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By Washington Gladden

S the Mayor's chair to be the terminus a quo of the popular leaders? We all know what once happened to a Mayor of Buffalo and what is now happening to a Mayor of Detroit. Are such experiences likely to become frequent? There is some reason why they should be. The city is the crux of American politics; the man who boldly solves it is entitled to the highest confidence of his fellow-citizens. In truth, the questions now right at the front in municipal politics are the questions around which National issues will soon be made up, and the leaders of municipal reform will be the natural leaders of National reform.

Young Mayor Harrison, of Chicago, has suddenly sprung into National fame through his resolute and successful resistance to the schemes of a voracious corporation; the people were willing to forgive a loose police administration because of his fidelity to a great trust; and they were wise. The saloons and the gamblinghouses are public enemies, but their influence is far less deadly in a democracy than that of the great organization of corporate wealth which is ready to spend money by the millions in the bribery of legislatures and city councils and judges and newspapers, in order that it may fasten its grip on the people and suck their blood by slow tribute through generations. It is sometimes supposed that, while the saloon question is a moral question, the question of the success of such an attempt as that which was made by the street-car companies in Chicago and the gas combine in Philadelphia is only a financial question; and that moral questions ought to outrank financial questions. But this is a grievous misconception. There are no moral questions more vital than those which are raised in our cities by the bold, and generally successful, attempts to rob the people through the acquisition of public utilities.

All this is pertinent to the interesting history of Mayor Jones, of Toledo, who has become pretty well known throughout the country during his two years' incumbency just concluded, and whose remark

able success in the recent election has made more talk, not only among the politicians, but also among the common people, than any recent political event.

Samuel M. Jones was born in Wales in 1846, and his parents came to America when he was only three years old. Poverty and severe toil were the portion of his childhood. At the age of eighteen he found himself in Titusville, Pa., in search of work, and with fifteen cents in his pocket; his quest was soon rewarded by an opportunity to work among the oilproducers, and from that time to this he has kept in close connection with this important industry. In the rough life of the oil-fields he won his vigorous frame, his practical sense, and his intimate acquaintance with the conditions of the working people. With small opportunities of education, he so well employed his leisure that we find him now possessed of considerable knowledge of literature, a keen relish for the best that has been said in prose and verse, and a good, clear English style, often lit up with a felicitous phrase or a telling quotation. He is a well-made man physically, about five feet ten, muscular, with a large blue eye, a genial face, and a manner of great frankness and directness.

Clearly he was too brainy a man to be long working by the day; he soon rose to positions of responsibility, and became an employer himself. In 1893 he invented an important improvement in the apparatus of the oil-wells, and, finding no manufacturer willing to produce his device, he set up his own shop in Toledo. "This brought me," he says in an interview, "in contact with ordinary labor conditions for the first time in my life. As a rule, labor in the oil-fields had enjoyed large wages compared to similar classes outside. I found men working in Toledo for a fraction of a dollar a day. I began to wonder how it was possible for men to live on such a small sum of money, as citizens of a free Republic. I studied social conditions, and these led me to feel very keenly the degradation of my fellow-men, and I at once declared that

the so-called 'going wages' should not govern our business. I said the rule that every man is entitled to such a share of the products of his toil as will enable him to live decently, and in such a way that he and his children may be fitted to be citizens of a free Republic, should be the rule governing the wages of our establishment."

"Without waiting for any," Mr. Jones set up the principle of a "minimum wage" in his shop; no man should work for him for less than a specified wage. After a year or so he became convinced that one remedy for the prevailing unemployment was the shortening of the labor day, and the adoption of the eight-hour day in his shop was accompanied, not by a reduction, but by an increase in the daily wage. the same time he changed the hours of labor in the oil-fields under his control from twelve to eight, employing three shifts instead of two for the twenty-four hours. For the wider introduction of this reform in the oil-fields he has labored enthusiastically, but with little success; there are few wells besides his own in which the men do not work twelve hours.

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Mr. Jones recognizes the fact that his patent enables him to disregard the competitive rate of wages in his factory; he does not take great credit to himself for maintaining a standard higher than would be possible in unprotected industries; he simply declines to appropriate the whole of this advantage, and divides it with his men. Every year, in addition to the wage, a labor dividend of five per cent. upon the amount earned by each man is distributed, and every man who has worked six months or more in the establishment is given a week's vacation with full pay at some time during the year.

In addition to these efforts to improve their material conditions, Mayor Jones has sought to put himself into the most brotherly relations with his men and their families. Let me quote again from that interview:

I soon discovered that the men were lacking in something else beside wages. The men were conscious of social inferiority, and I could not understand how a man who had done no wrong could or should feel inferior to any other man simply because he worked with his hands. Without any organized plan for the purpose or without hardly knowing myself what I was doing, I determined that no such feeling should

exist. To break down the feeling of social inequality, we began to "get together "-that is, we had little excursions down the bay. We invited our workmen and their families, and also some other people who live in big houses and who do not work with their hands. We sought to mix them, to let them understand that we are all people-just people, you know.

As business prospered, Mr. Jones built. for himself a fine house in one of the beautiful residence districts; but when the house-warming came, the party was made up of his workmen and their wives and sweethearts.

Mayor Jones has been a wide reader of literature relating to social questions; he has made the acquaintance of many of the leaders of social reform; he has invited many of them to Toledo to give free lectures for the education of the people. But his social theories all rest on the Sermon on the Mount. The one thing that he believes with all his heart and soul and mind and strength is that the teachings of Jesus Christ are practicable. Early in the history of his industrial enterprise in Toledo he came, as he says, to feel the need of a rule to govern the place. "So we had the following printed on a piece of tin and nailed to the wall. It's there to-day: The rule governing this factory: THEREFORE WHATSOEVER YE WOULD THAT MEN SHOULD DO TO YOU, DO YE EVEN SO TO

THEM.' We told the boys that this was a double-acting rule, which, to be carried out, required that they should do their work as they would want us to do it if they were working the office and we were in the other end of the shop. After nearly four years of a test, I am pleased to say that the Golden Rule works. It is perfectly practicable and is worthy of a trial. It is nearly nineteen hundred years since Jesus gave it to the world, and the least his professed followers can do is to try it.”

Adjoining the Golden Rule factory was a vacant lot 150 feet square, with several fine old trees; Mr. Jones bought it, and has made a pretty park of it-Golden Rule Park-with chairs and settees and swings and a May-pole for the children, and a speakers' and music stand. Here, every Sunday afternoon in the mild weather, there is music, and speaking by some one competent to teach, usually some phase of the social question. "Golden Rule Hall" has also been fitted up in the second story of the factory,

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where similar meetings are held in the formerly; that the administration of the cold weather.

By all these manifestations of his spirit and purpose Mr. Jones became pretty well known, especially to the working classes of Toledo; and when, at the Republican Convention held two years ago for the nomination of municipal officers, a deadlock occurred in the attempt to select a candidate for office, some daring individual ventured to suggest as a compromise candidate the name of Samuel M. Jones. The nomination went through like a whirlwind; and Mr. Jones was elected by a handsome majority, though the corporations and the saloons both stoutly opposed him.

His two years' incumbency has wrought many changes in his following. Not a few who shouted for him in his first campaign denounced him in the second; and a great many of those who feared him then are now his enthusiastic supporters. This is due, no doubt, to a considerable change in the attitude of the Mayor himself. During the two years he has been advancing pretty rapidly in the direction of Socialism. He is not an advocate of any sudden or radical changes in the industrial order, but his attempts to grapple with the question of employment and his experience with the corporate ownership of public utilities have convinced him that the existing economic system must be greatly modified. He insists, for one thing, that the right to work is a natural and sacred right; and that the State must never ask any man to eat the bread of a pauper until it has given him a chance to earn his own bread. The failure of employment, as he has constantly confronted it during his term of office, he believes to be a chronic condition for which public provision must be made. And this opinion modifies, to a considerable extent, his ideas about municipal administration. It leads him to feel that drunkenness is the effect, more than the cause, of poverty; and to have less faith than once he had in the suppression of drunkenness by law. His enforcement of the law against the saloons has been much less rigid than was expected of him, and those to whom this seems the principal thing have lost faith in him. Mayor Jones claims, however, that there has been less drunkenness during the last year than

police force has been of such a nature that vice and crime have been prevented; and that prevention is better than punishment.

His last message indicated the extent to which he wishes to go in the direction of Socialism. Omitting a few items of local interest, the following is a summary of its recommendations:

The establishment of a city plant for the manufacture of fuel gas.

The control and operation by the city of the electric lighting plant.

The establishment of civil service in all departments of the municipality.

The enactment by the Legislature of laws that will give the city such a measure of Home Rule as will enable it to " bring out the best that is in its own people."

No grant or extension of franchises to private enterprise without the approval of the people.

The abandonment of the contract system on all public work, such as paving, sewers, etc. The compilation and publication of the city directory by the municipality itself.

The establishment of kindergartens as part of the public-school system.

The sprinkling of the streets by the city itself.

A larger appropriation for public parks. An appropriation for music in the parks. The establishment of playgrounds for the children.

The establishment of free public baths. The veto power to be abolished, and the referendum to the people substituted in its place.

This does not seem at the present moment a very radical programme. Municipal ownership of public utilities is its most socialistic feature, and that plank was in the platform of every party in the late election at Chicago. But the vigorous advocacy of it by Mayor Jones enlisted against him all the holders of franchises; and in these a great many of "our best citizens" are directly or indirectly interested.

Such disaffection as I have indicated, utilized by the manipulation of the politi cal machine, which had, of course, no use for Mayor Jones, resulted in defeating his renomination in the Republican Convention. Immediately he announced himself as an Independent candidate, upon a platform sufficiently explicit :

"Equal opportunities for all and special privileges to none.

"Public ownership of all public utilities. "No grant of new or extension of existing franchises.

"The abolition of the private contract system of doing city work."

Upon this the battle was joined, and the battle was a fierce one. The prominent papers bitterly opposed Mayor Jones; the Ministers' Union repudiated him; it was alleged every day that the good people were all against him, and that his support came wholly from the vicious and disorderly classes. But the Mayor made a very active campaign, speaking in all parts of the city to great audiences, and making a kind of speeches, I venture to say, which have not been made very often in political campaigns. Amidst all the storm of obloquy and misrepresentation he kept his temper, refusing to indulge in personalities, and pleading only that the people, in a democracy, must have what belongs to them, and that the foundation of government must be "equal opportunities to all and special privileges to none." Democracy, as he understood it, rests on Christ's law of love, and this is what he preached up and down the streets of Toledo, in season and out of season. It must have been rather a bewildering moment to the average politician when Mayor Jones stepped upon the platform at the last meeting before the election, in the great armory packed with voters, amid a tumult of applause and cries of "What's the matter with the Golden Rule?" "What's the matter with brotherhood?" It was a notable speech that followed. Mayor Jones declared that he had sought to discharge the duties of his office in such a way as to bring the blessings of good government to all the people. He spoke rather sadly of the opposition of some whose friendship he might have reckoned on. "It is not pleasant," he said, " to be counted among the disreputable, to be classed as a demagogue' and a ' dangerous man;' but there is comfort in the reflection that men at whose feet I would count it an honor to sit have been called demagogues." He had no promise to make of any change of policy. "In the future as in the past I shall pin my faith to love as the only power that can save the world; and if again I am called into the public service, I shall use my best endeavor to administer love as law. It seems to me preposterous that Jesus would practice a hickory and shotgun' policy in dealing with evil. There is but one way

to overcome evil, and that is both scientific and Scriptural. 'Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good;' and that policy will overcome the evil that flows from the saloon, as well as from all other sources. The one way to finally overcome the saloon is to provide a better substitute."

So far as the question of franchises was concerned he was perfectly unequivocal. All public utilities must be owned and controlled by the people. "The private ownership of public utilities is a crime against democracy." This is his unflinching declaration. And his eye is constantly fixed on the day when we shall really have "government of the people by the people for the people," with all that it implies. "It is because," he said, "I see in the awakening social conscience of the Nation the dawn and promise of a better day that I proclaim its coming. It is because I believe that brotherhood is the goal towards which the race is progressing, and because I see in the near future the realization of a degree of liberty that will make equal opportunity for all, that I plead for a more just social order, an order that shall recognize the Golden Rule of all the people as the law of the land."

On this platform, an independent candidate, with all the newspapers and both the political machines fighting him, Mayor Jones received 16,752 votes, against 4,260 for the Republican and 3,155 for the Democratic candidate, carrying every election precinct in the city of Toledo. It scarcely needs to be said that this has come upon the mind of the average politician with the force of an apocalypse. He stands amazed and bewildered before it.

He begins to wonder how he can get hold of this man and use him.

There is evidence of the pendency of chaos in both of the great political organizations of this State; and it is not wholly inconceivable that Major Jones, if put upon his own platform, as an independent candidate, might carry the State in the next gubernatorial election. But I know that he covets nothing of the sort, and is perfectly content to stay where he is and work out the municipal reforms for which the people of Toledo have given him such a large order. Nor am I at all sure that this is not the very best thing that he could possibly do.

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