The Second Mayoralty Election in Greater New York

FOUR years ago, in the Atlantic for January, 1898, I discussed the first election for mayor of Greater New York, held the preceding November. I shall now, in like manner and for a like purpose, discuss its second mayoralty election, held last November. The two elections were, I believe, the most striking applications of universal suffrage to the business concerns of a single municipality which the world has ever known. The population of the city in 1897 was more than 3,000,000, and in 1901 more than 3,500, 000. In the former year more than 509,000 citizens, and in the latter more than 560,000, by secret ballot expressed their preference between candidates for the chief magistracy of the city, and meant to express their preference between the methods of its civil administration, or between rival political programmes proposed for the future. The vote in 1901 was far more than the total popular vote of the United States in the earlier presidential elections, and more than the latest vote for President in any American state except New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, Indiana, and Iowa. The specific administrative functions, which the voters had to award to one candidate or the other, were, in variety, extent, and intrinsic importance, greater than ever before in the Greater New York, or any of the former cities and towns of which it was the consolidation, and far greater, I believe, than were ever involved in a popular municipal election. Its government had become highly centralized. Its annual budget exceeded $97,000,000. Under its first consolidated charter, that of 1897, the prerogatives of the mayor had been large; but under the revised charter of 1901 the mayor was to have prerogatives much larger, and no doubt was justly to be held to a correspondingly greater responsibility. He would, during his entire term, have the right, and the sole right, not only to appoint his principal subordinates, but to remove any one of his appointees except members of the board of education. No one of his predecessors had had the right of removal except for a brief period after his inauguration. The new right of removal would enormously increase the mayor’s practical power of control and direction, and would likewise compel him, with his own repute and prestige, to answer for the ability and integrity with which the vast number of his subordinates should perform their duties. The perfect understanding of all this gave the election of 1901 a very great dignity and critical importance. No chief magistrate of any city in the world — certainly none chosen by popular suffrage — has a power equal, or nearly equal, to that which has just been placed in the hands of Mayor Low. It may be truly said that, within the limits of the city, the elections of 1897 and 1901 were not, in respect of intensity of popular feeling and intelligence of popular discussion, inferior to the presidential elections of our generation.

These mayoralty elections of the metropolis in 1897 and 1901 deserve, therefore, the profound interest of every student of municipal government — and of every citizen, whether a student or not — who is concerned with the political competence of the masses of American men. I told the readers of the Atlantic, four years ago, that I deplored — and I still deplore — the result of the election of 1897. It would, in my opinion, have been far better for New York if Seth Low had in that year been chosen, representing — as he then did, beyond any doubt — the independent sentiment rejected of both party organizations. Nevertheless, as I then said, there was much in the result to confirm and cheer those who believed that universal suffrage was to work well even when applied to the business problems of the great cities of our American democracy. It will, no doubt, be assumed — and rightly — that I regret the result of the mayoralty election in 1901, although it gave the ruler ship of the city to the same able and high-minded citizen whom I should have been glad to have seen chosen in 1897. In spite, however, of my regret, I find in the result as a whole, and especially in the campaign which preceded it, much — and more than I found in the election of 1897 — to increase confidence in the political ability and character of our urban populations. Both the struggles demonstrated the wholesome concern of the masses of the American metropolis with moral questions when distinctly put before them. Whether, in 1901, such questions were in truth and practically involved in the competition between the two candidates is a very different question of sound public policy, as to which there were, during the campaign, and remain after it, wide differences of opinion between men equally intelligent and loyal to the honor of their city. My personal position as the defeated Democratic candidate for mayor disables me from speaking of that and of other questions concerning persons with entire frankness; or rather, makes me fear that, however frankly I might speak about them, what I should say would not, by some, or perhaps many, be accepted as frank. Where I cannot freely speak, whether for praise or for blame, I shall not speak at all. But I can, and quite without arrière-pensées, discuss the general and most instructive features of the campaign. They may well interest the voters of other American cities.

The result in November, 1897, which four years ago I regretted, was strictly a “Tammany victory.” For although the Greater New York consists of five boroughs, in only two of which, Manhattan and the Bronx, the ancient Democratic organization of Tammany Hall exists, still the principal nominations and the fundamental theory of the Democratic campaign of 1897 were determined by Tammany Hall, and conceded by its associates of the three boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, and Richmond. Tammany Hall is likewise, no doubt, credited by many with the origin and direction of the Democratic mayoralty campaign of 1901; but those who accord it that credit are ill informed. It was in no proper sense a Tammany campaign, — certainly not in the bad sense in which the enemies of that organization interpret the expression. The differences between 1897 and 1901 are obvious. In my former article I pointed out that, however well disposed, personally, the Democratic candidates for mayor and comptroller might have been in November, 1897, the fact was clear, nor, indeed, was there any concealment of it on the Democratic side, that they “were not chosen for their own equipment in ability, in experience for the duties of really great and critical offices requiring statesmanship of the highest order, or any public confidence earned by any past public service; ” that although, during their tenure of office, it might turn out that in truth they had had such sense of right and such force of character, nevertheless it had not been for those qualities that they had been nominated. “They were chosen,” I then said, “ from among the large body of men counted upon to do absolutely and without troublesome protest the will of . . . powerful politicians with no official responsibility.” That was the first of the two chief grounds of my extreme condemnation of the Tammany campaign of 1897.

And there was a second and equally important ground. However good the nominees might turn out to be, their nominations meant — and were in substance declared to mean — that the Democratic organizations of Manhattan and Brooklyn reaffirmed adherence to the methods of administration against which just popular judgment had been pronounced at the polls in 1893 and 1894. In the latter year, legislative investigation had convinced the public that in the Manhattan borough (the old city of New York) detestable practices had existed in some departments of the Tammany administration then drawing to a close, and more especially among the police. Neither the Democratic candidate for mayor nor the organization which nominated him promised in 1897, nor, so far as the public was informed, did his nomination imply, any amendment, or any attempt at amendment, of the abuses of 1894 and the year immediately preceding. A like thing was true of the borough second in population to Manhattan, but rapidly overtaking it. In 1893 independent Democrats and Republicans had joined to defeat the local Democratic organization at the mayoralty election in that borough, — then the city of Brooklyn, ■— and for what was believed to be political and administrative wrongdoing.

That election resulted in complete Democratic defeat; and the next year the election in the old city of New York resulted in an even more overwhelming defeat of the Tammany ticket. The second ground upon which I condemned the Democratic municipal campaign of 1897 was, as I here wrote in January, 1898, the refusal of the Democratic organizations to reverse their support of what had been condemned by the popular and just verdicts of 1893 and 1894. I pointed out — and quite without imputation upon the principal Democratic candidates, whose ability and character still had to be tried in actual administration — that both those organizations “stood with explicit and bad courage upon the very record which had received a damning popular judgment not only in the decent homes of New York, but at the polls of the city.” I did not, however, — certainly I could not, in the philosophic reasonableness of these pages, — practice the exaggeration which is so fashionable in dealing with urban politics in our country, though so unnecessary for any beneficent purpose, or indulge in the wholesale imputations made upon the largest single body of voters in the city, — almost a majority of the whole electorate, — or upon all of the men whom that body chose to have lead them. On the contrary, I said — and truly, as the present retrospect shows — that “ the plurality which had returned Tammany Hall to power included thousands of honest, good citizens, and even citizens both intelligent and high-minded; that, under its restored administration, some things — probably many things — would be well and fairly done; that the masses of its voters had not deliberately intended to surrender their city to corruption and incompetence; that even among its politicians were men whose instincts were sound and honorable.” I protested against the abnormal pictures of iniquity in New York, pointing out that, without exaggeration, there was quite enough to arouse the wholesome indignation of good citizens. Nor did I confine my criticism to Tammany Hall. I said that in 1897 “nine tenths of the organized jobbery of the city sought Tammany success; ” but I also said that they did it both directly and through the “ indirect, but no less practical alliance of the Republican organization, — a machine more AngloSaxon, perhaps, in its equipment, but not a whit better in morals, than its rival.” I expressed my grief at the defeat of Seth Low, the candidate of the Citizens’ Union in 1897, my congratulations to him upon the great political strength with which he had emerged from his defeat, and my fear that New York was “doomed to a low standard of civic administration until the end of 1901.” Finally, and in spite of all we had wished to be otherwise, I insisted that there was much, very much, in the first mayoralty election of the Greater New York to encourage good citizens ; that there then appeared in its municipal politics, “far more plainly than ever before, a powerful and wholesome tendency ” to independent voting, that very first condition of permanently good municipal politics; that the election had shown that “the democratic experiment here on trial would work out well even in great cities; and that, in the very dear school of experience, the mass of people would learn to insist upon exceptional ability and character in public administration, and to vote for nothing else.”

Such, four years ago, was my view of the first mayoralty election ; and except as, for obvious reasons, I may not and will not, in this general discussion, deal with the actual merits or demerits of those chosen to office in 1897, or with the wisdom or fairness of those who, before or after their election, condemned them, I have not since seen, and do not now see, any reason to reverse my view. I venture only to say, by way of a single personal note, that my acceptance of the Democratic nomination in 1901 not only implied no such reversal, but, on the contrary, proceeded, and was, at the time of my acceptance, explicitly stated to proceed, upon a complete affirmance of the views I had expressed four years before. It was intended, whatever the result at the polls, to be a practical promotion of those views. Whether the intention were wise or not is another question: as to that, there were, and will doubtless remain, widely differing opinions.

The formidable independent strength shown in 1897 gave the Democratic organizations, upon entering into power on New Year’s Day, 1898, a serious reason for caution and restraint. Having the advantage of the popular discontent with the “reform ” or Fusion administration of Mr. Strong, and the far from satisfactory Republican administration of Brooklyn in 1896 and 1897, those organizations still found themselves definitely in a minority. In November, 1897, Judge Van Wyck, the Democratic candidate for mayor, received 233,997 votes; General Tracy, the Republican candidate, 101,873; Mr. Low, the candidate of the Citizens’ Union, 151,540; and Henry George, Jr. (running in place of his famous and noble father, who died suddenly during his candidacy), 21,693 votes. That is to say, the regular Democratic vote was 234,000 votes, or only 46 per cent, as against an opposition of 275,000 votes, or 54 per cent. Clearly, the election of the Democratic candidate had resulted from a division of the opposition, which might well be temporary. The caution and restraint exercised in 1898-1901 were, to say the least, insufficient. The course of public sentiment during those years became increasingly adverse; at the last it was intense and irresistible.

The most powerful stimulus of that sentiment (apart from the facts before the people) was the press of New York. Any one familiar with its daily journals, during the past quarter century, must acknowledge — and he should do so with gratitude — the great increase of their political independence, and with it the signal growth of their practical and immediate hold upon voters. In our time the old-fashioned party organ brings even to its partisan readers little that is useful; and it is an almost negligible quantity on election day. Not, indeed, that the modern independent press is omnipotent. Far from it. In 1897 almost the entire press of New York supported Mr. Low, but he polled less than 30 per cent of the total vote. There are other and sometimes greater forces than the newspapers. Nevertheless, what they did in 1897 was an extraordinary achievement. There may be great power without omnipotence. From 1897 until election day, 1901, the same press carried criticism to the point of condemnation of the entire administration, from top to bottom, as utterly corrupt and incompetent, except only in the finance department, whose chief, Mr. Coler, enjoyed during his entire term of office a general concession of his ability and upright independence. The newspaper picture during the years 1898-1901 was otherwise one of almost complete blackness.¹ That this was exaggeration is obvious to every resident of New York who, during those four years, had ordinary opportunities of observation, and who made his judgments upon his own knowledge. It really went to the limit of impossibility. If what was said were literally true, the public service would have fallen to pieces in the complete and foul disintegration which is sometimes imputed to New York in the prints of London and Paris. Intelligent observers, when not addressing the public, made fairer and less absurd judgments. There is a curious illustration of this in the editorial statement of a principal independent journal of New York,² with respect to Mr. Keller, the commissioner of charities, that, “although a Tammany man and a pretty stiff partisan, he has given the best administration of that department the city has ever had.” This, of course, was not printed until after the election of 1901. The admission was withheld as unsafe while the stress of the campaign was laid upon Democratic misbehavior. Mayor Low has reappointed two of the three civil service commissioners of his Democratic predecessor, thus accrediting that part of his predecessor’s administration. He has reappointed one of his predecessor’s two commissioners of accounts, those officers being the mayor’s special and chief representatives in supervision of the departments. He has appointed as health commissioner an important subordinate of the Democratic health commissioner, who had been retained under him for four years. He has appointed to be commissioner of correction one of the long-time subordinates of the Democratic finance department. It is quite safe to predict that, although he and his heads of departments have an almost complete power of removal of their subordinates, except in the uniformed police and fire forces, they will not feel justified in removing more than a small proportion of them, except only as they may (and doubtless should) reduce the number of public employees. So elsewhere, even in the unspeakable police, various merits in Democratic administration have been discovered since the election.³ Mayor Low and his stall will probably discover — or at least think they discover — such merits more and more as their own practical difficulties dawn upon them. The real danger is, I fancy, with them as with most public servants, that, after the new brooms have become worn, they will think too well, rather than too ill, of their predecessors’ performance. The zeal to undo wrongs, and especially reduce extrava gance, often abates as the labors and troubles of practical reform become nearer and more real. Such merits, however, of the late mayor’s administration, whether in fact they were more or less, and the difficulties with which he had to contend, whether they were more or less, were not, during the campaign, pointed out, or even admitted, by the able journalists of New York. And their campaign lasted from his very first official acts and utterances, in January, 1898, until election day, in November, 1901. There was so much material for just criticism that fair and intelligent discrimination would have made the journalistic condemnation quite as effective at the polls, — that being its prime purpose, — and probably even more so than it was. And there would not now exist the expectation — perfectly reasonable in view of the campaign, but quite impossible to meet — of a complete alteration, plain to every one, even the wayfaring man, in methods, ideals, and details of administration, and a great reduction in municipal burdens. Nor would there be the risk, through the unreasonable expectation created by such criticism, of a demoralizing reaction in public sentiment at the end of Mayor Low’s term.

The newspapers estimated, with practical genius, the danger of scattering fire, and the advantage of a specific target, from which their range should never be diverted, and which should have about it a personal and familiar picturesqueness sure to hold popular attention. This they found in Richard Croker, the leader of Tammany Hall. In cartoons, and in the virile and unweariedly continuous work of reporters and editorial writers alike, they held him up as a heavy, brutal, dull, insolent, corrupt, tyrannical, reckless, unreasoning, absentee, political “boss.” What measure of justification there was for this it is not within the scope of this article to inquire. I may say, however, that where, in our country, with our secret ballot and free and constant discussion, one man holds for half a generation (not for the five or six years of a Tweed, or the three or four years’ popular militarism of an Alcibiades) the effective support of great masses of citizens of an industrial and highly civilized community (including, for shorter or longer periods, men of all grades of wealth, intelligence, and public spirit), so that his will is, or rather, seems to be, theirs, a philosophic observer will probably believe that there are at least some errors or omissions in such a portraiture. If not, then there are many problems, puzzling indeed, in the history of Manhattan borough, and among them the nomination of so justly distinguished a character as Abram S. Hewitt by Tammany Hall under the Croker leadership in 1886, and his appointment of Mr. Croker to important office in 1887 after many years’ political acquaintance between them.

The next and perhaps equal object of journalistic attack was the police department ; and the practical success of that attack was of itself proof that superior discrimination in the treatment of other departments, while avoiding ultimate risks, would not have reduced the effect of the campaign upon the voters. Here the evidence, as it was made public, was sufficient to justify an extreme condemnation. In a cosmopolitan city like New York, subjected, as it most unwisely is, to sumptuary and restrictive regulations disapproved by its public sentiment, and enforcible or negligible in the discretion of the police, the temptations to blackmail and other forms of corruption to which the police are subjected are enormous. Prior to 1901, those temptations were aggravated, or, at the least, responsibility for their results was concealed from the people, by division of police power. Its head was a board of four members, no more than two of whom could, under the law, belong to either political party, but all of whom were to be appointed by the mayor, who did belong to one political party.

It was in November, 1900, that the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of New York, the Rev. Dr. Henry C. Potter,became the avant-coureur of the proposed Fusion campaign, protesting “before God, and in the face of the citizens of New York,” against “the base complicity of the police with the lowest forms of vice and crime.” The city was profoundly stirred by the blistering declaration that, in his belief, “nowhere else on earth ” did there “exist such a situation as defiles and dishonors New York city.” The Chamber of Commerce, the chief representative of the financial and business interests of the city, upon this peremptory call, appointed a Committee of Fifteen, to prove, where possible, and to break up, the repulsive and dangerous alliance. Although the committee did not have much success in detail, it did valuable service by keeping the moral issue before the community, and especially by its promotion of the picturesque and awakening attacks upon the gamblers and their police allies made by William Travers Jerome, a judge of one of the criminal courts. The sentiment which had long existed in favor of a single-headed police department was now decisively felt in the legislature of the state. In February, 1901, the police board was abolished by statute, which in its place provided for a single police commissioner, to be appointed by the mayor, with two principal deputies, to be appointed by the commissioner. It is of little moment to inquire whether the police department, during the few months in which it has had a single head, has in itself been better or worse than under the board of four. The usefulness of the change has been otherwise signally demonstrated, and to the instruction of every city which blunderingly intrusts executive duties to boards. Whatever the merits or demerits of police administration in New York were after the change, it is clear beyond peradventure that the people at last knew precisely where to place blame. Individual and undivided responsibility is an advantage of the very first order to the soundness of administration subject to popular judgment at the polls.

After the enactment of the law, it was the obvious duty of the mayor — and very certainly to the political interest of himself and his party — to appoint as the first commissioner not only a citizen of signal ability and of the very highest character, but one acceptable as such to the independent voters, — who, it had been clear since November, 1897, would hold the balance of power in 1901, —and to urge like care in choosing his two principal deputies. It was plain that if the new experiment were not thus inaugurated, the opposition would find it an easy and exhilarating task to organize and direct the public suspicion and anger, ready to burst into effective flame. William S. Devery, a man against whom, whether rightly or wrongly, the sentiment of all strains in the community had already run strongly, and even savagely, was, as first deputy, nominally under Michael C. Murphy (an elderly politician, far from persona grata to independent public sentiment), put in practical charge of the borough of Manhattan, — the very borough in which the abuses were believed to exist. But for those appointments the mayoralty competition of 1901 would have had a different end. Whatever may have been the merits or demerits of Chief Devery’s former career as captain, inspector, and superintendent of police under the bipartisan board, or of the public sentiment that put him on the defensive from the outset, it is certain that the power wielded by him in the borough of Manhattan, as practical head of police during the few months before election in 1901, aroused against himself, and, what was far more serious, against the party which, whether rightly or wrongly, was held responsible for his incumbency, an enormous and intense public feeling. With singular fatuity, under skillful goading by the press, he indulged, until the eve of the election, in crude utterances which strengthened the impression of his abuses and oppressions. His very energy — that most useful single quality, after honesty, in the head of a police force — seemed to possess a baleful fury, exquisitely disturbing to every person intelligently concerned for Democratic success.

In the work of gathering the harvest thus prepared by the press, the first place clearly belongs to the Citizens’ Union, — a body whose ideals and methods may wisely be adopted in every great American city. Upon its nomination, Mr. Low had been a mayoralty candidate in 1897, receiving, as already observed, and under its emblem as a political party recognized by law, almost 30 per cent of the entire vote of the metropolis. After its defeat in that year, the Union suffered from the inevitable post-election weariness of men not regularly in politics ; and it is not too much to say that but for the resolute and self-sacrificing public spirit of one citizen its elements would not have been gathered together, as they were, for their remarkably effective work in 1901. R. Fulton Cutting did not postpone his labors until within a few weeks of election day, but taught inferior politicians a lesson by his dedication of the rest of the year to that instruction and organization of public sentiment which are the vital work of true politics. For more than a year before the election he was industrious and persistent in gathering together independent men, and in earning by a frank and genuine sympathy the respect of representatives of labor organizations and of those (too generally ignored by the so-called “practical ” men in politics) who are interested in this or that constructive work fit for municipalities, and especially the large and growing body who believe in the ownership and use of street franchises by the city. By the spring of 1901 the Union had again secured public confidence, and from that time on was able, if it would, to dictate the main features of the proposed opposition campaign. It found a valuable ally in the City Club, which had, since 1897, prepared and issued, and in most effective form, a mass of statistical and literary material for the attack upon Tammany Hall.

The problem during the summer and early September of 1901 was to unite the elements of the opposition, so as to avoid the defeat which the opposition majority had suffered four years before. The Republican organization would undoubtedly make a party nomination; and there seemed no reason to doubt that its voters would very far outnumber any other element of the opposition. In fact, it became clear afterwards, when the votes were counted, that it far outnumbered all other of those elements taken together.⁴ Besides the two greater bodies of the Republicans and the Citizens’ Union, there were ready for fusion in the campaign several bodies of seceding or dissentient Democrats, animated by motives ranging all the way from sincere love of the city or hatred of abuses, whether practiced by their own party or not, to a spirit of mere vengeance or a desire to raise the value of their corrupt service to their old associates. The like is inevitable, perhaps, and, although just ground for suspicion, is far — very far — from being sufficient objection to every fusion movement. The principal of such Democratic bodies was the so-called Greater New York Democracy, headed by John C. Sheehan, a politician formerly and long of Tammany Hall, who had for many years suffered under the extremest reprobation of independent sentiment. Several of the bodies were German, the most influential being represented in the press by the Staats Zeitung, an important factor in its influence upon opinion, and enjoying the honorable prestige of the name of the late Oswald Ottendorfer, a German-born Democrat of distinction. It was sufficient, or well-nigh sufficient, for the Citizens’ Union, in its relations even with the least worthy of the bodies of dissenting Democrats, that, upon the mayoralty in this one election, their politicians and followers were willing, or might be induced, to vote aright. In this respect the Union observed the usual rule of politics, although with naïveté, or now and then with something akin to Pharisaism, some of them condemned other and equally sincere and independent Democrats for application of precisely the same practical rule in their welcome of regular Democrats to their reformatory programme. Nor did the Citizens’ Union shrink from the necessity of according their aboriginal allies, with the war paint still upon them and the scalps of their wicked and unrepented warfare still at their belts, recognition in public places of considerable importance. To that element was conceded, upon the Fusion ticket,⁵ the borough presidency of Manhattan which, with its independent budget of nearly $2,000,000, and the large patronage given it by the charter amendments to take effect in January, 1902, was the office, next after the mayoralty, most important for the customary but not exalted uses of a seceding political faction ; that is to say, the compulsion, by the use of spoils of office, of its recognition by the regular body of its own party.

When the Fusion ticket was to be made up, the professional politicians so arranged the division of power as that the Citizens’ Union should have but a small fractional share, although it was the creator and leader of the alliance. Its leaders, resolute for a practical result, yielded to this, although it is doubtful whether they needed to make the surrender. The breach between the regular Republican organization and Mr. Low had been healed by his resumption of “regularity” as early as 1898; and it was willing, or rather, desirous, that he should be the candidate. It was the preference of the Citizens’ Union that the candidate should, this year, be a Democrat. Independent Democrats had in 1893, in the reform campaign in Brooklyn, supported a Republican for mayor. So had they done in the campaign in Manhattan and the Bronx in 1894; and so, also, in the campaign of 1897, in the Greater New York. The Greater New York was Democratic by a large majority; and in the opinion of the Citizens’ Union its movement would be more clearly recognized as non-partisan if in 1901 Republicans were called upon to support a reform Democrat for mayor, as independent Democrats had three times supported a Republican. The Citizens’ Union did not mean, however, for any retrospective or sentimental consideration of justice, to risk failure of its plan of an alliance of all elements of the opposition. When, early in September, 1901, the terms of fusion were practically discussed, it yielded; and for the fourth consecutive time within eight years — and without any reciprocity meantime — independent Democrats were called upon to support a Republican as the reform candidate for mayor.

There is, however, much reason to believe that no candidate for the mayoralty would have better met the difficulties incident to the Fusion movement than Mr. Low. Four years ago, when he was in the shadow of apparent defeat, I pointed out in these pages his unique strength; and I may, therefore, in his victory, repeat my tribute. He was conceded to be able and high-minded ; he had had valuable experience during the four years of his mayoralty in Brooklyn, sixteen years before; and he had honorably served for ten years, or more, in the distinguished position of president of Columbia University. He had performed ably and with great public spirit several important functions, such as his services upon the Rapid Transit Board and at the Hague Peace Conference. He enjoyed an exceptional popularity among the Germans; and it was certain, in view of his party regularity, that he would receive substantially the entire Republican vote.

The Fusion mayoralty ticket thus nominated had great elements of strength. Although an independent ticket, it was also a “regular Republican ticket, ” supported as such loyally by a great mass of voters having no sympathy with the idea of non-partisanship animating the Citizens’ Union. German voters had been won by explicit promise that the liquor laws would not be rigorously or offensively enforced. It had the enthusiastic and effective support of nearly all of the daily press of New York. The Democratic candidates, outside of the small fraction of journalistic support accorded them (some of which was, however, genuinely able), would have to rely upon such access to independent voters as might be accorded in the news columns of hostile journals or upon the purchased hospitality of blank walls.

The Democratic organizations and their leaders found, therefore, that, able and resourceful as in many ways they were, they had neglected the dynamic and all - controlling element of their problem. That element was public opinion, and more especially the opinion of that hard-worked, moral, reading, and intelligent body which the English call the “lower middle class,” and from which probably comes the very best of political sentiment in Great Britain and the United States. The Democrats clearly faced, as, long before election day, some of the best informed of their leaders told their mayoralty candidate, a “ Waterloo with an adverse majority of at least one hundred thousand. ” This situation was particularly dangerous in the many square miles of small dwellings in Brooklyn, with its great German constituency and its generally fervid dislike of Tammany Hall. The rather desperate problem of the Democrats was how much of all this could be overcome in a campaign of four weeks.

And first they had to choose a candidate for mayor. The Brooklyn Democrats insisted upon a candidate quite unrelated to Tammany Hall, and of whom it would with good reason be believed that his determination was to reverse such of the methods of city government as were under popular condemnation, and to undo and punish past wrongdoing. A very large part of the Tammany constituency in Manhattan, and, I think, most of its leaders, were heartily in sympathy with this requirement; and at the last it was conceded. The choice of the Brooklyn Democrats, and especially of the reform Democrats of that borough, intensely desirous that their party should be an instrumentality of good government, not only for the sake of the city, but also for the wider purposes of wholesome opposition in state and national politics, was Comptroller Coler, and upon the plain political consideration that, as the people of the city believed him to have been able, upright, and independent in their second office, in which he was serving his fourth year, they would believe the promises of his trustworthiness in their first office. The leaders of Tammany Hall refused, however, to accept him, as, before that, the Republican leaders of the Fusion had likewise refused to accept or consider him. The author of this article was then nominated as the Democratic candidate for mayor. His qualifications and character are not open to comment here; but, that this discussion may have value, it is necessary to state some public opinions of him which led to his nomination. He was reputed to be a lifelong member of the Democratic party, who had been zealous for sound money, for low tariff, for civil service reform, and for the steadfast loyalty of the United States to the cause of democratic self-government the world over. In the political relations of Brooklyn, he had been deemed independent, though always and outspokenly preferring cooperation with his party when its success did not seem to be inconsistent with the welfare of Brooklyn. There had in late years, and especially since 1898, — and under Democratic auspices, — been a great improvement in the local administration and political conditions of that great borough; and the influence of the independent and reformatory part of the Democratic party had, since that year, more than for many years before, been hospitably welcomed and acted upon by its regular organization. He had in 1897 supported the Citizens’ Union, and had attacked Tammany Hall and the Brooklyn Democrats for their administrations (rejected at the polls in 1894 and 1893), and for their refusal, by nominations of men definitely committed to reform, to promise amendment of what had then been amiss, and also because their principal nominations in 1897 seemed to him (whether rightly or not is of no consequence here) to represent a deliberate intention that the great officers of the city should be subordinate representatives of politicians not responsible to the public. He was believed to have been zealous and successful in well-known prosecutions of public wrongdoing. He had for several years before 1898 been one of the leaders of an independent and influential Democratic body formed, in Brooklyn, to enforce a high standard of municipal nominations, and under public promise to coöperate with the regular body when the latter should yield to that standard.

His candidacy was intended, by those who proposed him, and very certainly by himself, as a signal promise that, if it were successful, the ideas of public service for which he had stood should dominate the mayoralty during 1902 and 1903. The sincerity of the promise was disbelieved by the opposition; nor was such disbelief unreasonable, if there were to be imputed to the quarter million voters who made up the regular Democratic strength the unworthy motives, corrupt purposes, and low ideals attributed— and no doubt often with reason — to political leaders. But that great body of voters deserved no such imputation; and they had first to be reckoned with. The nomination — leaders or no leaders, bosses or no bosses — was for them; its strength had to depend chiefly upon their good will; and they were sincere, whether or not their leaders were. It is the plain truth, however, that many of the leaders were also in sympathy with this view. In the candidate’s opinion, he had the right to assume, and the public welfare required him to assume, that the promise signified by his nomination was sincere. If the mayoralty were to come to him, and if he failed in steadfastness to the ideas of public service which he had given out, and for the impression of which on the public he had been nominated, the insincerity would then be his, his the broken promises.

He accordingly required that the record of his public utterances be examined, and that it be perfectly understood, before his acceptance, that he receded from nothing which he had said. He next insisted upon an explicit agreement that he was free of promises or pledges of any kind, except such as he should take upon himself in public. He next caused it to be understood that he should announce his own platform, and that his obligations to the people at large, to those who should vote for him and to those who should nominate him, should be precisely and solely what he himself publicly stated. It was believed by those who proposed his nomination that he was sincere; and they certainly had no reason, public or private, to believe otherwise, unless it were supposed that they recalled with hope the moral failures of other seemingly worthy men chosen to high office. The Democratic nominee could not reasonably be expected to make, or to acquiesce in, such an imputation upon himself. It would have been most unfit for him to make such an imputation upon them.

Some criticisms upon the Democratic candidate present questions of a political and moral character not without general and permanent interest. It was at once said that the acceptance of such a nomination by a man of his antecedents involved gross political inconsistency. But if he were sincere there was no inconsistency. He had opposed the Democratic mayoralty nomination of 1897, and for the reason that, to him, it had then seemed (whether rightly or wrongly) to be in theory the very reverse of the nomination of 1901. In the view expressed by him in 1897 (whether right or wrong), the nominee of that year was not intended to be an independent chief magistrate, representing his own reformatory views, but to be a political subordinate of politicians not answerable to the people. The nomination of 1901, on the other hand, meant to the candidate of that year, and was intended to mean to the public, the very opposite of this. So other criticisms implied that he intended, if he were elected, to give administration of the very kind which in the past he had condemned, and for condemnation of which he had been nominated; or even that he had entered into some kind of agreement, direct or indirect, to do, if he were chosen mayor, the very contrary of what he publicly and solemnly promised to do. Except upon denial of the integrity of his personal purpose and the truthfulness of his promises, there was no merit whatever in those charges of inconsistency.

He was also condemned for accepting a nomination from unworthy politicians and political bodies. But a like charge could be made against his competitor, with reference to some, at least, who nominated him, and indeed against the best of men who have been chosen to public office by universal suffrage. The proposition that evil men should be made to support evil candidates, and otherwise continue in their evil courses, is, in reality, sheer treason to good municipal government.

The Democratic candidate, immediately upon his nomination, was strongly pressed to peremptorily demand from Mr. Croker, the leader of Tammany Hall, the Democratic organization in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx, his intervention to remove Mr. Murphy, the police commissioner, and his obnoxious deputy, Chief Devery; or, if that were not done or could not be, to declare that, if he were elected, he would, as soon as he took office, himself remove the police commissioner. He was offered valuable and perhaps decisive support if he would do either the first or the second of these things. But it should have been obvious that he could not make the demand upon Mr. Croker — even if it would have been successful — without complete self-stultification. The statutory power to remove the police commissioner rested either with the governor of the state, a Republican who certainly was not amenable to Mr. Croker’s influence, or with the mayor, and with no one else. Upon both the governor and the mayor rested an undoubted and sworn duty to remove, if the public welfare required removal; but no such duty rested upon the leader of Tammany Hall. If, holding no office or public trust, he nevertheless held any such power, it was clearly the very power against which the Democratic nomination was a protest, and which the nominee certainly could not ratify by appeal to it, without surrendering, in case he were elected, his own official self-respect, and depriving himself of the moral strength and independence accorded by the circumstances of his nomination. Neither could he, with reason or decency or consistency, in order to promote his own political fortunes at the polls, ask the mayor to remove a public officer whom the mayor would not remove upon the score of public necessity.

It was equally clear — or rather, it would have been equally clear but for the different view taken by Mr. Low — that a candidate for the mayoralty should give no pledge as to his official treatment of a specific person, whether then in office or out of office. If the modern constitutional prohibition of New York not only against payment of money or value to influence votes, but against any promise to influence votes, were not meant for such a case, then it is difficult to know for what it was meant. And that prohibition was no more than an expression — imperfect, perhaps, but still clear — of a fundamental and wholesome rule of American public life. The police commissioner had been appointed for a term of five years, less than one of which had expired. If he were removed, he was to be punished not only with loss of the remainder of his term, but with ineligibility to reappointment. He was justly removable only because the public welfare required it. Plainly, therefore, his removal ought to be an official act, determined, not by a candidate for the exigencies of his candidacy, and upon facts as he learned them, during his campaign, from a newspaper press, excited and heated, however honestly, but by the elected mayor when he should be in office, acting under the sanction of his oath and upon the facts as he should then find them to be. I hope that the precedent unfortunately set by Mr. Low will not be followed. Before he gave his preelection pledge to remove the police commissioner, it had been supposed — and quite apart from constitution or statute — that, in our democratic republic, a candidate for president or governor or mayor or other office must enter his office with an absolute freedom from pledges respecting persons. It is impossible to distinguish between a pledge to remove one man and a pledge to appoint another. It would be lamentable, and ultimately the source of corruption, if candidates should hereafter feel justified, or be open to compulsion by the threats of good men or bad men, or by other campaign necessities, to announce programmes of dismissals or appointments of specific persons.

The campaign, beginning with the most serious probability of Democratic defeat, seemed less favorable to the Fusion as it wore on. The promise of a firm, upright, and constructive mayoralty by the Democratic candidate; his pledge that he would not permit municipal powers or moneys to be used for partisan purposes; the argument that his nomination was in itself a victory for the sentiment represented by the Citizens’ Union, and that, with the great normal Democratic majority in the city, a more radical and permanent improvement in standards of administration could be accomplished by giving success to the reformatory movement for the time powerful in the Democratic party rather than by defeating the party when, for the first time in many years, it controlled the all-important nomination to the mayoralty, and of inflicting that defeat in favor of an alliance, at the best but temporary, of the incongruous elements of the Fusion; the necessity in the country of an honorable and effective opposition, when political power was elsewhere so nearly completely in the hands of the Republican party, — such arguments seemed to make headway with the body of independent Democrats with whom the decision rested. But near the end of the campaign the tendency was effectively reversed, and enough of the original situation restored to assure Democratic defeat. This was the work of Judge Jerome, who was the candidate for the important office of prosecuting attorney in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. At the last he became the hero or Prince Rupert of the campaign. Sounding the single note of a corrupt alliance between crime and the police force under the Democratic administration, he addressed his appeal to the simplest and strongest sense of morality. Better than any one else he adopted the text sternly given by Bishop Potter the year before. In effective, often rude, but often, also, most impressive manner, he produced the very deepest impression of his own truth-telling sincerity and utter courage. He was followed and listened to as was no other candidate. He had the burning zeal of a true crusader, and to that were forgiven what were deemed mere faults of taste. Near the end of the struggle his speeches became the dominant feature. Until then it was, during the latter half of the campaign, believed by most disinterested judges that the enormous advantages with which the Fusion had begun had been overcome, and that the Democratic candidate for mayor would be chosen by a narrow majority.

The election resulted in a decisive victory for Mr. Low and the Fusion ticket, all of the boroughs except Queens giving him majorities. His total vote was about 297,000, against his adversary’s 265,000. His victory was at the first welcomed as a novel exhibition of independent voting full of beneficent promise, as a final destruction of the Democratic organizations in the Greater New York, and more especially of Tammany Hall, and (curiously ignoring the plain facts of the case) as a definite and final establishment of the new system of exclusively non-partisan nominations. While the result in 1897 had to many seemed a permanent abasement of the public life of their city, the result in 1901 seemed to the same observers a permanent establishment of that life on a firm and wholesome basis. The happy change of sentiment was at once reflected abroad. The London and Paris newspapers hailed Mr. Low’s election as a “revolution.”

The first impression has somewhat faded upon more careful examination of the result. It was not many days after the election that Mr. Wheeler H. Peckham, a distinguished independent Democrat, declared his disappointment at the meagreness of the majority, in comparison with the impressive blackness of the picture which had been drawn of misgovernment, and in view of the expectations cherished for months and years, and of the many signs of a really overwhelming uprising. There was, in truth, great reason to rejoice at the achievements of public sentiment which the campaign had demonstrated. But the character of the result was at first quite misunderstood. If there had simply been a struggle between the forces of righteousness all on the one side and the forces of vice all on the other, with the enormous advantages which the former had enjoyed, Mr. Peckham’s depression would have been quite justifiable. If 265,000 citizens of the American metropolis, after a campaign of several years, conducted with extraordinary energy, had, in the face of object lessons so appalling as those held up to them, deliberately voted to continue iniquitous government, it would surely have been a calamity, and almost an extinction of patriotic hope. But that was a partisan and superficial view. It was, indeed, the plain truth that the Democratic strength had increased, and the Fusion strength had diminished, from 1897 to 1901. The votes in the several boroughs were as follows:⁶ —•

The total Fusion majority in the entire city, which in 1897 had been 41,209, was in 1901 reduced to 31,632, although the total vote had increased by more than ten per cent. The difference was that while in 1897 the Fusion votes were divided between Mr. Low, the Citizens’ Union candidate, General Tracy, the Republican candidate, and Henry George, Jr., in 1901, on the other hand, the Fusion votes were united for Mr. Low. The Democratic vote had both relatively and absolutely increased, and the Fusion vote had relatively decreased. Nor was this all; for in former elections the proportional Fusion strength had been greater than in either 1897 or 1901. Thus in 1894 the Tammany candidate received in the old city (the present boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx) 108,907 votes against 154,094 for the Fusion candidate, Mr. Strong, — being thus a plurality of 45,187 out of a total vote of 263,001. Had the campaign of 1901 resulted in an equivalent division of political strength in the same boroughs, the total vote of 318,921 would have been divided, so that Mr. Low would have received a majority of 55,000 instead of the 6000 which in fact he received. In the corresponding Democratic defeat of 1893 in Brooklyn, already noted, the Fusion mayoralty candidate had received 95,859 against 65,100 for the Democratic candidate, —a majority of 30,759 out of a total of 160, 959; while in 1901 Mr. Low received a majority of 25,767 out of a total of 203,483. Had the division of the Brooklyn voters in 1901 been the same as in 1893, Mr. Low’s plurality in 1901 would have been upwards of 40,000 instead of 26,000.

Nor was it true, as the independent press seemed to assume, that fusion and independent voting had their really first success in 1901. There had, indeed, been more than three times as many ballots cast under the independent emblem in 1897 as were in 1901 cast under both the Citizens’ Union and independent Democratic emblems. And not only had the proportion of independent voting been larger in 1893 and 1894, but in still earlier years there had been still more striking exhibitions of non-partisan sentiment and independent voting. Such, for instance, was the revolt against the corrupt Tweed régime in 1871. In the preceding year, 1870, the Tammany mayoralty candidate had received 71,037 votes against only 46,392 for the independent Democratic candidate supported by the Republican party. But twelve months later, after an extraordinary and memorable agitation of only four or five months, the Tammany ticket was overwhelmed, receiving only 45,916 votes against 89,127 for the head of the Fusion ticket. How very much larger was the measure of non-partisan voting then than in 1901 is obvious from the fact that while in 1871 the head of the Democratic local ticket had received 45,916 votes, the Democratic state ticket received 89,326 ; and while the Republican state ticket received but 34,391 votes, the head of the Fusion local ticket received 89,127.

The congratulations of good citizens must not, therefore, rest upon the proposition that the election of 1901 was a plain, simple struggle between Ahriman and Ormuzd. The truly cheering significance of the campaign of 1901 will be lost if it be assumed that the mayoralty contest was between complete and obvious evil on one side and complete and obvious good on the other. If that were true, then the dark principle had been making headway over its adversary of light. Surely, we ought to be depressed if we knew that the cause of vice and misgovernment had, in the American metropolis, failed of a majority of the votes by but three per cent, and that the fraction of the total vote in favor of depravity has increased, in spite of an educational campaign of nearly four years by the press, by the Citizens’ Union, the Chamber of Commerce, and other reformatory bodies, by an almost continuous outpouring of eloquence, and by uninterrupted object lessons, startling and in the sight of all men. The assumption, however, is untrue. All the good was not on one side, nor all the evil on the other. There need be no disappointment, if we respect the facts rather than, after the fashion of the doctrinaire, reason upon preconceived theories unrelated to the wonderful and complex stream of human life in what Mr. Low, in his campaign, has well called a Weltstadt, — the most cosmopolitan city in the world. The reformatory campaign, with its struggles of unselfish and high-minded men, did not result in a Pyrrhic victory, probably to be reversed in 1903; certainly to be reversed if, during the coming two years, there shall be a reaction of public sentiment for reasons sufficient or insufficient.

The whole campaign ought to bring solid satisfaction, because it has shown, far better than in numerical totals, a deeper, broader, and more intelligent influence, practically exereised by public sentiment upon municipal politics, than the city had known in 1897 or ever before. For, first, it was demonstrated that independent voters held the balance of power, and that, large as was the normal Democratic majority in the city, any grave offense given by its officials or leaders to its independent members would readily put it in a minority. And, further, independent sentiment had compelled the Republican party to a better loyalty to the city, and therefore to accept the alliance with the Citizens’ Union which it had refused in 1897. The compulsion would, no doubt, have been as great if Republican politicians had been less skillful in persuading the Citizens’ Union to surrender part of its programme; but the compulsion was effective, and we know it may be effective again, and that is the point. And, next, and perhaps most significant of all, the same sentiment had made itself powerful with the politicians and organizations of the Democratic majority. Their mayoralty nomination was no less the work of the Citizens’ Union and the sentiment for which it stood than was the Republican nomination. On all sides, indeed, there had come to be a measure of enlightened deference to the reformatory and independent spirit, — insufficient, no doubt, sadly insufficient, but still far greater than in 1897 or ever before.

Neither of the great party organizations will, during our generation, cease to be active and powerful in the municipal politics of Greater New York. They will continue to nominate mayors and other municipal officers, and to provide by far the greater part of the votes for them. But hereafter, and until the memory of the campaign of 1901 shall have grown dull, they will accept — not completely, indeed, but more hospitably and largely than they have hitherto — the sentiment of the intelligent and loyal citizenship of their city. More and more have we reason to believe that that sentiment, if organized and well directed, will effectively influence the standards of party nominations, party ideals, and party behavior in its municipal affairs, and in those of cities affected by its example. Party forces will not be destroyed in American cities, nor will they be there confined to activity in national or state matters. They may, however, — and will, if reformers exercise practical good sense, — be harnessed to the work of honest and effective city government.

I hope that Mr. Low will, in his great office, have a large and noble success. Such success is of the first consequence to the cause of good municipal government not only in the metropolis, but in every city of the land. If he be genuinely successful, if he administer well, and especially if he uncover and punish a large part of the past wrongdoing described during his campaign, he will secure a hold upon the confidence of the voters of this city which will wholly or largely neutralize the reaction which must inevitably come. Such success will, perhaps, if he desire it, although with the large Democratic majority that is far from assured, bring him two years hence a renewal of the vote of popular confidence. If, however, he fail in vigor of administration, in the vigor and thorough extent with which he procures justice to be meted out for the past wrongdoing so obvious and pervading, or if, for any reason, his administration fail to hold the zealous loyalty of the people, the reformatory and independent sentiment in both parties, — and no less in the Democratic party than in the Republican party, — and also the independent sentiment not closely allied to either party, will be inevitably and calamitously weakened. If his administration be so successful as to genuinely interest the voters, it will strengthen intelligent and high-minded sentiment in both parties, and augment that reasonable independence which is, after all, the fundamental condition of good government, whether in the city or in the nation. And thus, in the Greater New York, and indeed in all the great cities of the United States, no less than in great private corporations, it can help to make effective and fruitful the splendid capacity of the American people for business administration, — splendid in energy, in originality, and in fertility of resource.

Edward M. Shepard.