Upbuilders

by Lincoln Steffens

From a photograph by Lefferts & Co., Jersey City

MARK M. FAGAN

UPBUILDERS

By

LINCOLN STEFFENS

Author of "The Shame of the Cities" and
"The Struggle for Self-Government”

Illustrated from Photographs

New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
MCMIX

TO MY FATHER

JOSEPH STEFFENS, SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

 

FOREWORD

Is it hope that is wanted? Wide-eyed optimism? Here it is, in this book. And faith? Faith in democracy? It is here. And a hint as to what one man can do? Here it is. Here are faith in the many men; hope for all; and, for the few who think they would like to lead, encouragement, the inspiration of humble examples, and some notion of how to proceed. This book contains five straight, true stories, each telling what one straight, true man has done with democracy, and through them all shines forth at last one truth upon which, as a foundation, Man can build with and for Mankind:

Wherever the people have found a leader who was loyal to them; brave; and not too far ahead, there they have followed him, and there has been begun the solution of our common problem; the problem of the cities, states, and nations—the problem of civilized living in human communities.

It has not mattered much who the leader was, or what. His religion has made no difference, nor his social status; nor his financial condition; nor his party. Mark Fagan—first in my heart, as he is in my book—Mark is an Irish Catholic Republican undertaker, but he carried Democratic Jersey City three times running. Everett Colby who turned upside down Essex, the county next to Mayor Fagan's—Senator Colby was a Wall Street broker; the heir of a rich railroad builder; a college graduate; and he looks his part. But to the voters of Essex the boy looked sincere, and they helped him to beat his boss, and theirs. Ben Lindsey was a Democratic politician and a County Judge, when he began to do justice to children, and when, at the last Denver election (1908), both the old parties and the "best" people, both men and women (who vote in Colorado), and some of the largest churches, all “went back" on the "kids' judge." —

"I went to the people," he wrote me. “I went into the shops and the workers received me with open arms . . . a glorious victory! . . . The Mary Murphys in the mills, the men there, and the kids in the street— the people won it."

W. S. U'Ren was a blacksmith in Colorado, before he became, while a visitor in Oregon, a lobbyist there, the people's lobbyist; and, as such, began to hammer out legislative tools for the use of democracy everywhere. This strange, It was great legislator does not run for office, so there is no way of proving that the voters of Oregon appreciate his service, but they elect his laws, and that's all he asks. He leads and the people follow his leadership.

But the most amazing example of the democracy of democracy is the case of Rudolph Spreckels. A capitalist, the president of the First National Bank of San Francisco, and a millionaire in his own right, this young man is a member of the rich, aggressive, unpopular Spreckels family of California, and, personally autocratic, unbending, hard, it did seem impossible that he should be able to lead the fight against the low vice and the high financial corruption of the so-called Labour administration of his city. And most of his own kind of people opposed, and they still doubt him, but the common people, the rank and file of the uneducated, anonymous mob—they followed him. They, too, jeered at first, and he never replied or explained. Francis J. Heney did; the prosecutor told the people everything. But Spreckels did his work in his private, business-like, undemocratic way; and the people watched him from afar. And, making thus at long range their quiet study of the man, they were able to penetrate class and party prejudice and a cloud of evidence as thick as a Pacific fog— somehow, the people perceived that this Spreckels was "all right."

The people are pretty wise. They are ignorant, and they can be and often are, corrupted, but not many educated individuals are as wise as the mass of men when individuals haven't tampered with them.

"Give me a jury of thieves," said a well-known district attorney, "and, if I can keep them apart from any influence excepting that of the law and the evidence in court, they will convict a guilty thief of theft."

The world's wise doubt the world's wisdom, and they have reason to; they differ very, very often; and, of course, the wise individual decides, and he tells the mute masses, that he is right. But, Euripides observed long ago in wise old Greece, that

"The world's wise are not wise."

And history and observation bear out the poet and the district attorney. Juries are juster than judges; they feel through the facts for the human story and through the letter of the law for the spirit thereof. The public is fairer than the press; the readers allow for the bias of the newspaper. An audience is more open-minded than the critics. "Have I had a good time?" the playgoer asks and the question is more fundamental than the critics’ criterion of art. And all the world knows that the world has welcomed, since Euripides, not only other artists (Wagner, for example), but prophets (Jesus, for example), and scientific discoverers (Darwin, for example), who were opposed by the authorities in art, church, state, and science.

Uninformed and misinformed; pauperized or over-worked; misled or betrayed by their leaders—financial, industrial, political and ecclesiastical, the people are suspicious, weary, and very, very busy, but they are, none the less, the first, last, and best appeal in all great human cases. Certainly the first rule for the political reformer is: Go to the voters. And the reason seems to be, not that the people are better than their betters, but that they are more disinterested; they are not possessed by possessions; they have not so many "things" and "friends." They can afford, they are free to be fair. And, though each individual in the great crowd lacks some virtues, they all together have what no individual has, a combination of all the virtues.

Mercy, for example, and forgiveness. It's wonderful how the people will pardon error. Mistakes don’t count for very much in the long run and the people, who make so many themselves, they seem to know that better than the wise men who should know why it is so.

Everett Colby had served the boss of Essex (and the bosses of the boss) faithfully, ignorantly and, therefore, innocently, during three sessions of the legislature, till he saw the evil thereof, and appealed to the people to beat the system. He went, as Mark Fagan advised, and as we have just seen Judge Lindsey go, to the shops. The workers, aware of his antecedents, heard him coldly. But when he had finished his first speech one of his audience asked a question. This worker wanted to know if Mr. Colby "hadn't voted in the assembly" for a certain notoriously bad bill.

"Yes," Mr. Colby answered, quick and straight. "And not only for that bill," he said. "I think, if you will look up my record that you will find me introducing, voting or speaking for nearly every bad measure of that sort which came up in my time. But, as I have been trying to explain, I didn't understand those things. I've only just come to understand them. But I do think I understand them now."

That was enough. The word was passed "down the line" that this young rich fellow was "on the level," and that was all the voters of Essex wanted to know. They elected him. They forgave his transgressions as they would have theirs forgiven them. They gave Colby another chance, just as they will a drunkard or a thief or a captain of industry. Indeed, there is reason for thinking that Colby was helped by his bad record of errors. The people suspect (and very wisely, too) all superiority, and Colby's candid, free confession of ignorance and guilt, made him a fit representative of his neighbours in Essex County, New Jersey, U. S. A.

Senator Colby has been retired since; and Mark Fagan was beaten; and Lindsey may be, and Spreckels. "Republics are ungrateful," Mr. Dooley quotes, and he adds: "That's why they are Republics." The people are not constant. And the forces of corruption are. In Jersey the "interests" became alarmed at the issues the Colby-Fagan "New Idea" movement was raising: taxation; representative government; the direct election of the United States Senators; home rule; etc., so they threw into the situation a "moral issue," the liquor traffic. This is an important question, but it is so important that to drop it into a reform movement with other issues up, is to break up that other movement, and—fail to solve the liquor question. If I were a political boss, in danger of losing my crown, I would get the church to come out against the saloon. That would save me, and it would not cost the saloons very much.

The liquor issue in Jersey checked, but it did not stop reform in that state. Mr. Colby has quit, for awhile, but Mark Fagan and most of the other Jersey leaders, have gone on fighting. As I am writing these lines, Mark is preparing to run again for Mayor of Jersey City. And Mr. Heney says Spreckels can't quit; and I say Ben Lindsey can't; and W. S. U'Ren—impossible!

It's hard labour: it's the hardest work in the world; and the least steady, and the most never-ending; but there's a fascination about the service of the public which holds men. It takes courage, and self-sacrifice; patience and eternal vigilance; faith and hope and human understanding; and it costs pain and disappointment and sorrow. I have seen strong men break down and weep like children because, forsooth, I had said, out of kindness and only half-believing it then, that some day, after they were dead, men would acknowledge and, ceasing to suspect their motives, might appreciate their devotion to men. It's an ungrateful career, politics is. But—and here's some more optimism for the optimists that are not mere cheerful idiots: here's a truth I would like to shout so that it might be heard some 1909 years away:

The happiest men I know in all this unhappy life of ours, are those leaders who, brave, loyal, and sometimes in tears, are serving their fellow-men.

And who are their fellow-men that accept their service? We are, you and I; we are the people who beat, but who also elect these leaders of ours. And what are we? Well, if I listen to my own thoughts, and my own conscience, and to my own heart, and yours; and if you hearken only to yours, and mine, we may not recognize the voice of God. But, if we heed, as Mark Fagan must, and Ben Lindsey, and Rudolph Spreckels, the proud; if we should have to hear and abide by the votes of the great, mixed, smelly mass of us, then we, too, should both be and obey the voice of humanity. And that is divinity enough for Man, and for the little leaders of men.

Lincoln Steffens.

Boston, May 15, 1909.

CONTENTS

chapter

page

I.

Mark Fagan, Mayor ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

3

II.

Everett Colby, "The Gentleman from Essex" ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

47

III.

Ben Lindsey, the Just Judge ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

94

(1) "The Kids' Court"

(2) What Makes "Bad" Children Bad

(3) Battles with "Bad" Men

IV.

Rudolph Spreckels, a Business Reformer ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

244

V.

W. S. U'Ren, the Law-giver ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

285

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mark M. Fagan ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

Frontispiece

facing page

Everett Colby ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

48

Ben B. Lindsey ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

96

Rudolph Spreckels ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

246

William S. U’Ren ....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

286