Many Americans today are wondering how things got to this point – where both political Parties refuse to acknowledge the theft of the 202o election, refuse to accept direct evidence of the theft, and refuse to prosecute criminals who committed the fraud. The following article explains how and why we are in the present political cesspool:
Corruption was so widespread in many city governments at the turn of the [20th] century that bribes were openly given and accepted; legislators proudly represented specific vested interests; and the law was flagrantly ignored. It was in this atmosphere that Lincoln Steffens went to St. Louis in 1902 to see what a crusading young circuit attorney named Joseph Folk was doing to reform the city. His article, written in conjunction with Claude H. Wetmore for McClure’s magazine, was the first in a series on municipal corruption that Steffens was to call The Shame of Our Cities.
“St. Louis, the fourth city in size in the United States, is making two announcements to the world: one, that it is the worst governed city in the land; the other, that it wishes all men to come see it. It isn’t our worst governed city; Philadelphia is that. But St. Louis is worth examining while we have it inside out.
There is a man at work there, one man, working all alone, but he is the circuit (district or state) attorney, and he is “doing his duty.” That is what thousands of district attorneys and other public officials have promised to do and boasted of doing. This man has a literal sort of mind. He is a thin-lipped, firm-mouthed, dark, little man, who never raises his voice, but goes ahead doing with a smiling eye and a set jaw, the simple thing he said he would do. The politicians and reputable citizens who asked him to run urged him when he declined. When he said that if elected he would have to do his duty, they said, “Of course.” So he ran, they supported him, and he was elected. Now some of these same politicians are sentenced to the penitentiary, some are in Mexico. The circuit attorney, finding that his “duty” was to catch and convict criminals and that the biggest criminals were some of these same politicians and leading citizens, went after them.
The corruption of St. Louis came from the top. The best citizens – the merchants and big financiers – used to rule the town well. They set out to outstrip Chicago. The commercial and industrial war between these two cities was at one time a picturesque and dramatic spectacle such as is witnessed only in our country. Businessmen were not mere merchants and the politicians were not mere grafters; the two kinds of citizens got together and wielded the power of the banks, railroads, factories the prestige of the city, and the spirit of its citizens to gain business and population. And it was a close race. Chicago, having the start, always led, but St. Louis had pluck, intelligence and tremendous energy. It pressed Chicago hard. It excelled in a sense of civic beauty and good government; and there are those who think it yet might have won. But a change occurred. Public spirit became private spirit; public enterprise became private greed.
Along about 1890, public franchises and privileges were sought, not only for legitimate profit and common convenience but for loot. Taking but slight and always selfish interest in the public councils, the big men misused politics. The riff-raff catching the smell of corruption, rushed into the Municipal Assembly, drove out the remaining respectable men, and sold the city – its streets, its wharves, its markets, and all that it had – to the now greedy businessmen and bribers. In other words, when the leading men began to devour their own city, [today called “Corporate Cannibalism“ see: The Great Deformation by David A. Stockman] the herd rushed into the trough and fed also.
So gradually has this occurred that these same citizens hardly realize it. Go to St. Louis and you will find the habit of civic pride in them. The visitor is told of the wealth of the residents, of the financial strength of the banks, and of the growing importance of the industries; yet he sees poorly paved, refuse-burdened streets, and dusty or mud-covered alleys; he passes a ramshackle firetrap crowded with the sick and learns that it is the City Hospital; he enters the “Four Courts,” and his nostrils are greeted with the odor of formaldehyde used as a disinfectant and insect powder spread to destroy vermin; he calls at the New City Hall and finds half the entrance boarded with pine planks to cover the unfinished interior. Finally, he turns a tap in the hotel to see liquid mud flow into wash basin or bathtub.
The St. Louis charter vests legislative power of great scope in a Municipal Assembly, which is composed of a Council and a House of Delegates. Here is a description of the latter by the February grand jury:
“We have before us many of those who have been, and most of those who are now, members of the House of Delegates. We found a number of these utterly illiterate and lacking in ordinary intelligence, unable to give a better reason for favoring or opposing a measure than a desire to act with the majority. In some, no trace of mentality or morality could be found; in others, a low order of training appeared, united with base cunning, groveling instincts, and sordid desires. Unqualified to respond to the ordinary requirements of life, they are utterly incapable of comprehending the significance of an ordinance and are incapacitated, both by nature and training, to be the makers of laws. The choosing of such men to be legislators makes a travesty of justice, sets a premium on incompetency, and deliberately poisons the very source of the law.
Our investigation, covering more or less fully ten years, shows that, with few exceptions, no ordinance has been passed wherein valuable privileges or franchises are granted until those interested have paid the legislators the money demanded for action. Combinations [Parties] in both branches of the Municipal Assembly are formed by members sufficient in number to control legislation. To one member of this combination [Party] is delegated the authority to act for the combination [Party] and to receive and to distribute to each member the money agreed upon as the price of his vote in support of or opposition to a pending measure. So long has this practice existed that such receipt of money for action on pending measures is taken for granted as a legitimate perquisite of a legislator.”
One legislator consulted a lawyer with the intention of suing a firm to recover an unpaid balance on a fee for the grant of a switch way. Such difficulties rarely occur however. In order to insure a regular and indisputable revenue, the combination [Party] of each house drew up a schedule of bribery prices for all possible sorts of grants. There was a price for a grain elevator, a price for a short switch; side tracks were charged for by the linear foot, but at rates which varied according to the nature of the ground taken; street improvement cost so much; wharf space was classified and precisely rated.
As there was a scale for favorable legislation, so there was one for defeating bills. It made a difference in the price if there was opposition, and it made a difference whether the privilege was legal or not. But nothing was passed free of charge. Many of the legislators were saloonkeepers – it was in St. Louis that a practical joker nearly emptied the House of Delegates by getting a boy to rush into a session and call out, “Mister, your saloon is on fire!” – but even the saloonkeepers of a neighborhood had to pay to keep in their inconvenient locality a market which public interest would have moved.
From the Assembly, bribery spread into other departments. Men empowered to issue [business] licenses and permits to citizens who wished to erect awnings or use a portion of the sidewalk for storage purposes charged an amount in excess of the prices stipulated by law and pocketed the difference. The city’s money was loaned at interest, and the interest was converted into private bank accounts. City carriages were used by the wives and children of city officials. . .
Men ran into debt to the extent of thousands of dollars for the sake of election to either branch of the Assembly. One night, on a streetcar to the City Hall, a new member remarked that the nickel he handed the conductor was his last. The next day he deposited $5,000 in a savings bank. A member of the House of Delegates admitted to the February grand jury that his dividends from the [Party] netted $25,000 in one year; a councilman stated that he was paid $50,000 for his vote on a single measure.
Then the unexpected happened – an accident. There was no uprising of the people, but they were restive; and the opposition Party leaders, thinking to gain some independent votes, decided to raise the cry “reform” and put up a ticket or candidates different enough from the usual offerings of political parties to give color to their platform. These leaders were not in earnest. There was little difference between the two Parties in the city; but the Republican rascals had been getting the greater share of the spoils, and the Democrats wanted more than was given to them. No exposures were threatened and the bosses expected to control their men if elected.
When somebody mentioned Joseph W. Folk for circuit attorney, the leaders were ready to accept him. They didn’t know much about him. He was a young man from Tennessee, had been president of the Jefferson Club, and arbitrated the railroad strike of 1898. But Folk did not want the position. He was a civil lawyer, had had no practice in criminal law, cared little about it, and a lucrative practice as counsel for corporations was interesting him. He rejected the offer to run for the office. The committee called again and again, urging “his duty to the Party” and “to the city, etc.” “Very well, he said, at last, “I will accept the nomination, but if elected I will do my duty. There must be no attempt to influence my actions when I am called upon to punish lawbreakers.”
The committeemen took such statements as the conventional platitudes of candidates. They nominated him, the Democratic ticket was elected, and Folk became circuit attorney for the Eighth Missouri District.
Three weeks after taking the oath of office his campaign pledges were put to the test. A number of arrests had been made in connection with the recent election, and charges of illegal registration were preferred against men of both Parties. Mr. Folk took them up like routine cases of ordinary crime. Political bosses rushed to the rescue. Mr. Folk was reminded of his duty to his Party and was given to understand that he was expected to construe the law in such a manner that repeaters and other election day criminals who had hoisted the Democrat flag and helped elect him might be either discharged or receive the minimum punishment. The nature of the young lawyer’s reply can best be inferred from the words of that veteran political leader Edward R. Butler, Sr., who, after a visit to Mr. Folk, wrathfully exclaimed, “D___ Joe! He thinks he’s the whole thing as circuit attorney.”
The election cases were adjudicated with astonishing rapidity; no more mercy was shown Democrats than Republicans, and, before winter came, a number of ward heelers and old-time Party workers were behind the bars in Jefferson City. He next turned his attention to grafters and straw bondsmen; and several of these leeches are in the penitentiary today, and the system is broken up because of his activity. But this was little more than the beginning. .
Other cities are today in the same condition as St. Louis before Mr. Folk was invited in to see its rottenness. Chicago is cleaning itself up just now; so is Minneapolis; and Pittsburgh recently had a bribery scandal; New York is contented with a respectable outside veneer; Boston is at peace; Cincinnati and St. Paul are satisfied; while Philadelphia is happy with the worst government in the world. As for the small towns and the villages, many of these are as busy as bees at the loot.
St. Louis, indeed, in its disgrace, has a great advantage. It was exposed late; it has not been reformed and caught again and again, until its citizens are reconciled to corruption. But, best of all, the man who has turned St. Louis inside up, turned it, as it were, upside down, too. In all cities the better classes – the business men – are the sources of corruption; but they are so rarely pursued and caught that we do not fully realize whence the trouble comes. And so most cities blame the politicians and the ignorant and vicious poor.
Mr. Folk has shown St. Louis that its bankers, brokers, corporation officers, its businessmen are the sources of evil, so that from the start it will know the municipal problem in its true light. With a tradition for public spirit, it may drop Butler and its runaway bankers, brokers, and brewers, and pushing aside the scruples of the hundreds of men down in blue book and red book and church register, who are lying hidden behind the statutes of limitations, the city may restore good government. Otherwise, the exposures by Mr. Folk will result only in the perfection of the corrupt system; for the corrupt can learn a lesson when the good citizens cannot.
The Tweed regime in New York taught Tammany to organize its boodle business, the police exposure taught it to improve its method of collecting blackmail. And both now are almost perfect and safe. The rascals of St. Louis will learn in like manner; they will concentrate the control of their bribery system, excluding from the profit sharing the great mass of weak rascals, and carrying politics as a business in the interest of a trustworthy few. District Attorney Jerome cannot catch the Tammany men, and Circuit Attorney Folk will not be able another time to break the St. Louis ring.
The point is, that what went on in St. Louis is going on in most of our cities, towns, and villages. The problem of municipal government in America has not been solved. The people may tire of it, but they cannot give it up – not yet.”
Source: Annals of America, Volume 12, pgs 483-487
