THE AMERICAN MONTHLY REVIEW OF REVIEWS VOL. XXXV. NEW YORK, JUNE, 1907. THE PROGRESS OF THE WORLD. No. 6 by enacting this measure in the form desired by Governor Hughes and his supporters. This was really a significant triumph won against great odds. The vote on the question of retaining the insurance superintendent was a matter of slight consequence compared to the effect throughout the State of the passage of so comprehensive a measure as the Public Utilities bill. Other State governors, notably those of Connecticut and Missouri, have felt obliged to rebuke the legislatures of their respective States for neglect of the public interests, but in no other State has the victory of thoroughgoing sincerity and efficiency in the executive chair been more marked than in New York. Efficiency in Governments. In these pages last month we reStatesmanship in a Governor's ferred to the isolated position of Chair. Governor Hughes at Albany, who was compelled to fight almost singlehanded for reform measures which he had promised the people in his campaign last fall and which only a minority of the Legislature seemed at all eager to promote. This isolation of the Governor was strikingly illus trated in the vote of the State Senate to retain in office the insurance superintendent, whose removal the Governor had emphatically recommended. That official was admitted on all hands to be personally honest and incorruptible, but his conduct in office had not shown the high standard of efficiency which, in the opinion of the Governor and the press of the State, is demanded at this In our State governments it is betime of a man in his position. The Govercoming more and more evident nor felt keenly his responsibility to the peothat the people will have to rely ple of the State for the administration of the almost exclusively on the governors that they insurance department, and he insisted on the select to secure any appreciable increase of right to remove an official who in his judg- administrative efficiency. The average legisment was incompetent to conduct the affairs lator is too much engrossed with the affairs of this important department as he had prom- of his own district to have much thought for ised that they should be conducted. The the concerns of the State as a whole. Most State Senate, however, had not yet reached of our States, if not actually badly governed that point of view in its political philosophy from which mere efficiency could be regarded as a real test for office-holding. In the opinion of a majority of its members, nothing short of absolute malfeasance in office would justify removal. In the exercise of its constitutional prerogative, therefore, the State Senate refused to accept the Governor's recommendation, and its action was very generally interpreted as signifying a determination to nullify the Governor's entire reform program. But those who predicated thus were deceived. Public sentiment made itself so quickly felt on the subject of the Public Utilities bill, which we discussed at some length last month, that both houses of the Legisla or corruptly misgoverned, are certainly administered in accordance with low standards of efficiency, as compared, for example, with our great industrial enterprises. To say this of our city governments is to utter a truism. Graft is not the sole evil to be rooted out of our municipal governments. After we are rid of the grafter, comes the question, Is the man who takes his place competent as well as honest? There has lately been published a little book bearing the significant title, Efficient Democracy." Its author, Mr. William H. Allen, of New York, believing that ill-informed officials are necessarily wasteful officials, has for several years conducted a silent but fruitful campaign in the Her Wonderful The fire following the earthquake Record. methods of certain of the public offices and laid low. A wonderful achievement in citydepartments. He has succeeded in showing building, this, and worthy of California's most effectively how misleading are official best traditions. reports as commonly compiled, and how few officials really know what they are doing, from year to year. Twelve months of quiet investigation as conducted in New York by a few men banded together in the Bureau of City Betterment, in connection with the Citizens' Union, resulted in disclosures concerning the borough government that led to the removals and enforced resignations of several incompetent officials and the installation, it is hoped, of common-sense business methods. The Bureau of Municipal Research, of which Mr. Allen was one of the incorporators, has a great work before it. The proposed methods of this new organization are outlined in "Efficient Democracy," which we commend to those among our readers who realize the crying need of this line of reform and have heart to undertake it. San Francisco's Shame. In San Francisco, however, the revelations of the past few months point to a condition of municipal rottenness that requires the most radical treatment. There the need of the hour is summed up in the simple, old-fashioned virtue of honesty. After that is attained it will be time to agitate for efficiency. Individuals, within and without official circles, were charged with bribing the Board of Supervisors to grant franchises to public-service corporations. In one day the grand jury returned sixty-five indictments of this nature against Abraham Ruef, one of the leading politicians of the city, who has since pleaded guilty and promised to do what he can to overthrow the iniquitous system of corruption that has reached such startling proportions in the city by the Golden Gate. Mayor Schmitz was reported to have offered to make a full confession of his participation in municipal graft, but it was denied that immunity was promised him in consideration of such a confession. All these disclosures are extremely humiliating to the proud metropolis of the Western slope, which only a year ago was the recipient of the nation's sympathy and bounty in the hour of her distress. But we should, of course, remember that the true bone and sinew of San Francisco's citizenship have been and will be unaffected by these scandals in high places. The mass of the population has been going about its daily tasks, building up in a remarkably short space of time what earthquake and fire 497 blocks, being about four square miles. Within that area there was practically not a building but was rendered uninhabitable, and but few that were not totally destroyed. A careful canvass of the burned district has been made just one year after the fire. This shows that almost onehalf of this area is now under roof. While not all of the new buildings are of permanent construction, a large part of them are, and the permanent work which has been done is of the best, the character of the buildings being such as to guarantee that the new San Francisco which is springing up so rapidly on the ruins of the old is to be more beautiful and substantial than that which was destroyed. It is estimated that the actual cash outlay in reconstruction during the year has been about $80,000,000, of which more than $60,000,000 went for the construction of buildings, nearly $10,000,000 for labor in the removal of débris, and a similar sum for the restoration of public utilities. To the members of labor-unions alone it is estimated that $20,000,000 was paid in wages. Bank clearings for the year reached the enormous total of $2,074,299,568. The map on the opposite page affords striking evidence of the year's activity. The blackened spaces represent buildings in the burned district now actually under roof. Chicago's Limited. After a decade of agitation and New Charter, strenuous work, Chicago has secured a new charter from the Illinois Legislature. She has been governed by an antiquated “city and village" act, and has been restricted in a hundred directions. and prevented from making necessary municipal improvements or from introducing method, efficiency, and system into her administration. To clear the way for a new charter suited to Chicago's needs and conditions, a constitutional amendment had to be proposed by the Legislature and adopted by the people. This was done in 1905, and the approval of the amendment was followed by the organization of a large and representative charter convention composed of Chicago citizens. The convention labored for eighteen months, carefully studied all recent charter legislation in America and Europe, better pavements, a more efficient police, should result from it. Had the Legislature been more progressive Chicago would have obtained much more, but she is thankful for the favors received and has every reason to be so, considering the "remarkable unresponsiveness of the Legislature to really progressive propositions," in the words of the vigilant Legislative Voters' League. thoroughly debated a number of "mod--n" and economic. Cleaner streets, better bridges, and "radical" ideas,-there was a strong radical element in the convention, thanks to ex-Mayor Dunne, and finally elaborated a compromise charter that seemed satisfactory to all groups and interests. The charter was submitted to the State Legislature in the form of a bill and was the feature of the recent session. For weeks its fate was in doubt, for many of the "country legislators" feared Chicago was practically about to secede from the State and set up a rival Legislature. But all obstacles and difficulties,-many of them serious, were finally overcome, and in the last hours of the session the charter bill was passed by a very narrow margin. Material Chicago is rejoicing and enthusiand Economic astically congratulating herself Benefits on the result, and she is certainly entitled to gratulation. Her new charter is not a model in any sense and will not contribute anything to the science or art of municipal government. The Legislature missed its opportunity and failed to profit by the thought and experience of municipal reformers. It rejected several significant and advanced provisions that the Chicago convention had inserted after much reflection and full consideration. It refused to make the slightest concession to independent voting, to popular control of party by means of direct primaries, and to the demand for local option in Sunday observance. But it has at least freed Chicago from galling fetters and given her what may be called the necessaries of municipal life and growth. The new charter enables her to consolidate her taxing and administrative bodies, to place her park systems under one management instead of three, to improve and extend her revenue system so as to raise more money by reasonable taxation, to increase her bonded indebtedness fivefold for permanent improvements, and to control more effectually, or even municipalize, such public utilities as telephones, tunnels, gas, and electric plants. Further, the new charter provides for a referendum on any important franchise at the request of 10 per cent. of the registered voters. Chicago is given the authority to amend her own charter in certain specified directions and is made more independent of the Legislature. The number of aldermen is reduced from seventy to fifty, and the aldermanic term is raised to four years. The benefits from the charter, which has to be referred to the people of Chicago,-will be chiefly material The Idaho Murder Cases. The country's attention was centered in a remarkable way, last month, on a murder trial cònducted at Boise City, the capital of the State of Idaho. On December 30, 1905, ex-Governor Frank Steunenberg was assassinated by means of a bomb planted at the gate in front of his house at Caldwell, Idaho. Six years before, his official actions as Governor at the time of the labor riots in the Cœur d'Alene mining district, in obtaining the aid of federal troops, had been bitterly resented by the Western Federation of Miners. On the person of Harry Orchard, who was arrested on suspicion of complicity in the murder, were found papers which were believed to establish a connection with William D. Haywood, secretary and treasurer of the miners' union; Charles H. Moyer, its president, and George A. Pettibone, a member of its executive committee. The trials of these men for conspiracy to commit murder, beginning with that of Haywood, are now in progress. It was alleged many months ago that a confession had been procured from Orchard implicating the union officials in many other murders committed in the mining districts of Idaho and Colorado, as well as in the killing of Steunenberg. The interest of organized labor in the case became acute and widespread when the Governor of Colorado honored a requisition for Moyer, Haywood, and Pettibone, and the men were arrested and taken, without the privilege of consulting counsel or seeing members of their families, by special train to Idaho. The United States Supreme Court later sustained the validity of this procedure, but an unusually virulent agitation in behalf of the prisoners has spread throughout the labor-unions of the country. President Roosevelt's characterization of them as "undesirable citizens," while it had no reference to the crime for which they had been placed on trial, was taken up by the Socialist agitators, who sought to have it appear as an attempt to prejudice the case. A large fund was raised for the defense of the accused men, and eminent counsel were engaged. After the first few days at Boise City even the irreconcilables among the Socialist leaders in attendance seemed ready to admit that the Idaho authorities were disposed to grant the accused a fair and impartial trial. The process of selecting a jury occupied many wearisome days. The This month of June will witness Philippine the first general election of dele Election. gates to a popular assembly in the Philippine Islands. The steps by which this important event in the political history. of the Philippines has been brought about have been hardly noticed by the American public. Five years ago Congress passed a law which provided that whenever " a condition of general and complete peace shall have been established," and the fact of its establishment certified by the president of the Philippine Commission, "the President upon being satisfied thereof shall order a census.' It is further provided by the law that if the HON. WILLIAM H. TAFT, OF OHIO. (From his latest photograph.) peaceful conditions should continue for two Copyright, 1907, by I. Benjamin. Cincinnati. years after the completion and publication of the census an election for the choice of delegates to the popular assembly shall be called by the direction of the president. The census was completed and published on March 28, 1905, and, two years having passed without serious disturbance, the President on March 29 of the current year issued a formal order fixed by the commission for the election, which is to be held in all of the territory not inhabited by Moros or other non-Christian tribes. While at least one of the political parties in the islands has declared for immediate independence, it is impossible to say whether any considerable number of delegates will be elected upon that platform. The National Progressive party, successor of the Federals, has adopted a platform looking to ultimate independence, but proposing no radical steps at present. Parties in the Philippines have always resembled personal factions or juntas, rather than bodies of voters united on particular policies or principles. |