect some fine, honest, ingenuous, not over energetic man as mayor or governor and “point with pride” to him, while the Boss stands behind him grinning, runs everything, and steals the people poor.

A Boss cannot come to power unless he really does something to help his party, his union. After all, his sway must have some basis of good service. It is Parks who is chiefly credited with the present effective organization of the iron-workers, and it was he also who led in the fight for advanced wages; he has been largely instrumental in nearly doubling the income of the ironworker in five years. In 1897 the housesmith received $2.50 a day. In 1903 he receives $4.50 a day. Parks has made life better worth living—at least in a material sense—for 25,000 New Yorkers.

How Unionism Excuses Parks

You will hear honest men saying: “Yes, Parks is a grafter, but see what he has done for us! Yes, he steals, but he steals mostly from the employers. What difference is it to us if he makes the employer give up? They get more than their share anyhow.”

It takes high moral stamina to resist such speciousness as this.

Gratitude, however, never kept a man in office, especially in political office, and we find Parks engaged in all the familiar electioneering devices to maintain his power. A meeting hall holding only a small fraction of the membership was easily packed by friends of the boss when he needed a vote of confidence. We find him securing his own judges at elections, once even rushing the polls so that the city police were called in to quell the riot. We hear of repeaters and purchased votes, even of fraudulent ballots and fraudulent counts. I was told of one instance in which, after the adjournment of a meeting, when President Neidig and many other members had gone home, the Parks ring called the union together again at 2:30 o’clock in the morning, suspended the constitution, elected Parks for another term as walking delegate, and voted him a three months’ vacation at full pay. Alarmed by this scandal, however, a subsequent meeting reversed the action.

Pursuing all these approved bruiser and criminal methods of the ward politician, Parks, nevertheless, could not have held his place without drawing around him a ring of adherents (heelers) who would support him through thick and thin. It is rather difficult to see, at first, how Parks, unlike the Crokers who get men paid from the public treasury, could confer enough favors to keep a clique together. In practice it was simplicity itself, and the methods here, too, were strikingly similar to those of the political boss.

Parks’ “Entertainment” Committee for Recalcitrants

Making an excuse that he needed money and a free hand to conduct the fight against the employers, he was allowed too easy an entrance to the union treasury. He organized a paid committee, called with grim humor an “entertainment” committee, the chief duty of which was to command the pickets during strikes and to “entertain” the non-union man by punching his head or gouging his eyes. These men were expressively known as the “Rough Riders.” Here was the nucleus of the ring: faithful heelers and henchmen. It easily followed that anyone who was so temerarious as to oppose the Boss found himself “slugged” some night—very mysteriously to police and public; not at all mysteriously to himself. He was careful next meeting to support Parks.

Parks himself was easily the most accomplished slugger in the union. He relates having had as many as twenty fights in one day. The very physical force of the man, the terrorism which he inspired, were no negligible factors in his rise. We recall that Croker, in his earlier years, was also a mighty slugger— slugging his way upward to a condition of fame and favor in which he could afford to be dignified and business-like. Indeed, we are not surprised to find the labor boss and the political boss, birds of a feather, flocking together. We find Parks the close friend and supporter of Devery. We find Devery signing Parks’ bond when he is arrested; Devery is an honorary member of the Housesmiths’, and he has actually told Parks that he shall have a place on the Devery ticket as President of Manhattan Borough! And why not? “Dick” Butler, another iron-worker, one of Parks’ union men and supporters, has been sent to the Legislature. Our politics have been instructive to unionism!

Even this policy of force, however, might not have sustained the Boss against the aroused indignation of the union if he had not been supported by another powerful source of influence, in short, his ability to cause the discharge of men he did not like and to get his favorites into choice places. When an employer needs more men he notifies the union, and the officers send out some unemployed workman who has registered at headquarters. Many unions make it a rule to send out the man whose name is first on the list, but Parks sent out, not the man who had been longest out of work, or who was most needy, but the man who was his friend, or promised to be his friend; so that he soon had a large number of men working who owed their jobs to him. On the other hand, if any workman displeased the Boss, influence was brought to bear on the employer—most employers are easily frightened—to discharge that man.

Sometimes he got his friends appointed to jobs as foremen at $7 a day, when ordinary workers received only $4.50. A strike being called on the new Empire Theatre, Parks told the builder that the work would not be resumed until he was allowed to appoint a new foreman. The former foreman—a union man named Lawson—had opposed Parks, even threatening to run for delegate, and Parks wanted to discipline him. The builder yielding, Parks appointed one of his henchmen, J. W. Kelly, to the place. At the next meeting of the union Lawson complained in private to President Neidig. Parks saw the two men talking, and suspecting that Lawson was telling his story, walked over and knocked him down. Lawson had Parks arrested, but for reasons not at all mysterious to those who know the ways of the labor boss, the case was not pushed in court.

Some Unions See the Evils of the Boss

So Parks built up his machine. So machines were built up in most of the unions in the building trades of New York. Indeed, the hardest problem in unionism today, as in our political life, is the Boss. Wise leaders recognize the danger, and some of the more experienced unions, grappling earnestly with the question, have adopted such remedies as the referendum, the supervising committee, and, more important still, strict business methods—smaller local union bodies and rules forcing the attendance of all members at important meetings, until some of them have reached a degree of self-government far in advance of anything in our political parties.

The Board of Building Trades in New York was, then, in reality, a Board of Bosses, as Tammany Hall is a Board of Bosses. Sam Parks being the big boss in his union and having much experience at the business, became a great influence in the board, forming there his coterie of friends and supporters, and being finally elected as its president. This board, a secret body, so secret that even the presidents of the unions represented were not allowed admittance to the floor, not properly accountable to the union, too powerful in the use of that terrible weapon—the sympathetic strike—and not powerful enough (or not willing) to force discipline among its constituent unions, this board was able, practically to control the building industries of New York City. Controlled by such bosses as Parks, Carvill, McCarthy, and others, it is not surprising that it often conducted its business not for the good of the building trades, not even for the good of its own constituents, but for the personal advantage of its members. Quay’s ring, Croker’s machine, Addicks’ machine, have all done exactly the same thing.

Such was the condition of bossism in the unions: What about “graft” among the builders? Where bribes are received bribes must be paid. Where a man is discharged at the request of the Boss there must be an employer to discharge him.

The Other Side—The Grafting Employers

It has its humorous aspects—the astonishment and horror with which we heard the stories of graft given out by members of the employers association—we Americans who take credit for knowing ourselves so well! Here was a builder doing his million or two million dollars’ worth of business a year indignantly telling how he paid $200 or $2,000 to a walking delegate six months or two years ago! Why has he kept his indignation to himself so long? and why did he pay the money, anyway?

We are asked to look upon these things as if bribery and graft and blackmail were new in the building trades of New York.

Why is it that for years the building department has been notably one of the most corrupt branches of the city government? Why have several former high officials of this department, employed at a modest salary, gone out of office after a few years of service with fortunes large enough to make them resplendent for the remainder of their days? Why are the positions of building inspector even to-day in such demand? The inspector is paid only $1,200 a year, out of which he must buy his uniform, pay his own expenses (and his political assessments), and he must, if he is an efficient officer, be a man of experience and ability as a builder. Why, his earnings are not more than an ordinary carpenter or blacksmith will make—not so much, perhaps. On this exact point the new superintendent of buildings, Henry S. Thompson, has said:

“With $100,000,000 worth of building being done every year in this city, and every dollar of it subject to the supervision of inspectors of this department, the opportunities for graft and blackmail in the building department are equaled by no other department in the city, except, possibly, the police.

“These $1,200-a-year men overlook $3,000,000 buildings. They are the ones to pass on the materials being used. If inferior material is put in, if the plans are deviated from, if the plumbing is not placed properly, if there is the least deviation from the prescribed plan, or from the law, the inspector on the ground is the man to bring it to notice and to require the builder to comply with the law. How wide a field this opens if the inspector is not an honest man anyone may see.”

Bribery in the Building Department

For long there was a regular schedule of bribe money: So much for the construction inspector, so much for the plumbing inspector, so much for the iron work inspector, and so on. Often the bribes were contemptible five-dollar bills for breaking little laws, and sometimes as high as $2,000 paid to high officials for breaking big laws. And who has made the building department for years a favorite place for grafting? The builders—no one else. Not all builders—no one may accuse a whole class—but enough of them to give a great city department its evil reputation. Why have they paid graft and bribed building superintendents and inspectors?

Because they wanted to break the law.

That, indeed, is the secret of all graft. They wanted to put in cheaper materials than the law called for, they did not want to make their building really fireproof, they did want to hurry and scamp their work and increase their profits, or they were too cowardly to resist the demand of corrupt officials; so they used bribe money.

Similarly there were times when the purchase of the labor boss also became “a regular business expense.” And this is not new; it is as old as the unions themselves. In the case of the walking delegate, the builder wants to break, not a law, but his agreement with the union; he wants to deal unfairly, he wants to “keep in” with the union, but at the same time he wants to prostitute the union to his own private ends; or he is too cowardly to resist in court the demands of the corrupt delegate.

Here, for instance, are non-union men working on a job, or laborers doing the work of skilled artisans; the delegate protests, as his duty requires; how much simpler and cheaper it is to hand out a hundred-dollar bill, quiet the delegate, and keep the nonunion men and laborers working at cheap wages. No matter if it is the purchase of a man’s honor, no matter if the delegate sells out his friends, business has not been interrupted.

Do Employers Want Honest Labor Leaders?

And does any one really suppose that all builders really want honest delegates? Does anyone suppose that our street railway owners, our gas concessioners, our owners of dock privileges, really want honest aldermen, honest city officials? No, sir; they do not. If the delegates and officials were honest, profits would be decreased, the builder would not be able to beat his competitor, and the street-car capitalist to rob the public of franchises. After all, this is a republic, a government by the people; if, as a people, we really did not want bosses we should not have them. Grafting is only one expression of our American lawlessness.

New York was deeply stirred the other day over the revelation of the demands made by the stone-cutters’ union on their employers for a large sum of money which the union called a “fine” for disregarding union regulations. Fifty thousand dollars was at first demanded from Andrew J. Baird and his associates of the Stone Dealers’ Association, but employers and employees finally compromised on ten thousand dollars. I am not here entering into the discussion as to whether this payment was “graft” or not, or whether the union had a right to demand this large sum. The significant fact was that the public would never have heard of this transaction—which surely meant something—if the union treasurer, Murphy, had not stolen the money, with the result that the whole affair was dragged into the courts. At no time in the proceedings was there an accusation of employer against employee, or employee against employer. Here was a curious, unaccountable sum of money passing, and the men who paid it making no public protest. After Murphy was in State’s Prison he made the statement that there was a secret agreement and understanding between the union and the employers’ association, similar to the combinations which I have described in my article on Chicago labor conditions.The fact is, the employers wanted to use the union to fight their competitors and to form a monopoly, and the union was willing to be used, if paid for it.

No; the dishonest Labor Boss, if not too greedy, is very often a useful tool for the employers. A single instance, a story told by District Attorney Jerome, from evidence in his possession, will show how happily the Boss serves the employer when he does not want to meet the demands of the union squarely, fairly, honestly; it also throws an impressive light on some other ugly conditions of our modern building system.

A Story of Graft

For years the Amalgamated Association of Painters and Decorators worked in amity under agreements with the employers’ association of their trade. To the Amalgamated Association belonged practically all the painters and decorators in New York City and vicinity. In the summer of 1902 the Amalgamated Association demanded an increase in wages and a half holiday on Saturday—as they had a perfect right to do. I am not here questioning the justice of these demands or the provocation of the employers; the plain point is, that instead of meeting this demand of their old partners in the industry fairly and squarely with argument or refusal, or offer of arbitration, the employers bethought themselves of an evasive scheme—a business scheme—to fight the demands. In other parts of the country, having headquarters in Indiana, there existed a national organization of painters called the Brotherhood of Painters and Decorators. The employers opened secret negotiations with this organization to come to New York, organize, and fight the Amalgamated Association. When the members of the Amalgamated Association heard of this plan they prepared at once, and not unnaturally, to wage a bitter fight, finally striking against all the members of the Association of Interior Decorators and Cabinet Makers, tying up, among other buildings, the new Union Club. The employers knew that they could not fight the Amalgamated Association, backed up as it was by the Board of Building Trades, unless the new Brotherhood could also get a representation in the board. The natural way to get this representation—at least no one seemed to think of any other way—was to use graft, and plenty of it.

President Bahlhorn of the Brotherhood came on from Indiana and offered $2,500 in cash to be used in the proper manner. It wasn’t nearly enough. The opulent New York labor bosses sniffed at this western money, and President Bahlhorn himself began, as a labor leader expressed it, “to have cold feet.” He expected to appear soon for reelection by his organization and ugly questions might be asked by honest members as to where and how that $2,500 was expended in New York—and he couldn’t well explain. So fifteen members out of seventeen of the employers’ association—two refused to pay—subscribed $450 each; the Union Club, which was anxious to have the work on its building go forward, made a handsome contribution, and this, with other funds subscribed elsewhere, a total of some $17,000, was used among the Labor Bosses, chiefly in the credentials committee as an “initiation fee.” The names of the firms who paid $450 each are as follows:

William Baumgarten, 325 Fifth Avenue ; D. S. Hess & Co., 421 Fifth Avenue; The Hayden Company, 520 Fifth Avenue; Pottier & Stymus, 375 Lexington Avenue ; Herts Bros., 507 Fifth Avenue; Kimball & Sons, 328 Fifth Avenue ; Allard & Sons, 437 Fifth Avenue; T. D. Wadelton, 160 Fifth Avenue; Lowenbien & Sons, 383 Fifth Avenue; Newman & Co., 375 Fifth Avenue; Herter & Co., 382 Fifth Avenue; W. & J. Sloane, 848; Broadway; The Tiffany Studio, 333 Fourth’ Avenue; Peter Taucharden, 173 Clinton Street, Brooklyn.

Unions “Grafting” on Each Other

After this money had passed influences favorable to the Brotherhood began curiously to ferment in the board. An umpire—Boss Richard Carvill—was appointed to decide certain questions between the two painters’ organizations. After many significant delays and charges of “graft,” Boss Carvill decided in favor of the Brotherhood. As a condition of its admission to the board, on December 20, 1902, the Brotherhood agreed not to work for less wages than the Amalgamated Association was demanding, $4 and $4.50 a day. Three days later the Brotherhood deliberately signed a secret agreement for one year with the employers’ association to work for $3.25 and $3.50 a day. The $450 paid by each employer was thus a first-class investment; it was soon returned to him, with much more, in the saving of wages. “I knew that the end was coming,” said a prominent labor leader, “when the unions began to graft on each other.”

Every step in this transaction was marred by graft, by bad faith, by indirect dealing; and one side was exactly as bad as the other. Yet the employers call upon the public for sympathy in their fight against union corruption. A little common honesty and determination, a good deal less greediness on both sides to meet business issues squarely, and such a sickening transaction as this would never have occurred. “Only a higher conception of business honor among the building contractors themselves,” says the New York Evening Post, “will lead to an absolute and enduring reform.”

The Cause of Graft Higher Up

Bossism and venality, then, existed in New York long before the great lockout of May, 1903. The builder had long paid money to break the law or his agreements, and the delegate had long taken money to sell out his union, and neither had fared so poorly. It was a sort of balanced venality which might have continued to this day if another element—an outside, unrelated influence—had not entered the field and disturbed the evil equilibrium of the industry. It is of little importance what the immediate causes of the hostilities really were, of no more importance than the shots fired on Fort Sumter in 1861. This, too, was an irrepressible conflict; if it had not come in May it would have come in June, or July, or later. The same issues have already been fought out in Chicago and San Francisco, are now being contested in Pittsburg, and will have to be met in Boston. They are fundamental and national, not special and local issues.

The cause given by the employers’ association for the lockout was that the exactions of the Parkses and Carvills and of the Board of Building Trades had become absolutely unbearable, and the only way out was to smash the Boss system. No one who knows anything of the senseless strikes, trade disputes, and blackmail which the builders unquestionably had to suffer, will minimize this provocation or excuse the Labor Boss.

But there is much more to say in regard to the position of the employers’ association, an organization hardly older than the lockout itself—some things that may have escaped the attention of the casual reader of the newspapers, to whom the fight may seem a plain issue between the high-minded and abused employer and the blackmailing Labor Boss. If the real truth were known it might be found that these extortions of the Labor Boss, never very large compared with the millions and millions of dollars involved, and not half so hateful, be it whispered, as we have been led to believe, that these petty strikes and trade disputes, while maddening enough, were not to be compared in seriousness with one other tremendous fact of the building industry of New York and other cities. The gnat stings of the Labor Bosses won public sympathy for the employers’ association; the other thing, if generally admitted, would have merited none at all.

Enter the Trust

The plain fact is, a gigantic hand had reached into New York and was revolutionizing the building industry of the city—the hand of the Trust.

During the whole time of the lockout the man on the street may have noticed that work on many new buildings, some of the most important in New York, went forward without interruption, quietly, persistently. Farther inquiry would have shown that all, or nearly all, of these buildings were under contract by a single concern—the George A. Fuller Construction Company. Now, why was this company working when all the other builders of New York were idle? How did it rise superior to strikes and lockouts? Had it solved at last the labor problem?

The George A. Fuller Construction Company, the first of several great concerns of a similar character, all of Chicago origin, based on Chicago ideas and experience and backed by Chicago push, came to New York several years ago, its advent, curiously enough, being contemporaneous with that of Boss Parks. Starting with no business at all, it has, within some five or six years’ time, become the greatest construction company in the world, with the largest single building business in New York and important branches in Chicago, Baltimore, and Philadelphia.

The Fuller Company, itself capitalized at $20,000,000, is today owned and operated by a gigantic corporation known as the United States Realty and Construction Company, with a capitalization of $66,000,000. It is the trust idea applied to the building industry.

It was as inevitable sooner or later that such combinations should appear in the building trades, as in the steel or oil industries; they were the logical result of the era of the skyscraper. And it was also inevitable that their advent should work mighty changes, that the old-line builders and contractors—their competitors—should suffer before the centralized management and unified purpose of the new corporations.

Indeed, the independent contractors faced a similar danger on both sides. On one they had the leviathan combinations of capital, which were taking their business and cutting into their profits; in six years’ time they saw half the important building business of New York pass into the hands of these new corporations; on the other side they had the hardly less formidable preying combination of labor levying blackmail and forcing up wages. What could they do but organize? They were literally whipped into organization; that it must have required tremendous pressure to drive these contractors together, no one can doubt who knows the fierce competition and rivalry which exists among them. In short, it was a part of the common struggle of the times; organization and combination against disorganization, a clashing of great elemental forces, not the gnat stings of a little, insignificant, bullying Boss Parks.

How the Trust Worked

There was a vital idea and high-class brains behind the United States Realty and Construction Company. The managers devised new methods of economy—doing away in many instances with middlemen, tending to eliminate independent architects and contractors; they had new schemes for dealing with labor, learned in the Chicago strike of 1900, and they cunningly contrived new avenues of getting political influence—for the building business hangs on the will of a political appointee, the City Superintendent of Buildings. And, instead of waiting for business, they went out and made business; they organized neglected opportunities. Here was a man who had land, but no money to build: they supplied the money and built for him; often they bought the land themselves and built.

The new corporation was, moreover, fortified in its position in a hundred ways. In the first place it was intimately related to most of the other great trust and financial interests, which, after all, are nothing more than a family party, with headquarters in Wall Street. Naturally, therefore, when any of these interests were concerned in important new buildings, they favored the Fuller Company, for thus, in some degree, they paid the profit of one pocket into the earnings of another.

Forces Behind the Fuller Company

Here we find the Standard Oil Company represented in the person of James Stillman, president of Rockefeller’s bank, the greatest money institution in America. Mr. Stillman is chairman of the executive committee. It was well for a large consumer of steel like the Fuller Company to have a steel connection, and we find, accordingly, that the United States Steel Corporation is represented in the directory by Charles M. Schwab and E. C. Converse; and that the Fuller Company owns $550,000 of stock in the Steel Trust. At one time the Fuller Company is said to have had a contract whereby it got its steel at especially favorable rates. Railroad interests (the railroads haul the steel and other materials) were represented by Cornelius Vanderbilt and John W. Gates. Banking and other huge financial interests found a voice in James H. Hyde, vice-president of the Equitable Life Insurance Company; in James Speyer, one of the most conservative bankers in New York; in Augustus D. Juilliard and G. G. Haven, of the Mutual Life Insurance Company—all large owners or agents of real estate and buildings, who might need the services of a building company. Thus, we find the new Equitable Life building in Broadway going naturally to the Fuller Company. But perhaps the most important of all its connections was with the real estate interests of New York—the men who are on the inside, who know when and where buildings are to be built, and who is to build them—and who know these things first; so we find Bradish Johnson, an acknowledged real estate expert, as president of the company, and Albert Flake, Robert E. Dowling, Henry Morganthau, all very prominent real estate men, represented in the directory. Stockbroking interests—an important department in such a concern—were represented by Henry Budge. Nor did the company omit to cast a political line to windward. The city regulates building, and it is well to have influence where it will count. So we find among the directors Mr. Dowling, Mr. Flake, and Hugh J. Grant, former mayor of New York, a big politician, and an associate in a trust company composed largely of Tammany interests. It is common talk in the building trades that the new Superintendent of Buildings, Mr. Thompson, was appointed through the influence of these directors, though there are no charges of maladministration against him. Legal acumen, of which such a company may have urgent need, is represented by one of the ablest New York lawyers, B. Aymar Sands. Also we have representatives from Chicago and Boston, where the company does a large business. The actual management of the building interests was in the hands of Judge S. P. McConnell, president of the Fuller Company, and Harry S. Black, a relative of the founder, George A. Fuller, both Chicago men.

Buying a Supply of Labor Bosses

When the Fuller Company first came to New York and introduced the “department store idea” in building, the old-line contractors naturally did their best to fight it. So the old-line storekeeper has waged a losing war against the department store. In several trades there existed combinations between the associated employers and the unions (like those in Chicago) which fought the new companies with effect; in other trades, not so well organized, there came to be a wholesale bidding for labor. The oldline contractors would raise wages and get the men away from the Construction Company, and the Construction Company would bid up and get the men back again. Here were sown still other seeds of corruption, for both sides sought the favor of the walking delegates. There can be no doubt that the arrogance of the Labor Boss, knowing his power, is largely traceable to this courting of the labor monopoly by both parties to the gigantic struggle between trust and independent builder.

The Fuller Company, fresh from bitter strike experiences in Chicago, had learned the simple business lesson that the labor union has come to stay quite as surely as the trust, that it is better to work with it than to fight it. Instead of antagonizing labor it went out of its way to win labor—or at least the Labor Bosses. It yielded to the demands of labor and, doing not a little of its work on a percentage basis, it simply charged the added expenses up to the owner—-in other words, “took it out of the public,” as the pools in certain Chicago building trades are doing. Also, it made a policy of quick work, which is always worth a premium to the owner. But it went a step farther, perhaps the next universal step; the Chicago “pools” were mere voluntary agreements of competing contractors with the unions—”gentlemen’s agreements” in which, in spite of oaths, and promises, and bonds, the gentlemen would not remain gentlemen. The Fuller Company was a corporation, a unit in which there could be no internal dissension, which could deal with the union as a single man.

It is a significant fact that the Fuller Company brought Sam Parks from Chicago when it came—and, curiously enough, as a “scab,” to help assist the trust’s entry into New York—and there is evidence that he was on their pay-roll long after he became a leader of the union: that while he was drawing wages from his union to look after its interests he was also drawing money from the Fuller Company to look out for its interests. Rather strange, perhaps, but modern! The check paid by the Hecla Iron Works to Parks—I have told why this check was paid—was cashed by the Fuller Company. One of the officers of the Fuller Company was the go-between in the payment of money for the admission of the Brotherhood of Painters to the Board of Delegates.

Trust at War

The Fuller Company, as a labor leader expressed it to me, “went the old builders one better on their own game.” Instead of buying delegates occasionally, they were able to own a supply outright. It is common talk in the building trades that the Fuller Company, through its influence with the labor bosses, could and did cause strikes against their competitors, and even invited strikes against themselves when they wished to secure immunity from penalties under the “strike clause” in their contracts, but I could not find any specific evidence, even from the company’s worst enemies, of this dastardly sort of warfare. But this idea of being friends with labor, good or bad, has kept the Fuller buildings going through all the strikes, has made good their claim to getting their buildings done on time—at any cost of money or honor. Other construction companies, like the Thompson-Starrett Company, more conservatively managed, buried their differences with the old-line contractors temporarily, and joined the employers’ association in their fight to down the blackmailing Labor Boss.

The Unions the Tool of the Trust

Was this attitude of unfailing friendliness expressed by the Fuller Company a sign that Judge McConnell and his associates recognized more clearly the rights of labor, or that they were thrilled with any new conception of the brotherhood of men? Not a bit of it. It was a simon pure business proposition, and business does not feel! They believed as firmly as ever that the working-man was created for the natural use of the employer, but recognizing that if they could not use the workers individually as in older times, play them off against one another and secure lower wages, then they must be used as a union—but used. Instead of fighting organized labor they appeared as its best friend, and the foolish union, greedily swallowing the bait, looking at the immediate advance in wages, the immediate surrender to their demands, and not seeing that they were being employed as a tool by a mighty corporation to crush its competitors, went onward serenely proclaiming the Fuller Company its dearest supporter! But should the trust accomplish its purpose, and crush its competitors, which this trust is not likely to do, what would become of the useful tool?

This is a question now rising in many of the greatest American industries.

In all the accusations of extortion and blackmail against union men has anyone heard any complaints from the Fuller Company? It has been able somehow to proceed steadily, in the midst of strikes and lockouts. It did exactly the same thing in Chicago during the building strikes there. How? Why? This may be laid down as a law: The larger the corporation the more danger of graft.

Corruption a Good Investment

This point of danger in the trust problem, has not, it seems, been sufficiently emphasized. The larger the corporation the greater the need of “standing in” with the union. A general strike where enormous capital is involved is a very serious matter, not only for employer and employee, but for the public. The anthracite coal strike showed this conclusively. The more extensive its operations the less the corporation feels the small expense of owning delegates, and corruption becomes a good investment. In the trust, the men who really own and control the business—the employers—are widely separated from the men who do the work. What does Mr. James Stillman, president of the National City Bank, know about the building industry? or can he be suspected of having even a remote interest in Sam Parks or the struggles and trials or human life of the “rough-necks”—as the iron-workers call themselves?

What personal interest has Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt, Mr. Charles M. Schwab, Mr. John W. Gates, Mr. James K. Hyde, all directors in this Construction Company, in the actual operations of building? Of the twenty-seven millionaire officers and directors of this trust only two have any practical knowledge of the building business, and they are not professional builders.

They don’t know, and they don’t care; all they demand is results in dividends. A practical manager is placed in control of the active operations of the company. The tremendous weapon of capital and capitalistic influence is placed in his hands and he is told to get results. If he does not earn dividends they hire a manager who will—by one means or another. If there is a need of “dirty work” their smug consciences are never troubled with it.

How Watered Stock Leads to Grafting

So conservative a financial authority as the New York Evening Post, criticising the first annual report of this building trust, which, it says (August 5, 1903) “has been conspicuously in the public eye in the last few months, chiefly as the place at which Samuel Parks’ checks were cashed,” concludes that over half of its capitalization of $66,000,000 is pure water and wind.

In other words, the manager of the trust is set to earn dividends on a capitalization over half of which is water. Is it surprising if he tries by fair means or foul to control the labor market, the demands of which make up so large a proportion of the total out-go? His own business existence depends on his getting results. Will he buy human honor? Anyone can answer that question.

The corruption began high up when the stock of the corporation was watered by $35,000,000—a crime by the side of which the blackmailings of a Parks are mere gnat pricks. It is some satisfaction to know that this particular watered trust is a stock exchange failure, that the promoters who hoped to sell their lying shares to the innocent public have been caught in their own trap and have suffered large losses.

In one respect, indeed, there is the same fundamental difficulty and danger in the trust that there is in the labor union. In the union we have the conservative, respectable, “honest” members, staying at home and leaving their collective business in the hands of a rascally walking delegate and profiting by his management. In the great modern trusts we have the respectable “honest” millionaires, the Stillmans and the Vanderbilts, pillars of society, permitting the use of their influential names to float questionable companies, leaving their collective business in the hands of a manager, paying no attention to the manner in which he does the work if only he gets results, they profiting by his management.

It is all too common a belief that when a man puts his money in a corporation there his duty ends; but the investor or stockholder is exactly as responsible for the morals of his company, down to the smallest details, as the workman is for the morals of his union. Who is blamable for the corporation manager who robs innocent investors, corrupts labor, buys public officials? Who but the stockholder who gives him power. Who is responsible for the blackmailing delegate? Who but the members of the union who elect him.

How likely we are to get our causes mixed up with our effects! Sam Parks no more caused this great strike than the man in the moon. Parks is an effect. It is not Parks who is at the bottom of the trouble, but Parksism. Parks is the visible sore of the disease, the invisible germ of which—money corruption—is circulating in the blood of the American people, and takes its victims high and low.

Who is Responsible?

Mr. Jerome has said: “This corruption in the labor unions is simply a reflection of what we find in public life. Everyone who has studied our public life is appalled by the corruption that confronts him on every side. It goes through every department of the national, state, and local government.

“And this corruption in public life is a mere reflection of the sordidness of private life. Look what we find on every side of us—men whacking up with their butchers and grocers, employers carrying influential labor leaders on their pay-rolls, manufacturers bribing the superintendents of establishments to buy their goods.”

The time must come when the responsibility for these dangerous conditions will be placed where it belongs; upon the stay-at-home, conservative voter who regards politics as beneath his honorable attention; upon the stay-at-home, conservative union man who does not wish to disturb his ease, to take part in the turmoil of the union meeting; upon the millionaire stockholder in the corporation who sits at home and draws his dividends without knowing or wanting to know by what trail of blood and dishonesty they have been earned.

In short, if we want self-government—not the name, but the real thing mentioned in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we have got to work at it ourselves. President Roosevelt is right when he preaches broad morality; the necessity of each man getting down and doing something himself. We are willing to swallow any sort of patent nostrum for our disease—municipal socialism, the single tax, the referendum, cooperation—instead of getting down and doing personal work. These remedies may be good enough in their way, but we shall have no need of them if we obey the laws we already have.

“And men still call for special revolutions,” says Henrik Ibsen, “for revolutions in politics, in externals. But all that sort of thing is trumpery. It is the human soul that must revolt.”

Decaying Classics

H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/May 26, 1910

Sam Walter Foss, librarian of the Somerville (Mass.) Public Library and a poet of parts, arises to sing the melancholy death song of the so-called American classics. Twenty years ago no refined American home was complete without the “works” of Emerson, Lowell, Holmes, Irving, Cooper, Bryant, Longfellow, Hawthorne, Whittier, Bayard Taylor and N. P. Willis. They were rammed into the heads of unwilling schoolboys in all the select academies of our fair republic; they were in great demand as presents; they were read religiously on the long winter evenings, as if the reading of them were some elevating and patriotic rite. It was sacrilege to scoff at them; even the compositions of Byron, Scott and Dickens were not held in greater veneration.

But no more! Today only the schoolboy remains faithful to those ancient idols, and in his case fidelity is the son of fear. Treason to Lowell brings the rattan from its sheath and a revolt against “Thanatopsis” is followed by a painful dusting of the pantaloons. For the same reason the schoolboy sweats through the ghastly stanzas of Spenser, the interminable bombast of Marlowe of “the mighty line,” the long reaches of “Paradise Lost,” the fustian of “Cymbeline,” the maudlin strophes of Donne. It is abominable, but it is held to be, in some vague way, nourishing to the mind. Such, at least, seems to be the theory of Messieurs the pedagogues. The course in “literature” at every respectable high school is still devoted, in the main, to Old Masters whose utterances, when laboriously interpreted, turn out to be not worth hearing. “Hudibras,” though long since unintelligible, is still set before the harassed jejune as a delectable intellectual victual. The pale wheezes of Irving are still labeled “humor,” and poor youngsters are ordered to laugh at them on penalty of the bastinado.

The Day of Deliverance

Naturally enough the average schoolboy when he leaves school knows very little about English literature and nothing at all about any other literature. He knows that Shakespeare was born on April 23, 1564; that Hawthorne was the greatest of American novelists; that so many feet of such and such a breed make a line of such and such a species; that Poe was an astute psychologist and Emerson a profound philosopher, and a lot of other things that are either untrue or not worth knowing, but the chief impression left upon his mind is one of confusion and discomfort. He has been convinced, in brief, by bitter experience that the field of letters is a bleak and barren expanse, with no vegetation save coarse foot-ensnaring grasses and unpalatable medicinal weeds.

Happy that boy if fortune leads him back as an independent explorer, where once he plodded the weary miles in chains! If he has the love of books in him he will go back. Bit by bit his mind will be cleared of its useless lumber. He will forget “Comus” and “Cato,” “Tamerlane” and “Irene,” with their dreary reaches and maddening footnotes, and discover for himself the delights of “Much Ado About Nothing” and “The Old Bachelor,” “The Recruiting Officer” and “The Magistrate.” He will forget Dryden’s wire-pulling and his tedious blank verse and browse happily through the “Essay on Dramatic Poesie;” he will put Holmes and Cooper out of mind and find unction for his soul in the “Barrack Room Ballads” and the doings of the Great Gargantua, in Thackeray, Stevenson, Huxley, Zola, Meredith and Mark Twain.

Irving A Fallen Idol

As Mr. Foss points out, some of the towering giants of the schoolroom have long since shrunk to pitiful pigmies outside. There is Irving, for example. The printing of his books, for actual reading, has practically ceased. A few sets are still ground out every year from old plates and for the cut-rate trade, but no educated reader would think of making room for them on his shelves. But the publishers of schoolbooks notice no decline in the demand for annotated, classroom editions. Irving, in brief, is still forced through the skulls of the young. The poor schoolboy must assimilate his gentle humor but vacuous periods; it is assumed as a pedagogic axiom that no American who does not know him can be civilized or a patriot.

Lowell is another fallen god whose worship is still kept up at academic altars. Bayard Taylor and Whittier are yet others. If you want the poems of Taylor today you must go to a second-hand store—or buy a school book. And if you want Willis you must go the same. As for Emerson, he has been declining steadily for a dozen years. The disciples of the New Thought, psychotherapy and other such flapdoodle still find stimulation in his speculations, but the more catholic reader has found the way to the German philosophies from whom he derived—and to those later Germans who have succeeded them.

The Case of Poe

Mr. Foss seems to be in some doubt about Poe. Is he growing or shrinking? It is probably near the truth to say that, all things considered, he is standing still. On the one hand, the old extravagant worship of him is dying out, and on the other hand, serious students of letters are beginning to admit his originality and influence. For a long time a certain flavor of romantic, inviting devilishness clung to Poe. His own actorial affectations and the libels of Griswold combined to invest him with an air of desperate immorality. But now we know that he was a quite decent and commonplace fellow, whose only vices were drunkenness and bathos.

At the moment, Poe is better regarded in France than at home, and the cause is not far to seek. There is something in the American character which revolts against the melodramatic pessimism of “The Raven,” and something, again, which scoffs at the sophomoric horrors of the prose tales. We are just a bit too healthy, just a bit too sane, to get any pleasure out of snouting through charnel houses. It is difficult to interest us in dank, mysterious forests, ruined castles and bleaching skulls. We prefer the open Mississippi, with Huck and Jim on the raft, and the clear, blue sky overhead. We have sound stomachs, and so we are optimists.

The Frenchman is of different kidney. He goes in for the more staggering, electric emotions. It is his aim, when he seizes his pen in hand, to shock the public, and if, perchance, that effort fails, he is content to shock himself. Hence the graveyard strophes of the so-called decadents. In most of them there is no poetry at all, but only thrills; just as in many of the tales of Poe there is no reality at all, but only horror. Read in cold blood, not a few of those tales must needs provoke the sacrilegious snicker—but no Frenchman ever reads them in cold blood.

The Madness of Youth

This is not saying, of course, that Poe is not read with pleasure in the United States. Far from it! He is still a very lively classic. His books are still sold. But the majority of his readers, I suspect, are youngsters. He was always a youngster himself—a sort of solemn, self-conscious Peter Pan. He never outgrew the Byronic, play-acting period. He always saw robbers behind the nearest hedge; he was always enchanted by the magic of sounding but empty words; he constantly played a part. It pleased him to think that he was the victim of dark and felonious conspiracies; to pose as a Hamlet; to lament lost loves that he never had; to stand aghast before his own devilishness. The same madness falls upon all of us when we are young. We all cultivate pessimism, and we all read Poe.

But wasn’t Poe, after all, a great poet? Well, maybe he was—ever and anon. But if “The Bells” is great poetry, then “The Battle of Prague” is music.

The Charity Bill

H.L. Mencken

Baltimore Evening Sun/May 4, 1910

What does it cost Lord Baltimore, in hard cash and by the year, to be so charitable? How much does he dole out to his unfortunates and his incompetents? Two millions? Five? Six? Ten? No one seems to know; no records are kept by any central authority. The money comes pouring in from the State and city treasuries, from endowments and from private contributions, and it is poured out again in the same lavish manner. No one seems to have any authority to inquire into either its collection or its expenditure. How much, for instance, does the Salvation Army, with its junk wagons and its organized begging, rake in every twelve-month? And what is done with the money?

Some notion of the colossal cost of public charities in a city the size of Baltimore may be gained from the fact that there are, at present, more than 30 orphan asylums within the city limits—all crowded and nearly all constantly asking for aid. In addition, there are no less than 39 hospitals, most of which receive the poor without charge, and 23 free dispensaries. Finally, there are 30 “homes” of various species—for the aged, the insane and the crippled, for out-of-works, convalescents and veterans of the wars.

Who is The Gainer?

Who profits by all of this outpouring of alms? Certainly not the average, hardworking, thrifty Baltimorean. The thousands given to the local hospitals, for example, bring him no personal benefit. If he falls sick himself he must pay for lodging and attendance—and the bill he gets is ordinarily so large that paying it keeps him on short commons for a year afterward.

At one of the largest local hospitals, I am informed, the minimum charge for a private room is now $30 a week. If the patient is so ill that he needs a special nurse he must pay her $25 a week more, and give the hospital $6 or $7 a week for boarding her. And, in addition, be must pay his own private physician for visiting him, and must meet the staggering hills of the surgeons, learned consultants and other pundits called in to give aid.

What does the patient get with his $30 room? Little more than the tiny, cheerless room itself and the few victuals his agonies permit him to eat. True enough, he has the services of a day and night staff nurse, and of the hospital’s staff of resident physicians, but each of those staff nurses has ten or a dozen other patients, to look after, and most of those resident physicians are both extremely young and extremely busy. If the patient is sick enough to need real nursing, he must hire his own nurse. The result is a copious outpouring of his currency. Six weeks in hospital are just about as expensive as six weeks in Europe.

It is but natural then to assume that the hospitals make enormous profits on their private patients—profits beside which the gains of a Washington hotelkeeper on Inauguration Day must seem puny. But do these profits go into the pockets of the eminent chirurgeons who run them? Very seldom. Nine times out of ten those gentlemen get little more than glory out of their endeavors. The real beneficiaries, of course, are the free patients—and fully half of the latter are shiftless negroes.

The Dependent African.

The city negro, as everyone knows, is a far from healthy animal. Maladies serious and trivial constantly pester him, and he is an incessant patron of the dispensaries and free wards. Of the 90,000 odd negroes in Baltimore it is probable that not 10,000 ever pay for medical attendance. Why should they? They are able to get all of it they need, with medicines, board in hospital and nursing thrown in, without money and without price.

Ambitious and skillful young surgeons stand ready to excise their appendices free of charge: there are free beds for them in comfortable wards; they may have all of the castor oil and quinine pills they care to swallow for the mere asking; and if, perchance, their assiduous swallowing reduces them to helpless invalidism, there are agreeable and salubrious asylums for them, wherein the struggle for existence need not worry them.

The light-hearted Afro-Baltimorean, indeed, is the chief beneficiary of Lord Baltimore’s charity. Sick or well, his hand is always out. He comes into the world under the benign auspices of the public treasury, he is fed and clothed at the public expense whenever he approaches starvation or orphan asylums, almshouses and jails; he is boarded and lodged and is given the best of care when he is sick, and when, finally, he goes to his reward, the city stands ready to relieve his relatives of the expense of burying him.

Many a Baltimore darky who earns say, $200 a year by his occasional labors, gets as much more from the public in the form of charity. The sojourn in hospital, which would cost a well-to-do white man $500, costs the lowly ex-chattel not a cent. Directly or indirectly, he is constantly profiting by the industry and greater efficiency of his betters. What his average annual profit in that direction comes to it is hard to say, but it cannot be much less than $100 a year. Accepting that as a fair estimate, and assuming the number of aided negroes to be 25,000—certainly no extravagant guess—the annual cost to the city works out to $2,500,000 a year.

The Private History of a Campaign That Failed

Mark Twain

Century Magazine/December, 1885

You have heard from a great many people who did something in the war, is it not fair and right that you listen a little moment to one who started out to do something in it but didn’t? Thousands entered the war, got just a taste of it, and then stepped out again permanently. These, by their very numbers, are respectable and therefore entitled to a sort of voice, not a loud one, but a modest one, not a boastful one but an apologetic one. They ought not be allowed much space among better people, people who did something. I grant that, but they ought at least be allowed to state why they didn’t do anything and also to explain the process by which they didn’t do anything. Surely this kind of light must have some sort of value.

Out west there was a good deal of confusion in men’s minds during the first months of the great trouble, a good deal of unsettledness, of leaning first this way then that, and then the other way. It was hard for us to get our bearings. I call to mind an example of this. I was piloting on the Mississippi when the news came that South Carolina had gone out of the Union on the 20th of December, 1860. My pilot mate was a New Yorker. He was strong for the Union; so was I. But he would not listen to me with any patience, my loyalty was smirched, to his eye, because my father had owned slaves. I said in palliation of this dark fact that I had heard my father say, some years before he died, that slavery was a great wrong and he would free the solitary Negro he then owned if he could think it right to give away the property of the family when he was so straitened in means. My mate retorted that a mere impulse was nothing, anyone could pretend to a good impulse, and went on decrying my Unionism and libelling my ancestry. A month later the secession atmosphere had considerably thickened on the Lower Mississippi and I became a rebel; so did he. We were together in New Orleans the 26th of January, when Louisiana went out of the Union. He did his fair share of the rebel shouting but was opposed to letting me do mine. He said I came of bad stock, of a father who had been willing to set slaves free. In the following summer he was piloting a Union gunboat and shouting for the Union again and I was in the Confederate army. I held his note for some borrowed money. He was one of the most upright men I ever knew but he repudiated that note without hesitation because I was a rebel and the son of a man who owned slaves.

In that summer of 1861 the first wash of the wave of war broke upon the shores of Missouri. Our state was invaded by the Union forces. They took possession of St. Louis, Jefferson Barracks, and some other points. The governor, Calib Jackson, issued his proclamation calling out fifty thousand militia to repel the invader.

I was visiting in the small town where my boyhood had been spent, Hannibal, Marion County. Several of us got together in a secret place by night and formed ourselves into a military company. One Tom Lyman, a young fellow of a good deal of spirit but of no military experience, was made captain; I was made second lieutenant. We had no first lieutenant, I do not know why, it was so long ago. There were fifteen of us. By the advice of an innocent connected with the organization we called ourselves the Marion Rangers. I do not remember that anyone found fault with the name. I did not, I thought it sounded quite well. The young fellow who proposed this title was perhaps a fair sample of the kind of stuff we were made of. He was young, ignorant, good natured, well meaning, trivial, full of romance, and given to reading chivalric novels and singing forlorn love ditties. He had some pathetic little nickel plated aristocratic instincts and detested his name, which was Dunlap, detested it partly because it was nearly as common in that region as Smith but mainly because it had a plebian sound to his ears. So he tried to ennoble it by writing it in this way; d’Unlap. That contented his eye but left his ear unsatisfied, for people gave the new name the same old pronunciation, emphasis on the front end of it. He then did the bravest thing that can be imagined, a thing to make one shiver when one remembers how the world is given to resenting shams and affectations, he began to write his name so; d’Un’Lap. And he waited patiently through the long storm of mud that was flung at his work of art and he had his reward at last, for he lived to see that name accepted and the emphasis put where he wanted it put by people who had known him all his life, and to whom the tribe of Dunlaps had been as familiar as the rain and the sunshine for forty years. So sure of victory at last is the courage that can wait. He said he had found by consulting some ancient French chronicles that the name was rightly and originally written d’Un’Lap and said that if it were translated into English it would mean Peterson, Lap, Latin or Greek, he said, for stone or rock, same as the French pierre, that is to say, Peter, d’ of or from, un, a or one, hence d’Un’Lap, of or from a stone or a Peter, that is to say, one who is the son of a stone, the son of a peter, Peterson. Our militia company were not learned and the explanation confused them, so they called him Peterson Dunlap. He proved useful to us in his way, he named our camps for us and generally struck a name that was “no slouch” as the boys said.

That is one sample of us. Another was Ed Stevens, son of the town jeweller, trim built, handsome, graceful, neat as a cat, bright, educated, but given over entirely to fun. There was nothing serious in life to him. As far as he was concerned, this military expedition of ours was simply a holiday. I should say about half of us looked upon it in much the same way, not consciously perhaps, but unconsciously. We did not think, we were not capable of it. As for myself, I was full of unreasoning joy to be done with turning out of bed at midnight and four in the morning, for a while grateful to have a change, new scenes, new occupations, a new interest. In my thoughts that was as far as I went. I did not go into the details, as a rule, one doesn’t at twenty four.

Another sample was Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice. This vast donkey had some pluck, of a slow and sluggish nature, but a soft heart. At one time he would knock a horse down fro some impropriety and at another he would get homesick and cry. However, he had one ultimate credit to his account which some of us hadn’t. He stuck to the war and was killed in battle at last.

Joe Bowers, another sample, was a huge, good natured, flax headed lubber, lazy, sentimental, full of harmless brag, a grumbler by nature, an experience and industrious ambitious and often quite picturesque liar, and yet not a successful one for he had no intelligent training but was allowed to come up just anyways. This life was serious enough to him, and seldom satisfactory. But he was a good fellow anyway and the boys all liked him. He was made orderly sergeant, Stevens was made corporal.

These samples will answer and they are quite fair ones. Well, this herd of cattle started for the war. What could you expect of them? They did as well as they knew how, but really, what was justly expected of them? Nothing I should say. And that is what they did.

We waited for a dark night, for caution and secrecy were necessary, then toward midnight we stole in couples and from various directions to the Griggith place beyond town. From that place we set out together on foot. Hannibal lies at the extreme south eastern corner of Marion County, on the Mississippi river. Our objective point was the hamlet of New London, ten miles away in Ralls County.

The first hour was all fun, all idle nonsense and laughter. But that could not be kept up. The steady drudging became like work, the play had somehow oozed out of it, the stillness of the woods and the sombreness of the night began to throw a depressing influence over the spirits of the boys and presently the talking died out and each person shut himself up in his own thoughts. During the last half of the second hour nobody said a word.

Now we approached a log farmhouse where, according to reports, there was a guard of five Union soldiers. Lyman called a halt, and there, in the deep gloom of the overhanging branches, he began to whisper a plan of assault upon the house, which made the gloom more depressing than it was before. We realized with a cold suddenness that here was no jest–we were standing face to face with actual war. We were equal to the occasion. In our response there was no hesitation, no indecision. We said that if Lyman wanted to meddle with those soldiers he could go ahead and do it, but if he waited for us to follow him he would wait a long time.

Lyman urged, pleaded, tried to shame us into it, but it had no effect. Our course was plain in our minds, our minds were made up. We would flank the farmhouse, go out around. And that was what we did.

We struck into the woods and entered upon a rough time, stumbling over roots, getting tangled in vines and torn by briers. At last we reached an open place in a safe region and we sat down, blown and hot, to cool off and nurse our scratches and bruises. Lyman was annoyed but the rest of us were cheerful. We had flanked the farmhouse. We had made our first military movement and it was a success. We had nothing to fret about, we were feeling just the other way. Horse paly and laughing began again. The expedition had become a holiday frolic once more.

Then we had two more hours of dull trudging and ultimate silence and depression. Then about dawn, we straggled into New London, soiled, heel blistered, fagged with out little march, and all of us, except Stevens, in a sour and raspy humour and privately down on the war. We stacked our shabby old shotguns in Colonel Ralls’s barn and then went in a body and breakfasted with that veteran of the mexican war. Afterward he took us to a distant meadow, and there, in the shade of a tree, we listened to an old fashioned speech from him, full of gunpowder and glory, full of that adjective piling, mixed metaphor and windy declamation which was regraded as eloquence in that ancient time and region and then he swore on a bible to be faithful to the State of Missouri and drive all invaders from her soil no matter whence they may come or under what flag they might march. This mixed us considerably and we could not just make out what service we were involved in, but Colonel Ralls, the practised politician and phrase juggler, was not similarly in doubt. He knew quite clearly he had invested us in the cause of the Southern Confederacy. He closed the solemnities by belting around me the sword which his neighbour, Colonel brown, had worn at Beuna Vista and Molino del Ray and he accompanied this act with another impressive blast.

Then we formed in line of battle and marched four hours to a shady and pleasant piece of woods on the border of a far reaching expanse of a flowery prairie. It was an enchanting region for war, our kind of war.

We pierced the forest about half a mile and took up a strong position with some low and rocky hills behind us, and a purling limpid creek in front. Straightaway half the command was in swimming and the other half fishing. The ass with the french name gave the position a romantic title but it was too long so the boys shortened and simplified it to Camp Ralls.

We occupied an old maple sugar camp whose half rotted troughs were still propped against the trees. A long corn crib served fro sleeping quarters fro the battalion. On our left, half a mile away, were Mason’s farm and house, and he was a friend to the cause. Shortly after noon the farmers began to arrive from several different directions with mules and horses for our use, and these they lent us for as long as the war might last, which, they judged, might be about three months. The animals were of all sizes all colours and all breeds. They were mainly young and frisky and nobody in the command could stay on them long at a time, for we were town boys and ignorant of horsemanship. The creature that fell to my share was a very small mule, and yet so quick and active he could throw me off without difficulty and it did this whenever I got on. Then it would bray, stretching its neck out, laying its ears back and spreading its jaws till you could see down to its works. If I took it by the bridle and tried to lead it off the grounds it would sit down and brace back and no one could ever budge it. However, I was not entirely destitute of military resources and I did presently manage to spoil this game, for I had seen many a steamboat aground in my time and knew a trick or two which even a grounded mule would be obliged to respect. There was a well by the corn crib so I substituted thirty fathom of rope for the bridle and fetched him home with the windlass.

I will anticipate here sufficiently to say that we did learn to ride after some days’ practice, but never well. We could not learn to like our animals. They were not choice ones and most of them had annoying peculiarities of one kind or another. Stevens’s horse would carry him, when he was not noticing, under the huge excrescences which for on the trunks of oak trees and wipe him out of the saddle this way. Stevens got several bad hurts. Sergeant Bowers’s horse was very large and tall, slim with long legs, and looked like a railroad bridge. His size enabled him to reach all about, and as far as he wanted to go, so he was always biting Bowers’s legs. On the march, in the sun, Bowers slept a good deal and as soon as the horse recognized he was asleep he would reach around and bite him on the leg. His legs were black and blue with bites. This was the only thing that could make him swear, but this always did, whenever his horse bit him he swore, and of course, Stevens, who laughed at everything, laughed at this and would get into such convulsions over it as to lose his balance and fall off his horse, and then Bowers, already irritated by the pain of the horse bite, would resent the laughter with hard language, and there would be a quarrel so that horse made no end of trouble and bad blood in the command.

However, I will get back to where I was, our first afternoon in the sugar camp. The sugar troughs came very handy as horse troughs and we had plenty of corn to fill them with. I ordered Sergeant Bowers to feed my mule, but he said that if I reckoned he went to war to be a dry nurse to a mule it wouldn’t take me very long to find out my mistake. I believed that this was insubordination but I was full of uncertainties about everything military so I let the matter pass and went and ordered Smith, the blacksmith’s apprentice, to feed the mule, but he merely gave me a large, cold, sarcastic grin, such as an ostensibly seven year old horse gives you when you lift up his lip and find he is fourteen, and turned his back on me. I then went to the captain and asked if it were not right and proper and military for me to have an orderly. He said it was, but as there was only one orderly in the corps, it was but right he himself should have Bowers on his staff. Bowers said he wouldn’t serve on anyone’s staff and if anybody thought he could make him, let him try. So, of course, the matter had to be dropped, there was no other way.

Next, nobody would cook. It was considered a degradation so we had no dinner. We lazed the rest of the pleasant afternoon away, some dozing under trees, some smoking cob pipes and talking sweethearts and war, others playing games. By late supper time all hands were famished and to meet the difficulty, all hands turned to on an equal footing, and gathered wood, built fires, and cooked the evening meal. Afterward everything was smooth for a while then trouble broke out between the corporal and the sergeant, each claiming to rank the other. Nobody knew which was the higher office so Lyman had to settle the matter by making the rank of both officers equal. The commander of an ignorant crew like that has many troubles and vexations which probably do not occur in the regular army at all. However, with the song singing and yarn spinning around the campfire everything presently became serene again, and by and by we raked the corn down one level in one end of the crib and all went to bed on it, tying a horse to the door so he would neigh if anyone tried to get in. (it was always my impression that was always what the horse was there for and I know it was the impression of at least one other of the command, for we talked about it at the time and admired the military ingenuity of the device, but when I was out west three years ago, I was told by Mr. A. G. Fuqua, a member of our company, that the horse was his, that the tying him at the door was a mere matter of forgetfulness and that to attribute it to intelligent invention was to give him quite too much credit. In support of his position, he called my attention to the suggestive fact that the artifice was not employed again. I had not thought of that before.)

We had some horsemanship drill every forenoon, then, afternoons, we rode off here and there in squads a few miles and visited the farmer’s girls and had a youthful good time and got an honest dinner or supper, and then home again to camp, happy and content.

For a time, life was idly delicious. It was perfect. There was no war to mar it. Then came some farmers with an alarm one day. They said it was rumoured that the enemy were advancing in our direction from over Hyde’s prairie. The result was a sharp stir among us and general consternation. Ir was a rude awakening from out pleasant trance. The rumour was but a rumour, nothing definite about it, so in the confusion we did not know which way to retreat. Lyman was not for retreating at all in these uncertain circumstances but he found that if he tried to maintain that attitude he would fare badly, for the command were in no humour to put up with insubordination. SO he yielded the point and called a council of war, to consist of himself and three other officers, but the privates made such a fuss about being left out we had to allow them to remain, for they were already present and doing most of the talking too. The question was, which way to retreat; but all were so flurried that nobody even seemed to have even a guess to offer. Except Lyman. He explained in a few calm words, that inasmuch as the enemy were approaching from over Hyde’s prairie our course was simple. All we had to do was not retreat toward him, another direction would suit our purposes perfectly. Everybody saw in a moment how true this was and how wise, so Lyman got a great many compliments. It was now decide that we should fall back on Mason’s farm.

It was after dark by this time and as we could not know how soon the enemy might arrive, it did not seem best to try to take the horses and things with us, so we only took the guns and ammunition, and started at once. The route was very rough and hilly and rocky, and presently the night grew very black and rain began to fall, so we had a troublesome time of it, struggling and stumbling along in the dark and soon some person slipped and fell, and then the next person behind stumbled over him and fell, and so did the rest, one after the other, and then Bowers came along with the keg of powder in his arms, while the command were all mixed together, arms and legs on the muddy slope, and so he fell, of course, with the keg and this started the whole detachment down the hill in a body and they landed in a brook at the bottom in a pile and each that was undermost was pulling the hair, scratching and biting those that were on top of him and those that were being scratched and bitten scratching and biting the rest in their turn, and all saying they would die before they would ever go to war again if they ever got out of this brook this time and the invader might rot for all they cared, and the country along with him, and all such talk as that which was dismal to hear and take part in, in such smothered, low voices, and such a grisly dark place and so wet, and the enemy, maybe, coming along at any moment.

The keg of powder was lost, and the guns too; so the growling and complaining continued straight along while the brigade pawed around the pasty hill side and slopped around in the brook hunting for these things; consequently we lost considerable time at this, and then we heard a sound and held our breath and listened, and it seemed to be the enemy coming, though it could have been a cow, for it had a cough like a cow, but we did not wait but left a couple of guns behind and struck out for Mason’s again as briskly as we could scramble along in the dark. But we got lost presently in among the rugged little ravines and wasted a deal of time finding the way again so it was after nine when we reached Mason’s stile at last; and then before we could open our mouths to give the countersign several dogs came bounding over the fence with a great riot and noise, and each of them took a soldier by the slack of his trousers and began to back away with him. We could not shoot the dogs without endangering the persons they were attached to so we had to look on helpless at what was perhaps the most mortifying spectacle of the Civil War. There was light enough and to spare, for the Mason’s had now run out on the porch with candles in tier hands. The old man and his son came and undid the dogs without difficulty, all but Bowers’s; but they couldn’t undo his dog, they didn’t know his combination, he was of the bull kind and seemed to be set with a Yale time-lock, but they got him loose at last with some scalding water, of which Boweres got his share and returned thanks. Peterson Dunlap afterwards made up a fine name for this engagement and also for the night march which preceded it but both have long ago faded out of my memory.

We now went into the house and they began to ask us a world of questions, whereby it presently came out that we did not know anything concerning who or what we were running from; so the old gentleman made himself very frank and said we were a curious breed of soldiers and guessed we could be depended on to end up the war in time, because the no governor could afford the expense of the shoe leather we should cost it trying to follow us around.

“Marion Rangers! Good name, b’gosh,” said he. And wanted to why we hadn’t had a picket guard at the place where the road entered the prairie, and why we hadn’t sent out a scouting party to spy out the enemy and bring us an account of his strength, and so on, before jumping up and stampeding out of a strong position upon a mere vague rumour, and so on and so forth, till he made us all feel shabbier than the dogs had done, not so half enthusiastically welcome. So we went to bed shamed and low spirited, except Stevens. Soon Stevens began to devise a garment for Bowers which could be made to automatically display his battle scars to the grateful or conceal them from the envious, according to his occasions, but Bowers was in no humour for this, so there was a fight and when it was over Stevens had some battle scars of his own to think about.

Then we got a little sleep. But after all we had gone through, our activities were not over for the night, for about two o’clock in the morning we heard a shout of warning from down the lane, accompanied by a chorus from all the dogs, and in a moment everybody was up and flying around to find out what the alarm was about. The alarmist was a horseman who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like our which it could find. Farmer Mason was in a flurry this time himself. He hurried us out of the house with all haste, and sent one of his negroes with us to show us where to hide ourselves and our telltale guns among the ravines half a mile away,. It was raining heavily.

We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture land which offered good advantages fro stumbling; consequently we were down in the mud most of the time, and every time a man went down he black guarded the war and everybody connected with it, and gave himself the master dose of all for being so foolish as to go into it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a ravine, and there we huddled ourselves under the streaming trees and sent the negro back home. It was a dismal and heart breaking time. We were like to e drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming thunder, and blinded by the lightning. It was indeed a wild night. The drenching we were getting was misery enough, but a deeper misery still was the reflection that the halter might end us before we were a day older. A death of this shameful sort had not occurred to us as being among the possibilities of war. It took the romance all out of the campaign and turned our dreams of glory into a repulsive nightmare. As for doubting that so barbarous an order had been given, not one of us did that.

The long night wore itself out at last, and then the Negro came to us with the news that the alarm had manifestly been a false one and that breakfast would soon be ready. Straightaway we were light-hearted again and the world was bright and full of life, as full of hope and promise as ever; for we were young then. How long ago that was! Twenty four years.

The mongrel child of philology named the night’s refuge Camp Devastation and no soul objected. The Masons gave us a Missouri country breakfast in Missourian abundance, and we needed it. Hot biscuits, hot wheat bread, prettily crossed in a lattice pattern on top, hot corn pone, fried chicken, bacon, coffee, eggs, milk, buttermilk etc. and the world may be confidently challenged to furnish the equal of such a breakfast, as it is cooked in the South.

We stayed several days at Mason’s and after all these years the memory of the stillness and dullness and lifelessness of that slumberous farmhouse still oppresses my spirit as with a sense of the presence of death and mourning. There was nothing to do. Nothing to think about. There was no interest in life. The male part of the household were away in the fields all day, the women were busy and out of our sight, There was no sound but the plaintive wailing of a spinning wheel forever moaning out from some distant room, the most lonesome sound in nature, a sound steeped and sodden with homesickness and the emptiness of life. The family went to bed about dark every night and as we were not invited to intrude any new customs we naturally followed theirs. Those nights were a hundred years long to youths accustomed to being up till twelve. We lay awake and miserable till that hour ovariotomy and grew old and decrepit waiting through the still eternities for the clock strikes. This was no place for town boys. So at last it was with something very like joy that we received word that the enemy were on out track again. With a new birth of the old warrior spirit, we sprang to our places in line of battle and fell back on Camp Ralls.

Captain Lyman had taken a hint from Mason’s talk, and he now gave orders that our camp should be guarded from surprise by the posting of pickets. I was ordered to place a picket at the forks of the road in Hyde’s prairie. Night shut down black and threatening. I told Sergeant Bowers to out to that place and stay till midnight, and, just as I was expecting, he said he wouldn’t do it. I tried to get others to go but all refused. Some excused themselves on account of the weather, but the rest were frank enough to say they wouldn’t go in any kind of weather. This kind of thing sounds odd now, and impossible, but there was no surprise in it at the time. On the contrary, it seemed a perfectly natural thing to do. There were scores of little camps scattered over missouri where the same thing was happening. These camps were composed of young men who had been born and reared to a sturdy independence and who did not know what it meant to be ordered around by Tom, Dick, and Harry, who they had known familiarly all their lives in the village or the farm. It is quite within the probabilities that this same thing was happening all over the South. James Redpath recognized the justice of this assumption and furnished the following instance in support of it. During a short stay in East Tennessee he was in a citizen colonel’ s tent one day talking, when a big private appeared at the door and, without salute or other circumlocution, said to the colonel;

“Say, Jim, I’m a goin’ home for a few days.”

“What for?”

“Well, I hain’t b’en there for a right smart while and I’d like to see how things is comin’ on.”

“How long are you gonna be gone?”

“Bout two weeks.”

“Well, don’t be gone longer than that and get back sooner if you can.”

That was all, and the citizen officer resumed his conversation where the private had broken it off. This was in the first months of the war of course. The camps in our part of Missouri were under Brigadier-General Thomas H. Harris. He was a townsman of ours, a first rate fellow and well liked, but we had all familiarly known him as the soles and modest-salaried operator in the telegraph office, where he had to send about one despatch a week in ordinary times and two when there was a rush of business. Consequently, when he appeared in our midst one day on the wing, and delivered a military command of some sort in a large military fashion, nobody was surprised at the response which he got from the assembled soldiery.

“Oh, now what’ll you take to don’t, Tom Harris?”

It was quite the natural thing. One might justly imagine that we were hopeless material for the war. And so we seemed in our ignorant state, but there were those among us who afterward learned the grim trade, learned to obey like machines, became valuable soldiers, fought all through the war, and came out at the end with excellent records. One of the very boys who refused to go out on picket duty that night and called me an ass for thinking he would expose himself to danger in such a foolhardy way, had become distinguished for intrepidity before he was a year older.

I did secure my picket that might, not by authority but by diplomacy. I got Bowers to go by agreeing to exchange ranks with him for the time being and go along and stand the watch with him as his subordinate. We stayed out there a couple of dreary hours in the pitchy darkness and the rain, with nothing to modify the dreariness but Bower’s monotonous growling at the war and the weather, then we began to nod and presently found it next to impossible to stay in the saddle, so we gave up the tedious job and went back to the camp without interruption or objection from anybody and the enemy could have done the same, for there were no sentries. Everybody was asleep, at midnight there was nobody to send out another picket so none was sent. We never tried to establish a watch at night again, as far as I remember, but we generally kept a picket out in the daytime.

In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn crib and there was usually a general row before morning, for the place was full of rats and they would scramble over the boys’ bodies and faces, annoying and irritating everybody, and now and then they would bite someone’s toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify his english and begin to throw corn in the dark. The ears were half as heavy as bricks and when they struck they hurt. The persons struck would respond and inside of five minutes everyman would be locked in a death grip with his neighbour. There was a grievous deal of blood shed in the corn crib but this was all that was spilt while I was in the war. No, that is not quite true. But for one circumstance it would have been all.

Our scares were frequent. Every few days rumours would come that the enemy were approaching. In these cases we always fell back on some other camp of ours; we never stayed where we were. But the rumours always turned out to be false, so at last we even began to grow indifferent to them. One night a negro was sent to our corn crib with the same old warning, the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood. We all said let him hover. We resolved to stay still and be comfortable. It was a fine warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins–for a moment. We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of horseplay and schoolboy hilarity, but that cooled down and presently the fast waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out altogether and the company became silent. Silent and nervous. And soon uneasy–worried and apprehensive. We had said we would stay and we were committed. We could have been persuaded to go but there was nobody brave enough to suggest it. An almost noiseless movement began in the dark by a general but unvoiced impulse. When the movement was completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept to the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs. No, we were all there, all there with our hearts in our throats and staring out towards the sugar-troughs where the forest footpath came through. It was late and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere. There was a veiled moonlight which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark the general shapes of objects. Presently a muffled sound caught our ears and we recognized the hoof-beats of a horse or horses. And right away, a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke, its mass had such little sharpness of outline. It was a man on horseback, and it seemed to me that there were others behind him. I got a hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright. Somebody said “Fire!” I pulled the trigger, I seemed to see a hundred flashes and a hundred reports, then I saw the man fall down out of the saddle. My first feeling was of surprised gratification; my first impulse was an apprentice-sportsman’s impulse to run and pick up his game. Somebody said, hardly audibly, “Good, we’ve got him. Wait for the rest!” But the rest did not come. There was not a sound, not the whisper of a leaf; just the perfect stillness, an uncanny kind of stillness which was all the more uncanny on account of the damp, earthy, late night smells now rising and pervading it. Then, wondering, we crept out stealthily and approached the man. When we got to him, the moon revealed him distinctly. He was laying on his back with his arms abroad, his mouth was open and his chest was heaving with long gasps, and his white shirt front was splashed with blood. The thought shot through me that I was a murderer, that I had killed a man, a man who had never done me any harm. That was the coldest sensation that ever went through my marrow. I was down by him in a moment, helplessly stroking his forehead, and I would have given anything then, my own life freely, to make him again what he had been five minutes before. And all the boys seemed to be feeling the same way; they hung over him, full of pitying interest, and tried all they could to help him, and said all sorts of regretful things. They had forgotten all about the enemy, they thought only of this one forlorn unit of the foe. Once my imagination persuaded me that the dying man gave me a reproachful look out of the shadow of his eyes, and it seemed to me that I could rather that he had stabbed me than he had done that. He muttered and mumbled like a dreamer in his sleep about his wife and his child, and, I thought with a new despair, “This thing that I have done does not end with him; it falls upon them too, and they never did me any harm, any more than he.”

In a little while the man was dead. He was killed in war, killed in fair and legitimate war, killed in battles as you may say, and yet he was as sincerely mourned by the opposing force as if he had been their brother. The boys stood there a half-hour sorrowing over him and recalling the details of the tragedy, and wondering who he might be and if he was a spy, and saying if they had it to do over again, they would not hurt him unless he attacked them first. It soon turned out that mine was not the only shot fired; there were five others, a division of the guilt which was a great relief to me since it in some degree lightened and diminished the burden I was carrying. There were six shots fired at once but I was not in my right mind at the time, and my heated imagination had magnified my one shot into a volley.

The mans was not in uniform and was not armed. He was a stranger in the country, that was all we ever found out about him. The thought of hi got to preying on me every night, I could not get rid of it. I could not drive it away, the taking of that unoffending life seemed such a wanton thing. And it seemed an epitome of war, that all war must just be the killing of strangers against whom you feel no personal animosity, strangers who in other circumstances you would help if you found them in trouble, and who would help you if you needed it. My campaign was spoiled. It seemed to me that I was not rightly equipped for this awful business, that war was intended for men and I for a child’s nurse. I resolved to retire from this avocation of sham soldier-ship while I could retain some remanent of my self-respect. These morbid thoughts clung to me against reason, for at the bottom I did not believe I had touched this man. The law of probabilities decreed me guiltless of his blood for in all my small experiences with guns, I had not hit anything I had tried to hit, and I knew I had done my best to hit him. Yet there was no solace in the thought. Against a diseased imagination, demonstration goes for nothing.

The rest of my war experience was of a piece with what I have already told of it. We kept monotonously falling back upon one camp or another and eating up the farmers and their families. They ought to have shot us; on the contrary they were as hospitably kind and courteous to us as if we had deserved it. In one of these camps we found Ab Grimes, an upper Mississippi pilot who afterwards became famous as a daredevil rebel spy, whose career bristled with desperate adventures. The loom and style of his comrades suggested that they had not come into the war to play and their deeds made good the conjecture later. They were fine horsemen and good revolver shots, but their favourite arm was the lasso. Each had one at his pommel, and could snatch a man out of his saddle with it ovariotomy, on a full gallop, at any reasonable distance.

In another camp, the chief was a fierce and profane old black-smith of sixty and he had furnished his twenty recruits with gigantic, home-made bowie-knives, to be swung with two hands like the machetes of the Isthmus. It was a grisly spectacle to see that earnest band practising their murderous cuts and slashes under the eye of that remorseless old fanatic.

The last camp which we fell back on was in a hollow near the village of Florida where I was born, in Monroe County. Here we were warned one day that a Union Colonel was sweeping down on us with a whole regiment at his heels. This looked decidedly serious. Our boys went apart and consulted; then we went back and told the other companies present that the war was a disappointment to us and we were going to disband. They were getting ready themselves to fall back on some place or another, and we were only waiting for General Tom Harris, who was expected to arrive at any moment, so they tried to persuade us to wait a little while but the majority of us said no, we were accustomed to falling back and didn’t need any of Harris’s help, we could get along perfectly without him and save time too. So, about half of our fifteen men, including myself, mounted, and left on the instant; the others yielded to persuasion, and stayed–stayed through the war.

An hour later we met General Harris on the road, with two or three people in his company, his staff probably, but we could not tell; none of them were in uniform; uniforms had not come into vogue among us yet. Harris ordered us back, but we told him there was a Union colonel coming with a whole regiment in his wake and it looked as if there was going to be a disturbance, so we had concluded to go home. He raged a little bit, but it was of no use, our minds were made up. We had done our share, killed one man, exterminated one army, such as it was; let him go and kill the rest and that would end the war. I did not see that brisk young general again until last year; he was wearing white hair and whiskers.

In time I came to learn that the Union colonel whose coming frightened me out of the war and crippled the Southern cause to that extent; General Grant. I came within a few hours of seeing him when he was as unknown as I was myself; at a time when anybody could have said, “Grant–Ulysses S Grant? I do not remember hearing the name before.” It seems difficult to realize there was once a time when such a remark could be rationally made, but there was, I was within a few miles of the place and the occasion too, though proceeding in the other direction.

The thoughtful will not throw this war paper of mine lightly aside as being valueless. It has this value; it is not an unfair picture of what went on in may a militia camp in the first months of the rebellion, when the green recruits were without discipline, without the steadying and heartening influence of trained leaders, when all their circumstances were new and strange and charged with exaggerated terrors, and before the invaluable experience of actual collision in the field had turned them from rabbits into soldiers. If this side of the picture of that early day has not before been put into history, then history has been, to that degree incomplete, for it had and has its rightful place there. There was more Bull Run material scattered through the early camps of this country than exhibited itself at Bull Run. And yet, it learned it’s trade presently and helped to fight the great battles later. I could have become a soldier myself if I had waited. I had got part of it learned, I knew more about retreating than the man that invented retreating.

The Archive

Historic American Journalism

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